Whether or not Eknath Shinde’s rebellion succeeds, Shiv Sena as we know it is finished

Karnataka and Maharashtra are neighbours in more than one sense. It took thirteen months of a rough and warring coalition government that was never meant to be to finally implode in July 2019. And it might take less than a month, i.e., two and half years after another unlikely coalition government in Maharashtra to similarly implode. The vociferous Sanjay Raut has  already hinted that the Assembly might be dissolved any time. An India Today report  says that Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray might step down in light of the MLA famine engineered by Eknath Shinde.

The pronounced similarity in both states — apart from the obvious lust for power — was desperation to prevent the BJP from occupying the top slot. In both cases, the eventual fate of the coalition was foregone. In Karnataka, the Congress, the senior coalition partner, ceded space to the JD(S), which got a paltry 37 seats out of 224. In Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena with 55 seats is slightly ahead of the NCP which has 53 and the Congress, which has 44.

But there is also a significant contrast. While in Karnataka there is almost no ideological difference between the Congress and the JD(S), the Shiv Sena which had a clear ideological aversion to that of the NCP and the Congress, is now paying a steep price for it.

In a manner of speaking, this story has its origins after the death of the Shiv Sena founder and patriarch, Bal Thackeray as we shall see.

The first high-profile exit from the Shiva was former railway minister Suresh Prabhu in November 2014. The Shiva Sena — then the BJP’s coalition partner — had to look on helplessly.

However, what really brought the party to this nadir is unarguably Uddhav Thackeray’s haste over prudence. The lure of the chief minister’s chair proved so irresistible that he chose to gamble away his father’s party’s future for an uncertain tenure. And now, the uncertainty has translated into reality.

In fact, the Maha Vikas Agadi (MVA) has hurtled head along from blunder to blunder almost from Day 1. In purely political terms, the Uddhav-led Shiv Sena almost single-handedly resuscitated the NCP. It is no secret that Sharad Pawar has controlled the MVA government since its inception.

The crass record set by the MVA in corruption and scandals and political vendetta in just over two years is truly mind-boggling.

It is indeed hard to find any other state in which the home minister himself is behind bars, the police commissioner is absconding, the Minister of Minority Affairs is also in prison, and the police meekly hand over hapless sadhus to a lynch-mob, a film star’s murder unravels a snake-pit of drug-related crimes, a bomb is planted outside Antilia and triggers a spate of political murders and cover-ups in its aftermath… quite a hard act to match.

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But if that was not bad enough, Uddhav Thackeray has almost surrendered to Sonia Gandhi, the bête noire of his gutsy father. Throughout his life, Bal Thackeray — more than any BJP leader — repeatedly and openly head-butted with Sonia Gandhi. Not many have forgotten his provocative  statements that “after the Mughal and British rule, India was now being ruled by an Italian,” that “it is better to return India to the British than be ruled by her,” not to mention his serial jibes about her early career as a hostess in a hotel.

Quite obviously, the Shiv Sainiks got the rudest shock when Uddhav announced his alliance with the Congress in 2019. Ever since, his frequent appeasement of Sonia Gandhi is now stale news. Or the fact that his son, Aaditya Thackeray invoked her blessings  addressing her as aunty. If this was not enough, the “Hindutva” party Shiv Sena has given a free run to a communal outfit like AIMIM.

These antics go beyond mere political theatrics and have sent out loud messages to the cadre: that the first family of the party has betrayed its founding ideology. Among other things, Eknath Shinde has made precisely this point as the core of his rebellious campaign.

The ongoing self-inflicted crisis in the Shiv Sena must also be seen in the larger context of the Indian political and public discourse. Shiv Sena was one of the most enduring experiments in grassroots politics. Its earliest forerunner was the DMK — ideologically its polar opposite — which in its initial days, groomed hardcore political leaders from the bottommost rungs. But the first major chink in the style of such political outfits was exposed when MG Ramachadran shattered it vertically and as long as he was alive, the DMK could never wrest back power.

But parties like the Shiv Sena, built on the cult of an individual, are doomed to suffer this eventuality. It was the generational memories of his personality cult that had kept the Shiv Sena from completely disintegrating after his death. Perhaps until recently, “Shiv Sainik” was a badge of honour for old warhorses like Eknath Shinde. It was a durable badge that Bal Thackeray had created using his native political acuity. That and the near-monopoly that the Shiv Sena has over the lucrative BMP.

Uddhav Thackeray has evidently failed on both fronts: On ideology and governance. His style of functioning has not only upset strongmen like Eknath Shinde, the rebel MLAs and the party cadre but has led to this tipping point.

The overall portrait is this: Uddhav and Aaditya Thackeray have emerged as dynasts. We suppose they have not learnt anything from a similar phenomenon unfolding before their eyes: The spectacular, extant implosion of their ally, the Congress dynasty.

Just two years after Independence, DVG, the iconic litterateur, editor and public intellectual, wrote a series titled Congress Ailing. It contained a dire foreboding: “As long as the Congress loved the country, the country respected the Congress. The moment it stopped loving the country, anger, disaffection and rebellions started brewing everywhere.”

Long story short, it was Indira Gandhi who decimated the Congress by transforming it into a family enterprise. Rajiv Gandhi was the last blade of grass that grew into an enormous artificial tree created by sympathy voting. Remember, it was Rajiv Gandhi who reduced the Congress tally from 412 to 191, less than half, in just five years. It has never recovered ever since.

The same analogy is valid here.

Clearly, it appears that Uddhav inherited only his formidable father’s surname, not his gravitas.

In the end, the Shiv Sena as we know it is finished. Whether or not Eknath Shinde’s rebellion succeeds.

The author is founder and chief editor, ‘The Dharma Dispatch’. Views expressed are personal.

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