Sujata Anandan
Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray cannot help smiling from ear to ear ever since results to elections in the three Hindi heartland sets were out. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP's) drubbing has come as a shot in the arm to the Shiv Sena with BJP leaders, including Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, renewing their pleas for an alliance during the Lok Sabha elections in 2019 and assembly elections six months later.
Suddenly, the BJP is bargaining from a position of weakness, and is having to cool its heels as Uddhav is yet to decide whether or not he wants to go in for an alliance with the BJP. Without having to work for it, this is a sweet victory for the Shiv Sena, which was unceremoniously kicked out of the alliance days before the October 2014 assembly polls.
In Maharashtra, the BJP was not growing under the shadow of Bal Thackeray and leaders such as Nitin Gadkari and late Gopinath Munde wanted to break the alliance. They were, however, reined in by the older guard, especially LK Advani, who were wary of risking losses, particularly because the Congress and the NCP were in alliance.
When the four parties fought it out alone during the 2014 assembly polls in Maharashtra, the BJP discovered that despite the Narendra Modi wave, it could not make a clean sweep. On the other hand, despite the shock of having just 15 days to get its act together, the Shiv Sena made a far better showing than anyone expected.
At the peak of Bal Thackeray’s charisma, the Shiv Sena was able to win 85 out of the total 288 assembly seats and that too when in an alliance with the BJP. On the other hand, his son Uddhav, pulled off 63 seats all on his own, while the BJP won 123 seats. The Sena won more seats than the Congress (43) and the NCP (41).
The Congress and the NCP have learnt their lessons and have almost worked out a seat-by-seat alliance much ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. Now, after the December 11 results, the BJP is on the back foot and cannot afford to keep an alliance partner hanging in limbo. Sensing BJP’s situation, the Shiv Sena is making it difficult by not making its stand clear on whether it wants an alliance or not.
While congratulating Congress President Rahul Gandhi on his victory at the recent polls, Sanjay Raut, Shiv Sena MP and spokesperson, lost no time in reminding the BJP that the 25-year-old alliance, the longest in India’s political history, broke not because of the Shiv Sena. “You broke up, we will decide when or if at all we want to get back together again,” Raut said in response to Fadnavis’ presumption that the alliance was a done deal.
For weeks now, Fadnavis has been emphasising that the two saffron allies cannot afford to go their separate ways in view of the Congress-NCP combine. Compared to the Shiv Sena, the stakes are far higher for the BJP given the collapse of most of its policies at the Centre and the failure of the Ram temple issue to take off again.
Uddhav is also trying to appropriate the BJP's core base of Hindutva — last month he visited Ayodhya and demanded that the temple be built there. There he also described the BJP’s failure to fulfil its promise of building a Ram temple in Ayodhya as yet another “jumla”. A week later, Saamna, the Sena mouthpiece, carried an editorial calling for compulsory sterilisation of Muslims to control their population, thereby attempting to prove they were more Hindutva-oriented than the party which originally formulated Hindutva as a political philosophy in India.
Although BJP President Amit Shah tried to convince himself and others that the Sena was coming round to the alliance by adopting Hindutva, the fact remains that the Sena can cut into more of the BJP votes by going it alone than benefit the party in places. That said, not forming an alliance is a risk neither can afford to take — the BJP for fear of losing more seats and the Sena for losing its bargaining power in case it does worse than expected.
It is expected that the saffron allies will eventually come together but not before Uddhav Thackeray extracts his pound of flesh from the BJP. Either way, the BJP is likely to bleed.
Sujata Anandan is a senior journalist and author. Views are personal
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