The new Shiv Sena is more a natural ally of Congress than BJP

Uddhav Thackeray

Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray often spoke about like-minded political allies and would quote the Panchatantra story of the mouse-girl and the sage. That said, Thackeray would have never expected his party to change alliances so seamlessly as it has done since 2019.

The Panchatantra tale is of a sage who finds a mouse on a mountain and converts it into a baby girl, and brings her up as his own daughter. When it’s time for her to marry, the sage lines up various gods as suitors, but she rejects them all. Finally she’s taken to the mountain god and there they realise that a mouse is mightier than the mountain. The sage converts his daughter back into a mouse and lets her join her fellow mouse on the mountain.

The irony of the Shiv Sena joining hands with the Congress, after breaking away from long-time ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is galore, because the Shiv Sena’s origins in the 1960s can be traced to the Congress’ efforts to check the growing influence of communist trade unions in Bombay’s textile hub. Thus, it is not alarming that the Shiv Sena should return to its roots and further the Congress’ agenda.

The latest example for this is the Uddhav Thackeray-led state government announcing an award in the information technology sector named after late Congress leader and former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. This comes on the heels of the BJP-led central government renaming the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award after hockey legend Major Dhyan Chand.

The state government is cocking a snook at the Centre, but while the Congress benefits from the move, the Shiv Sena is letting the BJP know who calls the shots in Maharashtra. To that extent, the late Bal Thackeray would approve. It is a different matter that he might not recognise this new, pacifist, secular and constitution-abiding Shiv Sena.

Though Bal Thackeray was co-architect, along with the late Pramod Mahajan of the BJP, of the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance, he was always in conflict with the national party. It was before the 1998 elections when the LK Advani-led BJP ignored Bal Thackeray’s demands. He decided to call off the alliance and this put Advani’s PM ambitions at stake. Advani went to Matoshree (the Thackeray residence in Mumbai) but it was only days later when AB Vajpayee arrived that Bal Thackeray agreed to meet the BJP leaders. Bal Thackeray had proved his point — that he was the deciding authority, and not the BJP.

However, when it came to the Congress, Bal Thackeray obeyed a summons from then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to meet her at a state guest house and meekly endorsed the Emergency in return for relative freedom to run his magazine when most other critical journals were banned.

Bal Thackeray preferred an arrangement whereby the Congress ruled at the Centre and the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra so that they could keep their separate constituencies intact and aid each other’s goals. In that sense, as is in the Panchatantra tale, Bal Thackeray had no problem in cosying up to the Congress. The interlude with the BJP was a shrewd political move in view of the growing saffronisation in India since the mid-1980s.

Now with both the Congress and the Shiv Sena allies in the Maha Vikas Aghadi government, there are no pretensions about sharing a common goal — the defeat of the BJP. With several municipal elections due in Maharashtra early next year, this move indicates a closing of ranks against the faction-ridden Maharashtra unit of the BJP.

Interestingly, there is another instance of rechristening on similar lines. The Congress-NCP government (2009-2014) instituted the Rajiv Gandhi Jeevandayi Arogya Yojana for people living below the poverty line suffering from debilitating health issues to seek government aid for treatment. The government reimburses hospitals in full for treating these patients free of cost. Much like the Narendra Modi government’s move, the Devendra Fadnavis government (2014-2019) renamed the scheme as the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Jan Arogya Yojana, after iconic Dalit leader Jyotiba Phule, knowing the Congress would not be able to protest.

That said, the new name is yet to stick, and hospitals generally refer to patients under this scheme as ‘Rajiv Gandhi patients’. The Shiv Sena is smiling benignly and has no objections to it.

That brings us to the question: when will the Shiv Sena name something after Bal Thackeray? The party seems to be in no hurry. For before he died, Bal Thackeray made amply sure to name plenty of parks, gardens, bridges, roads, hospitals and clubs both after his father Prabodhankar Thackeray, who was a social reformist, and his wife Meenatai Thackeray who was not in public life. The Congress governments since then have not renamed those places. Talk about quid pro quo.

Sujata Anandan is a senior journalist and author.

Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.