Can Shiv Sena ever change its stripes, from a violent party to a genteel outfit?

File image

For a good part of September the Shiv Sena's WhatsApp groups have been raging with a Hamletian dilemma — to turn to violent protests or not.

Debate and dilemma are alien concepts to the Shiv Sena which usually has a standard template and quick reaction to any unwelcome situation: highhandedness or taking to the streets.

However, despite actor Kangana Ranaut’s provocations against the party and its leader and Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, the party rank and file has been restrained. Ranaut’s choice of words for Thackeray, and her comment that the Shiv Sena betrayed the trust she reposed in it because she was “forced” to vote for the party in the 2019 elections has not gone down well with the cadre. (The veracity of her statement has been questioned because for both the assembly and general elections it was Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidates, from the then BJP-Shiv Sena alliance, who contested and won from the constituency where Ranaut voted. Put simply, there were no Shiv Sena candidate(s) for her to be “forced” to vote for them).

In the past, for far less provocative statements the Shiv Sena's women wing, the Mahila Aghadi, has resorted to attacking individuals, at time even getting physical. The cadre have not taken kindly to Ranaut’s statements, but unlike in the past the Shiv Sena cannot be breaking the law now as it is one among the three parties running the state government, and Uddhav Thackeray is Chief Minister. There is an argument that the purpose behind Ranaut’s statement is to rile the party cadre into the kind of action that would be designed to bring down the government. For now, however, the unhappy Shiv Sainiks have been told to hold their horses.

Another dilemma the Shiv Sena leadership is facing is on how it will satisfy the party’s core base of lumpen elements without giving them their pound of flesh. The longer they remain unsatisfied, the more it will weaken its organisational strength.

For years now, both Uddhav Thackeray and his son Aaditya Thackeray have been trying to mainstream the Shiv Sena and turn it more genteel. They have succeeded to a large extent, resulting in winning over the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) to form a government in Maharashtra; but, unlike the Congress-NCP which always do better in government, the Shiv Sena is essentially a party groomed right from its birth to be a militant opposition party.

While in alliance with the BJP between 2014 and 2019, the Shiv Sena occupied the opposition space in Maharashtra despite being in government both in the state and at the Centre, and edged the Congress and the NCP out of that space by challenging almost every policy of both the Narendra Modi and Devendra Fadnavis governments. The Shiv Sena did precisely what it has been accustomed to — taking to the streets, roughing up officials, cocking a snook at BJP leaders, and simply refusing to co-operate. It won them second place in the assembly after the BJP.

The question for the Shiv Sena leadership now is how to balance its newfound measured gentility with its core brash elements. Party leaders are aware that despite attempts to clean up the Shiv Sena and make it acceptable to both the classes as well as the masses, the upper crust in society still does not vote for Sena candidates, even when they were in alliance with the BJP. The Congress did better in areas with Shiv Sena candidates than when they stood against the BJP.

While Uddhav Thackeray has been trying hard for years to shed the image of the party as one of street fighters and lumpen elements that suited his father Bal Thackeray's party very well, the Shiv Sena has not quite been able to fully replace the other more refined political parties in the people’s affections.

Under given circumstances, the Shiv Sena cannot afford to lose its core voter base and leave a vacuum for someone like, perhaps, Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) to occupy. Yet it cannot also jeopardise the government and alliance with the Congress and the NCP by giving in to the cadre’s baser instincts.

This is why the average Shiv Sainik is unable to understand why the Maharashtra government — a government which has its party leader as CM — had to provide police protection to Ranaut even after she challenged the CM; or why Sena workers who were demonstrating against Ranaut or roughing up those who spoke ill of Thackeray were arrested.

Be it replying to provocations or being a politically responsible party, the Shiv Sainiks are finding it hard to wrap their heads around these new codes of conduct. As mentioned above, it’s a trait that’s alien to the Sena genes. The cadre is unhappy, puzzled and rearing to go back to the old ways. One does not know for how long Uddhav Thackeray and the senior leadership can encourage and cohesively hold the spirit of the cadre. Chances are that sooner than later the Shiv Sena will go back to its old ways — because the tiger cannot, after all, change its stripes.

Sujata Anandan is a senior journalist and author. Views are personal.