Maharashtra Splits : A Political Drama

By Deepak Parvatiyar

October 8, 2014

What type of right-wing political posturing is going on after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena snapped their 25-year-old ties last month over the issue of seat sharing in Maharashtra that goes to poll on 15th October?

Charges being Traded by BJP-Shiv Sena

Consider these charges being traded by the Shiv Sena and the BJP now :

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• The Shiv Sena holds the BJP responsible for the break-up of the alliance, accussing it of ‘backstabbing’ the Sena.
• Balasaheb’s son and the present Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray compares Prime Minister Narendra Modi – the BJP’s star campaigner – with Afzal Khan (a 17th Century General who was defeated by Shivaji)!
• The BJP accuses the Sena of “targeting” Modi because, as senior BJP leader from Maharashtra and Union minister Prakash Javadekar claimed, “they (the Sena leaders) are suffering from Modi phobia”.
• Sena leader and Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Raut rules out any possibility of a post-poll pact in case of a fractured mandate in the assembly elections.

Obviously, wars and elections are fought to win and, therefore, such rhetorical expressions easily pass off as war cries of two rivals engaged in a high-pitched electoral battle.

Subtle Game being played by both BJP and Shiv Sena

But what if they appear so superficial in the wake of the following developments? :

• Modi adopts a soft posture on the Sena in his election rallies out of his “respect” for the  Sena founder, late Balasaheb Thackeray –  “This is the first election in Maharashtra to be held after the passing of Balasaheb Thackeray. I have decided not to speak a word against the Sena.”
• Uddhav Thackeray claims he “still” respects Modi. His lieutenant Sanjay Raut too agrees — “We love and respect Narendra Modi. He is leading the country well…”
• Union minister and former BJP chief Nitin Gadkari – a formidable Maharashtra politician – does not rule out the possibility of a post-poll tie up with the Sena — “If the situation arises, we can certainly think of that.”
• Shiv Sena’s lone member in Modi’s Cabinet, Ananth Geete, rules out his resignation  as  heavy industries minister on grounds that despite parting ways with BJP, the Shiv Sena still remains a  a part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre.

Doesn’t it appear that the mutual admiration between the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party is even more perceptible now than ever before?

Hidden Political Agenda?

Before we analyse the reasons for this blow-hot-blow-cold approach of the two estranged bedfellows, it would be apt to point out that they did not divorce because of any ideological conflict but they rather conspicuously suspected each other of respectively encroaching their own individual spaces in the Maharashtra political arena.

Such a split among natural allies is not new in Maharashtra politics and this jostling for space within the same ideological framework had resulted in an ambitious Raj Thackeray parting his ways from the Shiv Sena to establish his own Maharashtra Navnirman Sena in the state.

Raj and Uddhav have remained estranged cousins politically, though they do share a bonding at a personal level.  Can they come together in case of a hung assembly is to be seen. Yet it is rather a curious phenomenon that the major contenders in the state elections —  the BJP, Shiv Sena and the MNS — do share the common umbilical cord. Even the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) was born out of the Congress Party!

Political ambition of individual leaders may be responsible for the splits yet they also offer better scope to ideological outreach and are even helpful in tackling the incumbency factor.

I recall a BJP activist in the nineties wondering why every splinter group of the Congress party had the word ‘Congress’ in its name – whether it was Nationalist Congress Party, Tamil Manila Congress, Trinamool Congress and so on. “Even after the split they retain their ideological identity yet they eat up the Opposition space and come together after the elections,” he observed.

Can we say the same about the BJP-Sena split? After all, isn’t it true that Modi did successfully try the same formula in the last assembly elections in Gujarat, where his one-time mentor Keshubhai Patel had split the BJP to form his own Gujarat Parivartan Party and considerably negated the Congress challenge by dividing the Opposition votes in certain constituencies in Saurashtra? After the elections, Modi did patch up with Patel by touching his feet!

What makes the situation more complex in Maharashtra is that unlike Keshubhai’s GVP, the Sena is a formidable force here and in fact was the senior partner in its alliance with the BJP. Now that it is contesting 286 seats instead of the earlier 169 that it had wanted to contest as a BJP ally, it has set a target of winning 200 of them. Obviously it seems a daunting task in a multi-pronged contest.

BJP-Shiv Sena out to eat up Congress-NCP Votes

Yet, assuming it gets the majority in the Assembly, will it go for any alliance with the BJP. The same applies in case of the BJP either. But with political pundits discounting any such prospect and predicting a hung assembly after the state elections, indeed, there appears shrewd political arithmetic between the split – to eat up the Congress-NCP votes – and wait to see who among the Sena and the BJP emerges as the largest party of the two.

This does make sense and explains the reason that why neither of the two saffron parties has yet not disclosed its respective Chief Minister candidates. After all, wasn't their fight all about the CM’s post?