Marriage of convenience for Hindutva allies

Sunil Gatade
Senior Journalist

POLITICS is the art of the possible. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah proved it in Maharashtra recently by finally tying up with the Shiv Sena, whose chief Uddhav Thackeray had not long ago spoken in the language of Congress president Rahul Gandhi on the Rafale deal, stating that ‘chowkidar chor hai’ (a dig at PM Modi).

But, if a sulking Uddhav had wanted restoration of the ‘elder brother’ status in alliance with the BJP in the state, he has clearly failed in his objective as Modi and Shah have emerged as past masters in the alliance game in the key state having 48 Lok Sabha seats, next only to Uttar Pradesh (80).

The BJP-Sena ties have been tumultuous over the past five years after the saffron party got majority on its own in the Lok Sabha in 2014.

The tragedy is that despite his party being the oldest ideological ally of the BJP, Uddhav has failed to become another Nitish Kumar, for whom the BJP went out of the way to carve out a 50:50 partnership in Bihar by giving up five of its 22 seats to the new-found friend. For the record, Nitish’s JD-U has just two seats in the outgoing House.

In Maharashtra, too, the BJP and the Shiv Sena have become ‘equal partners’, with the former set to contest 25 of the 48 seats in the Lok Sabha polls as per the new arrangement. Both sides will contest an equal number of seats in the Assembly after leaving a few of the total 288 seats to smaller allies.

No one would say that Uddhav has been given the same respect and honour as Nitish, the friend-turned-foe-turned-friend of the BJP. “How is it possible when you have attacked the Prime Minister day in and day out?” wondered a BJP leader.

Uddhav had raised the pitch for seeking the restoration of the ‘elder brother’ status in Maharashtra. BJP leaders have made it clear that there is no hidden clause to give the chief ministership to the Sena; the party which gets even one seat more than the other in the Assembly would have the upper hand. The Assembly polls are scheduled in October. In the previous polls, the BJP had secured 122 seats, while the Sena had bagged 63. 

The Sena and the BJP share the same political space in Maharashtra and the struggle is for supremacy over that space, with Modi and Shah seeking to broaden the footprint and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis becoming a leader in his own right after being at the helm for four years. Fadnavis is not only non-controversial, but has also won poll battles for the BJP at various levels.

Before May 2014, no two parties in contemporary Indian politics were so close to each other, but after the poll victory no two parties have been at loggerheads so much and still sticking together.

In 1995, when the Sena-BJP alliance had formed the government in Maharashtra for the first time, the Sena had led it. The party founder, late Bal Thackeray, had proudly proclaimed that he had got the ‘remote control’ of the Manohar Joshi ministry in which the late Gopinath Munde was the Deputy CM.

The Sena’s prospects started brightening in Maharashtra politics since the mid-1980s when then CM and Congress veteran Vasantdada Patil expressed apprehension over moves to turn Mumbai into a Union Territory. The statement, in the midst of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections, helped the Sena to capture the civic body, said to be the most resource-rich in its category across the country.  The subsequent ‘homecoming’ of Sharad Pawar from the Congress-S to the Congress left much fertile ground in the countryside and the Sena quickly filled the political space.

After the latest deal, it is not exactly that Modi and Shah are having the last laugh and that Uddhav has become a laughing stock, but it shows that the two Hindutva allies have realised that they need each other even more than they did five years ago when the Modi wave decimated their rivals.

Uddhav is facing many questions over his volte-face, but the BJP, on its part, has offered a face-saver to its 25-year-old Hindutva ally which had declared sometime back that the years of the alliance were ‘wasted’ for it and that it would contest all future elections on its own. Perhaps, the BJP may be compensating for the humiliation it meted out to its partner since 2014.

With the Congress and the NCP joining hands in Maharashtra, neither the BJP nor the Sena could have afforded the strategy of going it alone. This is notwithstanding the claims from the BJP that it had kept a ‘Plan B’ ready in case the Sena did not relent on the alliance issue. The saffron party’s allies are aware that the Congress-NCP campaign in Maharashtra is being led by Sharad Pawar, who had ensured 42 seats for the Congress and its allies back in 1998 when the Sena-BJP alliance was in power in the state and at the Centre. Pawar, who will be 80 in a couple of years, has declared that he, too, would contest the polls, signalling that the Maratha strongman would fight hard.

But the Sena’s failure to go it alone, as decided by it earlier, and continuing to cling to the BJP indicates that the party founded on the principle of Marathi pride is losing its spark.

For Modi and Shah, the Sena’s parting of ways would have been a disaster at a time when they have lost some allies and it would have sent the message that they are not adept at the alliance game and don’t care for old friends. Since 2019 is an altogether different ball game than 2014, the BJP needs all its backers and well-wishers.