That L.K. Advani has chosen to speak out against the hate campaign unleashed by the Shiv Sena and Maharastra Navnirman Sena in Mumbai is significant. It comes at a moment when it was beginning to appear that the competitive parochialism of the cousins Thackeray was not being met by any consequential political resistance. Advani’s intervention is remarkable not just because of his stature as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. The Shiv Sena and the BJP have been locked in an alliance of mutual need ever since they first came together in the late ’80s; the Sena is the BJP’s oldest ally. But Advani’s criticism of the Sena’s anti-Outsider tirade is valuable, most of all, for the expansive terms in which he locates it. The Sena’s campaign is against the “Constitution” and “the concept of national unity”, he says, and every Indian has the right to live, work and travel to any place in the country, irrespective of his place of birth. The reiteration of the Constitution’s letter and spirit as the central legitimising force of any political strategy, is welcome, and in the context of the small-mindedness recently on display in Mumbai, long overdue. This was also a moment when BJP-Sena ties were again showing signs of strain. Bal Thackeray chose the annual ritual of the Saamna interview on his birthday last month to send out a warning to ally BJP. The ‘Modi model’ won’t work in Maharashtra, he said, and reiterated Sena support to Sharad Pawar as prime minister. There have been signs that the Sena is discomfited by the BJP’s renewed confidence after the big victory in Gujarat. In a sense, it resurrects an older tension that has always chased the BJP and the Sena. It comes into play whenever the Sena perceives that Hindutva, the plank it shares with the BJP, is coming into conflict with its patented slogan of ‘Marathi pride’, or even on Hindutva, that it is being outflanked by the BJP. It is perhaps this insecurity, among other calculations, that has led the Shiv Sena to plunge headlong into its current bout of one-upmanship with the MNS.Advani’s cautionary note to the Sena on its campaign against the ‘Outsider’ can potentially be a reality check for the Sena’s politics of regional chauvinism taken too far — and also for those within his own party who would want to cast Hindutva in more and more exclusivist ways. It sends out messages for both the BJP and Sena — a national party must necessarily have an encompassing vision. And two, the regional party cannot afford to lose sight of the fact that it is a constitutive part of the whole.
