An election symbol lost, an Uddhav Shiv Sena that is no longer ‘Balasaheb’s party’

Since February 17, when the EC allotted both the party name and symbol to Eknath Shinde’s faction, commuters on Mumbai’s busy roads have come across groups of 50-odd Shiv Sainiks holding placards and shouting slogans. They disperse within half an hour. Who would have imagined that a party known for running amok on the streets of Mumbai at the slightest provocation, forcing shopkeepers to down their shutters and commuters to hurry home, would be reduced to demonstrations of the kind staged by human rights activists? This isn’t a nostalgic lament for those days of terror; obviously, Mumbai is the gainer from this change in the Shiv Sena. But has the party lost?

Uddhav Thackeray’s surprise alliance with his father’s bete noirs, Sharad Pawar and the Congress, was seen as a strategy for survival, given the BJP’s tendency to swallow its partners. But it also showed an inclusiveness alien to Bal Thackeray’s strident Hindutva politics. Just how different this Thackeray was evident during the Covid lockdown, when as CM, Uddhav regularly addressed citizens on TV. What emerged was his humility and reasonableness, qualities far removed from Bal Thackeray’s personality. His refusal to give in to the BJP’s strident campaign for the reopening of temples and his counter that hospitals were the new temples, showed that this son of the original Hindutva icon, for years overshadowed by his father’s aura, was finally his own man.

Interestingly, in 2010, police had intercepted a call made by Uddhav’s personal secretary in which he could be heard ordering a senior party functionary to organise the burning of buses during a Sena bandh in Pune. Uddhav was the party’s “chief executive” then. But Bal Thackeray was still the Supremo.

To be sure, the decrease in street violence by the Sena began even while the Supremo was alive, and was ascribed to the party’s stint in power from 1994-1999, which is said to have “softened” its street fighters. After Uddhav was crowned successor in 2003, the hooliganism that had characterised the Sena became the hallmark of its rival and family rebel Raj Thackeray’s outfit.

However, today’s Sena carries the unmistakable stamp of both its heads: Uddhav and son Aaditya. While the latter’s political debut in 2010 was in typical Sena style — burning copies of Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey (Mumbai University immediately dropped the text) — Aaditya is regarded today as a “modern”, environmentally-conscious young politician, uneasy with the Sena’s previous lawless image.

Will this change in the Sena prevent it from fighting the blow the EC has served it? Among ordinary Marathi-speaking citizens, for whom the Thackeray name is synonymous with the Sena, there’s both sadness and anger at the “usurpation” of “Balasaheb’s party”. Sena mouthpiece Saamna, edited by Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut, has already started using the rhetoric that Bal Thackeray would use every time the Congress opposed his party: Decry “Delhi’s imperial rule” and compare it to Mughal emperor Aurangzeb against whom Maharashtra’s warrior king Shivaji (after whom the party is named) waged a long battle. The “Shah” in Amit Shah has come in handy for such comparisons, as has the anti-Gujarati plank often resorted to by the Sena.

But writing is easy, the task of rejuvenating a demoralised cadre and building on people’s sympathy, isn’t. Supporters are already chafing at Uddhav’s reluctance to move beyond his residence Matoshri and Sena Bhavan. To be fair, since the Fadnavis-Shinde takeover, he has twice announced plans to tour the state, only to be thwarted by the after-effects of his November 2021 spine surgery. The spirit is willing, the flesh is weak, but at stake is control of the Mumbai Municipal Corporation that the Sena has held since 1997. Even an ailing Uddhav can’t afford to let go of Asia’s wealthiest civic body, with its annual budget of Rs 52,619 crore.

The writer is a senior journalist