Opinion Express View on battle of Shiv Senas: Factions slug it out

The Shiv Sena Foundation Day on Monday turned out to be another occasion for the two party factions to engage in name-calling. The noise continued as the Maha Vikas Aghadi constituents observed Tuesday as Gaddaar Din (Traitor’s Day) to protest the fall of their government following the split in the Sena. The detention of MVA activists ahead of the Tuesday event further ratcheted up tensions. On Monday, Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray called Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, who split the Sena with 40 MLAs last year and joined hands with the BJP to form a government, the “new slave of BJP”. Shinde, on his part, said Thackeray would be “turned into garbage”. The Shinde-led Sena also organised celebrations on Tuesday, calling it Swabhimaan Day. With the general election less than a year away, the divide is only likely to widen.

Both the Sena factions define their political choices in ideological terms. This has been easier for the Shinde faction – since the 1990s the Sena had embraced Hindutva as its political ideology. It made it easier for it to explain its alliance with the BJP to party cadres, who had originally been attracted to the party because of nativist agendas. The Shiv Sena-BJP alliance stayed strong for years because of the Hindutva glue and the convergence of both parties on issues such as Ayodhya, Article 370 and Uniform Civil Code. It stayed firm also because the BJP’s national and state leaderships were ready to accept the primacy of the Sena in Maharashtra. The Shinde faction invokes this legacy and argues that Uddhav Thackeray’s decision to align with the NCP and Congress is a betrayal of the Sena’s political beliefs. Uddhav Thackeray has been hard-pressed to explain the ideological contradiction in his decision to stay with the MVA since he also advocates Hindutva agendas. His invocation of the Bal Thackeray legacy will have traction among Sainiks, of course, but he has not been successful in distinguishing the Sena’s Hindutva orientation from the political plank of the BJP.

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As the Sena factions slug it out, the long-term beneficiary could be the BJP, the original party of Hindutva, which could attract alienated Sainiks. In any case, the Maharashtra BJP has been increasingly backing polarising narratives — for instance, raising the pitch on Aurangzeb — in a bid to sharpen the ideological divide. The Sena (UBT) may need to put together a distinctive plank — perhaps like that of a regional party such as the DMK, KCR’s BRS or YSR Congress — if it wants to regain its pole position in Maharashtra.