Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of the 19th-century German Reich, wrote, “Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable—the art of the next best.” Over the years, this has come to mean the “art of the impossible”. It can best be applied to the possible coming together in Maharashtra of the two estranged Thackeray cousins—Uddhav and Raj. They have sparred for over two decades to inherit the mantle of Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray. So, when Raj offered to set aside his differences for the greater good of Maharashtra during a podcast on Saturday, it came as a bombshell. Uddhav responded that he could work with Raj, provided the latter gave up his ‘dubious’ friends.
The swift back and forth between the two seemed calibrated according to a plan. The rapprochement moves appear logical. Both regional leaders have lost out heavily in Maharashtra’s political roulette. “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows,” said William Shakespeare in The Tempest. Raj Thackeray left the Shiv Sena in 2006 after his uncle Bal Thackeray favoured his son, the understated Uddhav, as his successor rather than the more flamboyant nephew. Raj saw no future in a family-run party and formed his Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. However, the MNS was always a non-starter. In last November’s assembly polls, Raj drew a blank, and even his son, Amit, lost.
For Uddhav, too, it is the end of the road. The Shiv Sena, once the senior partner in its alliance with the BJP and had ruled the state with three chief ministers, is today reduced to a rump. The breakaway Eknath Shinde camp is in government and continues to chip away at what remains of the UBT Sena. The cousins have learned the hard way that as an ally, the BJP will not allow a regional party to grow; allying with the Congress, on the other hand, dilutes the original Sena’s Hindutva and ‘sons-of-the-soil’ ideology. Now, there is a window of opportunity: within the government, there are contradictions between Devendra Fadnavis and Eknath Shinde; outside, there are rumblings against the three-language formula and Hindi. Reviving the original Bal Thackeray call of 1966 for ‘Marathi asmita’ or self-respect could gain traction. The coming Mumbai municipal polls could be the test run for a new regional power play.