The dilemmas before Uddhav Thackeray are many. (File Photo | PTI)
The dilemmas before Uddhav Thackeray are many. (File Photo | PTI)

Rabble to rubble: Uddhav Thackeray and the difficulty of being good

Exigencies demand Uddhav continues to use the crutches provided by Congress and NCP to stand. For that, he will have to walk the fine line between practising Hindutva and yet looking secular.

In 1991, the pro-Marathi-manoos Shiv Sena led by its towering patriarch the late Bal Thackeray faced its first rebellion. The man who had dared to defy the much-feared Balasaheb, as he was fondly called, was Chhagan Bhujbal.

As irony would have it, twenty-eight years later, Bhujbal -- in the Nationalist Congress Party since 1999 -- had to work under the Sena patriarch's not-so-charismatic son Uddhav when the latter joined hands with his party and the Congress to become the Chief Minister of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in December 2019. After barely two-and-a-half years of coming to power, that MVA government has now collapsed due to the rebellion led by another Sena heavyweight Eknath Shinde.

In between, the Shiv Sena had faced two more rebellions -- one by Narayan Rane, now in the BJP, and, shortly thereafter by Uddhav's cousin Raj. The first three rebellions didn't deal a body blow to Shiv Sena. This one by Shinde and about 40 others, however, has brought it to the brink of an existential crisis. The reasons are not far to seek.

First, all the three earlier rebellions happened when Bal Thackeray reigned supreme. The rebels were minnows compared to him and didn't have anywhere near the same degree of support as Shinde, who has taken three-fourths of the party's 56 MLAs along with him. Add to this the fact that Uddhav is sober and reserved and doesn't invoke the fear and respect his father did and you can well understand why this crisis is a dire one.

There are other factors aligned against the former Chief Minister.

Earlier, the rebels didn't have any rival political party supporting them whereas the Shinde group today has the backing of a formidable BJP. And while the earlier rebellions were for positions of power within the party, the one by Shinde is, for the record, ideological -- for Hindutva to be precise. This rebellion has also played out under the ever-enlarging shadow of investigations by Central investigating agencies.

So overwhelming then is the effect of the Shinde group's rebellion that the Shiv Sena looks set to even lose its precious bow-arrow symbol to the rebel group. The "original" Sena will have to be prepared for the worst and plan its next moves from that perspective.

The only solace guaranteed to the Uddhav camp is that it will be able to retain at least its name with a suffix in the bracket -- become a Shiv Sena (Uddhav) or Shiv Sena (Balasaheb). And, of course, the fact that Uddhav is the scion of the Thackeray family will also count, no matter how competitively the BJP and the Shinde camp exhibit their reverence for "late Balasaheb".

Yet, the road ahead is full of challenges for the deposed CM. Uddhav needs to rebuild the party from scratch. This will entail a combination of innovations, improvisations and even compromises.

With over 40 MLAs, and an unspecified number of Members of Parliament, municipal councillors and even organisational office-bearers of the party reportedly deserting the Sena or likely to desert, the best bet for Uddhav is the loyalty of his party's committed voters. He can't take this for granted. He will have to plan his future by presuming a dent in this voter base too.

He can draw some comfort from the fact that the largest chunk of MLAs - 10 out of 15 - with him are from Mumbai, his home turf. That should help him retain a large chunk of the 97 seats his party commanded in the now-dissolved Bombay Municipal Corporation, elections for which are to take place later this year.

An early indication of the mood of ordinary Shiv Sena voters would have come in the municipal council elections to over 98 bodies originally slated for August 18. But with all parties requesting the State Election Commission to postpone the voting to enable the incorporation of OBC reservations, Uddhav may have to wait longer for clarity.

In 1992, when a senior Sena leader, Madhav Deshpande, had criticised Bal Thackeray, the latter had dramatically offered to quit politics. That had Sena supporters in a rage. Many had hit the streets threatening self-immolation. Uddhav lacks the charisma to provoke such extreme professions of loyalty.

The only given is that he will continue to enjoy the natural advantage of being Balasaheb's son. But that said, he needs to win the perception war against his opponents to stay afloat.

When Uddhav broke away and chose to form a government with his long-time political and ideological adversaries, the Congress and NCP, the BJP went to town with the propaganda that the Sena had stabbed them in the back and had also cheated the people of Maharashtra by shortchanging Hindutva for power. Uddhav had countered it with a half-hearted and laboured claim that he hasn't dumped Hindutva and his, in fact, was the real Hindutva.

From here on, he needs to emphatically spell out his ideological leanings. In the regular run of play, this should have been easier since he is no more in government with secular partners -- the Congress and NCP -- but it actually is far more complex.

On the one hand, there is the challenge of reconfiguring his Hindutva stand and, on the other, the challenge of walking independently. With the predatory BJP all set to exact revenge, Uddhav needs his two current partners more than ever before. So, reviving the old strident brand of Hindutva won't be an immediate option.

Also, in the forthcoming BMC elections, Uddhav will be faced with a dilemma when it comes to Sena's longstanding and original son-of-the-soil plank. He can neither be seen as dumping it nor using it explicitly. All his political skills will be put to a grueling test in walking that tightrope.

Clearly, exigencies demand that Uddhav continues to use the crutches provided by Congress and NCP to stand. For that, he will have to walk the fine line between practising Hindutva and yet looking secular. A reinvention of that kind will never be easy. Uddhav will have to marshall all his political skills to measure up to the challenge.

But staying ideologically sober is no security against yielding the leftover political space to his new partners. The BJP made its moves despite ideological fraternity. The Congress and NCP will have to be impracticably generous to refrain from eyeing their share of the remaining Sena pie. Needless to say, either way, revival of old glory and strength is a tall order for the Uddhav-led Sena.

The other vital task that the former CM will have to undertake is rebuilding the organisation. He had shown he is equal to the task after taking over the reins from Bal Thackeray. Uddhav had then proven political observers who forecast cousin Raj Thackeray as the real successor wrong by winning 63 seats in the 2014 Assembly elections without a pre-poll alliance with the BJP. And this was two years after Bal Thackeray's death in 2012.

In 2019, the Sena's tally came down to 56 despite five years in government with the BJP and a pre-poll alliance. The depleted number only lent credence to Uddhav's suspicion about BJP stealthily undercutting his party's political base but the BJP cleverly managed to portray themselves as the victim of Shiv Sena's "deceitful" conduct after the latter quit the alliance to join hands with the Congress and NCP.

The game of perception is, however, now delicately poised. With the BJP finally pulling the rug from under Shiv Sena's feet, Uddhav has unambiguously emerged as the victim.

Such party splits have historically been loaded heavily in favour of the original parties, be it the Congress under Indira Gandhi or Purogami Lokshahi Aghadi led by Sharad Pawar in the eighties, Uddhav must be hoping for a repeat in his case too.

But he will still need to do a lot of explaining to the people, especially his core voters, to convince them that he is still a force to reckon with. In this fight for survival, he can expect public sympathy to be on his side. His image as a cultured leader might also help. But these are all intangibles.

What cannot be gainsaid is that Uddhav's new inning will need a lot of concrete steps. He will need to decide what they will be and execute them with mathematical precision to bounce back.

(The author is a freelance journalist based in Nagpur. This is the first in the series of web-only columns that The New Indian Express will be carrying.)

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