In 2004, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had hosted a high-profile national meet at an opulent Mumbai hotel, soon after its defeat in the Lok Sabha polls. The party had invited its key ally, the Shiv Sena, for dinner with its stalwarts including former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and former Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani.
However, on the morning of the dinner, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray simply announced he would not go. “I will not be able to discuss politics with Mr. Vajpayee at the dinner. I will meet Mr.Vajpayee later, perhaps in Delhi,” he told the media. This was classic Thackeray one-upmanship — the need to show the BJP its place on his home turf and remind them that in Maharashtra, he was the boss.
“I don’t go to meet BJP leaders. They come to Matoshree,” he would boast. In 2009, when Mr. Advani tried to call on him during a visit to Mumbai, Thackeray reportedly turned him down because he had not been given enough notice.
Role reversal This is why last week’s meeting between BJP President Amit Shah and Bal Thackeray’s son Uddhav, who now heads the Shiv Sena, could not have been more ironic. Mr. Shah had no plans to call on Mr. Thackeray during his maiden trip to Mumbai ahead of the Maharashtra polls. The Shiv Sena first made its displeasure clear and then went on the offensive, with party workers releasing images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi bowing before Bal Thackeray.
But Mr. Shah did not budge. For the first time in the 25-year-old alliance, a Thackeray had to extend an invitation for a courtesy call from the BJP. It was a dramatic role reversal in the battle for supremacy within the alliance.
After its Lok Sabha victory on the crest of a Modi wave, a resurgent BJP is in no mood to remain a junior partner. It has won five more seats than the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra. Sections of the party have been pushing to go solo for the Maharashtra polls. At the very least, it wants an equal share of seats instead of ceding the larger chunk to the Shiv Sena. In 2009, the Shiv Sena contested 169 seats compared to the BJP’s 119.
“The run-up to the polls is likely to see more shadow-boxing within the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance, but many feel it will stay as a unit in this crucial election”
“When the alliance began 25 years ago, the BJP used to contest 32 seats in the Lok Sabha. Over the years, the Shiv Sena took six of these seats but did not compensate us with seats in the State Assembly. It’s only fair that we get more seats now,” says senior BJP leader Eknath Khadse. The BJP is also gunning for the Chief Minister’s post if the alliance comes to power.
The birth of the saffron alliance The BJP first allied with the Shiv Sena during the 1989 Lok Sabha polls. The BJP leader Pramod Mahajan, who is considered the architect of the alliance, had realised the Shiv Sena’s potential after seeing it making strong inroads in Mumbai. He was also keen to expand the social base of the BJP which was largely considered a party of Brahmins and traders.
They came together on the Hindutva agenda, a shared vision which made the Shiv Sena the BJP’s strongest ideological ally. The Shiv Sena supported Mr. Advani’s rath yatra and in 1992, sent its cadre for the Babri Masjid demolition. Bal Thackeray publicly defended Mr. Modi during the Gujarat riots even when he faced dissent within the BJP.
The Shiv Sena was part of successive National Democratic Alliance regimes at the Centre. The two parties also shared power in Maharashtra, running the government between 1995 and 2000. With the mercurial Bal Thackeray at the helm of the Shiv Sena, the alliance went through many turbulent phases but survived to be a long-standing political partnership.
With the Shiv Sena conscious of its role as the Big Brother in the State, Bal Thackeray never failed to remind the BJP that he had the upper hand. The party felt the BJP grew in Maharashtra by “piggybacking” on the Shiv Sena and wanted its pound of flesh. “If it were not for us, how would the BJP have grown?” asks a former Shiv Sena MP.
During the NDA regimes, the Shiv Sena asserted its presence, often publicly embarrassing the BJP. In January 1999, when then Union Home Minister Advani was in Mumbai, Shiv Sainiks vandalised the office of the Board of Control for Cricket in India to protest against the India-Pakistan cricket series. They had earlier dug up the Ferozeshah Kotla ground in Delhi.
Senior BJP leaders including Mr. Vajpayee and Mr. Advani were routinely mocked in the Shiv Sena newspaper Saamna and the party often belittled as “Kamlabai.” Before parting ways with the Shiv Sena, its Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Nirupam had hurled accusations at the then Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie on the Centaur hotel sale, and the then Union Minister Pramod Mahajan’s telecommunication deals.
In Mumbai, the BJP was also uncomfortable with the Shiv Sena’s violent streak and its pro-Marathi stridency, which was alienating the burgeoning north Indian vote bank. But it could do little about an agenda set by its senior partner. The Shiv Sena has largely remained an ally that the BJP could not take for granted. It even backed two United Progressive Alliance-nominees for the post of President of India. The Shiv Sena chose to support Pratibha Patil in 2007 and Pranab Mukherjee in 2012, to the annoyance of the BJP.
Aggressive assertion However, the BJP had been making steady gains in the State. By 2000, it had even floated the slogan “shat pratishat bhajap” or 100 per cent BJP. It had managed to attract a substantial following among the Other Backward Classes through senior leader Gopinath Munde and widened its social network.
The Shiv Sena on the other hand was weakened by revolts. In 1991, Chhagan Bhujbal who commanded a loyal following, split the party and joined the Congress led by Sharad Pawar. He later followed him to the Nationalist Congress Party. In 2005, the Shiv Sena’s fiery Konkan leader Narayan Rane quit to join the Congress, followed shortly by Bal Thackeray’s militant nephew Raj who formed his own front. In 1995, when the Shiv Sena-BJP came to power in Maharashtra, the BJP had 65 MLAs compared to the Shiv Sena’s 74. By 2009, the BJP had overtaken the Shiv Sena with 47 MLAs compared to the latter’s 45.
In this period, the BJP started asserting itself more aggressively. In 2006, then State BJP President Nitin Gadkari wrested the Chimur Assembly by-poll seat from the Shiv Sena after a bitter spat. After Mr. Rane took a chunk of MLAs from the Shiv Sena, the BJP grabbed the post of Leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly.
The emergence of Mr. Modi on the national stage after the Gujarat riots also gave the BJP a hard line Hindutva icon on a par with Bal Thackeray. The Shiv Sena founder was unhappy to see his sobriquet “Hinduhridaysamrat” (Emperor of Hindu Hearts) being extended to Mr. Modi.
Now with Mr. Modi’s government firmly installed at the Centre, the BJP is on the ascendant. It no longer needs to cater to the Shiv Sena’s whims and tantrums. Uddhav Thackeray was unhappy with his party getting just one Cabinet Ministry in the Modi government but quietly fell in line.
The run-up to the polls is likely to see more shadow-boxing within the alliance. But many feel it will stay as a unit in this crucial election. “They have been out of power for 15 years and feel this is their best opportunity to regain power in Maharashtra.
They don’t want to rock the boat,” points out senior journalist Sandeep Pradhan from Lokmat. But this time clearly, the Shiv Sena will not be setting the terms of trade.
