(The Political Line newsletter is India’s political landscape explained every week by Varghese K. George, senior editor at The Hindu. You can subscribe here to get the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.)
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and leader of the rump Shiv Sena Udhhav Thackeray are in the same boat these days. Both of them had profited from their association with the Bharatiya Janata Party, and both of them parted ways with the saffron party to pursue their personal ambitions. It all looked very smart and savvy to begin with, and both of them thought they pulled a fast one on the BJP. But soon enough, their clever schemes began to unravel, and both of them are staring at political uncertainty as the ground beneath their feet erodes. Mr. Thackeray is now hoping that the Supreme Court of India will disqualify the MLAs who deserted him.
The fact is that their popularity worked in conjunction with the BJP, and perhaps only in conjunction with the BJP. Their original bases would not tolerate a path separate from the BJP, it turns out. Shiv Sena functionaries are moving in hordes to the group led by Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, while the OBC base of Nitish Kumar seems upset with his latest alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal. It appears that Upendra Kushwaha, a leader of Mr. Kumar’s party, the Janata Dal (United), is trying to do a Shinde. By questioning Mr. Kumar’s authority on a daily basis, he is preparing the ground for a split in the party to be followed by an alliance with the BJP — a predictable pattern.
The moral case is stronger for the challengers of Mr. Kumar and Mr. Thackeray. In the last Assembly elections of Bihar and Maharashtra respectively, both were in alliance with the BJP. Mr. Kumar became CM in alliance with the BJP, and abruptly decided to join hands with the RJD that he had berated in the previous campaign. The Sainiks who challenge the Thackerays and the JDU leaders who challenge Mr. Kumar are actually showing fidelity to the mandate and what their parties actually stand for.
In both Bihar and Maharashtra, the BJP had won more seats than respective allies, the JDU and the Shiv Sena. Mr. Thackeray had no legitimate claim to the CM’s post. The BJP had won more seats and wanted the CM’s post, unlike in Bihar where it had conceded the post to Mr Kumar who had won fewer seats. Bihar’s political situation warranted that the BJP did not want to be seen as displacing an OBC leader; in Maharashtra, the BJP had concluded that it had to displace the Sena as the dominant custodian of the Hindutva plank.
Mr. Shinde is a man of the masses, a fact his former boss Uddhav Thackeray failed to appreciate. Mr. Shinde listens to hundreds of party workers everyday. Some days, those interactions go late into the night or early morning but everyone who turns up gets an audience with the CM, a far cry from the style of the Thackerays who drew their power from being aloof. Sena founder Balasahab Thackeray of course had the command to pull this off, but not his son and grandson. The world of Aditya Thackeray was further removed from the average Shiv Sainik as he tried to reshape the party with lateral inductions. When the identity of the real Sena was sought to be wrapped in a different packaging, it came down crashing.
Where do Nitish Kumar and the Thacakerys go from here? The OBC voters of Bihar that are opposed to the Yadav-dominated RJD will make decisions independent of Mr. Kumar, going by the trends in recent byelections, and that is bad news for him. The only condition in which this trend could be reversed is an issue that triggers caste polarisation. The JDU-RJD alliance is trying to place the ongoing caste census in that frame. The case of the Sainiks is more complex. Sainiks ideally want the Thackerays and the strident Hindutva agenda of the BJP to stay together. They are upset that the Thackerays walked out of the BJP’s embrace. The pressure from below, and ejection from power, could tame the tigers of Mumbai who will be under pressure to rethink their relationship with the BJP. Watch this space.
