What 50 years have taught Shiv Sena
June 19, 1966 can always be remembered as the day which changed the fortunes of the Thackeray family. The family of the noted cartoonist never thought that after this day they will be turning into one of the most feared and followed political families of Maharashtra.
This fear has sustained for 50 years and shows no sign of waning.
June 19, 1966 is the day when Bal Thackeray, cartoonist by profession and son of one of the leading social reformists of Maharashtra, formed an "organisation" not a political party, which his father Keshav Thackeray named Shiv Sena.
The baton of the organisation had been passed on to Bal Thackeray's son Uddhav and then will likely be passed on to Aditya, his grandson.
The Shiv Sena on June 19, 2016 will be 50 years old. It remained an "organisation" for many years after its formation and mainly concentrated its activities in Mumbai and surrounding areas like Thane. The initial promise made by its chief Bal Thackeray was that the organisation will do "20 per cent rajkaran and 80 per cent samajkaran". It means politics will comprise only 20 per cent of its agenda and the remaining 80 per cent will consist of social work and that’s why it was formed as an organisation and not a political party.
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| Bal Thackeray. |
This, however, was the first of the promises that Bal Thackeray broke after the formation of the organisation. The Shiv Sena contested the BMC elections within two years of coming into being and won an impressive 42 seats in alliance with the Praja Socialist Party.
However, the Shiv Sena broke the alliance within few years of testing its strength in elections. Bal Thackeray who was running a political magazine called Marmik understood the frustration of the lesser educated, unemployed youngsters. He promised them that the job opportunities that Mumbai’s economic growth was creating would go to Marathi job aspirants. So in Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena is the progenitor of “son of the soil” politics.
This agenda of "son of soil" politics gave a much-needed headstart to the political party-cum-organisation, but more than that, the Shiv Sena’s method to get "justice" led to the creation of an aura of fear around the name Thackeray
Shiv Sena became the first political party which openly supported violence. Bal Thackeray never gave any ideological base to his organisation; its ideology swings happened according to diktats and needs of its leader Bal Thackeray. That is the reason Shiv Sena could have an alliance with even those parties which have been the target of Bal Thackeray’s speeches.
The Shiv Sena has had alliances with socialists, the Congress, Muslim League and in the end, with the BJP. Bal Thackeray openly supported only one ideology to keep the party floating - the ideology of violence and it became Shiv Sena’s working ideology.
The ideology is so ingrained in the hearts of the Sena workers that even its new leadership is finding it hard to change. The Shiv Sena is a party which cannot be put in to any ideological mould - Right or Left. In the initial days, its "son of the soil" slogans were supported by even socialists in Mumbai and also by the working educated middle class.
Shiv Sena’s street fights in Marathi-dominated central Mumbai were supported by the Congress, which was waiting since long to cut the communist and its rowdy unions to size.
The Shiv Sena’s equally rowdy cadre was used by the Congress against the communists but Shiv Sena’s leadership never bothered about that as long as it had its aura intact in Mumbai.
During the Emergency years, when the Right and Left came together against Indira Gandhi, it was Bal Thackeray who supported the Emergency, though he and the party paid political price for that. But this clearly showed that Shiv Sena and its leaders never cared about the position they were taking ideologically.
Despite this, its cadre at the ground level remained intact. When Thackeray saw an opportunity to grow beyond mumbai and Thane he abandoned his original "son of the soil" agenda and took up an aggressively Hindutva agenda. The Shiv Sena’s role in the 1992 Mumbai riots made it a strong right-wing party, but Thackeray kept using the saffron tag only when it was needed to boost the voter base.
But why is it that in spite of many u-turns by Bal Thackeray, the Shiv Sena could maintain its dominance? The credit for that should go to its selfless cadre working on he streets. The cadre, abandoned by all mainstream parties as it had no ideological face and aptitude, got Bal Thackeray's patronage.
This cadre ran the party from thousands of "shakhas" across Maharashtra. These shakhas, or local offices of the party became a parallel judicial system, which decided matters right from money matters like real estate dealings to mundane family issues like marital discord.
The aam adami who normally does not wish to go to courts to sort out their day-to-day issues started knocking the doors of these shakhas, and the local level shakha heads called "shakha pramukhs" started solving these issues.
This worked for the Shiv Sena as this instant, time-saving justice system was not offered by any other political party. This system did keep the Shiv Sena’s existence intact despite many defections from the party including that of Raj Thackeray.
However, this system had its flaws. It never gave the Shiv Sena the image of a serious political party and because of this, it could never touch the heights that some of its contemporaries like the DMK, AIADMK, TDP and recent ones like TMC and TRS could in their respective states. The Shiv Sena on its own could never come to power on its own in Maharashtra.
The current Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray is giving it a serious push but that is also because its long-time ally BJP ditched it in the 2014 Maharashtra Assembly elections.
Now the Shiv Sena has realised that its techniques of forming alliances will not work. The biggest asset of the Shiv Sena till now has become its hurdle, particularly if it is building up a Mission 2019 for the next Assembly elections and nurturing the dream of becoming the ruling party on its own.
The Shiv Sena cadre is ill-equipped to bring the party to the top position in the state. Bal Thackeray could play his politics according to his whims, Uddhav and Aditya do not have that luxury. They have a challenge not only from their rivals but also from their "friends" like the BJP.
Maybe that's the reason Uddhav Thackeray keeps playing the role of Opposition depite being part of the government in the state as well as the Centre. Bal Thackeray always fought the politics of survival so that he could keep talking about "20 percent politics and 80 percent social service". Uddhav and Aditya Thackeray know that they will have to talk about 100 per cent politics and that would truly be the 50th birthday gift to its cadre.