In Maharashtra, BJP is challenged by its own machinations

The roots of the ongoing political mayhem lie in 1995 when, for the first time, the Shiv Sena-BJP combine defeated Congress in the state Assembly elections and formed the first saffron alliance government. Though married to each other since the early Eighties, the saffron couple could hardly have conceived of political success in a state that was a Congress stronghold. There was clear political demarcation those days. The state government was Congress’s fief while the megalopolis of Mumbai was left to the Shiv Sena, which was used by Congress’s Marathi leaders in the party’s internal power struggles. Dominated by resourceful and influential Gujaratis and Marwaris like Bhanushankar Yagnik, Rajni Patel and B A Desai, the Marathi leaders in the party such as Vasantrao Naik and Vasantdada Patil tactfully used the Shiv Sena as a counter to the Hindi-speaking leaders. So much so that the Shiv Sena earned the moniker “Vasant Sena” for its pro-Vasantrao Naik stance.

All this while, the Jana Sangh, the BJP’s previous avatar, stayed on the sidelines. It joined hands with Sharad Pawar when the Maratha strongman became chief minister as early as in 1978 at the age of 37. This also marked the beginning of the end for political giant Yashwantrao Chavan. From then onwards, Chavan’s disciple Pawar was in the driver’s seat. Besides Pawar, Congress at the time had a strong battery of leaders like Vilasrao Deshmukh and Sudhakarrao Naik, besides the two Vasants. Other than Congress, socialists led by Nanasaheb Gore, S M Joshi, Madhu Limaye, Madhu Dandavate and many others, were a dominant presence in the state. Those were the days when Maharashtra’s political canvas featured a range of political hues.

Things began to change after the Nineties when L K Advani played the Mandir card to counter V P Singh’s Mandal move. The first to jump on the Hindutva bandwagon was the Shiv Sena which had been in search of an issue after the 10-year textile mill strike in Mumbai robbed it of its “Marathi manoos” card. It was the perfect marriage: The BJP was looking for an ideological partner, while the Shiv Sena was searching for a political plank. The saffron alliance thus came into being, getting its first taste of power in 1995 when it defeated Pawar, who was then with Congress.

But the success was short-lived, as Pawar, with his newly-formed outfit, the Nationalist Congress Party, in association with his alma mater Congress, defeated the ruling Sena-BJP combine in subsequent elections. To counter Pawar and Congress’s influence, the saffron partners had the trio of Sena patriarch Bal Thackeray, the BJP’s Pramod Mahajan — more of a strategist or, some might say, back-room operator — and his brother-in-law Gopinath Munde, who was among the tallest mass leaders in the Maharashtra BJP. However, it took the BJP another 15 years to wrest the state from the Congress-NCP. By then, Mahajan was gone, soon to be followed by Munde and Sena patriarch Thackeray. This period also saw the rise of the new BJP, which had very little connection to its erstwhile affable leadership.

Unwilling to cede even an inch of space to its competitors, the new BJP received a body blow when it failed to retain power in the 2019 state Assembly elections. Standing in its way were two political families: The Pawars and the Thackerays, headed by scion Uddhav. Leading from the front was Bal Thackeray’s political foe and personal friend Sharad Pawar, who hand-held Uddhav to the CM’s chair, thereby thwarting the BJP leadership’s equations. Since then, the BJP has had a one-point agenda: To cut the Pawars and the Thackerays to size. This was the motive behind the two high-profile splits in the last two years, when Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar walked out of the Thackeray and Pawar camps, respectively.

Much to the BJP’s dismay, instead of dousing the political fire, its firefighting only fuelled the blaze. Earlier it had to deal with just one Pawar and/or one Thackeray. Now there are two Pawars, one Shinde, two Thackerays (Uddhav and his bête noire and chief of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, Raj) and numerous splinter groups. It can ignore none. The reason for this is the state’s political map. The days of one-party dominance in Maharashtra have been over for a while. Now, the situation is such that even two is not enough to manage the state. Any combine hoping to rule the state has to have a combination of three parties to its side. Two is not enough for a company and three certainly is not a crowd in Maharashtra.

Currently, the state has two Shiv Senas, two NCPs, half of MNS, another Vidarbha-only outfit led by Prakash Ambedkar, Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM), one Congress (with many ready-to- flee Congressmen) and the BJP. None of the smaller parties mentioned here are insignificant. Add to the list disgruntled leaders from each of these parties along with minor regional players.

With so many “flying objects”, Maharashtra has become the perfect place for political storm. In its quest to “finish off” its rivals, the BJP broke open rather too many political enterprises. It would have realised by now that while it is easy to herd cattle, cats are another matter. It will take no less than two elections before they are sent back into their party cages.

The writer is editor, Loksatta