The road to the future comes from the past and goes through the present. This is especially true for Uddhav Thackeray. The heir apparent anointed by none other than the Shiv Sena patriarch Bal Thackeray – all when he was alive, has been saddled by problems his outfit has never earlier confronted.
He has been robbed of his men, his party, by a seemingly innocuous “theft of family legacy”.
A total contrast to his father’s style, stature and tone, Uddhav is at such a critical juncture that how he plays the hard-ball today will shape his future, never mind the plethora of his political, legal, and other woes. Problem is, he’s not getting any younger. Time is such an essence.
Sena’s Transformation
In 2016, when the Shiv Sena turned 50, large hoardings dotting Mumbai’s skylines beamed its transformative image, not so much in words, but in picture: Bal Thackeray to the left, his son Uddhav in the middle, and Uddhav’s son Aaditya on the right, underlying an obvious transition from its chequered past to future through its present. No one had an inkling then that as the Sena took fresh guard at half-a-century of its existence – it was still in alliance with the BJP, the future was pregnant with a tactical battle the party of streetfighters knew not how to fight.
What seemed plausible then, as now, was that its wily old ally was set to consume it sooner than later, something this writer gathered from a series of interviews with the hardcore Shiv Sainiks in the party’s shakhas, lowest units that form the party’s foundation. The party workers feared that the biggest challenge to the Sena was the BJP, not so much the Congress or NCP, and the non-Marathi speaking voters who today outnumber the Marathi populations in its citadel, Mumbai.
The BJP eyed for its 20-odd percent voters, not so much the Thackerays.
By then Uddhav had been in the middle of careful repositioning of the Sena from a ragtag army to a suave political force – essentially an attempt to appeal to the Hindi-Gujarati voters. What it lacked was an economic and social policy, a long-term vision to go to this new constituency.
Uddhav, Interrupted
Before he could attempt that goal, the Modi-Shah juggernaut plunged Uddhav into an existential dilemma. In many ways, his journey has parallels with that of Rahul Gandhi’s – desertions and backstabbing by close lieutenants; conundrums of political dynasts; an ascendant, aggressive BJP out to disrupt the status quo and hit at their very foundations; tattering party machinery and an uncertain future.
Fast forward to 2023, a lot of water has flown: Uddhav and his son Aaditya took a plunge into electoral politics to enter into the legislature, something that Balasaheb had never contemplated. He was in a sense content with the image of a kingmaker – rather than becoming the king. That Uddhav miscalculated how far the BJP could go in taking him down was to underscore his gut in breaking ways with the BJP and joining hands with his hitherto political and ideological rivals.
The kings-in-the-waiting in the Sena were ruffled when the kingmaker chose to be the king. The seeds of discontent were sown; Uddhav knew it. What he did not know was the machinations the Modi-Shah pair was capable of. They got his elected aides switch sides in a whiff when things normalised after two years of storm brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, they aimed at seizing control over the party itself and late Balasaheb’s legacy, leaving the Sena in ruins, and hoping that by ripping it, the BJP could eat into its sizeable voter-base.
MVA Here To Stay
Ideological moorings are smaller when it comes to existential paranoia. As they say, there’s no permanent foe or friends in politics. Uddhav’s political decisions – first to enter the fray and then to break bread with the Congress and NCP – have altered Maharashtra’s political landscape for a foreseeable future, rumblings over the iconic figures such as Savarkar notwithstanding.
Uddhav’s political sense would not allow him to fall for these diversions, because the option he chose post-2019 have long closed some of his doors in the immediate terms. There’s no going back to BJP, he knows. He stared at a certain oblivion in 2019 if he were to stay with the BJP. By resetting the Sena position since, he faced the difficulty of convincing his trusted voters, but he at least had a toehold in the door, a chance to stay relevant, and Aaditya, a means to reimagine his future.
Uddhav knows the difficulty in dealing with the Congress-NCP, but it’s still a better option. That the three-party Maha Vikas Aghadi is getting traction across the state comes as a respite to him.
Uddhav’s “Regional” Possibilities
There’s a broad national political context to Uddhav’s moves: that the entire opposition is facing the heat from Modi-Shah is no secret. His difficulty is that he has been losing his mass leaders, a same trend that Congress has been witnessing for some time. Yet the MVA’s first electoral litmus test would come if and when the local body elections, overdue by a year, are held.
Retaining Mumbai might be Uddhav’s immediate priority. For that, he needs the Congress and NCP, as much as they need him, to get the arithmetic right not just in Mumbai but in the state.
In the long run, the future is replete with new, if difficult, possibilities for Uddhav. He could dive into his grandfather, Prabodhankar Thackeray’s legacy, retaining part of his father’s too, to build a truly regional outfit with a regional identity rather than straddling a crowded Hindutva space, where the BJP is the boss, with Shinde-Sena and Raj Thackeray’s MNS to keep it company.
Jaideep Hardikar is a Nagpur-based journalist, a core team member of the People's Archive of Rural India, and author of "Ramrao - The story of India's farm crisis". Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.