LAST Saturday’s soap opera featuring the Thackeray cousins and their families underlined the existential crisis both off-shoots of the original Shiv Sena are facing in the aftermath of political blunders committed by their leaders. Invoking Marathi pride, both Uddhav Thackeray and Raj Thackeray tried their best to stir the electoral feelings among Maharashtrians but within days have discovered that their old ways of hooliganism are not finding resonance even in the Marathi-speaking voters. Both, the Shiv Sena (UBT) and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), are on the backfoot as the linguistic pride card is turning out to be a bluff. The cousins have lit a fire and they now stand the danger of ending up with big political blisters. Stoking up language row for political survival is a ploy laced with many risks. Both the parties have shown an ambivalent stand on the Marathi issue and the attacks on non-Marathi people by their workers have further pushed them on the defensive.

 

Their dilemma of carrying the issue further is reflected in the gag order issued by Raj Thackeray to MNS workers and leaders. Keeping them away from the media and stopping them from issuing any statement on the row, Raj has only dented the image of his party. It has a history of reneging on promises and another fiasco on Marathi issue will further alienate the MNS supporters. The lack of traction to the Marathi pride call has also shown both the parties that Maharashtra has moved beyond the politics of narrow linguistic parochialism. Had the brothers been so concerned for Marathi identity then they would have united long ago. This show of unity is a marriage of inconvenience spurred by repeated electoral setbacks and identity crisis. It warmed the hearts of the followers of late Balasaheb Thackeray but that feeling has a limited shelf-life, for, it holds no power to translate the emotion into votes. The Marathi manoos, for whom Balasaheb’s Shiv Sena was a huge security, is clearly frustrated by the inconsistencies of Uddhav and Raj. Their shifting stands, short-term populism and ill-advised political alliances have exposed the decay in both SS (UBT) and MNS strategies.

 

It is a hard truth the factions will have to confront. The Marathi manoos sentiment on which Sena built its foundation under Balasaheb is no longer potent enough to end the brothers’ political oblivion. The reunion of the cousins has further deepened confusion among the cadre of both the parties. All of them were under one umbrella before Raj walked away to form the MNS. Since then, both the brothers have slowly drifted away from the Shiv Sena’s core ideology of fighting for Hindutva and Marathi identity. Lack of focus on the second part has hastened the decline of their political fortunes even as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) strengthened its base on Hindu unity without any regional bias. The BJP’s stand has echoed far louder in the cosmopolitan culture of Mumbai while Uddhav and Raj have kept brooding over their failed political ambitions after deserting the issue of Marathi pride. Uddhav simply failed to gauge the power of the Hindu sentiment which has come out in the country with a pronounced pride since the political change in New Delhi in 2014.

 

He stayed with the BJP and floated on the Hindutva platform before the 2019 howler. It was a major turning point for Uddhav and Shiv Sena. The move of severing ties with the BJP and entering into an unlikely alliance with the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) to lead the Maha Vikas Aghadi government is still perceived as anti-Hindutva by the voters. That one blunder has systematically eroded the Shiv Sena’s traditional support base. The Marathi and Hindu voters term the alliance with Congress as a betrayal. It has severely hurt the credibility of Uddhav Thackeray. The joint call for Marathi identity cannot revive the traditional support base, for, the voter in Maharashtra has moved far ahead out of the trap of regional confines. Without the party’s official name and symbol, now held by Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, the comeback path of Uddhav Thackeray has become too slippery. The SS (UBT) already encountered this harsh truth when it ended up with only 20 seats in the 2024 Assembly elections. It was the worst performance in Shiv Sena’s history.

 

The debacle sent a loud and clear message to Uddhav that the voters are not willing to accept his political volte-face and ideological contradictions. The sentiment of Hindutva still holds a powerful current in Maharashtra and it will be almost impossible for Uddhav to wipe out the stamp of being a Hindutva betrayer. For Raj Thackeray, the climb is far too steep. By resorting to vandalism, the MNS has scored a self-goal and their leader has now been forced to issue conciliatory statements. His speech at the reunion rally was again full of theatrics but conveyed no assurance of forging a lasting alliance with Uddhav’s faction. The arm-twisting tactic by his party workers has been called out by even Maharashtrians living in Mumbai. These are signs of the MNS’ dwindling political clout in the land the Thackerays once held as their fortress.

 

That is why there was a desperate scramble by the cousins to jointly claim the legacy of Balasaheb Thackeray. In the bid to send a message to their political rivals in the State, the Thackeray brothers chose Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis as their prime target. It was perfect stuff to make headlines as Fadnavis also responded to the jibes in his usual, cool manner. However, this direct attack can boomerang badly on the two factions given Fadnavis’ mastery in engineering political coups. A surprise might be in store for the Thackeray brothers!