The Isolation of Raj Thackeray

WHEN RAJ THACKERAY opened his campaigning on Monday, November 4, one of the venues where he held his rally was Thane, the stronghold of Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. In that speech, Thackeray, chief of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), and the best orator in the state’s political firmament even now, used many of his caustic barbs at Shinde. There was irony in it because until a few months ago Shinde, in interviews, would say the real successor to Bal Thackeray, the founder of Shiv Sena, should have been Raj Thackeray, and not son Uddhav. The party symbol and the name, however, now belong to neither Raj nor Uddhav but Shinde. If all this is confusing to someone not in Maharashtra, then it is because it really is so. And that was also something Thackeray spoke about in his opening rallies. The public, he said, had been betrayed because in the last election they voted for one alliance and opportun­ists. “Anyone goes with anyone. No one is ashamed. Maharashtra was not like this,” he said in his Thane speech.

He had grounds for not being pleased with Shinde. The reason was 25km away in the constituency of Mahim in Mumbai. It also has within it the locality of Dadar, the birthplace of Shiv Sena and the bastion of MNS when it was founded. It is where his son Amit is contesting his first election, a natural port of call for a Thackeray. Until a few weeks ago, the general impression was that the main political parties were going to extend a courtesy to Thackeray by not fielding a candidate against his son. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was for it. When the Lok Sabha polls were happening a few months ago, Thackeray had unconditionally supported their alli­ance and had put up no candidates of his own. Likewise, the Shiv Sena of Uddhav Thackeray should have been amenable. When Aaditya, Uddhav’s son, had first stood for elections, Raj had not put up a candidate so that his nephew would win. It was valuable support. MNS might be considered a spent force but it still had a base in that area, sizeable enough to play spoilsport if the right political conditions presented themselves.

Ordinarily, that gesture would have been reciprocated. The hurdle came from so many breakaway factions in play and seat-sharing agreements. Mahim was part of Shinde’s lot and Sada Sarvankar, his candidate, was the sitting MLA. Sarvankar saw no reason to give his seat up for political courtesies being played out by others. Shinde, the only man who could have got him to make way, decided not to press with it. If there was a candidate of Shinde with greater odds of victory then there was no reason for Uddhav Thackeray to not make his party contest either. As a result, Amit Thackeray will now have his work cut out if he has to win. While the Thackeray surname goes a long way in those parts, it is nowhere near a victory card.

RAJ, IN TURN, announced that MNS would contest 25 of the 36 seats that make up the region of Mumbai. It has no hope of victory in almost all of them. In the last Assembly elections, MNS got just one MLA and that was after contesting in 101 seats all over Maharashtra. Overall it got 2.3 per cent of total votes polled. This was a far cry from the impact that it had made in its first election in 2009 when it got 13 MLAs after contesting 143 seats. It accounted for 5.7 per cent of total votes and the party was in the first three positions in half of all the seats its candidates stood from. The party had a clear ideology of be­ing pro-Maharashtra and pro-Maharashtrian. Policies had been spelled out in the manifesto: locals would have first rights over jobs, free housing for them, first preference for Marathi students in educational institutes, and so on. All this was borrowed from the Shiv Sena but with an ailing Bal Thackeray having turned over the reins of his party to Uddhav, MNS became a serious contender for the Marathi vote. In that election, MNS’ ability to take away Sena votes contributed to an easy victory for the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) alliance.

By the time Bal Thackeray passed away in 2012, many of the old Shiv Sena leaders had left the party. All that the MNS chief had to do was retain momentum, but instead the party regressed in popular appeal. In the 2014 elections, MNS contested even more seats, now veering away to a positive image by talking of Maharashtra’s eco­nomic development and releasing a blueprint. It got just one seat and has remained at that number since. Few think of MNS as a fac­tor that can sway the election’s result. They have a marginal base in some constituencies but it is a party that now relies entirely on Raj Thackeray’s personal charisma as the organisation gets depleted with every passing election.

In 2009, Nitin Sardesai of MNS had won the Mahim Assem­bly constituency and he had defeated Sada Sarvankar, the same man who has now refused to give up the seat. A lifelong grass­roots Shiv Sainik, Sarvankar had then joined Congress after being denied a ticket in that election by the Sena. He came second. He rejoined the Sena in 2012 and got a ticket in the next election in 2014. He won and retained the seat in 2019. When Shinde split with the party, Sarvankar was among those who went with him. After filing his nomination this time he gave the media an inter­esting spin on the turn of events. In that version, Shinde called him over and told him not to contest, but then Sarvankar gave his calculation of how the constituents would vote and why Amit Thackeray would not win. Shinde then told him to meet Raj Thackeray and convey all of this to him—and then agree to whatever decision the MNS leader made even if it meant Sarvankar had to pull out. But Thackeray refused to meet him and so Sarvankar said he had no choice but to contest.

MNS had initially planned to make Sardesai contest the seat until Amit Thackeray decided it was time for him to get into the game. He campaigns door-to-door in the colonies there with not a very large contingent of party members, a stark contrast to the huge crowds that his father addresses at rallies. MNS right now has just one mass leader in his father and has a flailing organisa­tion. It has very little to offer to draw in new members. A new and young Thackeray face with a hard-fought victory under his belt could be just the shot that MNS needs for a revival. With many broken parties and shifting alliances, it just might be able to then carve a space for itself.

Amit ThackerayAssembly elections 2024campaigns door-to-doorMaharashtraMNSRaj Thackeray