Shiv Sena in crisis again: Two legislators join Congress
by Sushil Pareek

    Mumbai: In yet another blow to Shiv Sena, two party legislators resigned from their Assembly seats and the primary membership of the party and formally joined the Congress party today. The two Narayan Rane loyalists Kalidas Kolambkar and Shyman Sawant representing Naigaon constituency in Mumbai and Srivardhan constituency in the Konkan region, respectively, quit the party and joined the Congress party at around 11.30 am at its office Gandhi Bhavan in South Mumbai, sources said.

   The escalating crisis in the Shiv Sena has attracted a fair amount of media attention over the last seven months. Bal Thackeray, one of the country's most vitriolic and high- profile leaders with a traditional base in the country's biggest and most cosmopolitan city, has been fighting to save his political edifice with his back literally to the wall. First, his one-time close associate Narayan Rane left the party and joined the Congress; he contested from his base Malvan and defeated the Shiv Sena candidate by a whopping margin of 63,372 votes. The Shiv Sena candidate lost his deposit in the election that had a high voter turnout of 71 per cent. He won though the senior Thackeray campaigned against him in spite of his poor health. Hardly had the shock of the defeat sunk in, when another crisis followed: Raj, the elder Thackeray's nephew, resigned from his party post. He subsequently quit the party last month. Rane had quit Shiv Sena and joined the Congress party in July last year after a prolonged dispute with Sena Executive President Uddhav Thackeray. He is presently Revenue Minister in the Congress-led Democratic Front (DF) Government in Maharashtra. Rane's resignation was later followed by three party legislators, Shankar Kambli, Ganpat Kadam and Subash Bane, who also quit the party and are contesting the by-election to be held on January 21 as the Congress candidates.

   Today is the last date for filing nominations for the by- elections to Vengurla, Sangameshwar and Rajapur seats in the Konkan region, which were left vacant due to the resignation of these MLAs. The MLAs who had defected with Rane are -- Vinayak Nimhan, Manikrao Kokate, Vijay Wadettiwar, Kalidas Kolambkar, Shyam Sawant, Prakash Bharsakle, Ganpat Kadam, Subhash Bane, Shankar Kambli, and Ashok Kale. Another MLA from Barshi Assembly segment of Solapur district, Rajendra Raut, too has joined the Rane camp, taking the total number of MLAs defecting to the Rane camp to 12. That was part of the battle between Raj and Uddhav, the elder Thackeray's son, over the family silver- or whatever is left of it.

   When Sena was founded in 1966, its agenda was to campaign for job reservation and better economic opportunities for Maharashtrians in Mumbai. The influx of immigrants in search of jobs and the resulting feeling of insecurity amongst the local population had set the right environment for a party like the Sena to thrive. It used strong-arm, aggressive methods to cut other national parties to size in Maharashtra. The textile mill crisis and the job losses made the Shiv Sena's rise to power easy. For all the 'political party' status that the Sena holds, it never really had an agenda beyond Mumbai. In a somewhat true fascist style, it targeted a series of communities (starting with the South Indians in the 1960s and 1970s) to justify its existence and to paint them as the cause of all the problems that Maharastrians faced in Mumbai ' be it jobs, opportunities or businesses.

    During later years, it added another angle to its attack, and took to a strident, fundamentalist Hinduism. When Balasaheb was thundering about 'outsiders', it meant different things at different points in time. No serious attempts were made to build the party beyond its narrow, ideological straitjacket. Such was the fear Balasaheb caused that no administration ever took any action against him in spite of all the inflammatory statements he made during some the worst riots that Mumbai witnessed. In one of his famous editorials in Samna, he once challenged the administration to arrest him. "I've packed my bags and am ready!" he proclaimed. On one occasion, Shiv Sainiks sneaked into the venue of an India- Pakistan cricket match and dug up the pitch and poured tar in it to stop the match from taking place. The reason? Thackeray had banned Pakistan from playing in India! In more recent times, Sainiks attacked an upmarket mall because English proficiency is needed to get employment there; the logic being that the locals were being denied the opportunity of working there. Well, sadly for the Sena, time seemed to have come nearly a full circle. Its traditional support base has been slowly eroded away in these times of constant changes. Sharad Pawars NCP has all but usurped the role of a party that claims to look after the interests of the state. The Sena's inability to hold on to Mumbai and its strongholds elsewhere in the state have sent a clear message that the final decline has set in. Today it doesn't even represent the famous Shivaji Park area which was the proverbial lion's den, from where the Balasaheb made his vitriolic speeches. The recent crisis has interesting origins.

    For several years Raj was considered the de facto inheritor of the throne, and for a while the son never showed much interest in taking up the mantle. However, things changed recently. In what was seen as a hurried move, the aging senior Thackeray anointed Uddhav as the executive president of the party. This has resulted in anger and resentment in sections of the party, not to mention the man who always thought he will be the king, Raj Thackeray. The first lesson is that parties have to evolve with time. What was the catchphrase of 1960s and 70s cannot be used forever. Everything comes with an expiry date. Second, you can't run a successful political party unless you have some sort of inclusive politics. Equations based on local-versus-outsiders or one-caste-versus- another don't survive long. True, they have an appeal at some point, but people do get tired of the same rhetoric if it lasts for several years. Finally, one-man show parties should plan for a more democratic decision making within them. Otherwise they are destined to decline along with the leader. Unless the inheritor reinvents the party, not much of a future awaits for the much-feared Tigers of Mumbai.

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