It is an implosion that has happened in the 56-year-old Shiv Sena (the Army of Shivaji) in Maharashtra. When such an event happens, it is difficult to put together all the pieces and remake the entity in its pristine form. To paraphrase Pilate, “what has happened has happened; it cannot be undone”. 

A political implosion does not happen all of a sudden. The build-up to the event must have begun a long time ago. It is not difficult to identify the factors responsible for what finally happened. It all began when the results of the 2019 Assembly elections came.

The Shiv Sena and the BJP had together fought the elections. While the Sena had to remain satisfied with 56 seats in a House of 288, the BJP had won 106 seats, almost double of what the Sen had won. For once the Shiv Sena leadership realised that its alliance with the BJP had been suicidal for the party. The Sena was no longer the predominant party in Maharashtra!

It had been the closest ally of the BJP with political commentators calling them the natural allies like the twins born with the same umbilical cord. They had many things in common like their adherence to Hindutva. The Shiva Sena founder Bal Keshav Thackeray, who started his career as a cartoonist in Swaminathan Sadanand-founded Free Press Journal, did not fight shy of expressing his dislike for what he called the “green rats”.

Thackeray also prided in the claim that the Shiv Sainiks were the first to use pickaxes, shovels and other implements to demolish the centuries-old Babri Masjid in 1992. Five years as a junior partner in the BJP-led government in Maharashtra taught the party a lesson every student of Botany knows — no plant or party grows under a banyan tree called the BJP.

The party MLAs also realised that five years were virtually wasted years. If they had continued in the alliance with a lesser participation in the ministry, it would have been a harakiri for the Shiv Sena. It was against this backdrop that the Sena decided to part ways with the BJP.

It is too well-known to need recanting that the BJP succeeded in forming a government by spiriting away a leader from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). The government collapsed like the many houses that collapsed in Afghanistan on Wednesday when an earthquake occurred in the land-locked nation, home to warring tribes who all profess their faith in Islam.

The architect of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), as the alliance in Maharashtra is known, was NCP leader Sharad Pawar, while the beneficiary was Uddhav Thackeray, who was suddenly catapulted to the post of Chief Minister. That he had no political or administrative experience to hold the coveted post was inconsequential.

His greatest qualification was that he was the son of a great leader, who preferred to be photographed while “fondling” stuffed tigers. With the Shiv Sena’s own 56 seats, the NCP’s 53 and the Congress’ 44, his government had the requisite majority to run the government. There were also smaller parties and Independents ever willing to support those in power for either money or pelf.

Since the NCP and the Congress and the Shiv Sena were ideologically poles apart, they had put together a common minimum programme to run the government. To be fair to Thackeray, he has been providing a reasonably clean and efficient government. 

Maharashtra was one of the worst Corona-affected states but the government did whatever was possible to control the situation. In any case, much better than the Central government, which pushed millions of poor people to take to the road to reach their villages from cities like Delhi and Mumbai.

Yes, there was some bickering between the Congress and the Shiv Sena on some petty issues but Uddhav Thackeray saw to it that it was kept under control, if not wrapped. The three parties were like the Trimurti in the Hindu pantheon of gods and goddesses. Thackeray was absolutely right that he received full cooperation from his alliance partners.

What the Chief Minister did not know was that the once-bitten-twice-shy BJP was plotting the downfall of his government through standard means. It could not reconcile itself to the fact that a non-BJP government with Congress participation in it was controlling the commercial capital of the country.

Every attempt was made to create political instability in the name of non-issues. For instance, when Raj Thackeray, the estranged cousin of the chief minister and founder of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (Maharashtra Reformation Army), tried to foment communal trouble by demanding a ban on the use of loudspeakers in mosques in the state.

When the Gyanvapi issue erupted in Varanasi, again, an attempt was made to cash in on it in Maharashtra. Fortunately, all this did not have an effect on the government. Simultaneously, efforts were on to control the three parties by letting the Central agencies like the Enforcement Directorate chase their leaders.

Two of the MVA ministers, including Nawab Mallik of the NCP, found themselves in jail on questionable charges. BJP leaders like Kirit Somaiya were so brazen that they named 12 MLAs supporting the state government who would be sent to jail. If anything, it showed how agencies like the ED had become a handmaiden of the ruling party.

The ultimate aim of all this was to destabilise the MVA government. Politics is the art of the possible. No one knows this better than Devendra Fadnavis, who had a meteoric rise in politics. He is only 51 and is already a former chief minister who completed his full term.

The BJP began using techniques it tried successfully in states like Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Goa and Meghalaya to come to power. It began wooing a section of the Shiv Sena. Kautilya in his treatise on statecraft had suggested four ways to deal with one’s rival.

They are Sama (Diplomacy), Dana (Sacrifice), Bhedha (Division) and Dhanda (Punishment). It looks like Fadnavis and his team have been using all these separately and, sometimes, together to see the back of Thackeray. The pity is that, as lamented by Sharad Pawar, the Chief Minister had no clue as to what was happening in his own backyard.

The setback the MVA suffered in the recent Rajya Sabha and Legislative Council elections should have opened the eyes of Thackeray that everything was not hunky-dory on his home front. He realised that the carpet had been pulled from under his feet only when some MLAs either belonging to the Shiva Sena or supporting the MVA government reached Surat in Gujarat.

Those who know history know how Surat as the first port of call for any visitor should set alarm bells for those in power. The Mughals ruling India did not know that their countdown began when the British landed in Surat from where the East India Company was allowed to carry on their trading activities. From Surat, the British went eastward to reach Calcutta, where they established Fort William and began ruling the country.

Eknath Shinde knew history. The four-time MLA has his own ambitions. Who does not have it? Otherwise, would Narendra Modi have become chief minister first and prime minister later? He knew that his MLAs would be safe and comfortable in Surat.

Shinde could rely on the BJP government’s hospitality and the sense of security it provided. But when word spread that the Shiv Sena revolters were in Surat and some of them could be persuaded to trek back to Mumbai, he took all of them eastward to Guwahati.

It did not bother Shinde that Assam was in the grip of an unprecedented flood. He found political safety in a state marooned by flood water. In any case, Assam Chief Minister Dr. Himanta Biswa Sarma had proved that he was indeed a great fly-by-night operator.

When Dalit leader and MLA Jignesh Mevani became a headache for the Gujarat government, Biswas managed to have a fraudulent case registered against him for a social media comment he made. He was taken away to Assam to face trial. 

And when the court found that the charge against Mevani was flimsy and he could not be held in jail like journalist Siddique Kappan for perpetuity and he was released on bail, he was arrested again on the basis of a police woman’s complaint that he tried to offend her modesty while he was in police custody. Who else could have protected the Shiv Sena MLAs better?

It was apparent that the game was up for Thackeray when he issued a statement that he would have resigned and allowed Eknath Shinde to succeed him if only he had met him and told him about his desire in person. The alacrity with which he vacated the official residence to shift to Matoshri, the house from where his father controlled Mumbai and, later, Maharashtra, showed that he was on shaky grounds. In doing so, he sought the high moral ground.

Thackeray would have obliged Shinde to keep the MVA intact. That is not what Fadnavis and his masters in Delhi like Narendra Modi and Amit Shah wanted. They wanted the MVA to go lock, stock and barrel.

Small wonder that Shinde responded to Thackeray’s offer of rapprochement by demanding that the Shiv Sena end all its relations with the Congress and the NCP. He also claimed that the Shiv Sena was losing ground to the Congress and the NCP. Electoral records do not suggest that the Sena was yielding ground to the Congress or the NCP.

Statistics prove, on the contrary, that the Shiv Sena can never be the leading partner in any alliance with the BJP. Since the situation in Maharashtra is so fluid that any guess about the likely turn of events would be hazardous. What is clear is that the kingmaker in Maharashtra will no longer be the Shiv Sena but the BJP.

In the history of the Shiv Sena, which Bal Thackeray formed to fight for the sons of the soil, there have been revolts. Chhagan Bhujbal was the first to revolt against Thackeray senior when he found that he was ignored and the late Manohar Joshi was made chief minister. The next to revolt was Narayan Rane, who is today with the BJP.

The third one to revolt was Raj Thackeray, who felt that he was more qualified to run the party than his cousin Uddhav Thackeray. When these revolts occurred, Thackeray Senior was in command and he could rely on the grassroots support he enjoyed in the metropolis.

The situation is no longer the same. True, Uddhav Thackeray has gained a lot of experience as an administrator but his reliance on some leaders who can only provide soundbites for television channels proved to be his Achilles’ heel. Had he kept his ears to the ground, he would have known in advance about the machinations of Eknath Shinde and others.

The MVA government has a lot to commend itself. Together, the three parties are a force to reckon with. With the BJP’s own pliable person in the Raj Bhavan, it would not be difficult for it to chart its next course of action. A combative Thackeray can turn the tables against the BJP, if the Congress and the NCP fight the next elections together with the Sena.

Seen in this context, all is not yet lost for Uddhav Thackeray. Like the Pandavas, who were defeated at every stage before they met their foes at Kurukshetra, let the BJP and Shiv Sena renegades like Eknath Shinde gloat over the Pyrrhic victory. Ultimately, the will of the people will triumph when they get an opportunity to distinguish the foe from the friend.

ajphilip@gmail.com