‘Too soon to say Thackerays will lose Sena’

Academic Dr Sanjay Patil writes in response to our Sunday’s story ‘How Shinde is planning to take over Shiv Sena’

Months after Eknath Shinde-led rebels in Shiv Sena joined hands with the BJP to form the government in Maharashtra after overturning the Maha Vikas Aghadi government, the Shinde faction is making aggressive attempts to appropriate the Sena brand and is trying to build a narrative that its takeover of the Shiv Sena is near complete. However, it is too soon to assume that the Thackeray family will lose its hold over the Sena anytime soon.

Dr Sanjay Patil (HT Photo)

To begin with, while Shinde has been successful in gaining support of 2/3rd of Sena’s MLAs and MPs, it has met with key legal challenges to prove its hold over the ‘real Sena’ in the Supreme Court and the Election Commission. As per the anti-defection law, the defected elected representatives in the assembly have to merge with any other party to retain their membership in the house and cannot remain within the same party as a separate faction irrespective of the numerical support. This challenge has pushed the Shinde faction to claim ownership over the real Shiv Sena to win the legal battle.

Taking over the Shiv Sena has two key aspects - one is establishing a hold over the party’s formal organizational structure and the other is claiming ownership over the idea of the Shiv Sena. The Sena’s organisational structure is highly centralised in nature. The final decision-making rests undisputedly with the Shiv Sena chief (currently Uddhav Thackeray) as per the party constitution. All the decisions with respect to appointments, party programmes and party agenda are taken by the Sena chief in consultation with the national executive. The national executive, is thus the highest decision-making body.

Even as a few members of the executive went with the Shinde faction, nearly 80% of the 244-member national executive have officially reposed faith in Uddhav’s leadership. A take-over of Shiv Sena’s formal structure would mean that Shinde needs the support of not just the elected MLAs and MPs but also a majority of the representatives in its national executive in addition to its allied organisations such as the Bharatiya Kamgar Sena and the Sthaniya Lokadhikar Samiti, which is a Herculean task, considering that one has not seen further defections in the organisation since the unprecedented jolt by Shinde.

What is more challenging for Shinde and Co. is to establish its hold over the Idea of the Shiv Sena, which is still very much in the favour of Uddhav. While Sena’s electoral politics has contributed to its success in more concrete terms, what keeps the party and its support base intact is a set of somewhat abstract yet operationally relevant relationships that people share with it, which constitutes its Idea. This includes the loyalty and faith of Sainiks on the Thackerays, the support and prominence of Sena’s shakhas which form its nervous system, the appeal of nativism and regional pride and the overwhelming response to the aura and charisma of late Bal Thackeray. Unlike other parties, Sena followers have an emotional connect with the party chief, regardless of leaders and their shifting loyalties. The recent meeting of Gat Pramukhs which took place in Goregaon underlined this aspect yet again with 30,000 followers in attendance supporting the Uddhav-led Sena. The crowds that gathered during Aaditya Thackeray’s state-wide rallies also show that the Shinde faction has not been able to capture the party’s grassroot workers just yet.

While the Shinde faction has been desperately trying to appropriate the physical symbols of the Sena - by claiming rights over the bow-and-arrow and creating another Sena Bhavan like structure, the appeal over the non-material factors is hard to take over in a few days or even months. While the legal battle will decide the fortunes of both factions, the real test lies in the upcoming local body elections which would also bring to fore the relevance and appeal of Sena’s very Idea as imagined by its founder Bal Thackeray.

*The author’s doctoral work looks at the journey of Shiv Sena between 1985 and 2022. He works at the University of Mumbai and has been chronicling the Shiv Sena’s journey for the last ten years.