Raj-Sonia meet – a tectonic shift in Indian politics?
Raj has not only made overtures to the much-hated north Indians over the past years, but his brilliant campaign against Modi during the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections has been second to none
I am now fully convinced of Sharad Pawar’s magical powers of persuasion over Sonia Gandhi. For years, Congressmen have been resigned to the fact that no matter how hard they work to convince her against Pawar, it takes the NCP president just minutes to bring her round to his point of view and get her to tread his chosen path.
Now, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena president Raj Thackeray’s audience with Sonia in New Delhi on Monday, which marks a tectonic shift in, not just Maharashtra but also Indian politics has Pawar’s stamp all over it. Few people may know that Pawar, as a Youth Congress leader in the mid-1960s, had sat in on the conception of the Shiv Sena by Bal Thackeray, and guided him behind the scenes on how to conduct his politics.
Thackeray and his party were used by then chief minister Vasantrao Naik, in whose cabinet Pawar was a powerful minister, to shut down the Communists and their powerful trade unions in Bombay. The Communists and their partners on the left were the only challenge to the Congress and had been steadily depleting its electoral strength in the state in the wake of the Samyukta Maharashtra Movement. The Congress’s deft use of Bal Thackeray and his party effectively stemmed that bleeding, and now the party is desperately in need of a rescuer again.
Pawar has been working for a couple of years now, to bring Raj under the UPA umbrella but he needed to be given an image makeover before the Congress was convinced that his parochial politics would not interfere with their vote bank. Over time, however, many of the voters they were attempting to safeguard against the Sena and MNS kind of militancy seem to have shifted loyalties to Narendra Modi and the BJP. The Congress is left with virtually no grass on its turf.
Meanwhile, Raj has not only made overtures to the much-hated north Indians over the past years, but his brilliant campaign against Modi during the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections has been second to none, including that of Rahul Gandhi, the only other leader who took on Modi fearlessly and with rare courage of conviction. Even if Raj’s campaign did not help the Congress-NCP much during the Lok Sabha elections, he kept his side of the bargain and now it is up to Pawar and Sonia to return the favour. However, the MNS cannot be accommodated in the UPA and given seats at the assembly elections without the Congress on board. Despite the turmoil within the party, it is clear the Gandhis still rule the roost and Sonia’s audience with Raj Thackeray, an acknowledgment of his wholehearted campaign in Congress constituencies, could pave the way for the so-far reluctant Maharashtra and Mumbai units of the party to strike an alliance with the MNS for the assembly elections.
The Thackerays and the Gandhis are not strange bedfellows – Bal Thackeray had supported Indira Gandhi s Emergency, in return for which she did not shut down his beloved magazine Marmik and spared the Shiv Sena from a ban during those years. In gratitude, he refused to be a part of the post-Emergency alliance called the Janata Party and did not contest the state assembly elections in 1980 – refusing to support even his long-time friend Sharad Pawar and his Progressive Democratic Front alliance in Maharashtra that helped the Congress to a victory.
It was only after Indira Gandhi’s passing, following her assassination in 1984, the news of which Thackeray described as akin to “a thousand ants biting into my brains at the same time”, that the Shiv Sena founder moved away from the Congress, embraced Hindutva wholeheartedly and aligned with the BJP. Raj is now traversing the opposite course by bitterly opposing Modi’s brand of politics and seeking an overt alliance with the Congress, where his uncle’s alliance was always covert and behind the scenes.
The Congress now needs him – the most charismatic orator in the country after Modi – even more than it ever did Bal Thackeray. At one time, any such overt meeting between a Gandhi and a Thackeray would have destroyed both the Congress and the Gandhis, but there has been hardly a ripple now as desperate times call for desperate measures and the common enemy is clearly defined.
Prepare for a paradigm shift in Indian politics then – already supporters of the saffron parties, as many fifth columnists among Congressmen, are stupefied by the unabashed meeting between the two leaders. Expect a bitter fight during the assembly polls, come September.
