Will the Ram temple issue help Shiv Sena?

The Ram temple issue has not become that big, though some outfits are planning to take it across India. So why is the Sena doing this now?

In the late 1980s, as various outfits in the Sangh Parivar started the campaign for the construction of the Ram temple in place of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray was quick to sense the changing public mood and hopped on to the Hindutva bandwagon. He adopted the hard-line Hindu agenda more aggressively than the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) itself, forcing the latter to align with Sena. Thackeray’s party gained more from the hard-line Hindutva than the BJP. Within a few years, the Sena-BJP alliance was in power with Sena playing the role of the big brother.

As the Hindu right-wing outfits have started raising the pitch for the Ram temple, Uddhav has not wasted any time to pick up the issue. (HT FILE)

Now, almost three decades later, Thackeray’s son and current Sena chief, Uddhav, is doing the same. As the Hindu right-wing outfits have started raising the pitch for the Ram temple, Uddhav has not wasted any time to pick up the issue. His Ayodhya visit is aimed at the same.

However, 2018 is not 1989; the Ram temple issue has not become that big, though some outfits are planning to take it across India. So why is the Sena doing this now?

The popular theory in Maharashtra’s political circles is that the Hindu hard-line agenda will give Uddhav an excuse to realign with the BJP after his bitter criticism of the Modi government at the Centre since the last four years. Several leaders from both parties are privately admitting that the alliance will be inevitable if they have to counter the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party-led coalition in Maharashtra in the coming elections.

According to Sena insiders, this is not entirely wrong but there is more behind Uddhav’s move. “It is true that Hindutva could be the common ground for us to align with the BJP. For the past four years, we have been criticising the Modi-Shah regime in BJP. If we forge an alliance with the BJP, it would be for Hindutva and not for Modi. We can’t go to the people and seek votes in the name of PM Modi after criticising him,” said a key Sena leader, who did not wished to be named.

“Further, it seems the BJP will also take help of the Hindutva agenda since the situation in the country today is not similar to 2014 when it swept the elections. In that case, we will have a leverage over the BJP as they know that the voters responding to the Hindutva agenda would be divided between them and us,” he added. And what if the two parties contest separately? There is one more reason why the Sena leadership wants to adopt hard-line agenda: It will help the party to reach out to non-Marathi voters in the Mumbai-Thane-Pune belt, especially Mumbai.

Sena’s leadership is aware that votes of the Marathi-speaking population will not be enough to win assembly elections or even Mumbai civic body polls, which are crucial for the party. Sena’s top brass realised this when the BJP won more assembly seats than Sena in Mumbai in 2014 and came close to it in the 2016 civic polls. If the Sena has to reach out to non-Marathi voters, it will need a wider appeal of Hindutva. It can click with north Indian and Gujarati voters who are the largest groups after Maharashtrians in the Mumbai-Thane belt.