The steady national dominance of the BJP since 2014 has seemingly squeezed the space and whittled the influence of allies in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the rippling impact of what is now being felt even by its oldest “ideological partner” Shiv Sena which after making common cause with the former for 25 years, is, interestingly, set to end the alliance and hug the political opponents it fought against till as recently as in the last month’s Assembly polls in Maharashtra.
Sena, which had experimented with the Congress or briefly even with the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) in Maharashtra before launching itself with the BJP in 1989 touting “saffron brotherhood”, was all through two decades a “big-brother” in the western State as the BJP willingly played a second-fiddle in the State.
The Shah-Modi politics reversed the equation in the State as was evident when the two allies contested polls separately in 2014. In 2019, too, the two bitterly fought for greater share of seats before joining hands at the last minute in the Assembly polls that last month did not deliver the “expected” majority for the BJP, giving it 17 less seats than it collected in 2014.
The taciturn Sena was feeling the pressure from the BJP and suspected it of usurping its urban turf and gradually marginalising it in the State politics. The rules of games had changed and the BJP was now playing big brother in Maharashtra even as it was already at the Centre. And as they say when the shove came to the push, Sena, which was constantly sniping at the BJP and attacking Modi-Shah and at times even praising former Congress president Rahul Gandhi at the cost of the duo, bolted and joined one-time foes the Congress and the NCP to try forming a second Government after Manohar Joshi first helmed the affairs in 1995 to become the first non-Congress Chief Minister in Maharashtra.
Sena ‘s move to walkout of the NDA is not surprising, given the changing power-play at the Centre and the BJP outgrowing Sena in Maharashtra where the latter has a longer history and roots that are under imminent threat from the BJP’s growing appetite for total control in the cash-rich State. Sena making friends with the opponents and “going against the mandate” (as BJP has sought to rationalise before stepping aside) may backfire for it. But the power-game, which overlooks larger public interest, has always been about cobbling up numbers.
Sena is no stranger to opportunism. Formed in 1966 by Bal Thackeray, it has like other parties enough experience of playing opportunist politics prior to teaming up with the ideological partner 25 years ago. Its alliance with Congress (O) in 1971 elections following a split of the Congress, and then even backing Indira Gandhi’s Emergency are but a few examples of its non-ideological politics. Not just this, Bal Thackeray even aligned with Indian Union Muslim League leader Ghulam Muhammad Banatwala in the BrihanMumbai Corporation (BMC) election. History is merely repeating itself in Maharashtra for the Sena.
Shrimoni Akali Dal (SAD), another long-time ally, has also felt the heavy hand of the BJP when it refused to share seats with SAD in the recent Haryana polls and even roped in the sole SAD MLA to its side before the elections. But there has not been any acrimony between the two with SAD supremo Parkash Singh Badal terming the alliance ‘sacred’.
Former Prime Minister V P Singh, who ushered a coalition Government at the Centre in 1989 that was backed up by the left and the BJP, had once famously said “politics is art of managing contradictions”. The ‘contradictions’ which Sena now seek to manage outside the ‘saffron brotherhood’ are apparently being handled ‘deftly’ by a ‘secular’ Nitish Kumar within the NDA even though it refused to support the BJP-spearheaded legislation on the triple talaq, aimed at emancipating Muslim women.
Kumar returned to the NDA fold in 2017 after ditching ‘secular’ Rashtriya Lok Dal in Bihar and walking out from the alliance in 2013 with a rush of adrenaline saying the “Gujarat blot cannot be erased’ and berating the “Gujarat model of development”.
Nitish’s JDU has not been represented at the Centre with Narendra Modi in his second-inning refusing to part with more than one Cabinet berth to it. The compensation, however, is coming in form of Kumar’s acceptance as Chief Ministerial candidate in the Assembly polls, next year, despite some recent contrarian murmuring within the Bihar BJP unit.
Coalition politics at the Centre had even before the start of the nineties witnessed strange bedfellows with political parties of all denominations and assorted ‘ayarams-gayarams’ suiting their convenience, making governments rise and fall. And politics at the State levels has experienced this fragmentation even earlier with ‘national interest’ as the umbrella cover or an ‘innocent’ euphemism for making a ‘non-ideological’ power alliance.
The State level politics and regional satraps, however, came under pressure after the ascendency of the BJP since 2014 which one by one scooped out national parties and regional players in the States and put itself in the driver’s seat. At one stage BJP was ruling in 20 states before it was beaten back by the Congress in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. The Sena revolt will now be a test as much for it as for the BJP.
