The three partners — Sena, NCP and the Congress — should keep asserting their respective positions for public consumption and Uddhav should keep harping on his Hindutva ideology. This is the only way the coalition can continue

Shiv Sena supremo Uddhav Thackeray is trying to do a fine balancing act between what he calls his own brand of Hindutva and the secularism of his new-found coalition partners — the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Significantly, Uddhav’s ideological platform revolves around Hindutva, which is at odds with the “secular” political agenda of his ruling coalition partners.

Claiming that his brand of Hindutva is different from that of the BJP he clarified recently, “We don’t have the same thought process. I don’t want a Hindu Rashtra (nation), which is not peaceful. Using religion and grabbing power is not my idea of Hindutva.” The Maharashtra Chief Minister is keen to ensure that his ideological platform remains intact by asserting time and again that he has not abandoned the Hindutva nurtured carefully by the Sena founder, the late Balasaheb Thackeray.

No one knows the perils of having an anti-Hindutva image better than Uddhav and hence the stress on the Hindutva roots. He knows that Sena workers might suffer any humiliation out of love for him but they will never digest being called anti-Hindu. And they want Uddhav to give the BJP a befitting reply to the saffron party’s smear campaign, painting them as anti-Hindu.

Also he has realised that ceding the Hindutva space might cost him big, given his cousin Raj Thackeray’s recent efforts to rebrand himself as a pro-Hindutva leader. Uddhav has to reclaim the space. Hence, Uddhav’s much-publicised visit to Ayodhya last week is part of his new political strategy.

The Maharashtra ruling coalition headed by Uddhav recently completed 100 days in office. To mark the occasion, the Chief Minister visited Ayodhya with his family and announced a donation of Rs 1 crore for building the proposed Ram temple.

“This sum is not from the Maharashtra Government but from my trust,” he announced pointing out that it was his third visit to the temple town, in the last one-and-a-half years.

Addressing a huge crowd in Ayodhya, he said, “I have parted ways with the BJP but not with Hindutva.” The Sena mouthpiece Saamana also in its latest editorial said Lord Ram and Hindutva were not the sole property of any single political party. So it is clear that Uddhav is designing his own brand of Hindutva.

The Chief Minister has been consistent in his assertion and even told the Assembly on December 1, 2019, “I am still with the ideology of Hindutva which cannot be separated from me.” The fact that Uddhav’s  coalition partners understand his need for asserting his ideological identity was visible when his plans to visit Ayodhya were announced. The local Congress leaders were quick to make it clear that they had no problem with it because the Congress, too, was in favour of building the Ram temple in Ayodhya. In fact, a significant number of local Congress and NCP leaders feel that the alliance has helped them to counter the BJP propaganda that they were pro-Muslims.

Though Uddhav has kept his party intact after the death of his father these past seven years, heading the Government and running a coalition are new challenges for him. 

For instance, despite the bonhomie, the coalition partners had  some anxious moments when Uddhav did flip-flops on contentious issues like the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the National Population Register (NPR). In December 2019, Uddhav said the CAA will not be implemented in Maharashtra and subsequently after meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi in February, he said the law has been misunderstood. He also spoke in favour of the NPR.

Frowning on this indecisiveness, Congress leader Manish Tewari tweeted, “CM Maharashtra @UddhavThackeray requires a briefing on Citizenship Amendment Rules, 2003 to understand how NPR is the basis of the NRC. Once you do NPR you cannot stop NRC. On CAA he needs to be reacquainted with the design of the Indian Constitution that religion cannot be the basis of Citizenship (sic).”

Now Uddhav has announced a committee to study the NPR and he had also assured the legislators before the start of the Budget Session that contentious issues would not be allowed to disturb the coalition.

However, despite the best efforts on the part of the coalition partners, all these issues have made the delicate equation a little more fragile.  Though the stakes are high for all the three partners of the Maha Vikas Aghadi Government to keep the coalition going, the Sena, in particular is vulnerable, as it had to go for this partnership to remain relevant in Maharashtra politics. This was the calculation that the Sena made when it parted company with the BJP. And, with the perception quickly gaining ground that Uddhav was diluting his Hindutva identity due to coalition compulsions, he had to move fast and  reassure his cadre that the ideology was intact. Being a regional party, the Sena will have nothing to fall back upon if the party gets weakened and there is a risk that Sainiks might shift to the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) or the BJP.  Therefore, all that he is doing is to protect his turf while swearing by the Common Minimum Programme, which swears by secularism.

 Meanwhile, as a strategy, the three partners should keep asserting their respective positions for public consumption and Uddhav should keep harping on  his Hindutva ideology. This is the only way that the coalition Government can continue.

(The writer is a senior journalist)