The famous Hindi proverb Yun hota toh kya hota is the flavor of the season, with Marvel exploring the concept of Multiverse in its recent edition of movies and series. It takes us into the world of alternate realities, some hopeful, some damned. Shiv Sena, the party of the Marathi Manoos seems to be living in the latter.
Having spent majority of my life in Maharashtra, I reckon that Shiv Sena was the factor due to which the state got and maintained its identity over the years. The power to tame a beast like Mumbai was only in this party and all credits to the fiery leader at the helm who nurtured the city like the Khaleesi groomed her dragons. The fate of Maharashtra (including Mumbai) would have been different, had he not been there. His efforts towards the building and the flourishing of the state were an ode to the deity that his party is named after.
While there were many defining moments in the history of Shiv Sena, the one that altered the course of history was when Balasaheb, the hero of many Maharashtrians, turned a blind eye towards the calibre of many capable sainiks including his nephew and passed on the baton to his naive, inexperienced son, thus doing a Dhritarashtra in literal sense. Uddhav proved out to be the blunt head of the otherwise sharp Sena-spear. But he can hardly be blamed. His inherent nature is misaligned with the aura created around the Sena by its founder. He was set up for a failure by his father by choosing him to lead the Sena after him. What followed was a catastrophe.
After the demise of Late Balasaheb, the sainiks were constantly searching for Balasaheb in Uddhav, only to be disappointed. The faction that rallied behind Raj and the faction that was left, both wanted the two to unite in the interest of Maharashtra, but it was fruitless. The next few years saw Sena loosing its hold on many constituencies across Maharashtra, which was largely due to the lack of appeal that Uddhav had as a leader. This culminated into the party winning lesser seats in each iteration of the assembly elections, which eventually led to its coalition party taking up the role of the big brother in their alliance. Unfortunately, the defeats were wrongly attributed by them to their coalition and the greed of power led them at the doors of the 'king' of opportunism of the Indian politics. Mollycoddling them with the much desired CM post and projecting the old association that the 'king' had with Balasaheb, the Sena was trapped in a web woven by the master politician, unaware that it will never be able to come out of it intact.
Blinded by the ambition, the new Sena chief compromised the party's ideology and forged an unnatural alliance with those that the Sena once stood against for the entire of its existence. In the background, their erstwhile partner was also ready to forge a similar unnatural alliance with the same party through a pawn sent by the 'king' in the wee hours of an October morning. So, no moral high ground for any of them. The next wrong foot was the projection of the 3rd generation Thackeray as the promised prince by awarding him ministries despite not being an elected member. (Even the CM is not an elected member). The Sena thus followed the path that they objected to all these years - Nepotism. In the meantime, the 'king' continued to hollow the Sena strategically, sitting at the fence with a mission to root the party out of its existence. The recent rebellion by the sainiks is a narrative in itself of how the chief ignored them while being mesmerised by the king's mystic show.
The way this is headed, the only way out for Uddhav is to surrender to the 'king' and join NCP after respectfully handing over the Sena to the new leaders. And despite that, neither the Sena, nor NCP will come back to power. Congress is not even in the race. It will be the BJP that will gain the maximum mileage out of this situation and continue its juggernaut of toppling governments. AAP is still too far from Maharashtra politics. The closest possibility of a challenge to BJP in the state is a faction in itself breaking out and contesting.
As for the Sena, I hope for a parallel universe where it has avoided all these glaring blunders and has been able to stick to the basics of its origin and true to its cause. I guess we will never know if there is such a universe.
