Two weeks before the Election Commission declared the dates of the Maharashtra Assembly elections, the unofficial poll bugle had already been sounded when the two main alliances in the state, the ruling Mahayuti and the Opposition's Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA), wrestled to claim credit over Marathi being given a classical language status.
The war of words over the Union Cabinet’s 3 October decision highlights what is going to be a key subplot of the elections: Marathi Asmita (pride).
The Lok Sabha election verdict in Maharashtra gave the BJP and the Mahayuti more than a few reasons to be worried.
The MVA won 31 out of the 48 seats in the state and the BJP finished with an abysmal strike rate of 32 percent, managing to win only nine of the 28 seats it contested. Interestingly, while the trend of the Congress party doing poorly in head-to-head contests with the BJP continued across the country, Maharashtra was an aberration.
The state of the BJP’s allies, i.e., the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, was not any better. While Ajit Pawar’s NCP managed to win a solitary seat, it faced a humiliating defeat in the Pawar family pocket borough of Baramati.
On the other hand, on paper, the Shinde-led Shiv Sena appeared to have fared decently, winning seven out of the 15 seats. But two of these victories, Thane and Kalyan, came from the Shinde family’s home turf of Thane, and another seat (Mumbai North West), was won by a margin of fewer than 50 votes.
While the Ajit Pawar-led NCP is clearly the weak link in the NDA, there is also reason to worry for the BJP about the Shinde Shiv Sena’s lack of an independent and organic support base. In the Lok Sabha election, a significant proportion of those who voted for the Shinde Sena did so not because they wanted to vote for Ekanth Shinde or because they thought the party to be the inheritor of the real Shiv Sena, but mostly because they wished to see Narendra Modi continue as the prime minister.
The BJP’s woes in Maharashtra are compounded by its allies. It realises that it is still not a pan-Maharashtra party, and going solo is not a feasible option. Ajit Pawar was inducted into the alliance because the BJP needed more firepower to take on the MVA.
Unlike the Lok Sabha polls, the Modi factor will be far less pronounced in the state polls. Anger against the Mahayuti's MLAs who jumped ship and resentment against the political chaos in the state would only make the situation trickier for the ruling alliance. The Shinde Sena cannot piggyback on the Modi factor any longer.
It is essential for the BJP too that the Shinde Sena grows out of its over-reliance on the saffron party, and cultivates its own independent voter base.
Parties shape their individual identities and grow independent support bases by rallying support over issues they own or claim. To grow an independent base of its own and to stake claim to the undivided Shiv Sena’s legacy, Shinde’s Sena has two options: Hindutva and the Marathi Manoos (Marathi sub-nationalism).
These two issues defined the undivided Shiv Sena and helped it build its solid supporter base and keep it intact for over five decades. If the Shinde Sena has to grow out of the BJP’s shadows and carve out an independent identity and support base for itself, the only option it has is to claim the Marathi pride/sub-nationalism issue.
Given the BJP’s emergence as the undisputed Hindutva party in the state and the country, that issue is no longer a feasible option for the Shinde Sena. It can try to corner Uddhav's Shiv Sena by claiming that it has backtracked on the promise of Hindutva, but that would not help it build its unique appeal. It would only be mimicking the BJP, and not too well.
Such a scenario would not only harm the Shinde Sena but also the BJP and the NDA’s poll prospects.
The Shinde Sena as well as the NDA government in the state have been on the back foot over the issue of Marathi Asmita in the last couple of years. The Shiv Sena (UBT) has consistently tried to project Shinde and his MLAs as Maharastradrohis (traitors of Maharashtra) for plotting to bring down the Uddhav Thackeray government in "alien" lands, first in Gujarat and then Goa.
It did not aid Shinde's cause when his administration could only muster up a feeble response when the Opposition upped the ante over several investments and infrastructure projects being controversially moved out of the state, some of them to neighbouring Gujarat.
The BJP has another cross to bear. It is widely seen as responsible for the break-up of two regional parties that were widely seen to be championing the interests of the state. The move to grant Marathi the status of classical language, a proposal that had been in cold storage for too long, should be seen as a step in that direction.
It is a course correction measure adopted by the ruling NDA government to cover lost ground with respect to Marathi sub-nationalism. The BJP realises that it cannot romp to victory in Maharashtra on its own. It is, therefore, in the BJP's interests that the Shinde Sena, grows a support base big enough to ease the former's burden in the assembly polls, but not big enough to challenge its dominant position in the alliance.
By claiming credit for the move to grant the classical language status to Marathi, the Shinde Sena wants to make inroads in the undivided Shiv Sena’s Marathi Manoos vote bank. This is crucial for the party and the ruling alliance’s immediate prospects in the Assembly polls, and central to the Shinde Shiv Sena’s survival in the long run.
(An alumnus of Mumbai’s St. Xavier’s College, Omkar is currently pursuing a Research Master's degree in Politics at Sciences Po, Paris. His research interests and publications focus on issues and themes like party politics and electoral competition in India, populism, Dravidian politics, voting behaviour, and representation of minorities in India’s lawmaking bodies. Currently, he is working on the ideological transition of the Shiv Sena in the post-Bal Thackeray era. He is an incoming PhD student at Temple University where he would research electoral politics in India This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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