As Uddhav Thackeray, the direct familial heir of the Shiv Sena founded by his late father Bal Thackeray in 1966, stood up to address party workers in Uran, near Mumbai, this week, he would have recalled an unpleasant political episode from 1985. “We will teach our detractors a lesson, a befitting lesson,” Thackeray exhorted his party workers, days after the party’s name and symbol had been dramatically changed. The new name, allotted by the election commission, is a mouthful: ‘Shiv Sena – Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray’, and the party’s 38-year-old symbol of bow-and-arrow has been replaced with the flaming torch (mashaal).
The Shiv Sena was stripped of its identity in June when the late Thackeray’s loyalist Eknath Shinde stunned Uddhav by splitting its legislative wing. The split, a guerrilla operation, apparently had the blessings — logistical and otherwise — of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Within days, Shinde and BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis formed the Maharashtra government replacing the one led by Uddhav Thackeray.
However, Shinde did not function like the other turncoats in the Shiv Sena, who had walked out alone or with only a handful of loyalists which did not shake the very foundation of the party; Shinde’s rebellion was larger, and led to the party losing its name and symbol. A non-Thackeray, a local satrap, claimed to be the true heir of Bal Thackeray’s politics. To Uddhav Thackeray, Shinde’s blow would have hurt as much as when his cousin Raj Thackeray walked out of the party in 2005.
The Thackerays, Uddhav and son Aaditya, are staring at contesting elections — an assembly seat from suburban Mumbai in three weeks’ time and the all-important general body of the forthcoming Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections — with a depleted organisation, and without its ubiquitous ‘bow-and-arrow’ symbol.
The flaming torch has appeared in various avatars in the party’s newspaper Saamna and other sundry material. It is not an unfamiliar symbol to Shiv Sainiks — of both the Thackeray and Shinde factions. The question is: Can Uddhav Thackeray make it resonate with the party cadre and local leaders who have chosen to side with him, and ensure that the party’s committed voters recognise it too? It will take all of Uddhav Thackeray’s smart moves — and more — to swing the assembly bypoll which will be bellwether for the BMC elections.