Which Path Will Raj Thackeray Choose To Rebuild His Party’s Lost Ground?

Mahesh Vijapurkar

Raj Thackeray has admitted he knew of the machinations of the Shiv Sena to snatch his Mumbai corporators at least a month-and-a-half ago. He had not tried to prevent it for the six who left had “their minds corrupted by money”. He is left with a lone corporator there. He who did not abandon Raj too insists informing him about the mischief afoot.

This is rather odd for a party guards its mass even as it tries to build upon it. It could be the elected or the cadre because both are vital for its growth. Letting the elected defect takes the sheen off a party’s leadership. When Raj’s public response to the betrayal comes three days later, by way of a threat of a political slap ahead for Uddhav Thackeray, eyebrows indeed are to be raised.

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) is a party with ideas but in its nine years after breaking away from Shiv Sena, it has not been able to emerge as strong as even the weakest among others, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). It is a party that took time to be formed and some more for a launch. It did not ignite Maharashtra’s political landscape quickly enough to get into reckoning.

Though it had seven corporators in 2007, a dozen in Nashik, eight in Pune, and three in Thane, it couldn’t get a single to the Lok Sabha two years later. But an impressive baker’s dozen went to the Maharashtra Assembly which was seen as a high point for a new political outfit. In 2012, it captured Nashik civic body with 40 of its members getting elected. But that was then.

No doubt MNS has been a spoiler for Shiv Sena in elections but hardly made a strong showing except in Nashik, a nice and growing city. After that 2012 showing, and despite being in the driver’s seat there, the party began to wither away. The elected left in droves seeing BJP as the wagon to hitch to, and the party now stands depleted to virtually nothing across Maharashtra. It has a lone MLA, making no impact.

Given his rivalry with cousin Uddhav who is the basic cause for his leaving the Shiv Sena, political circles are only speculating what Raj Thackeray would do to regain some significant space. That his threat of violence delivered to the Railways to get hawkers evicted from within stations and to the civic body to free up spaces on the approach to them had appreciable response. It was not just MNS cadre who joined the morcha but the commuters.

Would he return to his migrant-bashing which marked the early days of the MNS to trouble the now relatively genteel Shiv Sena to take to the sons-of-the-soil platform? Both Sena and the MNS have been going easy on this for quite a while but is a certain identifier of the Shiv Sena. Or, would he, given the response to secular issues like absence of civic facilities he got some ten days ago see him redesigning his politics?

The first option would put him in a direct confrontation with the Shiv Sena, and create another social disorder for Mumbai – or any metropolis cannot do without them, and migration is a major facet of urbanisation. The second is likely to be welcomed by all because not just the metropolis but all urban spaces are full of issues which matter to the citizens but no political party takes them up.

It is a tough choice, for revenge could well be on top of his agenda now.