How does a political party react after an electoral setback? Some sulk, some go into a huddle, the BJP heads towards Nagpur. But if the party is the Shiv Sena, it blames the people, the voters, the media. Its supremo warns of a horrible backlash. He draws rabid spectres of Muslim fundamentalism and a take-over by Bangladeshi settlers. Bal Thackeray used his annual Dussehra speech to serve up dire images that are far too easily dismissed as the predictable rants of a sore loser. In fact, they amount to something far more worrisome. Thackeray’s diatribe is an act of disrespect — no, insult — to the voter in Maharashtra and to all norms and conventions of democracy that he and his party are expected to abide by.The Shiv Sena has a problem and the recent rout has only underlined it. It has been obvious for a while that the factors that muscled its rise are on the wane and that Thackeray’s outfit has neither the political substance nor the organisational fibre to deal with it. Since it was formed in 1966, the Sena has relied on the electorate’s insecurities, tight discipline of its cadres, their complete obedience to Thackeray himself. On each of these, the party is on shiftier sands today. The last five years or so have marked the maturing of a new voter who is less willing to do battle with imagined spectres and is more immersed in the search for a brighter future. The Sena’s jingoistic campaigns against Gujaratis, South Indians, Dalits, Muslims and North Indians preyed upon an erstwhile socio-economic setting. Mumbai has grown since. It may even hold the Prime Minister to his promise of making it another Shanghai. Then there is the lack of a single heir apparent, the receding of the base and greater centralisation. This time, Uddhav Thackeray selected the strategy and candidates; the room for manoeuvre at lower levels, always limited in the Sena, shrank further. There was an unprecedented number of rebels. A lot has gone wrong with the Sena. But by turning on the invective, Bal Thackeray is only giving further proof of his outfit’s unelectability. Nothing short of a reinvention will do.
