Maha thrust to BJP's core ideology

The five-day-old Shiv Sena-BJP government passed the floor test in the Assembly on Monday. Eknath Shinde, the Chief Minister, broke down while thanking the members and declared he is ready to be a martyr to save Shiv Sena. "They should understand (the Thackeray faction of Shiv Sena) why such a rebellion took place. They should find out the root cause of it," he demanded. That was expected of him. It was also expected of him to talk about his commitment to Shiv Sena DNA. Shinde also reiterated: "We were Shiv Sainiks. We are Sainiks of the late Balasaheb and Anand Dighe. Development and Hindutva are on our agenda." That's music to the ears of the BJP. It is this commitment it was seeking from Shiv Sena and the Thackerays betrayed it by aligning with the pro-Muslim secular parties like the Congress and the NCP.

Eknath Shinde's Shiv Sena – whatever it might be called after the SC ruling – got its semantics right for the new alliance to keep a check on the Maha Vikas Aghadi. "We could not act against the loyalists of Dawood Ibrahim…we could not laud Veer Savarkar because of the Congress in the previous government," Shinde prioritised his government's programme. The chasm between the two – the Thackerays and the rebel Sainiks – seems to have widened due to the vitriol of the Thackerays and their Sanjay Raut. The derogatory language used against the women of the rebel Sainiks has not gone down well, too.

Regional parties or national parties, there will always be leaders who rise from the ranks, from the scratch to the top. That is the beauty of democracy. Such leaders are no less dear to the masses. Just because they fall out of the good books of the top leadership does not mean they deserve the garbage. But then one need not blame the Thackerays alone for the debacle of Shiv Sena and MVA in Maharashtra. They had been served well by a modern day 'Shakuni' to their doom, as the rebels put it. Top leadership of the BJP must now be content with their maneuvering. It was left heartbroken when its efforts to install its government failed soon after the Assembly elections.

Maharashtra is of paramount importance to the BJP in every sense. The BJP could ill-afford losing Maharashtra in pursuit of its agenda. The return of 'Shiv Sena' and the government with it as ally, back to the 'Hindutva' fold is essential to the grandiose plans of the BJP. The support of the 'Bahujans' would be a bonus to it. That the Thackerays and their Sanjay never got it right is proved once again in their proclamation that "the tough time shall pass," and that it was not surprising to see the BJP winning the Maharashtra Assembly Speaker's election as the Sena was broken and 'Someone from the party' was pitted against it. The rebels are part of the Sena, but not Thackeray Sena. They are Balasaheb's Sena. The adhesive between the latter and the former was 'Hindutva agenda' and when the Thackerays trampled upon it to promote an "anti-Hindu" agenda, the bond was broken. The new bonding in Maharashtra is more like a covalent bonding between two similar electromagnetic non-metals. The earlier case was dissimilar. That is all!