Trouble with Ménage à Trois involving Shiv Sena,BJP and MNS in Maharashtra politics

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief, Raj Thackeray, has not just thrown the gauntlet at the Shiv Sena but also queered the pitch for the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) as a whole in Maharashtra. The BJP wants to ally with both factions of the Sena, but its overtures to the MNS, formally outside the NDA, made against the wishes of the official Shiv Sena led by Uddhav Thackeray, has the potential to turn the Sena hostile to its “unfaithful” partner, apart from to the MNS. Of the seven candidates announced by the MNS, six are ranged against Sena candidates. The other is contesting against a BJP rival. In Mumbai, the MNS cut into the alliance’s votes so much in 2009, that it lost all six seats to the Congress-NCP alliance.

The MNS’ politics is no different from the Sena’s, only somewhat more extreme. It claims to represent hurt Marathi pride and wants all “outsiders”, especially economic migrants from north Indian states, to leave Maharashtra. Its ire is especially directed against people it calls “bhaiyyas”, migrants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. In 2009, it got a little over 2% of the total votes cast in Maharashtra, not enough to get its own members elected, but enough to trip up the BJP-Sena alliance, in mainly urban centres like Mumbai. The Shiv Sena’s anti-outsider hostility is a source of conflict for the BJP in states other than Maharashtra. In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, migrants from which states have been at the receiving end of Sena ire, the BJP has some difficult explaining to do as to why it has joined hands with a party that targets their people. The high-profile tussles with and between the Senas are likely to draw greater attention to this essential contraction between the BJP’s pan-Indian Hindutva and the Sena’s anti-North India variant of Hindutva.