Revision as of 20:01, 12 March 2022

Finances

2016/ Rs 85cr of Sena’s Rs 87cr receipts came from Videocon alone

Prafulla Marpakwar, Sena declares Rs 87cr, Rs 85cr from Videocon alone, Nov 19 2016 : The Times of India

Home appliances maker Videocon Industries appears to be the Shiv Sena's biggest benefactor. The company , part of a $5bn Mumbai-headquartered group accounted for all but a fraction of the donations which the Shiv Sena has disclosed to the Election Commission of India.

A total contribution of Rs 86.84 crore was shown as received by Sena from corporates and non-corporates in 2015-16. Of this, a whopping Rs 85 crore came from Videocon, controlled by the industrialist Rajkumar Dhoot, who has represented Sena in Rajya Sabha for three consecutive terms.

Last year too, Videocon had contributed to the Sena's kitty , but the amount was relatively meagre: Rs 2.83 crore. This year, it has been lavished funds on the Sena while donations to oth er parties have been slim. Videocon gave Rs 25 lakh to NCP.

Ideology

On Secularism and Godse: 1991-2019

Vaibhav Purandare, Nov 29, 2019: The Times of India

Shiv Sena has for long considered as an abomination the word “secular,” now part of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi’s common minimum programme. And its founder Bal Thackeray had openly praised Nathuram Godse nearly three decades before Pragya Thakur spoke in favour of Gandhi’s assassin.

After the I&B ministry had, in an advertisement issued on Republic Day in 2015, left out the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist,’ Sena MP Sanjay Raut, one of the forces behind the new ‘secular’ alliance, had demanded that the two words be “officially dropped from the Preamble of the Constitution through an amendment.” Raut had said Sena founder Bal Thackeray stood for a Hindu Rashtra and there was “no space for secularism in Balasaheb’s mind.”

The Sena founder had said, at an election rally in Pune (where Godse and his family had lived) in May 1991, that Nathuram’s act was “a matter of pride and not of shame and had prevented a second Partition.” He had alleged that Gandhi had “betrayed the nation” by not preventing Partition and “insisted on handing over Rs55 crore to Pakistan,” all of which had “genuinely infuriated” Godse.

NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal, sworn in as minister on Thursday, was in the Sena at the time and had remarked amid the controversy that “statues of Nathuram Godse should be erected instead of those of Gandhi.”

Interestingly, NCP chief Sharad Pawar was also a part of this controversy. Pawar was then CM of Maharashtra, and some Congressmen had blamed him for the controversy, saying Pawar had started it by saying often that “BJP and Shiv Sena were synonymous with Gandhiji’s killer Godse.”

Relations with other parties

1960s-2019 Nov

Nov 12, 2019: The Times of India

NEW DELHI: From backing Congress candidates in presidential polls to not fielding any contender against NCP chief Sharad Pawar's daughter Supriya Sule to even tying up with ideologically opposite Muslim League, the Shiv Sena has had a history of flirting with 'frenemies'.

So for those aware of its past, the Shiv Sena, known for its firebrand Hindutva stance, quitting the NDA on Monday and seeking support of the Congress and the NCP does not come as a surprise.

In the assembly polls held last month, the BJP won 105 seats, followed by the Shiv Sena (56), the NCP (54) and the Congress (48) in the 288-member House.

Founded in 1966 by Bal Thackeray, the Shiv Sena in its more than five decades-long journey has allied with the Congress, formally and informally.

In its initial days, it was often supported directly or indirectly by many Congress leaders and its different factions.

Noted political analyst Suhas Palshikar in his article in the Economic and Political Weekly writes that senior state Congress leader Ramrao Adik was present at the first-ever Shiv Sena rally.

Dhaval Kulkarni, the author of 'The Cousins Thackeray-Uddhav and Raj and in the shadow of their Sena' said that in the 1960s and 70s, the party was mostly used by the Congress to counter influence of the Left on the labour unions in the city.

The party in 1971 allied with Congress(O) and unsuccessfully fielded three candidates for Lok Sabha in Mumbai and the Konkan region. It backed the Emergency in 1977 and did not field any candidate for the Lok Sabha polls held in that year.

"In 1977, it also backed Congress' Murli Deora in the mayoral polls," said Kulkarni. So much so that the party was also mocked as 'Vasantsena', the army of the then Vasantrao Naik who was the state chief minister from 1963 to 1974.

Palshikar writes that in 1978, when attempts to ally with the Janata Party failed, the Shiv Sena allied with the Congress (I), the faction led by Indira Gandhi.

It fielded 33 candidates for the assembly polls. All 33 lost in the anti-Indira wave.

In one of the most unlikely alliances, the Sena also allied with the Muslim League. Veteran journalist Prakash Akolkar, in his book on Shiv Sena titled 'Jai Maharashtra', writes that for winning the Mumbai mayoral polls in the 1970s, Shiv Sena also allied with the Muslim League.

For this, the Sena supremo also shared stage with Muslim League leader G M Banatwala at Mastan Talao in Nagpada in South Mumbai. If it was used by the Congress to end the Left dominance on trade unions in Mumbai, the Sena allied with Madhu Dandavate's Praja Socialist Party in 1968.

The bonhomie between the Congress and the Sena ended in the 80s after the death of Indira Gandhi and the ties between the two were not the same. The relations only deteriorated during the terms of Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and later Rahul Gandhi.

“It was also the time when the Sena was growing up at the cost of the Congress and from there it took a turn,” journalist Vaibhav Purandare, author of 'The Sena Story' and 'Bal Thackeray- the Rise and Fall of Shiv Sena', said.

This was also the time when the Sena tilted towards Hindutva and gravitated towards the BJP. The late 80s and 90s changed the character of the party which moved towards hardline Hindutva.

The Shiv Sena, however, broke ranks from the BJP-led NDA and voted for Congress backed Pratibha Patil and Pranab Mukherjee in presidential polls.

The equation between the Thackerays and the Pawars goes back to more than five decades – both were fierce rivals separated by conflicting ideologies but thick friends in private life.

Sharad Pawar in his autobiography 'On My Terms' writes that despite being fierce rivals, how he and his wife Pratibha would visit Matoshree for “gupshup” and dinner.

He also recalls that when he was suffering from cancer in 2004, Bal Thackeray gave him a list of “several commandments” related to diet. In private, Pawar says, Thackeray addressed him as 'Sharadbabu'. In 2006, when Pawar's daughter Supriya Sule contested the Rajya Sabha polls, Thackeray did not field any candidate.

"Sharadbabu, I have seen her (Sule) since she was a knee-high girl. This is a big step in her career. My party will make sure that she goes to Rajya Sabha unopposed," Pawar said quoting Thackeray's telephonic conversation with him.

When Pawar asked about the BJP's opposition, the NCP president says the senior Thackeray told him, “Oh, you don't worry about Kamlabai (the BJP)”.

Incidentally, the NCP fielded a lightweight against Thackeray's grandson Aditya, who was the first in his family to enter electoral politics. He won by a margin of over 67,000 votes in the recent assembly election.

With the BJP

2000-19

Sujata Anandan, March 8, 2022: The Times of India

One morning in July 2000, Bal Thackeray woke up to find Mumbai carpeted by platoons of central security forces. That is how he learnt that the Congress-NCP government, sworn in a few months earlier, was about to act on its promise to throw him behind bars for allegedly inciting riots in 1992-93 through incendiary writings in his newspaper, Saamna.

Rather than face the ignominy of an arrest, Thackeray chose to surrender before the magisterial court designate, to hear his case. The magistrate, fortunately for Thackeray, dismissed the case as time-barred – it was more than seven years since the original crime – and Thackeray returned home a free man.

But neither Thackeray nor his son Uddhav were able to forgive what they saw as a betrayal by the BJP. The party was in power at the Centre and the Congress-led Maharashtra government could not have accomplished the arrest without the Centre's help.

Wary of the kind of violent reaction Shiv Sainiks might indulge in following Thackeray's arrest, the Maharashtra government appealed to the Union home ministry for central forces to contain the fallout of the arrest.


BJP strongman L K Advani, who professed a deep friendship and respect for Thackeray, was then the Union home minister. Yet he readily acceded to the Maharashtra government's request and provided several platoons of paramilitary forces to the state – without a word of warning to Thackeray about what was afoot.


This is something the Shiv Sena leaders have not forgotten to this day, and that is why, among other points of betrayal and distrust, Uddhav refers to the BJP as “saapacha pilla" – the spawn of a snake – to whom the Shiv Sena fed milk for nearly 30 years, helping it to grow but which is now ready to bite the hand that fed it. On the eve of the budget session of the Maharashtra assembly, Uddhav added for better measure, “We know very well how to crush such snakes. We will not tolerate their nonsense anymore.” 


Of course, Uddhav and the Maha Vikas Aghadi government are rattled by the misuse of central agencies against their members, but the distrust of the BJP goes deeper. The Thackerays were able to forgive the Congress for they believed the party was only being true to its publicly-stated promise to arrest Thackeray when he came to power, but Advani's stab in the back in the hope that the arrest would decimate the Shiv Sena, leave it leaderless, and thus leave the field free for his own party, has been always considered unforgivable by Uddhav and his father.


Accordingly, Thackeray thought nothing of voting for Congress presidential candidates in 2007 (Pratibha Patil) and 2012 (Pranab Mukherjee) despite being in an alliance with the BJP.

When the party cried foul, he pointed to various acts of their betrayal, which included ignoring Thackeray's demands for a fair distribution of seats until he threatened to shift the Sena vote from the BJP in 1998, reinstating the Srikrishna Commission (which eventually indicted Thackeray for the 1992-93 riots) during its 13-day government in 1996, failing to support the Sena in the Raj Thackeray-Ramesh Kini murder case despite holding the home department in Maharashtra (an appeal to then Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda had to be made to get the CBI off their backs), etc. 
When leadership changed in the BJP, Narendra Modi, far from trying to take the Shiv Sena along, kept the party at a distance throughout his 2014 Lok Sabha campaign. Believing the voters now heeded no one but Modi, the BJP snapped its alliance with the Shiv Sena just ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.


There was not much public mention, but the BJP then believed that with several stents in his heart fitted recently, Uddhav would never be able to campaign or win any number of seats to make a difference to the final outcome. Yet in barely 15 days, Uddhav pulled off a stupendous victory, racing ahead of the incumbent Congress and NCP, and the BJP had to seek the party's support again.

But then Devendra Fadnavis’ ‘put up or shut up attitude’ as chief minister further soured ties between the two parties. Also, Uddhav held Amit Shah a liar for allegedly refusing to acknowledge a power sharing arrangement between the two parties.


Why Uddhav refused to cede first shot at the government in Maharashtra in 2019 is also rooted in the continuing feeling of betrayal by the BJP and his conviction that his former ally was all set to destroy his party as it has virtually done with its allies in other states.


His surprisingly graceful conduct in the office of chief minister of Maharashtra, his redefining of Hindutva in the liberal mode wherein you can be a devout Hindu without having to crush Muslims to feel superior and his exemplary management of the two Covid waves have all distanced him further from the BJP, which was expecting a downfall sooner rather than later. The targeting of his son Aaditya over the Sushant Singh Rajput case has further added to the quarrel.


The BJP has also never considered its allies worthy of common courtesies – like greetings on birthdays or a thank you for help sought and rendered. Balasaheb Thackeray never forgot A B Vajpayee's birthday on December 25 each year, yet no one in the BJP remembered to greet Thackeray on his birthday less than a month later.

The Congress, despite being in opposition, never forgot the date, even before the advent of social media. Neither did then chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh fail to visit Matoshree, the Thackeray residence, soon after Pratibha Patil's election in public acknowledgement of the Sena’s support for Patil. Might seem like small things before a larger goal of attaining power but as Sharad Pawar once said about Bal Thackeray, the latter knew how to abuse politically and invite you to dinner the same evening in a tacit apology which might never be uttered in words. 


Uddhav too sets a lot of store by personal friendships and has redefined the Shiv Sena's politics in a more liberal mode, virtually ridding the party of its lumpen elements and making it acceptable to previous critics. His is not the politics of violence and vengeance any longer, and that is why the relationship with the BJP is over. 


And though the Congress and NCP may have been political rivals, they are now on the same side of the fence simply because Uddhav’s distrust of the BJP overpowers any sense of rivalry and otherness with regard to the other two parties. 


The BJP will never be able to win him over. 


See also

Bal Thackeray

Political parties' funding and finances: India