As both Shiv Senas spar over Bal Thackeray’s legacy, Hindutva is Maharashtra’s only winner

Mumbai’s Shivaji Park is a few minutes’ walk away from Sena Bhavan, the headquarters of the undivided Shiv Sena where an image of its late chief Bal Thackeray towers over the streets. The park and its vicinity, usually crowded by walkers and children playing outdoor games, was cordoned off on 17 May for a massive rally to be addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the Lok Sabha election campaign in the city drew to a close. A group of Muslims sat at a far end of the expansive venue, wearing saffron stoles and holding cutouts of Modi. A middle-aged man among them told me that he supports chief minister Eknath Shinde—who had broken away with a majority of the party’s legislators from the Shiv Sena controlled by Bal Thackeray’s youngest son, Uddhav Thackeray—but struggled to elaborate when I asked why. Riyaz Shah, a youth sitting next to him, watched us with visible amusement. “We have come here for money,” he told me. He claimed that a member of the Shinde faction offered Rs 300 per person if they attended the rally.

Songs with inflammatory lyrics blared, as scores of people streamed in through the security barriers. “Jaago Hindu ab toh jaago, waqt nahi hai sone ka”—Wake up Hindu, wake up now, there is no time to sleep. Some entering the park were dancing, some clicking selfies with giant cutouts of prime minister and, in one corner of the venue, with a Modi impersonator. A man dressed in an outfit printed with images of the lotus and the Hindu god Ram invited everyone on his path for a tea party on 4 June—the day of election results when, he believed, Modi and the myth of the tea seller would inevitably continue to reign. The only figure represented as prominently as Modi among the cutouts at the venue was Bal Thackeray.

Much of the election campaign in Maharashtra has been about which of the Sena groups is truly following Bal Thackeray’s ideals and therefore deserves to be anointed as the real Shiv Sena. In other words, the two alliances are debating over the custody of Hindutva. Secular ideals are diluted in the process, or erased altogether.

“The people will go with those who abide by the principles of the honourable Hindu Hriday Samrat Balasaheb Thackeray ji,” Lal Singh Rajpurohit, a vibhag pramukh—divisional chief—of the Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena, told me. The prefix with Bal Thackeray’s name translates to “Emperor of Hindu Hearts,” one he has shared with Modi. Thackeray was a cartoonist by profession with the Free Press Journal in the 1950s. He established the Shiv Sena in 1966, quickly rising to prominence as the face of Hindu nationalism grounded in the Marathi identity.