Recently, the former Bharatiya Janata Party chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, Uma Bharti, was expelled for ?indiscipline?. Early in December, Raj Thackeray, nephew of the Shiv Sena founder, Bal Thackeray, and leader of its youth wing, quit the party alleging that he was being relegated to the sidelines in favour of his cousin and Thackeray?s son, Uddhav, whose cronies were in large part responsible for the Sena?s decline in recent years.

Both events are alike in that they reveal contradictions in inner-party functioning and the dilemma parties face as they seek to move from a grass roots, ?action-oriented? programme towards one that must balance demands posed by governance and institutionalized politics. Both Raj Thackeray and Uma Bharti are popular at the grass roots level; yet both were victims of the paternalistic functioning and the absence of internal democracy, characteristic of most political parties today.

Like the BJP, the Sena too was a creation of majoritarian insecurity. The latter had its beginnings in the Sixties in Mumbai, by championing the Maratha cause, and playing up the sentiments of a group as one deprived of opportunity and exploited by clearly recognizable ?Others?: Gujarati business houses, south Indians, communists in the Sixties, Muslims in the Eighties and Nineties and more recently, migrant north Indian labour. The Sena?s success in spreading terror against the ?Other? reached its acme in the Nineties, and Bal Thackeray acquired an aura of near-invincibility from the critical role he played in that period.

Old worries

Acquisition of political power, albeit as a coalition partner, first in 1968 at the municipal level and later at the state level in 1995, however, hardly changed the Sena party structure. Attempts to expand its support base were all short-lived, but it remained largely an urban, Maratha-dominated party. The party?s stint in governance, moreover, was marked by ill-planned, corruption-ridden schemes. The Tinaikar committee probing into the BMC?s functioning further tarnished the Sena?s reputation.

The politics of patronage in the Sena continued unopposed as long as Bal Thackeray was at the helm; unhappiness descended in 1999, soon after his son, Uddhav, was made executive president. Arguably, the task before Uddhav was a difficult one, for on him lay the onus of transforming the party ? from one that relied on its domination of street-level, ?direct-action? politics to a party that had to be pan-Maharashtrian in reach. But his efforts were riddled with contradictions. The party attempted to reach out to the Dalits by seeking to ally with different factions of the Republican Party of India; yet Uddhav?s choice of candidates, for instance, in local level elections in 2002, relied on old bonds of patronage and loyalty.

The exit of leaders such as Sanjay Nirupam, Narayan Rane and now Raj Thackeray reveals the wider identity crisis within the Sena. For long a party limited in reach and support base, the Sena had to make the transition to a higher political level in a short time frame; its ability to adapt was constrained by its steeply hierarchical organization structure. The 2004 Lok Sabha and assembly elections showed that the political scene in Maharashtra remains dominated by bipolar alliances. Yet the support bases of all four parties in the state ? the Congress, Nationalist Congress Party, BJP and Shiv Sena ? remains in flux, with the Maratha vote divided largely between the NCP and the Sena. It remains to be seen whether Raj?s departure will lead to a wider exodus from the Sena; but it seems that the balance within the party will tilt in favour of the group ? either Uddhav?s or Raj?s ? which is able to tap best the regions that have long perceived themselves as neglected and discriminated against.