Mumbai: Immediately after the Supreme Court kept in abeyance till July 11 the disqualification proceedings before the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly Speaker, Eknath Shinde announced victory of Shiv Sena founder Balasaheb Thackeray’s Hindutva. However, he hadn’t imagined being the next Chief Minister in an alliance with the BJP, to aggressively pursue Hindutva ahead of Lok Sabha and state assembly elections in 2024.
Shinde, who had defended his rebellion on the Hindutva cause while criticising Uddhav Thackeray’s move to stay with the NCP and Congress, is now in a comfortable position with the BJP on its side. Earlier, the party’s newly appointed deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis had targeted Thackeray for quitting Hindutva to stay in power. Thackeray, though, had slammed the BJP for using Hindutva to gain power terming its Hindutva “fake”.
Even though Shinde has claimed to be a staunch advocate of Hindutva propagated by Bal Thackeray and Dharmaveer Anand Dighe, he has yet to explain his strategy on how to pursue it in the present political situation. One of the rebel MLAs, who was camping with Shinde in Guwahati, told the Free Press Journal, “Shinde will have to take lessons from the BJP on its Hindutva. He will have to achieve a proper mix between Bal Thackeray’s Hindutva and BJP’s Hindutva to stay relevant, while taking on the Thackeray-led Shiv Sena on the one hand and the NCP and Congress on the other.”
Until recently, though, Shinde was toeing the line of Uddhav Thackeray that Shiv Sena’s Hindutva is Gadadhari, while BJP wears fake Hindutva. By joining hands with the BJP, he will have to tweak it in order to keep non-Hindu communities together and thereby maintain social harmony.
