Sena shifts goal posts, BJP changes the game
Like a house of cards, the Maha Vikas Aghadi came down in Maharashtra, unable to handle the very dichotomy that was haunting it from the very beginning. It was a house that was not to be. It was not an alliance that should have happened. The lust for power of the Congress and the machinations of the NCP notwithstanding, the greedy Shiv Sena that came to power with the two in tow collapsed.
What has Shiv Sena given up in its quest for power? Its Hindutva DNA, its Balasaheb ideology and its promise to protect the Bhagwa. In turn, it has given away the key portfolios to the Sharad Pawar camp, too, to make Pawar the de facto ruler of Maharashtra. As he had to please both the "anti-Hindu secular parties" all through, Uddhav Thackeray dumped his own men and their interests, too. Maybe those Ministers were just autowallahs and panwallahs, as he and his son preferred to call them, yet they had more common sense to respect their mandate.
Uddhav tried to blackmail not only the supporters of BJP but also the media by foisting cases against it. If a BJP government were to do it, it would have been attacked from all corners by the semi-literate intellectuals of this country and the 'Lootyens' who curry favors from the non-BJP dispensations. Uddhav's is an act of self-destruction. Blaming the BJP does not help him now. One could always form the government with the enemies of alliance partners post-poll and defend such a move. But you don't bend to tie the shoe laces of your new friends and go against the original mandate. The sedition cases filed against ordinary citizens and celebrities to please Sharad Pawar and Sonia Gandhi, to whom Uddhav proclaimed his loyalty till the very end and the threats meted out to Modi admirers have not gone down well with his own political family. In the end, everything boomeranged.
We should not forget that the 'rebels' as the Shiv Sena called them contained those from the other parties, too. Shiv Sena or whatever is left of it with Uddhav will not have the same appeal to the Maharashtrians. Will Uddhav be able to talk of the Hindu agenda ever again having worked day and night against those who voted for it? The 'rebels' headed by Eknath Shinde knew this better and hence they dumped him. Rather, they asked Uddhav to dump the MVA and move over to the BJP alliance once again. He did not listen.
Follow one's own dharma, though faultful, says the Bhagavad Gita. Thackeray dumped his own dharma for a drama and paid the price. Pawar, too, has lost much in the game. His vulnerabilities, too, had been exposed. This Kautilya of Baramati shall never be the same in future and, perhaps, it is time for retirement. The Congress has nothing to lose except some party funds. The MVA was changing the goalposts. The BJP changed the game. It is known as post-election management. Manipur, Goa, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya and now Maharashtra prove it. One electoral battle has to be fought to come to power and another, to retain it. People have no role in the second.