An amicable divorce is a contradiction in terms. Who needs enemies when a partner scorned spews forth choice abuse? That would seem to describe -- but not explain, much less justify -- the Maharashtra election campaign, as the Shiv Sena targets its guns at its ally of 25 years, the Bharatiya Janata Party, especially its leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Sena's estranged faction, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, also regards the BJP and Modi as its enemies at present and has joined forces with the parent on the practical ground that the enemy's enemy is one's friend.
The two Senas have jointly revived their original raison d'être, an appeal to the Marathi asmita (identity) to reject the outsider -- read the supposedly Gujarati-dominated BJP. How this will play at the hustings this week requires an understanding of what causes nationalistic, particularly sub-nationalistic, fervour to rise and fall. That in turn requires a comprehension of what constitutes a nation as a concept governing people's behaviour, and not merely a legal or constitutional entity. Commonly, a nation is defined as a voluntary collection of people going beyond and larger than kinship groups or tribal associations. It has shared geography, culture and ethnicity as ties that unite its people. Another, purely perceptional, factor needs to be added to this inherited wisdom to complete the definition. A sense of victimhood is a bond far stronger than the above shared ties that holds the agglomerate together.
All established nations, from the Jewish diaspora to medieval England to the more modern United States and France were founded on the perceived injustice meted out to its people by external tyrants. In fact, the victim/martyr motivation could be so strong as to transcend the physical or cultural attributes of the agglomerate. The jihadist ideology seems to appeal to a vast swathe of land spanning Asia and Africa and cutting across races, based as it is on the belief that Islam is in peril at the hands of its persecutors. It apparently persuades even some new converts from affluent, predominantly white, countries, as we see from the virulent spread of the Islamic State.
Nationalist forces and their ascendancy is the strongest when the three dimensions of territorial integrity, cultural affinity and ethnicity overlap to great extents, with an overarching narration of victimhood. Mahatma Gandhi's success in forging Indian nationalism was due in no small measure to his personal discovery of impoverishment of the Champaran indigo farmers symbolising the British Empire's exploitation of India. That culminated in the salt satyagraha, which effectively made every Indian a victim.
Indian separatist movements that came closest to success were the 1960s Dravidian agitations and the Khalistani stir. Both had strong overlaps of territorial integrity, linguistic and cultural affinity and ethnic (religion in Punjab, non-Brahmin castes in Tamil Nadu) identities working for them. Their leadership skilfully wove tales of injustice to bind them together, giving them a sense of 'other'ness. But that did not last long as they became integrated into the national mainstream.
Most analysts attribute this to the strength of liberal democratic institutions in India. A more immediate and material cause was at work as well. The Sikhs and the Tamils, already well-integrated into economic activities and governance structures, discovered fairly quickly that flaunting their otherness could cause their being shut out from these opportunities. That would hurt where it mattered most. Belonging thus triumphed over alienation.
A contrary example lends further credence to this argument. Kashmir and the northeast still smoulder with alienation. In both areas, there never was the integration of the kind that existed in Punjab and Tamil Nadu. The sense of victimhood has always been strong in Kashmir. Efforts of the various groups from the northeast to integrate themselves have not yet been adequately reciprocated. Thus belonging is yet to gain traction in either region.
The origins and the rise of the Shiv Sena have to be seen in this light. Mumbai of the 1950s and the 1960s attracted streams of impoverished men from the Konkan in search of jobs in textile mills. They were not easy to come by. A measure of the desperation lies in the fact that most of those men who could not find such employment were forced to accept the lowest jobs on the totem pole, that of household charpersons, popularly called Ramas. This was a situation not seen in any other city.
Bal Thackeray mined the resulting resentment into a convincing tale of the Marathi man being victimised in his own urbs prima, through his weekly Marmik. That became in 1966 the militant Shiv Sena that saw every non-Marathi in Mumbai as an exploiter. Its emotive appeal of victimhood transcended the underclass to cover the professionals as well as other locations outside Greater Mumbai in about a decade.
The Datta Samant-led strike of the 1980s effectively killed what remained of the textile industry in Mumbai and brought about a sea change in its wake. The Marathi manoos realised that there was a world beyond the mills; he embraced it with increasing enthusiasm.
The reality 30 years later is that there is now a larger and even poorer underclass in Mumbai, that of later upcountry immigrants. The sainiks can be occasionally provoked into agitating against the newcomers out of a sense of loyalty. But that is not the same as the driving force of the original Sena. The Thackeray cousins' efforts at conjuring up the image of the ruling BJP as the modern-day Mughals and Adilshahs exploiting Marathas may be amusing, but not necessarily convincing, to the new generation of voters effectively weaned away from the attraction of otherness. They see as much merit in belonging to a larger national group as the Scots did when they convincingly voted no in the referendum last month. Modi very smartly exploits that innate preference by painting an attractive picture of an economy growing under his leadership, offering more and better paying jobs. That trumps victimhood any day.
We will soon know whether this hypothesis is supported by ground reality. That will be the greater takeaway from the state election outcome.
Shreekant Sambrani taught at IIM-Ahmedabad and helped set up the Institute of Rural Management, Anand.
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