Maharashtra | Gen Z gloss for brand Thackeray

A curious dynamic has taken hold of the leadership space in Maharashtra all of a sudden. Disparate events over the past month have converged to stir the genie in the bottle—even if nothing changes on the surface, it masks unpredictable twists in the undercurrents. Look at a quintessential Maharashtra quartet: no element is unaffected. Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis is suddenly being spoken of as a potential export to New Delhi. Predicated on that would be deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde’s wish fulfilment. One of its enabling factors, octogenarian Sharad Pawar’s shift to the ruling side, has been put on a last-minute fork in the road by Gen Z! That last one has also arrived just in time to perchance give a fresh lease of life to a beleaguered Uddhav Thackeray.

On July 26, when the Shiv Sena (UBT) chief appeared on stage at Shivaji Park in Mumbai, standing in front of thousands of cheering youth, he was coming off the lowest ebb in his political career. His chief ministership had ended in 2022 in a dramatic moment of diminution that saw 41 MLAs and 13 of the original Sena’s then 19 Lok Sabha MPs join Shinde’s rebellion. The next year, he lost the rights to the Sena’s name and symbol, hitherto synonymous with his family name. Doom stalked him: in June, as another split saw six of the nine Lok Sabha MPs of even his rump party cross over, everyone was out with the direst pronouncements. It seemed to be curtains for Brand Thackeray.

Yet, a month later, here he was—in a triumphal mood, with cousin Raj, a family entente that has survived the trench warfare that is Maharashtra politics. Also on stage were their sons, Aaditya and Amit, respectively—both just on the other side of the Gen Z age threshold, and Aaditya adept enough at voicing the concerns of the street. The accidents of politics are such that, of all Opposition leaders in the state, it was Uddhav who had managed to land on the right side of history with the lightest—hence, cleanest—slate.

One point the national media is apt to miss is that Abhijeet Dipke, the Boston-returned founder of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), is a Marathi—born to a middle-class Dalit family in erstwhile Aurangabad. So the CJP moment plays out a bit deeper in this neck of the woods. During the Jantar Mantar protests, Dipke’s family had faced immense stress, received death threats, and briefly even left their home to take refuge in Konkan out of fear of state backlash and arrest. But then, the tide started turning.

Dipke’s certificate

On July 19, Dipke gave an interview in Marathi where he named Uddhav as the first leader to call him upon his June 6 return to India, saying he kept up an almost paternal contact all through the protest. Supriya Sule, Pawar’s daughter and Lok Sabha MP of the NCP (SCP), too went to Jantar Mantar twice to offer support. But then, the party is also dealing with the dilemma of whether to join the NDA or not. Recent weeks have seen Sule oscillate between signals of willingness and denials—speculation heated up again after she met Union home minister Amit Shah on July 27.

By contrast, once the CJP won the moral argument nationally, Uddhav was in a unique position to partake of that. “A month is a long time in politics,” a senior UBT leader told india today. “The BJP, which looked invincible, is now on the backfoot. The turnouts in Mumbai were also aided by our cadre. Now, it is for the younger generation of leaders like Aaditya to seize this opportunity.”

But if Uddhav has found an alternate source of energy, can he turn it into a renewable one? The stark reality was presented by a beaming Shinde on June 22, when he pronounced “Operation Tiger (is a) success”. The Lok Sabha split had set off a haemorrhage—on June 30, a close Aaditya aide, too, had quit. The UBT’s 20-MLA cohort is still vulnerable. Does he have the nous to stanch that?