Shiv Sena

Shiv Sena, right-wing Hindu nationalist political party in India founded by Bal Thackeray on June 19, 1966. Its largest following is in Mumbai (Bombay) and other parts of Maharashtra state. Initially the ideology of Shiv Sena focused on Maharashtrian pride and favoring regional exclusivity and priority for Maharashtrians. The party was opposed to the perceived economic and cultural threat of migrants moving to Mumbai, particularly from southern India. This xenophobic and exclusivist ideology later shifted into a right-wing anti-Muslim and anti-communist strand that developed into a Hindu nationalist ideology. The members and followers, called Shiv Sainiks, are considered to be staunch Hindu extremists, highly conservative, and generally anti-Muslim.

Origins and development

Thackeray, a journalist and satirical cartoonist, created the party in response to a perceived threat from migrant workers moving to the Maharashtra capital of Bombay from southern India and Gujarat and taking middle-class jobs. Thackeray published his political comics and journalistic work in Marmik, a weekly political magazine he created in 1960 to advocate his ideas. He wanted to motivate the youth of the region to drive out the migrant workers from their cities and state, thus maintaining “Maharashtra for Maharashtrians,” one of the movement’s main slogans. Thackeray’s father, Keshav Thackeray, who had been instrumental in the creation of Maharashtra as a predominantly Marathi-speaking state, suggested naming the new movement for Shivaji, the Hindu ruler of the Marathas in the 17th century who famously fought against the Mughal empire. However, among followers outside Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena’s name has been more closely related to the god Shiva. Soon after it was formed, the Shiv Sena turned into a political platform. In 1968 the party took 42 out of 140 seats in the local polls for the Municipal Corporation of Greater Bombay.

During the late 1980s and early ’90s, the Shiv Sena allied with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to obtain seats in the Lok Sabha and the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, and with that affiliation their rhetoric moved from Maharashtrian nativist to staunchly Hindu nationalist. In 1989 Bal Thackeray launched a newspaper called Samna that served as the party’s new mouthpiece. In its pages the party reprised its xenophobia but now against so-called “anti-nationalist” Muslims. This shift paralleled the rise in Hindu nationalist sentiment in the 1980s. After the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh state, was destroyed by Hindu nationalists in 1992, communal riots rocked India, particularly Bombay, in 1992–93. Thackeray’s Shiv Sena was seen as a primary instigator of those riots, an implication later confirmed by the 1998 Srikrishna Commission. In 1995 the Shiv Sena combined with the BJP to win a majority in Maharashtra state elections and took control of the state, a first for the Shiv Sena. It was under this government that the colonial name of Bombay was changed to Mumbai in honor of the local goddess Mumbadevi.

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Division of the Shiv Sena

The affiliation between the Shiv Sena and the BJP continued until 2014 when a political disagreement between the parties over seat-sharing in the elections for Maharashtra’s Legislative Assembly caused the parties to pause their 25-year alliance. When neither party won a majority after the elections, they again formed an alliance. When elections occurred again in 2019, a tussle ensued over who would be the chief minister: the Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray, son of Bal Thackeray and party heir, or the BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis, who had held the post for the previous five years. Uddhav Thackeray left that alliance to form another with the center-left Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Indian National Congress, creating the Maha Vikas Aghadi (Maharashtra Development Alliance) and becoming chief minister.

In 2022 the Shiv Sena split into two factions after Shiv Sena member Eknath Shinde led 39 other party members in a revolt against Uddhav Thackeray that toppled the Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition government. Shinde objected to the Shiv Sena’s alliance with center-left parties in the Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition and its split from the right-wing BJP. There was also a growing sense in Maharashtrian political circles that the Shiv Sena had softened its more-belligerent approach now that it was in power and even tried to incorporate Muslims into the party, thus moving away from its hardline Hindu nationalist stance under Uddhav Thackeray and his son Aaditya Thackeray. With Shinde and his followers defecting, the Shiv Sena no longer had a majority, forcing Uddhav Thackeray to resign as chief minister and allowing Shinde, backed by the BJP, to take up that role.

The two factions each formed a separate political party, both claiming ownership of the Shiv Sena. The election commission intervened and forced the two factions to rename themselves until the problem could be resolved in the courts. Shiv Sena (UBT), led by Uddhav Thackeray, has become the more-secular and more-progressive side, and the Balasahebanchi Shiv Sena, led by Shinde, follows the party’s more-conservative right-wing roots. In February 2023 the Election Commission of India recognized the faction led by Shinde to be the legitimate Shiv Sena. The Shiv Sena (UBT) party was allotted the symbol of a burning torch, and the Shinde-led Shiv Sena was awarded the party’s traditional bow and arrow as its symbol.

The Mahayuti alliance, comprising of the BJP, the Shinde-led Shiv Sena, and the NCP led by Ajit Pawar, swept the 2024 Maharashtra state assembly elections, winning 236 seats out of 288. The Shiv Sena’s individual contribution was 57 seats. The Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) won 20 seats as part of an alliance with the Congress and the Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (SP).

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