Dynastic battles of November polls

Pawars, Thackerays and Sorens

The Assembly elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand in November will determine the fate of the Pawars, the Thackerays and the Sorens, three of India's premier "democratic dynasties," a term Kanchan Chandra used as the title of the seminal work she edited. Each of the three has undergone the process of fission. Two of them have experienced splits in the parties they have been synonymous with. All three will have to demonstrate they still enjoy the loyalty of ethnic groups on whose support their power and prestige grew.

Fission poses an existential challenge to the Pawars, for both their dynasty and the Nationalist Congress Party, the party they led, have split. Founded by Sharad Pawar, the fissure within the dynasty emerged over the issue of succession. As his daughter Supriya Sule's public profile grew, so did, understandably, his nephew Ajit's anxieties, for patriarchs or matriarchs of democratic dynasties prefer to pass the baton to their children than to their husbands and wives or to nephews and nieces.

Ajit first broke away from the dynasty in 2019, for all of 80 hours - and then permanently in July 2023, after leading an NCP phalanx to join the Eknath Shinde-led government, of which the BJP is also a partner. Ajit had then said, "You [Sharad] are now 83… Are you going to stop someday or not?" His remark suggested he grew tired of waiting to succeed the octogenarian patriarch. But no less significant a factor behind Ajit's rebellion were the investigations into nine corruption case allegedly involving him. All these cases are now closed, testifying to the BJP's propensity to deploy State power for exploiting dissensions within dynasties to weaken them.

A divided dynasty spawns a contest between its factions over its social base. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Sharad showed he commanded the loyalty of the Marathas, the NCP's mainstay, winning eight seats for his NCP against Ajit's one. But new factors could now influence their dynastic battle. For one, activist Manoj Jarange-Patil's movement for including the Marathas in the Other Backward Classes category for reservation could fracture the community's votes in unforeseen ways. For another, the Shinde government's decision to give R1,500 a month to women provides Ajit a lethal weapon for battling the patriarch.

The succession battle in Bal Thackeray's dynasty was settled 16 years ago. It was earlier assumed his flamboyant nephew Raj would succeed the patriarch and the party he founded, Shiv Sena. After Raj's name surfaced in the 1996 Ramesh Kini murder case, it is said the patriarch began to groom his son Uddhav as his successor. But the love for his own child must have also swayed the patriarch. Raj left the party, in 2005, to form the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, which didn't emerge as a force, its role now confined to weaning away votes that might be the Sena's.

The challenge to Uddhav stems from Eknath Shinde, who split the Sena and became chief minister in July 2022. As in the NCP, the fissure in the Sena emerged over supporting the BJP. Again, the fear of the Central agencies was decidedly a factor in the split, although Shinde dressed his decision as a return to the Sena's original Hindutva moorings, in reaction to Uddhav's ideological shift to a centrist-right position.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the competition between Uddhav's Sena and Shinde's was even-steven, with the former winning nine seats and the latter seven. But with the Sena's principal base of OBCs angry over the reservation demand of Marathas, the community to which Shinde belongs, Uddhav could hope to wrest back for the Thackeray dynasty the late patriarch's cultish following.

Nature altered the course of succession in the Soren dynasty, founded by the iconic Adivasi leader, Shibu. His eldest son, Durga, elected to the Assembly way back in 1995, died in 2009 due to brain haemorrhage. Shibu passed the leadership mantle of his Jharkhand Mukti Morcha to another of his sons, Hemant. In the 2019 Assembly elections, Hemant crafted a handsome victory for the JMM-led alliance, and could have been the second Jharkhand chief minister to complete five years in office but for the Enforcement Directorate arresting him in January, sparking a minor upheaval in the dynasty.

Kalpana, Hemant's wife, was tipped to replace him, and this reportedly angered Sita, Durga's widow, who thought of herself as the successor. It was one reason why Champai Soren, not a member of the dynasty, was made the chief minister. Sita, in pique, left the JMM, as did Champai after he was compelled to vacate the chief minister's chair for Hemant following his release from prison. Champai and Sita are now in the BJP.

A factor behind the JMM's 2019 victory was Babulal Marandi, a reputed Adivasi leader, leaving the BJP and forming the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha, which bagged 5.45 per cent of votes. Marandi has returned to the BJP and, along with Champai and Sita, could erode the Adivasi base of the Sorens.

Indeed, the bells begin to toll for democratic dynasties once their principal asset - the ethnic groups whose support constitutes their political capital - depreciates.

The writer is a senior journalist and author of Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste
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