How BJP Took Over India’s Saffron Space, Crushing One Party At A Time

Last Updated:December 06, 2024, 12:57 IST

As we approach 2025, the BJP has virtually taken over India’s political saffron space, eating up its competition, and diminishing one party at a time

In the late 1990s, Shiv Sena’s first chief minister Manohar Joshi was cross-examined by Justice Srikrishna of the Srikrishna Commission formed to investigate Mumbai’s 1992-1993 riots. It was there that Joshi, representing Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena, tried to legitimise something that made them the most hard-core Hindutva party ever. He stood by his party’s support for backlash, calling it “constructive retaliation”.

“The retaliation was not intended to be destructive, but was for the purpose of self-defence, and therefore, constructive,” Joshi had said.

Back then, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was a non-entity in Maharashtra and an emerging power at the national level.

So if you are from Gen Z and think India’s saffron politics or Hindutva — a term coined by Veer Savarkar and ironically made a household name by Rahul Gandhi — is all about the BJP, one can understand. But if you are at least an early millennial (born in the 1980s), you would know that wasn’t the case always.

MNS, SHINDE & ASSAM

In a bid to capture the saffron space, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), which was formed in 2006 with a lot of promise, rose riding on sentiments against North Indians. However, it switched tracks in 2020 to hard core Hinduism, with the adoption of a saffron flag incorporating Chhatrapati Shivaji’s royal seal or ‘Rajmudra’.

Eknath Shinde’s faction, too, is not known for representing the proverbial saffron cause. Although soon after the Sena split, sources say, when the Shinde faction was approached with an offer for reunification by Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), they took the matter to BJP’s Amit Shah who told them that Shinde should instead claim Bal Thackeray’s legacy, given that Uddhav Thackeray “has joined hands with the Congress”. Shinde followed Shah’s words, but his faction couldn’t appropriate the saffron space of Maharashtra.

Thousands of kilometres away, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), which had a spectacular run for two decades in Assam, was founded on a different note of saffron — infiltration by illegal Bangladeshis and overtaking Assam’s demography and culture. What started as a student union protest ended up in a mass movement, resulting in a political party having a mass base in Assam.

CRUSHING ONE PARTY AT A TIME

As we approach 2025, the BJP has virtually taken over India’s political saffron space, eating up its competition, and diminishing one party at a time.

By not allowing a reunification more than two years ago, the BJP ensured Shiv Sena — a party that could produce leaders like Manohar Joshi —would never be back on its feet again. After its 2019 performance of 56 seats, when it walked out of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and formed an alliance with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress, the Uddhav faction was down to just 20 seats this time.

In between, the Sena was brutally split, with Shinde’s rebellion, shifting to Guwahati and flying back only to join the NDA as the CM. With the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections looming, reports of Uddhav Thackeray’s cadre mounting pressure on him to exit the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance only show the once king of India’s saffron politics is now insignificant.

The Shinde faction won an impressive 57 seats, but way behind the BJP’s 132, which forced sitting CM Shinde to reluctantly agree to be demoted and serve as the deputy to his former deputy Devendra Fadnavis. Essentially, the Shinde faction, too, has been reduced to a second fiddle.

The MNS, due to its multiple flip-flops, has confused voters. Party chief Raj Thackeray’s “anti-North Indian attacks” repelled UP, Bihari votes. Now his support for Modi in 2014, support for Sharad Pawar in 2019 and support for Modi in 2024 has left him electorally non-serious.

Mimicking ‘fatwas’ issued by maulvis and to resurrect his diving Hindutva face, Raj Thackeray recently said in Pune, “I, too, am issuing a ‘fatwa’ that all my Hindu mothers, brothers and sisters should cast their vote in favour of the BJP and its allies, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar-led NCP.”

In 2011, firebrand youth leader Sarbananda Sonowal resigned from all executive posts within AGP and joined the BJP. Two years later, Atul Bora followed him. While they left the NDA over the CAA, AGP, in alliance with NDA, won a Lok Sabha seat this year after a long gap. However, Assam, which saw ethnic attacks including the Nellie massacre on the formative day of the AGP, has now just been reduced to being a Northeast ally of the BJP, ceding the saffron space to Himanta Biswa Sarma’s brand of politics.

In India’s current political space, saffron only equates with the ruling BJP.