As soon as the election commission announced the dates for Bihar elections, the Shiv Sena of Maharashtra announced its ‘son of the soil’ agenda for the Bihar polls. It becomes prudent to observe the political backdrop of entry of the Shiv Sena into Bihar polls because of three reasons.

The first reason is that recently the country saw a national spat in the “justice for SSR” wagon, where Shiv Sena, BJP and the Bihar formed the three sides of the conflict. People from Bihar, including fans of Rajput, kept demanding for justice for Sushant Singh. This nationally escalated debate becomes significant due to two causalities: Sushant was from Bihar, and he was from a higher caste category; and caste plays a crucial role in identity politics in Bihar. This SSR issue led to spilling of the nexus among players in different B-town scams. These scams are of various types like nepotism and talent management schemes in Bollywood. It also hinted at a subsurface fight between the ShivSena and the regime at the centre which played out in the provision of Y category security for Kangana Ranaut. In this whole issue, Kangana Ranaut came as the face of the lobby calling out for ‘justice for SSR’. Some suspect that she was nothing but the empathy gatherer for the BJP among the Bihar’s populace, while others believe that she has just been exposing the internal fiascos in Bollywood. All of this led to an aggravating relationship between the Shiv Sena and the Hindi heartland people, especially in Bihar.

The second reason is the pressing issue of Shiv Sena which stresses on the need to employ predominantly the local Marathi youth in any projects or works which are being developed in the state outside the core strategic sectors controlled by the GOI. This idea has been the cradle of the ShivSena and its more assertive spin-off, the MNS. It has been observed by certain sections of media that the ShivSena might be looking towards Bihar to bring development there, so that youth from Bihar need not go to Maharashtra.

The third reason is the need for political consolidation over the larger national political battleground in a time when anti-incumbency protests are gaining grounds across the nation especially after the farm bills 2020. Farmers unions in Maharashtra are majorly owned and controlled by NCP and Congress, which shrinks the moral ground for the SS to fight on this issue. ShivSena might have an undeniably strong hold over the overall politics of Maharashtra but they have marginal presence beyond the state with only 12 seats in the current Lok Sabha from the state.

In this background, the Bihar Unit of Shiv Sena wanted to contest on 100 seats in the upcoming Bihar polls. But sources inside SS indicated that the party will contest on around 50 seats in the state polls. The Chief Minister of Maharashtra Uddhav Thackeray had declared that he would campaign for the Shiv Sena candidates in the Bihar polls. The party has recently released a list of 22 leaders who would campaign in Bihar.

On the larger national politico-psychological map, though the Shiv Sena has parted ways with BJP, it is still adherent to certain similar core principles like BJP, which cannot be unseen if one listens to their speeches or reads their articles in Saamna. It can very certainly be the case that BJP and SS have decided to keep the balance of power hidden between New Delhi and Mumbai which will disallow any third party to take advantage of the equation. But this thought does not have that much weight given that the government in Mumbai is being run by an alliance of Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress which allowed the ShivSena to get its own CM. Giving away the seat of CM to Shiv Sena was specifically denied by BJP which was one of the reasons of the breaking of the BJP- SS alliance. Also recently, the country witnessed the tussle between the Governor of the Maharashtra, who is allegedly aligned with BJP, with the Maharashtra CM over keeping the temples open. The CM made a sound decision of keeping the temples closed keeping in mind that the state is still under the grasp of the Covid19, on which the governor took a jibe.

Probably to keep a hold over the home bastion in Maharashtra, the ShivSena made a compromise and to some extent diluted their ideological stance. This was indicated when the Apex court of the country gave the Ayodhya verdict in November 2019. At that time, Uddhav Thackeray stated that Hindus should celebrate but without hurting anybody’s sentiments.

By making its entry in the Bihar’s political space, it wants to highlight how the JD(U) has been unable to bring development to the state of Bihar, which drives countless of people from Bihar to work in other states as migrant workers and labourers.  This is a kind of applying the ‘son of the soil’ ideology in an inverted format over Bihar. It must not be forgotten that as dates for the Bihar polls were announced by the Election commission of India, the SS had declared that it would begin its campaign for the Bhoomiputra. It is visibly trying to be the part of an alliance which will bring development in Bihar so that the state’s youth need not go to Maharashtra and take space in the employment domains in cities like Mumbai, Nagpur, and Pune. In that case, it can be expected that it would keep its options open in terms of the party with which it sides.

With regards to the confrontation with Kangana over the justice for SSR; this might not have been part of the main deciding calculus for trying to gain entry in Bihar. To what extent this angle has influenced the entry of SS into the Bihar electoral polity would be better understood after  the polls, especially regarding what positional stance SS takes with respect to BJP in the would-be formed Bihar Assembly. At that point of time, if it sides with BJP, that might indicate that Kangana was probably being used as a pawn by the BJP to distract the public from the burning national issues through the SSR issue.

Participation of the ShivSena in the Bihar polls opens up remarkable head turning possibilities given that the mix has parties like Congress, BJP, LJP, RJD, JD(U) and other smaller parties with varied perspectives on Hindutva agenda, Caste factors and development.