Mumbai: Just two days before the BJP-led consecration ceremony of the Ram idol in Ayodhya, Shiv Sena (UBT) chief and former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray received an invite to attend the ceremony through a speed post. Despite his party’s political history associated with the contested Ram Janmabhoomi and Ayodhya, Thackeray stuck to his prior plan of visiting the Kalaram temple in Nashik instead.Thackeray along with family and party workers—who have been camping in Nashik for a few days—first went to the memorial of Hindutva ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in Bhagur at Nashik and later, visited the Kalaram temple. The Thackeray family, all dressed in saffron, offered a “maha arti” at the temple.The revered temple has black-colour idols of Ram, Sita, and Lakshman. It is built on the banks of the Godavari River in the Panchvati area of Nashik. The epic story of Ram claims that while in exile, he along with Sita and Lakshman had spent some time in Panchvati.Thackeray had announced his visit to Kalaram temple on January 11. This announcement acted as a prompt for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was visiting Maharashtra to launch multiple development projects. Modi made a quick visit to Kalaram temple and even “wiped” the temple floor. Since Thackeray had not announced his plan to visit Savarkar’s memorial earlier, Modi missed out on that.Thackeray’s two-day visit to the historical town of Nashik is also a launch of his outfit’s campaign for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in the state. After the Kalaram temple visit, Thackeray is scheduled to celebrate his father and the founder of Shiv Sena Bal Thackeray’s birth anniversary in the city.It has been over four years since Thackeray parted ways with the BJP. In these years, the party has gone through both radical transformations and faced political blows. In 2019, Thackeray forged an alliance with the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and formed a government in Maharashtra. As a party with the maximum number of MLAs, he also got to be the chief minister of the state.While Thackeray was seen to be working in sync with his Congress and NCP, there were several instances when Thackeray distanced himself from his allies. More specifically, at the time when his party’s stand on Hindutva was questioned. To recall one such instance, last year during the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ when Rahul Gandhi took on Savarkar, Thackeray warned him against talking about his “God-like figure”. Thackeray, at a press conference said, he won’t tolerate any insult hurled at Savarkar.A year and a half ago, Thackeray faced a major jolt when a party confidante Eknath Shinde broke the party, taking away the majority of MLAs. Today, Shinde is the state chief minister and the election commission and the state speaker have allotted his faction the party bow-and-arrow symbol. His faction has also been legitimised as the “real Shiv Sena”.Thackeray has continued to stay with the Congress and NCP and is also a part of the opposition alliance united under the acronym INDIA or the Indian National Democratic Inclusive Alliance. But his stand is not necessarily in sync with the opposition.Thackeray while has emerged as an anti-BJP face in recent years, time and again, he has returned to the Hindutva foundation laid by his father Bal Thackeray in the state. Even today, at the Kalaram temple, Thackeray had an opportunity to choose social justice over communalism. He could have invoked the 1930s agitation led by B.R. Ambedkar and Sane Guruji at the very same Kalaram temple, one of the important temple-entry agitations of our times. Instead, Thackeray chose Savarkar.Ayodhya played a pivotal role in ensuring Bal Thackeray remains both a relevant and powerful figure in Maharashtra. It is also important to recall Bal Thackeray’s alleged role in the 1992 riots. Senior Thackeray was indicted by the Srikrishna Commission of inquiry for having played an active role in both flaring communal tension and provoking his party men to run amok on the streets of Mumbai.Multiple testimonies of riot victims, journalists, and policemen point at the Shiv Sena’s active role in the riots that went on for many weeks between December 6, 1992, and January 1993. The commission’s conservative estimate claimed that over 900 persons, mostly from the Muslim community, were killed. Over 2,000 were seriously injured in this violence. While many riot cases have ended up as dormant files, a few cases are still on trial in Mumbai courts.Right now, Thackeray’s faction is in a precarious condition. Considering that the majority of MPs, MLAs and corporators of major cities like Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Pune, and Nashik have switched to the Shinde faction, it is no less a herculean task for him to revive his party months before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and soon to follow Vidhan Sabha polls.