Mumbai: A fortnight ago, a young Maratha activist in Antarwali Sarathi village in Jalna district in Maharashtra sat on an indefinite hunger strike, demanding reservation for his community in the state. Manoj Jarange-Patil, the Maratha agitator, mostly unknown until the last month, has now become a household name, with the agitation taking an aggressive turn across the state.
This three-decade-old demand, now revived by Jarange-Patil, went out of the state’s control with sporadic bandhs being announced across many districts. In some places, the agitation turned violent with the police resorting to lathi-charge on the protesters, further worsening the situation.
With both the Lok Sabha and state assembly elections in sight, the vexed problem of Maratha reservation demand is once again back to dominate the state politics. For the past two weeks, political leaders across parties have been making a beeline to meet Jarange-Patil and extend their support.
Jarange-Patil, who has been active in Maratha politics for over a decade, says he is an “apolitical person”, working for the welfare of his community. At the start of his career, he was active with a Maratha organisation headed by Purushottam Khedekar. He later started his own organisation, ‘Shivba’.
One of the primary demands of this agitation is the issuance of Kunbi caste certificates for all members of the Maratha community. The Maharashtra government, on September 7, issued a resolution saying that Kunbi caste certificates will be issued to all Marathas from the Marathwada region who possess the ‘Nizam-era’ documents such as revenue, educational and other supporting records, and if “Kunbi” is mentioned in their genealogy.
This resolution is not acceptable to Jarange-Patil and his supporters.
Throughout his protest, Jarange-Patil has maintained that he will continue the agitation until his demands are fully met. But he is willing to have a dialogue with the government. The government had called for an “all-party” meeting where it was decided that the home department would withdraw all the cases against the protesters in the Jalna district where the police had resorted to lathicharge.
Chief minister Shinde, addressing the media late Monday evening, said, “We requested him [Jarange-Patil] to give time to the Justice Shinde committee to set up (a proposal on the viability of giving Kunbi certificates to Marathas). We have also agreed to include him or his representative in the committee. We have also agreed to suspend three officials responsible for the lathicharge, expressing apology over the lathicharge incident.”
Shinde, who leads the Maharashtra government, is a Maratha leader. His deputy, Ajit Pawar, is also from the dominant Maratha community.
The community, estimated (although never enumerated) to constitute over 33% of the state population, enjoys political dominance in the state. A land-owning community, Marathas hold control over most sugar cooperatives in the state. Many privately run educational institutions belong to the community leaders. Since the formation of the Maharashtra state in 1960, 12 out of 20 chief ministers belonged to the Maratha community.
These privileges, the community leaders say, have been enjoyed only by a handful of families. The community, as claimed by the agitators, continues to be marginalised by and large and has therefore been demanding reservation as Other Backward Classes (OBCs)
Maharashtra has had a long tradition of anti-Brahmin movements, led by Maratha stalwarts like Keshavrao Jedhe and Dinkarrao Jawalkar. The community is known for its violent and dominant caste pride. In the Maratha-majority villages, the caste-atrocities inflicted by the Marathas on the Dalit community is very common.
The demand for Maratha reservation is not new
Around 32 years ago, Mathadi Labour Union leader Annasaheb Patil first began the Maratha reservation agitation. The demand has time and again come up, mostly around elections.
In 2014, just months before the assembly elections, the then state chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, relying on the then Narayan Rane committee report, brought in an ordinance introducing 16% reservation for the community, particularly in government jobs and education.
This was taken forward by the Devendra Fadnavis-led government in 2014. The Bombay high court, however, brought the 16% reservation down to 13% in jobs and 12% in education. In 2021, the Supreme Court quashed the quota altogether for Marathas. “Reservation cannot cross the 50% limit in states,” the court opined.
The government is trying hard to defuse the situation that Jarange-Patil’s agitation has led in the state. So far, the state has offered only a partial solution. Allowing the Maratha community into the OBC fold would mean eating up into the already limited pool. Many OBC communities, especially the Kunbi community, are already up in arms and are pushing back.
Many outfits belonging to the Kunbi, Mali and Dhangar communities have initiated protests across the state against the government’s move to integrate Marathas as Kunbis in the OBC quota. While the state government is busy initiating dialogues with Jarange-Patil and other Maratha leaders, the OBCs say the government has completely ignored them. The leaders had decided to stage an indefinite sit-in protest beginning Sunday (September 10) until the government assures them that it will not go ahead with the reservation.
The community has long been divided on the issue of Maratha and Kunbis as one. A meeting of the larger OBC community was recently organised in Nagpur. The OBC Mahasangh president, Baban Taywade, who attended the meeting, appealed to the OBC community to en masse oppose the government’s move.
“The Marathas are a separate community and cannot be incorporated as a sub-caste in the OBC. The Marathas have been demanding reservation and we are not opposed to it. But they can’t simply be bunched along with us. If the government is doing this under pressure, we are ready to oppose them,” Taywade said.