The Maharashtra government, led by chief minister Eknath Shinde, has managed to navigate a rising tide of protests by the dominant Maratha community—albeit temporarily. On November 2, it successfully held parleys with Maratha activist Manoj Jarange-Patil and persuaded him to cease his nine-day-old hunger strike. In exchange for his support, the government has committed to addressing the Marathas’ eligibility for backward class reservations within a two-month timeframe.
However, Jarange-Patil has warned that, if the demands are not met by then, the Marathas will march to Mumbai and blockade it. “Then, they will not even get vegetables,” he said. Jarange-Patil added that while he had withdrawn his fast, the protests would continue in the form of symbolic chain strikes. “My request to my Maratha brothers in Maharashtra is to prepare for a bigger protest than thisâæ let us all prepare in right earnest and pinch their nose in Mumbai,” he maintained.
In an indication that the truce was a temporary one, Shinde said the activist had given them time till January 2, while Jarange-Patil said his deadline would end on December 24.
Shinde claimed that Jarange-Patil had relented on his stance about granting certificates as Kunbis to all Marathas. “No, no, you don’t deflect (the issue) elsewhere. What he has said is, ‘give Kunbi certificates on a war footing to those who have the records to prove it’,” said Shinde, while responding to questions from the media later. However, on November 3, Jarange-Patil denied this.
Jarange-Patil had gone on an indefinite fast at Antarwali-Sarati village in Jalna district’s Ambad taluka, located over 400 km from Mumbai, seeking that the dominant Marathas, who are Kshatriyas or warriors, be categorised as Kunbis or tillers, which will make them eligible for quotas from the other backward classes (OBC) category. However, the demand was being opposed by the OBCs, including the Kunbis, who are already part of the category.
The state government was not willing to blink on Jarange-Patil’s demand due to the legal, social and political repercussions involved in granting quota benefits to Marathas after classifying them as backwards. The coalition regime was caught in a cleft between the growing tide of protesting Marathas and a restive non-Maratha and OBC population, which has significant numbers.
Maharashtra’s OBCs, who cut across caste and religious lines, believe that the Marathas will deprive them of their share of reservations in education, jobs and politics if they become a part of their category. Notably, OBCs have quotas in elections to local self-government bodies like gram panchayats, municipal councils and municipal corporations. The Marathas and Kunbis are said to collectively account for 31.5 per cent of the state’s population, while the OBCs are over 52 per cent. The Kunbis, who have significant numbers in the Konkan and Vidarbha regions, where they may not be endogamous with the Marathas, are already part of the OBC category. Those who can prove their Maratha-Kunbi or Kunbi-Maratha heritage are also classified as backwards. More realistic surmises put the population of Marathas (minus the Kunbis) at 12-16 per cent.
On November 2, a delegation of ministers, including Uday Samant, Dhananjay Munde, Sandipan Bhumre and Atul Save, and legislators Omprakash (Bacchu) Kadu and Narayan Kuche flew down to Antarwali-Sarati for talks with Jarange-Patil. They were joined by two retired judges, including Justice M.G. Gaikwad (retired)—the former chairperson of the Maharashtra State Commission for Backward Classes (MSCBC)—who spoke to the activist on the legal intricacies of his demands.
Later, Jarange-Patil announced that he was withdrawing his fast and giving the state government a two-month window. He added that the cases lodged by the police against agitators at Antarwali-Sarati and Jalna would be withdrawn within a fortnight and those in the rest of the state in a month.
Samant, who is the industries minister, said that they had given their word to Jarange-Patil to ensure legally sustainable Maratha reservations. Munde, the agriculture minister, said the process to withdraw criminal cases had already begun. He assured Jarange-Patil that the Maratha quota issue would be discussed in the winter session of the legislature in December.
The Maratha reservation protests had escalated to violence with the house of Sandeep Kshirsagar, a Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MLA from the Sharad Pawar faction, being torched in Beed town, while that of Prakash Solanke, an NCP MLA belonging to the group led by deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar, was attacked at Majalgaon in Beed district on October 30. The office of the Majalgaon municipal council was burnt. The office of Prashant Bamb, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA from Gangapur in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad), was also vandalised. Significantly, while Kshirsagar belongs to the OBC Teli community, Bamb is a Jain, and Solanke a Maratha.
On October 31, protestors blocked the Mumbai-Bengaluru highway in Pune. They also organised protest rallies and some even died by suicide. Several villages boycotted the entry of public representatives and politicians. Hemant Patil, a Lok Sabha MP from Hingoli, who is with Shinde’s Shiv Sena, was confronted by angry agitators. Patil announced that he would quit as an MP in solidarity with the demand as had his party colleague in Parliament Hemant Godse from Nashik and the BJP MLA from Georai in Beed, Laxman Pawar.
The state government took a series of measures to placate Jarange-Patil like accepting the interim report of the committee, headed by Justice Sandeep Shinde (retired), which is currently examining the classification of Marathas in the eight districts of Marathwada as Kunbis. This would help those Marathas, who had the records to prove that they were originally Kunbis, get caste certificates. The cabinet also approved an immediate grant of these certificates to such applicants.
The committee, so far, has found 13,498 genealogies of the Marathas being Kunbis out of more than 17 million records dating back to the reign of the Nizam of Hyderabad when the region was under its rule. A minister anticipates that these 13,498 records will help around five lakh people obtain caste certificates, potentially reducing the momentum of these protests. The committee has been granted a two-month extension (till December 24) to submit the final report, taking into account 12 types of records relating to departments and functions like revenue, education, birth and death, land registration, and ex-servicemen.
Jarange-Patil had earlier refused to relent despite overtures by Shinde and the state government. Shinde had said the state government would provide reservations in a manner that was legally sustainable and more crucially, “without heaping injustice on other communities.” This is a euphemism for not granting blanket quotas to Marathas as OBCs. “The government is very serious about reservations for Marathas,” he had declared on October 30.
On November 1, the state government held an all-party meeting chaired by Shinde which was attended by over 30 leaders from across party lines like deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president and former union minister Sharad Pawar. The meeting saw a resolution passed to state that there was unanimity in providing reservations to the Marathas but legally sustainable quotas would be given after completing the formalities.
In 2018, the state government led by Devendra Fadnavis had approved a bill to grant the Marathas 16 per cent ring-fenced quotas in jobs and education. This came after sustained protests by the Marathas. The Bombay High Court upheld the constitutional validity of the law but trimmed the quota to 12 per cent in education and 13 per cent in jobs. But in May 2021, the law was struck down by the Supreme Court and earlier this year, it refused a review petition.
The government, on its part, is working on restoring the quota and has already filed a curative petition in the apex court. The Maharashtra State Commission for Backward Classes (MSCBC) has been asked to collect empirical data to prove the backwardness of the Marathas. An advisory board under three former high court judges will also advise the state government and the MSCBC.
Jarange-Patil had launched a fast unto death in the Antarwali-Sarati village on August 29 to press for the demand. The police on September 1 lathi-charged a protesting crowd at the site, which revived the dormant Maratha protests across the state. On September 14, Jarange-Patil called off his hunger strike after Shinde visited his village and promised to restore the reservations granted to the Marathas. Jarange-Patil gave the state government 40 days to meet his demands and held a series of massive rallies across Maharashtra. However, after the government failed to fulfil the demand by October 24, Jarange-Patil began another hunger strike the next day.
After the violence at Beed, deputy chief minister and home minister Devendra Fadnavis had said that the local police would book those protestors and arsonists who burnt houses and establishments when people were inside, on charges of attempted murder. “Unfortunately, it has come to light that when such incidents were taking place, leaders and workers of some political parties were involved,” Fadnavis noted, stating that video footages were being ascertained.
A senior minister says while Jarange-Patil has gathered mass support for his cause, he lacks sound legal advice, which led to him persisting with his demands even if they were not legally sustainable. Jarange-Patil also changed the goalposts; for instance, broadening the scope of his demand from the Marathas from Marathwada to cover the entire state subsequently, he says. “Convening a special session of the legislature will not be of any help. The curative petition is the only way out. In any case, we will have to approach the SC. There is no point in beginning the process right from scratch,” the minister explains. He notes that some Maratha leaders are insisting on the community’s inclusion in the OBC category as it will make them eligible for political reservations in elections to local bodies, as against the SEBC category, which is restricted to quotas in jobs and education.
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