Maharashtra polls: The million mutinies that fragment the state's politics
Fragmentation of political parties allied with rising group and political consciousness has resulted in mutineers that range from Marathas to Lingayats
Mumbai: Through 2017-2018, Mantralaya, Maharashtra’s seat of governance at Nariman Point, faced the peculiar problem of petitioners throwing themselves off the higher floors into the quadrangle below to protest government inaction or delay. Most of them ended up with sprained limbs and bruised egos but when one of them died, the police insisted on installing a safety net.
In September this year, however, instead of the common folk, it was members of the ruling alliance led by deputy speaker Narhari Zirwal who jumped into the quadrangle to protest their own government’s move to give reservation to the Dhangar (shepherd) community under the Schedule Tribe quota.
This protest—a symbolic one given the safety nets in place-- ahead of next fortnight’s Assembly polls points to the multiple fault lines that now run though Maharashtrian polity. In his prescient 1988 travelogue, ‘India: A Million Mutinies Now’, part of which was set in Bombay, VS Naipul wrote: “Independence had come to India in the form of a revolution; now, inside that revolution, there were multiple revolutions. What was true in Bombay was also true in other regions…”
Fragmentation of mainstream political parties allied with rising group and political consciousness has resulted in a slew of mutineers that range from Marathas, OBCs, Dhangars to Matangs and Lingayats. What are these contestations roiling Maharashtra, and how will they impact election on the state’s 288 seats?
Maratha Mutiny:
(Likely impact on all 46 seats in Marathwada and another 20 seats in western Maharashtra)
In September last year, Manoj Jarange-Patil, a gangly farmer with the goatee of a city slicker, emerged as the unlikely leader of the Maratha agitation for reservation. The Marathas who comprise over 30 per cent of the state’s population and also its political elite, have launched multiple agitations since the 1980s for reservation in government jobs and higher education. In every successive government, nearly half of lawmakers have been Marathas, and like the Patels in Gujarat, they form the nucleus of political power. And yet, the majority of this agrarian community continues to suffer from economic and educational backwardness. At least three commissions have been set up by successive government in the last ten years to assess the extent of their backwardness.
As per the latest report filed by Maharashtra State Commission for Backward Classes headed by retired Bombay HC judge Sunil Shukre, the Marathas hold fewer than 15% government posts. The representation of scheduled castes in comparison is much higher than their reservation quota of 13%.
The Shukre report goes on to say that the percentage of Marathas in education too is lower than other communities in the open category. Yet another commission, under Justice Gaikwad, set up in 2017, too had enumerated that as many as 13.42% Marathas were illiterate, 35.31% were educated up to primary level, 43.79% up to secondary or higher secondary level and only 6.71% were graduates or postgraduates.
Compounding this is the fact that the agrarian community’s land holdings have been steadily whittling down. “84% Marathas earn less than ₹8 lakh a year (the limit for creamy layer cut-off) and 21.22% of these earn less than ₹15,000 per year. This percentage is higher than the state average of 17.4%,” says a senior bureaucrat. The economic distress is so severe that Maratha families in rural Maharashtra struggle to find brides for their boys. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Ramesh Baraskar, the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi candidate from Madha constituency, even made an election promise that should he win he would help the men in the constituency get married.
It is on account of such distress that the issue of Maratha reservation continues to simmer. In 2016, when Devendra Fadnavis was chief minister, the first significant mobilisation happened after the rape and killing of a 14-year-old Maratha girl in Khopardi. Ostensibly leaderless, that agitation intensified with 58 silent protests by hundreds and thousands of Marathas across the state. It forced Fadnavis’s government to create a special category of socially and educationally backwards to give reservation to Marathas which was eventually set aside by the Supreme Court.
On September 1 last year, a police lathi-charge on Maratha protestors, now banded under the leadership of Jarange-Patil, breathed a new life into the agitation and had a direct impact on the BJP’s poor tally in this Lok Sabha polls. The party failed to win a single seat in the 8 constituencies of Marathwada in this Lok Sabha election. (In 2019, before the agitation, the BJP had won 4 seats in Marathwada).
Before the Fadnavis government, the Congress-NCP government led by Prithviraj Chavan too had enacted a law to provide 16 percent reservation to the community which was later scrapped by the Bombay High Court. The creation of any special category violates the apex court’s order on reservation in the state not exceeding the 51% limit. This is also why Jarange-Patil’s demand that Marathas be given reservation under the existing OBC quota instead of as a special category, has found such traction on the ground.
With the Mahayuti government unable to meet his demand and back-channel talks with CM Shinde—a Maratha himself—having failed, Jarange-Patil has told the community to vote as “per their conscience” for candidates who will support their demand. The Mahayuti has strategically fielded Maratha candidates in 27 of the 46 Assembly constituencies of Marathwada.
OBCs see red
(Likely impact on 62 seats in Vidarbha and 18 seats Marathwada)
Jarange-Patil’s insistence that the government include the Marathas under fold of the Kunbis—a sub-caste under the OBCs-- for reservation purposes has lit a fire that threatens to singe the BJP.
In the Lok Sabha elections, Pankaja Munde, a Vanjari herself, lost the election from her family’s pocket borough of Beed because of the OBC anger against the government’s decision to give Kunbi certificates to Marathas. The cleave between the Marathas and the OBCs who are roughly 52 per cent of the state’s population, has led to rage and social boycott on the street which extends to shops, schools and even doctors’ clinics run by members of the “rival” community. The police have registered dozens of cases for such boycott across Beed, Jalna and Parbhani. “The situation is like a tinder box. The slightest of provocations can lead to bandhs, chakka jams and social boycott. Only we know the kind of effort it’s taking to keep the situation from escalating,” says a senior police officer in Beed.
In Maharashtra, there are about 400 castes that comprise the Other Backward Classes category. They have been traditional BJP voters. Some of the prominent OBCs are Mali, Vanjari, Teli, Kunbi and Dhangars. And though not monolithic, they display extreme sensitivity to any infringement upon their 27 per cent quota. In the early 1990s Sharad Pawar, when he was chief minister, introduced political reservation for OBCs in local self-government bodies including zilla parishads and municipal corporations. In doing so he tried to counter the BJP’s efforts to build a strong OBC support base using the MaDhaVa (shorthand for Mali, Dhangar and Vanjari) formula. Ever since that reservation came into place the state has become a battle ground between the Marathas and the OBCs for political dominance.
“There is an unprecedented social divide being witnessed in the state today and it will take years to heal,” says Prakash Solanke of the NCP (Ajit Pawar). Solanke who comes from Beed district and is a Maratha himself, was violently attacked by some OBC groups last year. His party leader Chhagan Bhujbal, an OBC, also put his government on notice for offering Kunbi certificates to the Marathas. In the last 10 months, there has been mass mobilisation of the OBCs through 50 rallies across the state.
“We are not opposed to a separate ten percent reservation for the Maratha community. We just want the government to not touch our quota,” says Dr Baban Taywade, national president of Rashtriya OBC Mahasangh. This rare show of unity among the OBCs has forced the state government to give an assurance that it would not dilute the OBC quota to accommodate the Marathas.
Professor Laxman Hake who has emerged as the OBC’s counterpoint to Jarange Patil is now holding public rallies across one hundred constituencies to canvass votes for OBC candidates. “I am asking the people to vote only for OBC candidates. On seats where OBC candidates are not available they should vote for candidates from Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) communities and none other,” he says.
Dhangar dilemma
(Likely impact on 30 seats in western and northern Maharashtra and Marathwada)
This October 4, the union government agreed to rename Ahmednagar district as Ahilyanagar after Ahilyadevi Holkar, the 18th century ruler of Indore who born in Ahmednagar. The decision was strategically aimed at wooing the Dhangar community who are about nine per cent of the population and whose vote can swing electoral outcome in Marathwada and parts of western and northern Maharashtra. At present they have a 3.5 per cent reservation in the OBC quota but are now agitating to be included in the Schedule Tribe quota which is 7 per cent.
Both the BJP and the NCP are keen to placate the powerful community. In 2014, Devendra Fadnavis had promised to act on their demands and asked the Tata Institute of Social Studies (TISS) to study the backwardness of the community and whether the Dhangars can be put under the ST category. Officials who are privy to the TISS report which was given a quiet burial, told HT that the report advised against the inclusion of Dhangars in the ST category. A subsequent 9-member panel formed by the Shinde government, last week favoured the inclusion of the Dhangars in the ST category but it would need the union government’s approval to go through. But allowing change of reservation also risks upsetting others in the Schedule Tribe fold. “CM Shinde should not succumb to the pressure of other tribal leaders who are against our inclusion in the ST category," warns Balasaheb Dodtale, president of Yashwant Sena, a Dhangar outfit.
The BJP, worried about a possible alienation of Dhangar vote, is supporting Rashtriya Samaj Paksha led by Dhangar leader Mahadev Jankar in the November election. Jankar, who was a minister in the 2014 Fadnavis government, has fielded 119 candidates in this election. The RSP candidates, the BJP is hoping, will divide any anti-Mahayuti Dhangar vote.
But just as the OBCs are upset about a possible dilution of their reservation, the prospect of upsetting the other Schedule Tribes too looms large. Maharashtra deputy speaker Narhari Zirwal, a tribal leader from the Ajit Pawar-led NCP, had jumped into the safety net at Mantralaya before television cameras to protest just such a move. In 2019, when the BJP and undivided Sena contested as an alliance they won 11 of the 25 seats reserved for STs. Now, the Mahayuti knows in the eventuality of a tight race, each one of those 25 seats reserved for STs will matter. They cannot afford to have the STs restive.
This intensified jockeying for reservation across communities, says Balkrishna Renke, former chairman of the National Commission for Denotified, Nomadic and Semi Nomadic Tribes, is because the various employment schemes have failed to percolate to the downtrodden. “Maharashtra had introduced pathbreaking employment guarantee scheme in 1972 but it never reached the intended target.” The wealthy sugar barons of western Maharashtra, he adds, are dependent on the cheaply-available cane cutters from Marathwada and there is an inbuilt inequality that has not been overcome. The uneven economic progress in the state is further evident from the fact that while Maharashtra has the highest GSDP (Gross State Domestic Production) in the country, 54 per cent of it comes from only 5 of the state’s 36 districts. Even among these five, Mumbai, Thane and Pune corner the lion’s share, according to CMIE data.
Hindu mobilisation
Adding to these ongoing fragmentations is the little over-a- year-long mobilisation effort by the Hindu Sakal Samaj, an umbrella body of 15 Hindutva outfits, that urges Hindu society to unite against the Muslims who are a little under 12 per cent of the population. In over 50 rallies at each district headquarter of the state, the HSS has led a high decibel campaign on so called Love Jihad, Land Jihad, and to which deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis has now added Vote Jihad.
The success of the Maratha and various other caste-based agitations in the state, say BJP leaders, can only be countered with an aggressive Hindutva campaign to unify the Hindu voter. UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath who has been campaigning in the state ahead of the November 20 election has been underscoring his slogan of ‘Batenge toh katenge’ (Hindus will be massacred if they are divided) at each of his rallies.