The conundrum of the Kunbi–Maratha identity
Historically, Kunbis sought to be identified as Maratha for upward social mobility. Now, Marathas seek to be identified as Kunbi for reservation benefits
Maharashtra has been facing heated debates and turmoil on the question of the Kunbi-Maratha reservation. The bruising politics of reservation in Maharashtra has divided the society and polity and facts have been the first casualty.
Historically, neither the term ‘Kunbi’ nor the term ‘Maratha’ pointedly referred to any particular caste. These somewhat fuzzy identities in the past slowly turned into rigid, quasi-closed caste identities, as the consolidation of both was a necessary outcome of a political process.
The story begins during colonial rule. Colonialism generated a discursive space for various lower castes to choose to “Brahminise’ themselves as part of an upward social mobility.
Some peasant castes were keen to seek higher status after achieving some kind of material progress. Petitions demanding higher ritual status submitted by various peasant castes to the census officials during the early decades of the 20th century testify to this. This kind of upward mobility could be claimed or, rather became possible, only by imbibing upper caste values. For example, some lower castes, in order to claim higher caste status, relinquished a long-prevailing custom of widow marriage. Tukaram Tatya Padaval, a 19th-century anti-caste intellectual, complained about this tendency: “These days, people just put on any old thread to make themselves look of a higher caste and even the Kunbi people now put on a great big thick sacred thread of cotton like the Brahmans that reaches right down to their knees, and parade about calling themselves Maratha Ksatriyas.”
Jyotirao Phule and Tarabai Shinde, the architects of the Satyashodhak movement, had hinted at this politics and also appealed to the peasantry to cast off the yearning for Brahminisation.
Many Kunbi families began to claim they were ‘Marathas’, who had a higher ritual status, which they expected would help give them freedom from the stigma associated with their lower status in the hierarchy. At the same time, the non-Brahmin movement in Maharashtra in the early 20th century insisted on the backwardness of the Maratha caste and created newer avenues of consolidation of the Marathas. This understanding was partly premised upon the assumption that the colonial state benefited only the upper caste, leaving the peasantry to its own fate.
Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj had appealed to three variants of the Maratha caste — the Khasa or Shuddha (pure) Maratha, the Kunbis or Kulvadis and the Akkarmashe or Kadu (less pure) Marathas to unify and claim a unitary single caste identity. The Kshatra Jagadguru appointed by Shahu released a farman (edict) in 1931 that the Kunbis in the Khandesh were, in fact, Marathas. The Jagadguru asserted that the Kunbis called themselves ‘Kunbi’ only in ignorance. The last sentence of the ferman was suggestive: “Gone are the days to rule with the power of money. These are the days to rule with the power of number.” The share of the Kunbi-Maratha population in Maharashtra is around 35-40 per cent and non-Brahmin leaders showed a great deal of foresight when they made such an appeal, as numbers accorded heft in the ever-changing nature of competitive politics.
Following this appeal, some non-Brahmin leaders had initiated a movement around 1920 targeting the Tirole Kunbis, one of the sub-castes of the Kunbi in Khandesh, to convince them to identify themselves as ‘Maratha’. Though this movement did not gather much momentum, it provided wider legitimacy and recognition to the umbrella Maratha identity. Such attempts bore fruit as several upward-looking Kunbis began to record themselves as ‘Maratha’.
At present, Kunbi, Maratha (Patil) and Deshmukh are the three predominant peasant castes in Maharashtra, which conveniently operate under the intricate rubric of ‘Maratha’. This complex trio is called DMK. It is ironically said that the DMK caste group aspires to be called as ‘Deshmukh’ in matrimonial matters (for retaining purity), ‘Maratha’ in political matters (for consolidating the vote bank) and ‘Kunbi’ in social matters (for benefiting from reservation).
The crux of the issue
Whether Kunbi, Maratha and Deshmukh be treated as independent castes is an unresolved enigma in both academic and politico-social arenas. These otherwise overlapping castes can be treated as independent castes as they are, individually, tight-knit endogamous groups. However, democratic politics based on caste demography required the amalgamation of various similarly-placed caste and sub-caste groups, giving rise to, for example, a single ‘Maratha’ political identity. Such an amalgamation shadowed the embryonic backwardness of the Kunbis, resulting in the socio-political loss of the Maratha-converted Kunbis.
The increasing pauperisation of the peasantry over the last few decades made many peasant leaders look upon reservation as a panacea. This is an attempt to overcome economic backwardness by way of social reservation. For legitimising this claim, the peasantry began calling itself ‘socially backward’ and compromising with lower ritual status. In the meanwhile, many Marathas and Deshmukhs in Vidarbha, for example, have conspicuously managed to record their caste as ‘Kunbi’.
Sharp class division among the Marathas became invisible under the entire Maratha identity. However, neither is the demand for inclusion of the Marathas in the list of the OBCs politically tenable, nor is the state government’s promulgating an ordinance for reservation legally sustainable. The present demand for the gross renaming of the Marathas as ‘Kunbi’ is also not socially justifiable.
Similar political crises may arise in several other states in India. The inclusion of many forward castes into the list of backward castes has already diluted the idea of positive discrimination. In the absence of any caste census, there is no reliable data about the quantum and nature of the backwardness of the peasantry in India. The demands of OBCs to conduct a caste census have been ruthlessly overlooked by the state. Any decision to grant reservation or special quota to any community without scientifically collected data will ultimately cause more chaos.
Dilip Chavan teaches at the SRTM University, Nanded
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