Maratha- Figuring out my caste positions within the hierarchies
Maratha is perhaps the most ‘dominant’ caste of Maharashtra- some rule from the chairs and others are seen revolting on the streets. This essay is an attempt to understand the position of the Maratha caste, its inter caste position and intersectionality through my social lenses. The essay is segregated into two parts, first examining my caste position through its historicity, attachment with martial pride and the second part would examine it’s inter caste position, further internal stratification and its current positions.
‘Dharma- Hindu, Jaat- 96 Kuli Maratha’, first made sense to me when introduced to the connotation of pride attached to it. I was asked about my surname ‘Shinde’ by someone in a bid to know about my native place and the caste position it holds. I replied with the similar vigor as my father, "96 Kuli Maratha" without realizing its implications. The person was thrilled with pride as he replied “so you belong to the lineage of Shivaji Maharaj!”. The narrative of equating the term Maratha to King Shivaji has been in parlance with the scholarly and historical references that political speeches made. Through my parents, I found out that the Maratha people started getting acknowledgement in the social hierarchy during the reigns of Shivaji. These populations particularly belonging to elitist families were essentially the Marathi speaking units of the population who scaled up the social hierarchical structure through military and civil employment opportunities. Hence, Maratha could generally apply to the other people and tribes as well but more so to the limited elitist classes within which we have 96 such families or kuls.
My caste position is within the 96 Kulis hierarchy and is called the ‘warrior caste’. My native place, Satara, has long been involved in political uprisings and historical wars; it’s also the place where the descendents of Shivaji Maharaj are currently residing. My grandfather and uncle have also been a part of military and navy operations and their ideas regarding nationhood and defending territories have been in sync with the military like traits attached to Marathas as the warrior caste. There are historical works such as the Bhakhars that mention the linkage between ‘genuine’ Marathas and the military cultural ethos while simultaneously upholding the narrative of the Kshatriya dharma and Rajput valor. These categorizations were not in terms of jatis or castes but attributing certain military ethics to a certain community.
It transformed into the category of caste due to the community’s struggle with the Brahminical hegemony during the Peshwa rule. The community was in the forefront of the Non-Brahmin movement by filtering some of its own people, picturizing itself as the savior of the depressed class and by claiming its historical Kshatriya lineage along with the valorization of King Shivaji’s history- the Marathas hence carefully carved their distinct caste based identities (Deshpande, 2004). Colonial administration too played a pivotal role in the construction of Maratha as a proper caste by reassigning them the military features and by recruiting the able-bodied ‘genuine’ Marathas, ie., the 96 families (Deshpande, 2004).
The complexities of the caste position and its intersectionality
The inter caste position would be examined in context of the state of Maharashtra, where their caste status is dominant. Marathas since the time of Shivaji and then the Peshwas have separated themselves from the Brahmins. The Brahmins were the chief executive of the Shivaji empire and his death led to the empowerment of the Brahmins as Peshwas. This can be illustrated through a number of examples. Brahmans opposed the Vedic coronation of King Shivaji because of his uncertain jati origins. A recent example would be the backlash faced by the former Brahmin CM of Maharashtra and the allegations stating that Brahmins will always oppose any social mobility relating to the Marathas, in this context reservation. One of the first attempts to segregate the Brahmins from the Kshatriya lineage of Marathas was made by N M Lokhande, when he disapproved of mixing two categories because for him, the Marathas belong to the Kshatriya Varna, particularly the 96 families (Deshpande, 2004). In my village in Satara, we find inter-Varna and inter-caste segregation prominently. Marathas all over Satara including my village hold a quantitative majority. But the segregation of temple space and administrative and land issues are prominently visible. The latter are handled by the Marathas who could be, in Srinivas’s words, called the dominant caste and the Brahmins (Kulkarni and Ranade particularly) who are merely 3 families, hold rights over the religious functions. Here, the segregation of the Brahmin and Maratha castes could be viewed as a religious hierarchy. The complexities of the inter caste position is not limited to the rivalry with the Brahmins but it is an internal hierarchy based stratification.
The intra-caste complexities of the Maratha caste even today remain unresolved. The community which largely consists of Marathi speaking people, mostly living in Maharashtra’s western region and Marathawada has always been a stratified community. The community is generally seen taking utmost pride with its Kshatriya lineage and Rajput ties and portrays themselves as a forward caste (Deshpande & Palshikar, 2017). But by way of personal information I found out there exists a category called the Kunbi, or cultivator. Socially and historically, the community has an internal stratification, though this has been the case only since the community started portraying itself as a caste. My family history gives me evidence to believe that the Maratha community or the ‘elite’ families constitute the warrior class and the others were Kunbis. But the military families often engaged themselves in farming activity too.
In reality, the Marathas have a highly stratified caste cluster that comprises peasants, cultivators or the Kunbis, and higher up in the ladder we find the aristocrats and rulers. In earlier ethnographies and Bhakhars, historians have successfully made distinctions between the ‘proper’ Marathas and the Kunbis. As mentioned earlier, the former contained 96 families and the latter contained only peasants. My family firmly believes that the ‘proper’ Maratha narrative depicts Kunbis as different and not even as a caste but as an occupation turned social category. The caste complexities within the Maratha and Kunbi category can be seen when the Marathas try hard to link themselves with the Kshatriya rank and Rajput lineage but the Kunbis remained within the Shudra fold (Deshpande & Palshikar, 2017). The aristocratic and military families of the Marathas have always opposed the upward mobility of the Kunbis and have followed a strict internal hierarchy. For instance, the advertisements for matrimonial sites of the ‘proper’ Marathas demand matrimonial relations with similar families that don’t include the Kunbis.
According to Phadke (2018) the Marathas are further stratified into loose classes but it has historical links and patterns. The first constitutes elite families, Maratha politicians, leaders, directors and owners of cooperative banks and directors of sugar factories. The next category consists of wealthy farmers with large land holdings and village influence. Further down we find farmers with small land holdings who are most affected by natural calamities and at the bottom there are landless laborers or Shet mazurs in my native terms. The position that my caste holds in this stratification has further categorization. First as belonging to the 96 Kuls, then my native place being Satara (the jati narrative of regional hierarchy). All these factors play a vital role in the projection of my caste position as it stands today.
Currently, the actual debate surfacing my caste is about its socio-economic educational situation. The Marathas have been politically dominant with most of the state’s CMs coming from this category. Economically, my native place Satara has the largest landholdings, sugar factories, etc. So where’s the issue? My family often navigates our caste position between the idea of them being from a “forward caste” and the degrading position of many included in it. The topic of contention is the reservation for the Maratha Caste. The silent morchas in favour of the reservation argue that the condition of the last two categories and even some belonging to the 96 families are miserable due to their historical links with the agricultural land, which now poses problems like landlessness, land degradation due to frequent droughts and the tax structure. In the demand for this reservation there is no mention of the Kunbis as such because they have already been granted the OBC quota due to their poor livelihood. The Marathas by their supposedly historical ranks have been denied reservations citing them as a “forward caste”. The inter caste complexities grow further deep when the SEBC demands OBC quota for the Marathas as well due to their links with kunbis. The aim of this essay is not to examine its political mobility or its influence on the demand of the reservation but it can be stated that the political pressure since 1980’s influenced the Maratha demand for reservation in the category of Socially and Educationally Backward classes.
I remember being told by my father that the silent morchas show our numerical, social and hierarchical strength in Maharashtra’s demographic and caste politics and also showcases the ground reality of the so-called ‘dominant caste’. This dominant caste is struggling to find its own identity and position even after several centuries of internal stratification and closure policy towards other communities.
References
Deshpande, P. (2004). Caste as Maratha: Social categories, colonial policy and identity in early twentieth-century Maharashtra. The Indian Economic & Social History Review, 41(1), 7-32.
Deshpande, R., & Palshikar, S. (2017). Political Economy of a Dominant Caste. Political Economy of Contemporary India, 77.
Phadke, M. (2018, 6 August). In Maratha reservations battle, the struggles of a community to define its caste status. The Print. Retrieved from https://theprint.in/politics/in-maratha-reservations-battle-the-struggles-of-a-community-to-define-its-caste-status/93077/
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