Maratha Protest – Can Maratha Community Really Benefit?
- In Current Affairs
- 11:33 AM, Oct 04, 2016
- Sagar Kinhekar
Silent protest rallies across Maharashtra have been making news for past few weeks. The rallies are in news due to their size, which range from 100,000 to 3,000,000 in size, apparently with no political support.
For uninitiated, Maratha community is the strongest community in Maharashtra, both in terms of numbers and political power. The community is especially powerful in Marathwada and Khandesh regions which are strongholds of Sharad Pawar’s NCP. 13 of 18 Chief Ministers of Maharashtra came from this community including stalwarts like Sharad Pawar, Yashwant Rao Chavan, Shankar Rao Chavan and Vasant Dada Patil.
The protests started after a gruesome rape of a minor Maratha girl in Kopardi village of Ahmednagar district. On 17th July, a girl was gang-raped by a group of laborers while she was on her way to her grandparents’ house in evening. The rape was brutal and was compared to Nirbhaya rape case of Delhi. To make the matter even more complicated, one of the perpetrator identified by the girl’s cousin was from Dalit community. Anyone who knows Marathwada region, knows that it is a center of caste politics. Maratha and Dalit communities being the two biggest communities in terms of numbers are always in the center of political caste conundrum in this region.
The initial protests happened in Aurangabad, Beed, Osmanabad, Jalgaon and Parbhani. It took a gigantic shape in Pune where 3 million people joined the protest as claimed by organizers. Even going by city administration’s claim of 1 million people, the protest was huge by any standard. The most remarkable thing of these protests has been the discipline shown by the crowd. In none of these protests has any violence been reported. The whole protest gets wrapped up in 3-4 hours and organizers make a conscious attempt to keep the streets clean post the protests. Apparently no big political leader is involved with the protests and as claimed by the organizers they are spontaneous protests.
The spontaneity of protest is possible as was seen in Nirbhaya protests in Delhi. However, the Maratha protests are not exactly the same as protests in Nirbhaya case for two reasons.
1. There are ‘organizers’ of these protests who are grouped under the flag of Maratha Kranti Morcha. So barring few initial ones, protests are not exactly spontaneous but are ‘organized’.
2. The demands of organizers are not limited to the rape case only.
The demand charter as presented by Kranti Morcha includes the punishment to perpetrators of Kopardi case, modification of Dalit Atrocity Act, Reservation for Maratha Community and waiver of loan for the community.
There is no doubt that the guilty of rape case should receive the harshest punishment. But this case alone does not warrant a change to Dalit Atrocity Act as there has not been any data showing serious misuse of this act. Even if there is a misuse, a demand by the organizers smells of a caste politics in light of traditional Dalit Vs Maratha political rivalry. Similarly, mixing reservation demand with the protest against rape brings out the wish of certain forces to snowball the anger of the community into a political storm like Patel agitation of Gujarat.
There is no doubt that there is an anger in the community after the rape incident. The anger is multiplied by various factors. The community which still has majority depending on agriculture, has been reeling under successive bad monsoon years. They have not been able to serve their loans. The leaders of community converted this anger into a sense of powerlessness after a non-Maratha was made CM by BJP last year, prompting the community to take to the streets. A tacit hand of Maratha political powers cannot be denied especially after Udayan Raje of NCP attended the Pune protest march. Sharad Pawar was forced to give statement denying his hand after such open indications of NCP’s involvement, or at least some support to these agitations.
Whether or not these are politically motivated protests, it is a catch 22 situation for Devendra Fadnavis. It is virtually impossible to meet two of the demands, first, that of revoking Dalit Atrocity Act and second, the reservation. Any dilution to Dalit Atrocity Act will make BJP look anti Dalit and will spell doom electorally not just in Maharashtra but in other states like UP and Gujarat which are due for assembly elections. Any reservation to Marathas beyond current reservation limit of 51% has already been stuck down by Mumbai HC. If Marathas are included in backward class, it will alienate OBC communities of Maharashtra from BJP.
So far Fadnavis has made many requests to the Morcha to come for negotiation but this is difficult with a faceless agitation. There is no single leader or group of leaders who can come on negotiation table and bring out solution together with government. As happens with all faceless agitations, either protests will slowly die its own death due to tired crowd or will snowball into violent protest. In any case neither Maratha Community nor Maharashtra government stands to gain anything. It is important that the community leaders, including political leaders understand this and lead the community towards an amicable solution rather than waiting for political gains.
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