MUMBAI: It was a call for quota that was consistently rejected by panel after panel for decades since the 1950s till one headed by a politician opened the floodgates by approving it in 2014. It, however, failed to clear legal challenges. The report of the first commission set up in 1953 and headed by Kaka Kalelkar said, “In Maharashtra, besides the Brahmin, it is the Maratha who claimed to be the ruling community in the villages, and the Prabhu, who dominated all other communities.” The commission saw no merit in the demand to accord backward class status to the Maratha community. While there is no denying that large Maratha sections are poor, there is no conclusive empirical evidence yet to establish their social backwardness. At present, Maharashtra offers 52% quota - 13% for SCs, 7% for STs, 19% for OBCs, 2% for special backward classes and 11% for four sections of nomadic tribes.
Various leaders at different points in time have emerged to lead agitations demanding reservation. The latest is Manoj Jarange Patil (41), a marginalised farmer based in Sarati village in Jalna district, which is part of the drought-prone Marathwada region. From his small tin shed house, Jarange started his quota protest with support from the surrounding villagers. His Gandhian model of long fasts - in August-September and October-November - has become a political head-turner.
Jarange roadshow
Jarange had set December 24 as the deadline for the Eknath Shinde government to announce the quota, failing which he would lead an indefinite hunger strike at Azad Maidan in south Mumbai. But the government set a February timeline for a new quota bill. So, his march to Mumbai and hunger strike will start from Jalna on January 20. He claims over one crore protesters would reach Mumbai on January 24. Coming as it does ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, it can be expected to become a hot-button issue.
The protest by Jarange started in a small way away from media glare when the press was busy covering the Opposition's INDIA bloc meeting in Mumbai. Ham-handed police action against the protesters generated empathy for them and the matter snowballed, says Rajendra Kondre, a Maratha community leader who is an adept on the matter.
Jarange says reservation is a gateway for the Maratha community - mostly marginal and poor farmers - to get education in good colleges and government jobs to enhance their quality of life. "The Marathas may be the ruling caste, but the rich and affluent are less than 1% while the rest are marginalised farmers with hand-to-mouth existence. In fact, a large number of farmer suicides happen within the community,” he reasons.
The social and economic pyramid, he argues, has completely changed. “People who got the benefits of reservation have improved their quality of life but dominant castes like the Maratha are suffering. We too want a share in the development pie,” Jarange adds.
Kunbi-Maratha genealogy
On the request of Jarange, Chief Minister Shinde appointed the Justice Sandeep Shinde committee to study old Nizam era documents to trace the genealogy of the Maratha community. The objective is to find out whether they were Kunbi or Maratha. The reason: Kunbis got into the state's OBC list in the 1960s while Marathas couldn't. Kunbi is a Maratha clan.
The panel recently submitted its final report. “The state law and judiciary department is scrutinising the report. The Shinde committee found several references to Kunbi in the Nizam-era documents. Records of Kunbis before 1967 will help people get Kunbi certificate and avail OBC quota. The committee studied 12 government department records, including revenue, education, caste data, birth and death data, to find out how the Maratha genealogy is intertwined with the Kunbi,” the chief minister told the legislative assembly a few weeks ago.
OBC Mahasangh president Babanrao Taywade says, “Justice Shinde is the not the first committee that has been tasked to establish the social and economic backwardness of the Maratha community. Two commissions appointed by the Central government and five other commissions/committees set up by the state government have already gone into the matter. Yet, nothing tangible has emerged so far that could withstand judicial scrutiny.”
State discretion
A few years after the Kaka Kalelkar report, the Centre on August 14, 1961, allowed all state governments the discretion to constitute their own commissions to identify socially and educationally backward castes in their respective states and take steps for their amelioration. Shortly thereafter, the Maharashtra government appointed the B D Deshmukh commission on November 14, 1961 to identify which castes can be added to the OBC basket. The committee's report on January 11, 1964 identified 180 such castes. The Maratha community did not figure on the list but Kunbis did. Kunbis are peasants. They are part of the Maratha community’s basket of clans. The Deshmukh panel let a Maratha section into the OBC list but kept others out, leading to further resentment.
Then came the Mandal Commission report - submitted in 1980 but adopted in 1990 - suggesting social engineering by carving out 27% reservation for OBCs within the Supreme Court-mandated 50% cap on quotas. The report went on to say that "Maratha is a forward Hindu caste."
Suicide and after
Before the Mandal report came into play, former Congress leader Annasaheb Patel demanded a standalone quota for the Maratha community on the grounds of economic backwardness in 1980. Two years later, he threatened to die by suicide if the reservation was not granted. When the then Congress government failed to yield, Anna shot himself with his own revolver on March 22, 1982. Ever since, more than 50 Maratha youth have ended their lives demanding reservation. The 10% reservation for the economically weaker section (EWS) announced by the Centre in 2019 was what Anna always wanted for the Marathas, analysts claim.
But then the Maratha quota appetite grew and the Maharashtra government in 1995 appointed the Khatri commission to study the Deshmukh panel's report. After an elaborate examination, the Khatri panel refused to accept Maratha as backward due to their higher representation in electoral politics and governance.
Quota ordinance
More than a decade later, the state government in 2008 constituted the Justice R M Bapat commission, which too, blocked Marathas out of the quota cake. The state government rejected the report and appointed minister Narayan Rane as head of a new quota panel. It was the Rane committee that opened the quota window for the first time by recommending special reservation to the Maratha community under Article 15(4) and 16(4) of the Constitution. Based on its report, the state government in 2014 promulgated an ordinance giving 16% reservation to the Maratha community in education and government jobs.
When the quota was challenged in the Bombay High Court, a bench stayed it citing faulty data to claim the community was backward. Around that time, the rape of a minor Maratha girl caused a major uproar, forcing the then chief minister Devendra Fadnavis to appoint Justice M G Gaikwad as chairman of the State Backward Classes Commission and tasking him with examining the Maratha quota afresh. The Gaikwad commission in its report on November 15, 2018 recommended declaring Marathas as economically backward.
Interestingly, the Bombay High Court had no problems with the Gaikwad panel's report but suggested 13% reservations to Marathas in education and 12% in government jobs instead of 16% ordered by the government.
Struck down
The matter went to the Supreme Court, which struck the quota down, adding the power to include or exclude any caste or community in the reservation list is part of the Centre’s exclusive domain. “The state can only make recommendations. The final right lies with the Centre," it ruled.
Chief Minister Shinde recently announced that a special state assembly session will be called in February to discuss and pass a watertight Maratha reservation bill. In the interregnum, the State Backward Classes Commission will conduct surveys to get empirical data that can establish Maratha as a backward caste. “Once the commission submits its report, it will be approved by the cabinet and subsequently tabled in the special session of the state assembly. The Maratha community will get reservation in February while staying within the legal framework,” Shinde said. The question is whether it would pass legal scrutiny.
Shinde's immediate task is to manage Jarange’s mobilisation of protesters. Humongous crowds in Mumbai could pose law and order challenges. Whether or not Jarange heeds to his request to put off the rally remains to be seen.