A restless sea of aspiration

On October 13, Maharashtra will go to the polls to elect a new Assembly. The campaign has been a bit tame, lacking in focus or gusto. But this election is very crucial in terms of the course that Maratha politics in the state will take. In 1995, the Assembly elections were rocked by the ‘rebel’ factor. This cost the Congress party very dearly and it lost power for the first time in the state. A majority of these rebels were from the Maratha community and after the election, many of them chose to ally with the Shiv Sena and BJP. The Marathas were no more supporting the Congress exclusively. This trend has stayed since then.

The Congress dilemma

Three implications follow from these developments. The first is about the Congress parties. The rivalry between the NCP and Congress dates back to the late ’70s, when Sharad Pawar formed his breakaway group and toppled the Congress ministry to form the first ever ‘non-Congress’ ministry in the state (1978). Ever since the Maratha lobby split, the Congress in the state has been without an anchor. All along the party has been trying to win back the Marathas, without much success. Since 1999, the NCP has projected itself as the party of the Maratha community. Today, the competition for Maratha votes is between the NCP and Shiv Sena. In the National Election Study (NES 2004) carried out by the CSDS, Delhi, it was found that the Marathas are increasingly turning towards the Shiv Sena (39 per cent Marathas supported the Sena then).

However, if one looks at the composition of the leaders of the Congress, we still find a string of locally powerful Maratha leaders. This has put the Congress in a dilemma. Voters have decided that it is not a Maratha party, but the party has been unable to digest this reality.

The Congress in Maharashtra lives in a time warp. It continues to believe that it is the same old party of the ’60s and the ’70s. One sees no effort by the Congress to project a new leadership from the non-Maratha castes or to address the OBC sections of the society. Perhaps, the party believes that the interests of the Marathas and OBCs are not different from each other.

Excessive reliance on the Maratha leadership has had two effects on the Congress parties. In the first place, they have to accept the next generation of leaders from the same dominant families in district after district, creating serious bottlenecks for new aspirants to politics, who find opportunity structures in the BJP and Shiv Sena more open and accessible. Secondly, the family-based politics of the Congress parties and the non-existent party organisation have produced a large number of ‘rebel’ candidates from both the Congress parties.

Absence of OBC politics

There is very little space for the consolidation of the OBC sections. One major section of the OBCs in the state is the Kunbi caste which is, politically and increasingly socially as well, part of the Maratha-Kunbi caste cluster. Besides, other sections of the OBCs are also not united politically. The efforts of the Bahujan Mahasangh (led by Prakash Ambedkar) in this direction have not been very successful. Apart from the Mahasangh, at least two new OBC parties have appeared on the political scene: the Lok Rajya party and the Sarva Samaj Party. Thus, today, there are at least six contenders for the OBC vote in the state: Shiv Sena, BJP, Bahujan Mahasangh, BSP and these two new parties. The net result is the fragmentation of the already dispersed OBC vote and by implication, adequate space for the politics of the Maratha community despite its own fragmentation.

Fragmentation of the Maratha caste

The Maratha leadership is entrenched in terms of control over rural resources. They enjoy control of the cooperative network. It is difficult to remove them from positions of control over these resources. Therefore, politics revolves around this phenomenon of Maratha domination in spite of the disintegration of the Maratha ‘lobby’ throughout the ’90s. Today, the Maratha leadership has lost sense of direction and also lost a beneficent identity towards the poor of its own caste. In this sense, it is isolated.

On the other hand, the Maratha community is increasingly fragmenting under multiple pressures. Contrary to what the leaders want to believe, the community experiences acute stratification between the resource-rich and poor farmers, between the politically powerful families and the ordinary Marathas. The historical consciousness of being one community is on the decline. Socio-economic trajectories of every part of the state have been shaping a separate politics for Marathas of each part of the state.

Thus, since the ’90s, we find that the politics of the Maratha community varies from region to region: Marathas of western Maharashtra are divided between the Congress and NCP; those of Marathwada region are divided between the Shiv Sena and NCP; the Marathas and Kunbis of Vidarbha are divided between the BJP and Congress; the Kunbis of Konkan are mostly with the Shiv Sena; and the Marathas of north Maharashtra are gravitating towards the BJP. Observers and politicians tend to believe in the myth of a singular politics of the entire Maratha community. However, we are on the threshold of the era of multiple Maratha politics.

The writer teaches in the Department of Politics, University of Pune