Shinde-Fadnavis government caught in quagmire

In 2018, it was appeasement that led Devendra Fadnavis to announce Maratha reservation. Today, it’s OBC appeasement that will not allow Fadnavis to give in to the renewed demand for Maratha reservation.

This is one Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coup that didn’t go well. Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis may have been better off in the Opposition, given the way politics in Maharashtra has played out ever since his party brought down the Uddhav Thackeray government in July 2022.

The breakaway group of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and his 40 MLAs failed to carry the Shiv Sena’s rank and file with them, and are nowhere near more than a year later. Last month was the second time that Shinde could not oust Uddhav Thackeray from Shivaji Park, the venue of the annual Shiv Sena Dussehra rally, a tradition started by Bal Thackeray, which Shinde would have loved to appropriate.

As for getting Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar to the BJP side — whatever advantage the NCP leader may have been seen to bring with him — has been brought to nought by the Maratha reservation agitation.

More than anything else, the chaos in Maharashtra right now evokes a sense of futility and sadness. The fury let loose and the destruction being wrought by thousands of young men won’t end well. There’s no way the demand for Maratha reservation can be met because there are too many factors working against it; not just legal, but political as well. The policy of ‘appeasement’ that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah keep blaming for all the evils in India that existed before 2014, is the reason why Marathas as a whole will not get reservation. It’s also the reason why the mess began.

It was a sign of desperate appeasement that made the then Congress Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan declare reservation for Marathas just a month after Modi swept the Lok Sabha polls in 2014, and the assembly elections were staring the Congress-NCP government in the face.

Chavan is too intelligent an administrator not to have known that the policy could not have stood legal scrutiny. It was again appeasement that led Fadnavis to make a similar provision in 2018 when he was Chief Minister, which was struck down by the Supreme Court. It’s appeasement that will not allow Fadnavis today to give in to the renewed demand for Maratha reservation — appeasement of the OBC vote-bank. It’s worth noting that Fadnavis went to Nagpur and Chandrapur to meet the OBC leaders fasting against Maratha reservation, but left it to Shinde to meet the fasting Maratha activist Manoj Jarange Patil.

Even the latest step: the issuance of certificates that will enable those Marathas who have documents from the Nizam era certifying them as Kunbis to get reservation is a stop-gap exercise. The government hopes this will make Patil end his fast and thereby prevent an explosive situation: the moment when the fasting Patil must be force fed or taken to hospital. After all, it was the attempt to hospitalise him that sparked off the clash between his followers and the police on September 1, a clash that propelled him into the limelight and rejuvenated the agitation.

But Patil has already said this measure is not enough. While this was his original call, he now wants Kunbi certificates for all Marathas, a demand as cynical as the moves being made by all the politicians involved — including the Opposition that’s rushed to support him. Patil knows that while all Marathas may want reservation, not all of them want to be classified as Kunbis, who are cultivators.

Marathas are known for their caste pride, their self-image as warriors and descendants of Chhatrapati Shivaji. As Union Minister Narayan Rane, himself a Maratha, said, no “96-kuli Maratha” would want to call themselves a Kunbi. (‘96-kuli’ refers to the 96 clans that are supposed to make up the Maratha caste.) Patil himself exhorted his followers with the words: “Kshatriyas should not cry, they should keep fighting.” Why didn’t he say Kunbis should not cry?

This caste pride is a natural corollary of Maratha privilege, and this privilege is the main reason courts have declined to categorise Marathas as backward. Yet, the false hope that Marathas will one day get reservation is kept alive by both agitators and politicians of all hues. On them lies the blame for the six suicides that have taken place in the last month by Marathas.

The government has allotted space in Mantralaya to the committee that will issue the Kunbi certificates, and provided it with 20 staffers. Quite a contrast to the way the same government treated the Bhima Koregaon Inquiry Commission set up to investigate the violence on January 1, 2018, between the Dalits and the Marathas. Given neither space nor staff in the city, the commission currently operates from Pune.

That’s appeasement.

(Jyoti Punwani is a senior journalist.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.