The Man Who Defeated the Marathas
THE HISTORICAL TUG OF WAR for power between Marathas and Brahmins has influenced Maharashtra’s politics since the time of the Maratha empire.
Founded by the Maratha warrior-king Shivaji Bhonsle I, who assumed the title of Chhatrapati, the kingdom reached its peak in the 1750s, when it spanned approximately two and a half million square kilometres—from Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu to present-day Peshawar in Pakistan in the west, and Bengal in the east.
The rapid expansion of the empire in the mid-eighteenth century happened during what is known as the Peshwa era. A few decades after the death of Shivaji, the Peshwas—Brahmin executives of the Maratha Chhatrapati—became more powerful than the Chhatrapati himself. While the Maratha Chhatrapati was reduced to a titular head, the Brahmin Peshwa held the highest administrative office. To keep the kingdom together, the Peshwas granted semi-autonomy to Maratha chieftains such as the Pawars of Dhar, the Scindias of Gwalior and the Bhosales of Nagpur, and the empire became a confederacy. But to this day, the disempowerment of Maratha rulers by Brahmin ministers rankles for the Maratha community.
Perhaps the most striking Brahmin politician from this time was Nana Phadnavis, who rose from the post of a clerk to that of a minister in the Peshwa administration. (“Phadnavis” was a title given to keepers of the Peshwas’ accounts.)
For a large part of the period between the 1760s and his death in 1800, Nana Phadnavis was the most powerful man in the Maratha empire, and was perceived as its de facto ruler. In 1773, the teenaged Peshwa Narayan Rao was murdered by his uncle, Raghunath Rao, who then installed himself as the Peshwa. Phadnavis, along with 11 other ministers from the administration, quickly deposed Raghunath Rao, in what is known as the Baarbhai conspiracy—the conspiracy of the twelve.
Phadnavis installed Narayan Rao’s posthumous infant, Madhav Rao II, on the throne, and led the Baarbhai council, which officially managed the affairs of state. A stern taskmaster, Phadnavis put together a massive spying network that helped him keep his rivals in check—the increasingly influential British, the Mughals in the north, the rulers of Mysore and even the Maratha chieftain Mahadji Scindia, among others. The Europeans in the subcontinent at the time conferred on Phadnavis the title of “the Maratha Machiavelli.”
In the twentieth century, the title of Maratha Machiavelli was bestowed on another young, shrewd politician: Sharad Pawar, a Maratha who, in 1978, engineered defections against a Congress chief minister and installed himself in the coveted seat at the age of 37. Pawar’s writ ran large in Maharashtra for decades to follow, during which he was chief minister thrice, and held the defence and agriculture portfolios at the centre. He also nurtured prime-ministerial ambitions until the rise of Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in May 2014 put paid to his chances.
Today, there is a new contender for the title of Maratha Machiavelli. In the assembly elections held in October 2014, the BJP emerged as the single largest party in Maharashtra and crowned a then 44-year-old Devendra Fadnavis as chief minister. With the same last name as Nana, though not related to the Peshwa-era statesman, Fadnavis has been similarly successful at outmanoeuvring his rivals to occupy the seat of power.
The young chief minister’s elevation had irked several more senior colleagues who thought they were more eligible for the job. Fadnavis did not take them on in public, instead he has handled them behind the scenes and emerged as the undisputed face of the BJP in the state.
In June 2016, when news broke that the BJP would nominate Sambhaji Raje, a descendent of Shivaji, to the Rajya Sabha, Pawar harked back to the times when the Maratha Chhatrapati would appoint a Peshwa, who in turn would choose a Fadnavis. “I hadn’t witnessed a Fadnavis appointing a Chhatrapati until now,” he said.
As in the case of Nana Phadnavis, Devendra Fadnavis’s elevation was also made possible by a gradual marginalisation of Marathas in the state’s politics. Over time, the caste group, which comprises about thirty percent of the state’s population, has seen its vote share split between multiple parties. Fadnavis, only the second Brahmin chief minister of the state, has benefitted from the BJP’s cultivation of the Other Backward Classes vote bank in addition to its core dominant-caste following.
Thus, for the Marathas, Fadnavis has been a bitter pill to swallow. In June 2016, when news broke that the BJP would nominate Sambhaji Raje, a descendent of Shivaji, to the Rajya Sabha, Pawar harked back to the times when the Maratha Chhatrapati would appoint a Peshwa, who in turn would choose a Fadnavis. “I hadn’t witnessed a Fadnavis appointing a Chhatrapati until now,” he said.
The time of the Peshwas is also well known as an era of Brahminical supremacy, and for atrocities against the oppressed castes, especially the Dalit Mahar community. The community has a rich history—BR Ambedkar was a Mahar—but unlike Brahmins and Marathas, it is not one of fighting for a piece of the pie, but one of fighting against the unjust caste system. The anti-caste struggle in Maharashtra, of which Ambedkar and the reformer Jotirao Phule are icons, has largely been seen as a threat by the ruling classes of Maharashtra. Under Fadnavis, the government’s crackdown on the adherents of anti-caste ideology has been unprecedented, as seen during the violence last year in Bhima Koregaon, and its aftermath.
In the past five years, Maharashtra has also grappled with a severe drought and water crisis, the brunt of which has been borne by farmers. Focussed on the urban voter, Fadnavis has been ineffectual in dealing with these problems, and a weak opposition has failed to capitalise, as seen in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, in which the BJP–Shiv Sena alliance won 41 of the state’s 48 seats.
The young chief minister’s takeover of a state that was historically a Congress stronghold has made people speculate about his eligibility as a future prime minister. Whether or not he makes it that far, Fadnavis, just like his eighteenth-century namesake, is set to leave a deep imprint on the history of Maharashtra.
FADNAVIS’S INSTALLATION as the first chief minister of Maharashtra from the BJP did not sit well with the Maratha community, which wields considerable clout in the state, from the village level to the highest political circles. Of the state’s 18 chief ministers so far, 11 have been Marathas.
Maratha anger finally erupted after three Dalits were accused of raping and murdering a 14-year-old Maratha girl at Kopardi village in Ahmednagar district on 13 July 2016.
On 25 July this year, I met Pravin Gaikwad, a former president of the Sambhaji Brigade, the Maratha organisation behind the 2004 attack on the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune. Gaikwad recalled that the community had been seething with anger for quite a while before the Kopardi incident. “Many of us were feeling insecure,” he told me. “The common refrain among the community members was, ‘With a Brahmin becoming the CM, Marathas will be victimised.’ The incident in Kopardi confirmed our worst fears.”
The chief minister was slow to assuage the community’s sense of injury. He visited Kopardi nearly a fortnight after the incident, after much criticism from the opposition. Fadnavis also kept the visit a well-guarded secret, and did not allow the media to be present when he met the victim’s family.
The Marathas planned a protest in Mumbai for 3 August 2016. But the state government denied the organisers permission, claiming that the protests would cause law-and-order problems since the state assembly was in session. “We decided to hold a rally in Aurangabad instead, expecting five thousand protestors,” Gaikwad said. “But thanks to social media, more than five lakh Marathas turned up. The rest, as they say, was history.”
After the success of the silent march held in Aurangabad on 9 August, a sea of Marathas waving saffron flags—the traditional symbol of Shivaji’s “Hindavi Swarajya,” which was later adopted as a Hindutva symbol by groups such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Shiv Sena—began gathering and marching on the streets of villages, towns and cities across the state. The silent protests, called “Maratha Kranti Morchas,” each boasted participation in the hundreds of thousands and brought routine public activities to a virtual halt. The organisers of the rallies, who were drawn from local Maratha organisations, kept a distance from established local, state or national Maratha leaders. Typically led from the front by a group of young girls and women, the participants comprised college students, schoolteachers, university professors,
