Re-imagining ‘Maratha’ Through Marriage and Kinship Strategies

Recent debate regarding reservation for the Marathas in the state of Maharashtra has not only reverberated across the nation but has also found similar echoes in the demands by the Jats and Gujjar communities in North India. Scholars have estimated that the Maratha (Maratha–Kunbi) caste cluster accounts for 33% to 40% of the total population of the state. To complicate matters, Kunbis have been included in the other backward class list of the Central Government in the 1990s during the implementation of Mandal Commission recommendations. To complicate matters, the Marathas, who are deeply intertwined with the Kunbis through marriage and kinship throughout precolonial and colonial history, have been denied the same. Colonial ethnography and local narratives suggest that the terms ‘Maratha’ and ‘Kunbi’ have been used interchangeably in the past. Moreover, the term ‘Maratha’ is multi-layered and when contextualised it could mean a linguistic group, a geographical community, a jati and even a feudal class. This article explores the historical conjectures and strategies employed by the political elite belonging to the Maratha–Kunbi caste cluster that facilitated this caste cluster to appropriate various identities ranging from kingship and kinship to martial race and also that of a peasant caste group.