At that time, the Nizam of Hyderabad ruled 17 districts, five of which—Aurangabad, Beed, Nanded, Parbhani and Osmanabad—fell in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra.
The Nizam ordered the recording of information about the population including their caste, religion, occupation, land holdings and other details in his regions such as mountains and rivers. The document that came out of this exercise is referred to as the Hyderabad Gazette.
In this document, Marathas engaged in agriculture were referred to as socially backward class and the Nizam had given them reservation in education and government jobs.
Now, Jarange-Patil demands that the members of the Maratha community who could establish that their families have been mentioned in the document should be given the Kunbi certificate, which is an OBC caste, so that they can claim reservation benefits.
The Government Resolution (GR) says that those seeking the Kunbi certificate need to have documents pre-dating October 1967 (date when the Maharashtra government recognised Kunbis as socially and educationally backward). The GR says that family trees will be established through home inquiries by the revenue machinery at the village level which will facilitate the issuance of the certificates.
The government has been trying to find records by way of land holding, birth and death certificates, revenue records. So far, over 5 lakh Kunbi certificates have been issued based on the 58 lakh records.
Experts are of the opinion that this GR is not vastly different from what the government has already been doing, but it will perhaps decentralise the process.
Vinod Patil, a Maratha activist who was one of the first to go to the court regarding the quota issue, told the media in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Wednesday this GR will not benefit the community much.
“This is just a process, and it has been put down on paper. The GR doesn’t say anywhere that the process of giving Kunbi certificates will apply to those Marathas who don’t have proof. We were expecting a blanket reservation (for all Marathas of the Marathwada region). This is nothing new,” he said.
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The Maratha-Kunbi conundrum
Another expert, not wanting to be named, told ThePrint that different gazetteers have established that there is not much difference between Marathas and Kunbis.
“The current GR is similar to the work that has been going on. So, there needed to be some clarity in this GR. The conversion of Kunbis into only Marathas in the 20th century should have been accepted by the government,” the expert said.
However, Jarange-Patil appealed to his supporters and community on Wednesday to not listen to such critics.
“The records in the Hyderabad Gazette will help Marathas in Marathwada to establish their Kunbi lineage,” he said. “The three-member committee at the gram panchayat level will help even landless Marathas get Kunbi certificates by giving affidavits with declarations from landlords who have employed them.”
He added that those working “in the interest of the government” have been spreading “rumours to create rift between me and the community”.
“The records in Hyderabad Gazette will help Marathas in Marathwada establish their Kunbi lineage,” Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange-Patil.
“The GR was important for the sake of reservation as there were no records of Marathas’ Kunbi lineage from 1881 (when the first caste-based census was done) available with the machinery,” he said.
Vishwas Patil, author and former bureaucrat who has been studying historical records on the subject, said the reference of Marathas as Kunbis goes back even further before the late 19th century.
The British started keeping records and conducted studies, including a census in 1881, to understand the country better. The exercise to conduct the first census started in 1862 under British officer Richard Meade and was completed in 1881. Published records had information about the population, caste, religion, and occupation of the population, aside from region, land holdings, mountains, rivers, and flora and fauna.
According to Patil, the records were published as district gazettes in 34 volumes. The fifth volume contained information about the Nizam Dominion. Some historians call this document the ‘Hyderabad Gazette’ as well.
The 1911 census
According to Patil, the gazette notes that those who were involved in farming were addressed as Maratha Kunbi. “Maratha Kunbis were never separated. They were addressed as Maratha Kunbis from the British era. But since the 1911 census, the records did not show them as Maratha Kunbis and started referring to them as Marathas,” he told ThePrint.
The records show that in 1901, the Maratha Kunbis or ‘Kapus’ made up over 30 percent of the population in all these districts. These records are also there in the Imperial Gazette of India-Provincial series Hyderabad state, released in 1909, he said.
ThePrint has seen this document. In the Aurangabad division, the Maratha Kunbi population was 2,57,000, followed by Mahars at 68,000, Dhangars 31,000, Brahmans 28,000, Shindes 15,900, Kolis 7,000 and Maratha Holkars 5,800.
“Maratha Kunbis were never separated. They were addressed as Maratha Kunbis from British era. But since 1911 census, records didn’t show them as Maratha Kunbis and started referring to them as Marathas,” author and former bureaucrat Vishwas Patil.
Similarly, in Parbhani, Nanded, Beed, Osmanadbad districts, the Maratha Kunbi population, mentioned as those primarily into farming, were over 30 percent.
Indrajit Sawant, historian and expert on Maratha history, told ThePrint, “Different gazettes (released as respective district volumes) done by the British in 1881 should be considered as a base (for that particular region), because the population of Kunbis in the 1881 versus 1931 and 1951 census is vastly different. The Kunbi population had drastically dropped because they were considered only Marathas. But they are not really different. They have the same habits, same culture. This needs to be looked at seriously and taking this as a base, the survey needs to be done again.”
Even Jarange-Patil is demanding that the 1880s gazette that refers to Marathas as Kunbi should be considered to trace the authenticity of the lineage.
The Hyderabad state got its independence from Nizam rule in 1948. The Marathi-speaking provinces of Marathwada became a part of the Bombay province on 1 November 1956, and then Maharashtra, when it became a state on 1 May 1960.
Patil said that records identifying Maratha Kunbis date back to the British era, and were transferred to Bombay province in 1956, and subsequently to the Maharashtra government.
“So, even if the records are lost at village level, or even if they are not there with farmers, the state government as custodian must have these records. And such important pieces of evidence are normally protected by the State,” Patil says.
Like Hyderabad, Satara (in present-day western Maharashtra), too, was a princely state. Patil said the Satara Gazette records Marathas as Kunbi-Marathas. In Satara district, 5,83,569 people were recorded as Kunbis. These did not include people in Phaltan, Sangli and Miraj tehsils at the time of the census.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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