CM’s false promises and fake snakes turn Maharashtra into a tinder box

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in the past week has shown complete immaturity for one holding such a high office, by his handling of the Maratha quota stir. When he announced recently that the government would soon fill up 72,000 state job vacancies pending for long, he opened up a Pandora's box.

Fadnavis should have stopped with that announcement and gone no further, waiting for people to mull it over and observed their initial reactions. But he went a step further and grandly stated that 16 % of these jobs would be reserved for Marathas. As a law graduate and chief minister who has been dealing with the Maratha reservation stir for nearly two years, he should have known that was an empty promise that would fool no one, least of all the Marathas.

Perhaps he wished to do a Prithviraj Chavan on the community—in the run up to the 2014 Maharashtra assembly elections, the Congress-NCP government had offered 16% reservation to Marathas in an act of political sophistry, knowing full well the decision would be struck down by the courts. It was. But they were weeks from the state elections and the Congress-NCP  were simply buying some time—and votes. Constitutionally, there can be no more than 52% reservation and there was no room to accommodate another 16%.

By the time the Maratha groups caught on, the Congress-NCP were defeated and did not have to face the consequences of their chicanery. In the meantime, though, the BJP, for the same reasons—to buy the Maratha votes—promised them similar reservations in their manifesto. But when Maratha groups, particularly the Maratha Kranti Morcha which held 58 silent and peaceful morchas across Maharashtra between August 2015 and September 2017, held the ruling party to its promise, the Fadnavis government had to backtrack and set up a committee  to study the demand and present its recommendations to the High Court.

Despite nudgings by the Supreme Court and several reminders by the Bombay High Court, the committee is yet to present its recommendations.

So how was Fadnavis now promising Marathas a 16% reservation in the 72,000 jobs? Marathas were suspicious. Was he having them on? Their first protests were sporadic, but then as Ashadhi Ekadashi approached (on Monday, July 23), Fadnavis played a game that did not go down well with any community.

For weeks before this Ekadashi, 'varis'—groups of pilgrims—from all across Maharashtra start walking towards Pandharpur in Solapur district, where they offer their veneration to Vithoba (Lord Vishnu), Maharashtra's resident deity, and his consort Rukmini. The chief minister of Maharashtra, from whichever political party, is the yajman (patron) of the temple and must lead the puja at this temple and pray for the state and its people’s good health and prosperity. It is a puja that was performed even by AR Antulay in his capacity as CM in the early 1980s. Sharad Pawar, a socialist and agnostic, never seen entering any temple in a private capacity, was always present at the Vithoba temple to pay his obeisance.

However, this year when Marathas worked out that Fadnavis was leading them on once again, they threatened to disrupt the puja by preventing his entry to the temple which is thronged by the varkaris (pilgrims) on the day.  But Fadnavis and his partymen now did two things that led the situation to spin out of control. Although the CM was full of bluster that he was surrounded by Z-plus security, he chickened out and cancelled the puja. Former Madhya Pradesh CM Digvijaya Singh, however, was there on his annual pilgrimage to the temple.

That cancellation by the CM was considered inauspicious. As was the only other time when a chief minister had called off the Ashadhi Ekadashi puja—Manohar Joshi of the Shiv Sena who was similarly threatened by Dalit groups in the wake of the mishandling by his government of the Ramabai Ambedkarnagar firings in Ghatkopar in North Mumbai, following the desecration of a statue of Dr BR Ambedkar in 1997.

Joshi then had said little about his decision. But then a Brahmin versus Maratha twist was now given to the contretemps (Fadnavis, like Joshi, is Brahmin). But even then the situation could have been contained had Fadnavis not tried to cover up his cowardice with the completely fake and unheard of statement that he had reports that the Maratha agitators were planning to release snakes among the pilgrims.

All hell broke loose. Lord Vithoba is worshipped in every home in Maharashtra and is as important to Marathas as anybody else. The mere suggestion that they would endanger the life of the varkaris thus was enough to enrage them and spark violence. When one agitator jumped into the river in a jal samadhi and another consumed poison, Maratha patience was at an end. Karan Gaykar, the leader of the Marathi Kranti Morcha, had told this correspondent a few days earlier that they would revive their earlier plan to stop any movement of the chief minister across Maharashtra if he reneged on his promises.

When reminded of the CM’s high security detail, Gaykar said loftily, “There are ways and means.” Some of those plans allegedly include carpeting his route with stones and rocks. It will take him hours to reach any destination while the PWD cleared the roads. There was also some talk of pelting his car with stones—not from the roadside but from treetops! He has seen our strength in peaceful morchas. Now he will see what we are truly capable of, Gaykar said. While those dramatics seem a far cry as yet, two BJP MLAs from Nashik—Seema Hiray and Rahul Aher—have already submitted their resignations, strangely though not to Fadnavis or the Speaker but to Gaykar, who too is Nashik-based. There are 146 Maratha MLAs from all political parties in the Maharashtra assembly in a House of 288. If there is a cascading effect and all follow suit with proper official resignations, the Fadnavis government could fall more than a year before its term.

For, these reservations are important to all Marathas cutting across party and class lines. Once upon a time, they were either rich zamindars or suitably employed farmers and farm labourers, but the growing agrarian crisis has left them on the margins of society. Reservations in government jobs is their only hope for the future but now this demand has brought them in direct conflict with Dalits and OBCs who wonder if the Marathas' 16% will be hived off from their own quotas. These communities too are suspicious of Fadnavis's promise to the Marathas, who have recently dropped their earlier demand for the dilution of the Prevention of Atrocities against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Act of 1989 which they had been insistent on a year ago. But the warinesss between the communities remains and all communities now look upon the Fadnavis government with a good deal of suspicion. Maharashtra could be a tinder box waiting to explode.