BJP returns to Ma-Dha-Va formula as Maratha-OBC polarisation threatens its Assembly prospects

The party is working hard to consolidate non-Maratha Hindu vote in its favour, using the same social engineering formula it employed in the 1980s.

BJP supporters during Deputy Chief Minister and Nagpur South-West seat candidate Devendra Fadnavis’ road show in Nagpur on November 5. | Photo Credit: ANI

Before the formation of the BJP in 1980, the Congress dominated Maharashtra’s politics with the formidable support of Marathas, Dalits, Kunbis, tribal people, and Muslims. The appeal of the BJP’s predecessor, the Jana Sangh, was limited to Brahmins and, very nominally, some other castes. In order to break this equation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological parent of the saffron parties, decided to change tack. It brought its ideologue and full-time member Vasantrao Bhagwat to the helm of organisational affairs in the State. Bhagwat, a Brahmin from Ratnagiri district of the Konkan region, was asked to make the BJP a statewide party. Towards this, he introduced the Ma-Dha-Va formula.

Ma-Dha-Va is a Marathi acronym for Mali (gardener), Dhangar (shepherd), and Vanjari (a semi-nomadic caste from Marathwada). Bhagwat understood the crux of the politics of the time: the Marathas, the State’s ruling caste, which accounted for 32 per cent of the population, made up the majority of the Congress vote bank. The BJP had little scope for getting Muslims, Dalits, and tribal people into its fold. What remained were the smaller castes, which had no political representation in the Congress.

Those were the days of the Mandal Commission (its recommendations were submitted in 1980), which laid emphasis on the “Other Backward Classes”. With many smaller communities eyeing OBC status, Bhagwat focussed on the Malis, Dhangars, and Vanjaris, which were the dominant communities in that category. Thus emerged the first generation of BJP leaders in Maharashtra: N.S. Farande (Mali), Anna Dange (Dhangar), and Gopinath Munde (Vanjari).

The BJP’s strategy to consolidate the non-Maratha smaller castes, or OBCs, paid off. It helped the party expand its influence among the Bahujan. The term “Bahujan” was in use a thousand years ago in the Pali language to describe the non-elite classes. In modern India, the social reformer Jyotirao Phule, himself from the Mali community, used it in his path-breaking essay on the history of non-Brahmins. Babasaheb Ambedkar expanded the concept further in his works.

Bhagwat’s outreach gave the BJP, hitherto known as a Brahmin-dominated party, a Bahujan tag. In 2024, following the defeat of the Mahayuti (grand alliance) led by it in the Lok Sabha election held in April-May, and with the Maratha reservation movement emerging as a dominant political issue, the party has returned to the social engineering days of the Ma-Dha-Va formula to save the day.

The Maratha reservation demand

The Maratha reservation demand is not new, but it gained fresh momentum under the leadership of Manoj Jarange-Patil. On October 1, 2023, following a police lathicharge on protesters that Jarange-Patil led in the Jalna district of Marathwada, the agitation for Maratha reservation turned violent for the first time in its 20-year history (“Maratha quota agitation: A cat among the pigeons”, Frontline, published online on November 11, 2023).

Manoj Jarange Patil with Chief Minister Eknath Shinde after announcing an end to the protests when the government agreed to accept his demands, in Mumbai on January 27. | Photo Credit: ANI

The protest by the dominant community of Marathas put pressure on the State government. Jarange-Patil’s demand was to include the Marathas from the Marathwada region in the Kunbi category. The Kunbi community, which is predominant in the Vidarbha region, comes under the OBC category. In a way, Jarange-Patil was demanding OBC status for the Marathas too. Chief Minister Eknath Shinde accepted his demand and announced a committee headed by a retired judge to look into it.

At this point, the government faced a backlash from the OBCs in the State, who were against sharing the space with the Marathas. In late 2023, Chhagan Bhujbal, a Cabinet Minister in the Shinde government, opposed the government decision publicly. He addressed rallies in Marathwada, where the Maratha reservation issue was central to the political discourse. Jarange-Patil’s rallies demanding Kunbi status for Marathas and Bhujbal’s rallies opposing it split the State vertically along caste lines.

The BJP was already in trouble because of careless remarks made by its members ahead of the Lok Sabha election that the party wanted a three-fourths majority in Parliament in order to change the Constitution. This angered Dalits; Muslims were already preparing for tactical voting, and tribal communities were exploring alternatives after incidents of atrocities against them in Manipur and Madhya Pradesh. With the Maratha bloc also turning against it, the Mahayuti won only 17 seats in Maharashtra as against the Maha Vikas Aghadi’s (MVA) 31. This prompted the BJP to introspect.

Interestingly, the plot thickened soon after the Lok Sabha election results were announced when a protest by Lakshman Hake and Navnath Waghmare on June 13 over the dilution of the OBC quota grabbed the headlines. The protest venue was Vadi Godri village in Ambad tehsil of Jalna district, barely 4 km from Jarange-Patil’s village and his protest venue at Antarvali Sarathi.

Hake was a little-known OBC leader who contested the Lok Sabha election from the Madha constituency and secured just 5,134 votes. He comes from the Dhangar community, a large section of which has been demanding reservation under the Scheduled Tribes category. He highlighted a promise made by the BJP in 2014 to give the community reservation under the ST status if it came to power. Hake’s protest against the inclusion of Marathas in the Kunbi category saying that it will reduce the existing share of OBCs resonated among members of the latter.

Highlights

• In the 1980s, RSS ideologue Vasantrao Bhagwat introduced the Ma-Dha-Va formula, a Marathi acronym for Mali (gardener), Dhangar (shepherd), and Vanjari (a semi-nomadic caste from Marathwada), to consolidate non-Maratha smaller castes (OBCs) expanded its influence among the Bahujan.
•  In 2024, following the defeat of the Mahayuti in the Lok Sabha election, and with the Maratha reservation movement emerging as a dominant political issue, the party has returned to the social engineering days of the Ma-Dha-Va formula to save the day.
• Maharashtra has around 100 Assembly seats where Maratha voters constitute 25 to 40 per cent, 40 constituencies where Kunbi voters constitute 20 to 30 per cent, and around 35 constituencies where non-Kunbi OBC voters make up 20 to 30 per cent.

The Lok Sabha results came as a shocker not just to the Mahayuti, which won just one of the eight seats in the Marathwada region, but to the OBCs too. Two OBC leaders, Mahadev Jankar of the Dhangar community and Pankaja Munde of the Vanjari community, lost the elections from Parbhani and Beed, respectively. In this context, Hake’s protest became immediately popular among OBC youth. Over the past three months, a perception has been created that Hake has consolidated OBC support across the State.

Hake has asked his supporters to defeat the “wrong candidates”, specifically naming Rajesh Tope and Rohit Pawar, both MLAs of the Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) faction, which is a constituent of the MVA along with the Congress and the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena faction.

Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar during a joint press conference at Silver Oak in Mumbai on November 5. | Photo Credit: ANI

Meanwhile, in the Maratha camp, Jarange-Patil, who had refused to contest the Lok Sabha election on the grounds that he would not enter electoral politics, was under pressure to field candidates for the Assembly election. He held talks with Muslim leaders, mainly the Islamic scholar Sajjad Nomani, with a view to fielding joint candidates in a few seats. But, by the morning of November 4, Jarange Patil seemed to realise that by doing so he would be dividing the Maratha vote, which would ultimately help the BJP. He decided not to contest the election and asked his supporters “to vote for anyone of their choice while keeping the community’s interests in mind”.

A clear picture emerges

From the outset, Jarange-Patil was seen as a front for the NCP (Sharad Pawar). Many BJP MLCs such as Pravin Darekar, Sadabhau Khot, and Prasad Lad had called him a mask for Pawar. The tallest Maratha leader in the State, Pawar was widely believed to be the hand behind the Maratha movement. However, with Jarange-Patil appealing to his supporters to defeat the BJP’s candidates and Hake asking his followers to defeat Pawar’s candidates, the picture is beginning to get clearer in Maharashtra.

Given the widespread opinion that a Jat-versus-non-Jat binary helped the BJP retain Haryana for a third consecutive time in the recently held Assembly election, it seems likely that the Maharashtra election is being worked along the same lines.

The BJP has tasted success with its social engineering formula on many occasions. In 2016, when Devendra Fadnavis was Chief Minister, the Maratha community hit the streets in large numbers over the sexual abuse of a Maratha girl from Ahmednagar (now Ahilya Nagar) district. The community held 52 rallies across the State, which were seen as attempts by the opposition parties to stir public sentiment against the BJP. At that time too the BJP’s strategy of consolidating non-Maratha Hindu votes in the State paid off. Within four months, in the local body elections (2016-17), the BJP emerged a clear winner, securing almost 200 municipal councils of 320 and 21 municipalities of 26.

Political observers, however, point to one difference between 2017 and 2024. Jaydeo Dole, a senior journalist from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, said: “In 2017, the BJP’s novelty factor under Prime Minister Modi was intact. Also, Dalits and tribal people were not a part of the anti-BJP consolidation at that time. This time, Dalits, Muslims, and tribal people are strongly against the BJP. That is why the 2017 non-Maratha consolidation formula is no longer useful for the BJP.”

According to the 1931 Census, Marathas account for 32 per cent of the State’s population, with Dalits at 14 per cent, Muslims at 11.54 per cent, and tribal communities at 9.35 per cent. Although OBC leaders claim that they constitute 54 per cent of the population, there is no authentic data to substantiate this. However, it is clear that if the Maratha–Muslim–Dalit–Tribal consolidation takes place, accounting for more than 60 per cent of the population, any counter-consolidation will not work.

Members of the Vanjari community participating in a march demanding reservation under the Scheduled Tribes category, a September 2019 picture. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives

Recognising this, the BJP has focussed on consolidating OBCs along non-Maratha lines while still trying to get a big chunk of the Maratha vote. To achieve this, it has deployed its Maratha leaders to take aggressive stands on religious lines. Leaders such as Nitesh Rane and Pravin Darekar have been vocal on right-wing Hindutva issues, aiming to appeal to religious sentiments.

Another shrewd move by the BJP is to deploy its alliance partners strategically. Chief Minister Shinde and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, both Marathas, are campaigning in every constituency where the party has a Maratha candidate. Of the 152 seats the saffron party is contesting, it has given an almost equal number to OBCs (46) and Marathas (44), which shows its intent to avoid antagonising the Maratha community while appealing to the OBCs.

Maharashtra has around 100 Assembly seats where Maratha voters constitute 25 to 40 per cent, 40 constituencies where Kunbi voters constitute 20 to 30 per cent, and around 35 constituencies where non-Kunbi OBC voters make up 20 to 30 per cent. Polarisation along caste lines will matter in these 170 Assembly constituencies, a significant segment of the total 288 Assembly seats. The outcome of this election will depend solely on which caste consolidation strategy proves successful this time.