Maratha-Vanjari divide leads to student boycott

Swapnil Bade, a final-year MBBS student in Pune, has been troubled for the last few weeks.

- Shrinivas Deshpande

PUNE: Close friends had been avoiding him, leaving him confused and unsettled. When the penny dropped, Bade was deeply hurt.

Bade hails from Beed district and believes that communal tensions back home are casting a shadow on his life in Pune. "Before this murder case, things were fine even though protests over reservations recently had caused some tension. My friends and I would hang out together, eat our meals, and discuss almost anything we wanted to. But, lately, they have been avoiding me, even stopping conversations when I join in," Bade said.

When he confronted his friends, one of them said that people from Beed are "criminal-minded". "They think I carry a gun just because I'm from Beed. How can I be held responsible for something that happened in my district," Bade asked.

The murder of Beed sarpanch Santosh Deshmukh in December last year has deepened the rift between the Maratha and Vanjari communities, traditionally on opposite sides of the socio-political divide. While Deshmukh was a Maratha, the men accused of his murder are Vanjaris, an Other Backward Class (OBC).

The rift widened further in the run-up to the recent assembly elections, with the Marathas demanding reservations from the OBC quota in a full-blown agitation that echoed through the corridors of power.

Sachin Adhekar, former president of Maratha Seva Sangh and convener of the Maratha Kranti Morcha, said, "As a Maratha leader, I condemn the discrimination between communities. Pune is the cultural capital of Maharashtra and we will not tolerate this." He said Marathas have been playing "big brother to the other community", and anyone with a story of discrimination "can approach me".

But the OBC community isn't looking for a "big brother"; they are simply seeking their rightful place socially, and are against the Marathas compromising their quota in education and government jobs.