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Maratha (caste)

For Marathi people or Maharashtrians, see Marathi people.

Maratha
ReligionsHinduism
Languages
CountryIndia
Populated statesMajority:
Maharashtra
Minority:
Goa,
Karnataka,
Telangana,
Madhya Pradesh
Gujarat
RegionWestern India
Central India

The Maratha caste[note 1] is composed of 96 clans, originally formed in the earlier centuries from the amalgamation of families from the peasant (Kunbi), shepherd (Dhangar), blacksmith (Lohar), carpenter (Sutar), Bhandari, Thakar and Koli castes in Maharashtra. Many of them took to military service in the 16th century for the Deccan sultanates or the Mughals. Later in the 17th and 18th centuries, they served in the armies of the Maratha Kingdom, founded by Shivaji, a Maratha Kunbi by caste. Many Marathas were granted hereditary fiefs by the Sultanates, and Mughals for their service.[1][2][3][4][5][6]

According to the Maharashtrian historian B. R. Sunthankar, and scholars such as Rajendra Vora, the "Marathas" are a "middle-peasantry" caste which formed the bulk of the Maharashtrian society together with the other Kunbi peasant caste. Vora adds that the Marathas account for around 30 per cent of the total population of the state and dominate the power structure in Maharashtra because of their numerical strength, especially in the rural society.[7][8]

According to Jeremy Black, British historian at the University of Exeter, "Maratha caste is a coalescence of peasants, shepherds, ironworkers, etc. as a result of serving in the military in the 17th and 18th century".[9] They are the dominant caste in rural areas and mainly constitute the landed peasantry.[10] As of 2018, 80% of the members of the Maratha caste were farmers.[11]

Marathas are subdivided into 96 different clans, known as the 96 Kuli Marathas or Shahānnau Kule.[12][13] Three clan lists exist but the general body of lists are often at great variance with each other. These lists were compiled in the 19th century.[1][14] There is not much social distinction between the Marathas and Kunbis since the 1950s.[15][16]

The Maratha king Shivaji founded the Maratha Kingdom that included warriors and other notables from Maratha and several other castes from Maharashtra.[17][18] It was dominant in India for much of the 18th century.


Cite error: There are <ref group=note> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=note}} template (see the help page).

  1. ^ a b Stewart Gordon (16 September 1993). The Marathas 1600–1818. Cambridge University Press. pp. 15–18. ISBN 978-0-521-26883-7. Archived from the original on 14 April 2023. Retrieved 13 November 2019. Looking backward from ample material on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we know that Maratha as a category of caste represents the amalgamation of families from several castes - Kunbi, Lohar, Sutar, Bhandari, Thakar, and even Dhangars (shepherds) – which existed in the seventeenth century and, indeed, exist as castes in Maharashtra today. What differentiated, for example, "Maratha" from "Kunbi"? It was precisely the martial tradition, of which they were proud, and the rights (watans and inams) they gained from military service. It was these rights which differentiated them from the ordinary cultivator, ironworkers and tailors, especially at the local level
  2. ^ Abraham Eraly (2000). Emperors of the Peacock Throne: The Saga of the Great Mughals. Penguin Books India. p. 435. ISBN 978-0-14-100143-2. Archived from the original on 14 April 2023. Retrieved 14 August 2020. The early history of the marathas is obscure, but they were predominantly of the sudra(peasant) class, though later, after they gained a political role in the Deccan, they claimed to be Kshatriyas(warriors) and dressed themselves up with pedigrees of appopriate grandeur, with the Bhosles specifically claiming descent from the Sidodia's of Mewar. The fact however is that the marathas were not even a distinct caste, but essentially a status group, made up of individual families from different Maharashtrian castes..
  3. ^ "The name of the 'caste-cluster of agriculturalists-turned-warriors' inhabiting the north-west Dakhan, Mahārās̲h̲tra 'the great country', a term which is extended to all Marāt́hī speakers": P. Hardy (1991). "Marāt́hās". In Bosworth, C. E.; van Donzel, E. & Pellat, Ch. (eds.). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Volume VI: Mahk–Mid. Leiden: E. J. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-08112-3.
  4. ^ Thomas Blom Hansen (5 June 2018). Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay. Princeton University Press. pp. 31–. ISBN 978-0-691-18862-1. Archived from the original on 14 April 2023. Retrieved 13 November 2019. Historically the term Maratha emerged in the seventeenth century from being an imprecise designation for speakers of Marathi to become a title of Martial honor and entitlements earned by Deccan peasants serving as cavalrymen in the armies of Muslim rulers and later in Shivaji's armies.
  5. ^ Jeremy Black (1 March 2005). Why Wars Happen. Reaktion Books. pp. 115–. ISBN 978-1-86189-415-1. Archived from the original on 14 April 2023. Retrieved 13 November 2019. In seventeenth and eighteenth century India, military service was the most viable form of entrepreneurship for the peasants, shepherds, ironworkers and others who coalesced into the Maratha caste
  6. ^ Jaffrelot, Christophe (2003). India's Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. p. 163. ISBN 978-1-85065-670-8. Archived from the original on 14 April 2023. Retrieved 21 May 2021.
  7. ^ Rajendra Vora (2007). Manoranjan Mohanty; George Mathew; Richard Baum; Rong Ma (eds.). Grass-Roots Democracy in India and China: The Right To Participate. Sage Publications. ISBN 9788132101130. Archived from the original on 14 April 2023. Retrieved 16 September 2018. The Marathas, a middle-peasantry caste accounting for around 30 percent of the total population of the state, dominate the power structure in Maharashtra. In no other state of India we find a caste as large as the Marathas. In the past years, scholars have turned their attention to the rural society of Maharashtra in which they thought the roots of this domination lay.
  8. ^ Sunthankar, B. R. (1988). Nineteenth Century History of Maharashtra: 1818-1857. Shubhada-Saraswat Prakashan. p. 122. ISBN 978-81-85239-50-7. Archived from the original on 14 April 2023. Retrieved 16 January 2020. The peasant castes of Marathas and kunbis formed the bulk of the Maharashtrian society and, owing to their numerical strength, held a dominating position in the old village organisation.
  9. ^ Jeremy Black (2005). Why Wars Happen. Reaktion Books. p. 111. ISBN 9781861890177. Archived from the original on 14 April 2023. Retrieved 14 September 2018.
  10. ^ V. M. Sirsikar (1995). Politics in Modern Maharashtra. Orient Longman. p. 64. The second caste conflict which is of political significance is that of the Marathas and the Mahars. Marathas are dominant in rural areas and mainly constitute the landed peasantry.
  11. ^ "Dowry, child marriage issues plague Maratha and Dhangar communities". 9 September 2018. Archived from the original on 12 September 2018. Retrieved 12 September 2018.
  12. ^ Kathleen Kuiper, ed. (2010). The Culture of India. Rosen. p. 34. ISBN 978-1615301492.
  13. ^ Louis Dumont (1980). Homo hierarchicus: the caste system and its implications. University of Chicago Press. p. 121. ISBN 978-0226169637. Archived from the original on 14 April 2023. Retrieved 13 May 2011.
  14. ^ O'Hanlon 2002, p. 17.
  15. ^ I. J. Catanach (28 May 2021). Rural Credit in Western India 1875–1930: Rural Credit and the Co-operative Movement in the Bombay Presidency. Univ of California Press. pp. 87–88. ISBN 978-0-520-36800-2. Archived from the original on 11 July 2021. Retrieved 11 July 2021. The Malis were gardeners by caste, of about the same status as the Marathas. They had a reputation as a progressive caste, apparently taking easily both to education and to new agricultural pursuits. In truth, their chief advantage in the Nira canal area seems to have been their previous experience with irrigated crops; the original inhabitants of the area, mainly Marathas by caste[note 135], frequently made exceedingly poor attempts at imitating the Mali's methods. They also did not have the Malis' capital resources.[note 135]:Maratha is used here to cover both the original maratha peasant-soldier group and the Kunbi group of generally poorer peasants. The social distinction between the two groups appears to have all but died out in the first half of twentieth century.
  16. ^ P.B.Salunkhe; M.G.Mali (1994). Chhatrapati Shahu, the Piller of Social Democracy. Bombay : Education Dept., Govt. of Maharashtra for President, Mahatma Jotirao Phule Vishwabharati, Gargoti, Dist. Kolhapur. p. 70. Archived from the original on 11 July 2021. Retrieved 11 July 2021. Today the majority of the Maratha - Kunbi caste - cluster identify themselves as Marathas . During the early decades of the 20th Century political considerations turned Kunbis into Marathas. Today many rich Kunbis have become Marathas.
  17. ^ Cite error: The named reference kantak was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  18. ^ Constable, Philip (2001). "The Marginalization of a Dalit Martial Race in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Western India". The Journal of Asian Studies. 60 (2): 439–478. doi:10.2307/2659700. JSTOR 2659700. PMID 18268829. S2CID 40219522. Archived from the original on 28 January 2021. Retrieved 28 November 2020. While the bulk of Shivaji's men were naturally Marathas, they included not only the allied castes of Dhangars and Gowalas, shepherds and herdsmen, but many who had no claim to kinship. For example Shivaji's famous infantry was composed largely of Bhandaris and Kolis. The Ramoshis... who afterwards formed the infantry of Haidar and Tipu in Mysore, were relied an for the capture of the hill forts, while the outcaste Mahars and Mangs served in his artillery, and in the garrisons of these forts – Patrick Cadell

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