Marathi people
The Marathi people or Marathis are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group who are native to Maharashtra in western India. They natively speak Marathi, an Indo-Aryan language. Maharashtra was formed as a Marathi-speaking state of India on 1 May 1960, as part of a nationwide linguistic reorganisation of the Indian states. The term "Maratha" is generally used by historians to refer to all Marathi-speaking peoples, irrespective of their caste; However, it may refer to a Maharashtrian caste known as the Maratha which also includes farmer sub castes like the Kunbis.
The Marathi community came into political prominence in the 17th century, when the Maratha Empire was established by Shivaji in 1674.
Etymology
According to R. G. Bhandarkar, the term Maratha is derived from Rattas, a tribe which held political supremacy in the Deccan from the remotest time. The Rattas called themselves Maha Rattas or Great Rattas, and thus the country in which they lived came to be called Maharashtra, the Sanskrit of which is Maha-rashtra. In the Harivamsa, the Yadava kingdom called Anaratta is described as mostly inhabited by the Abhiras. The Anartta country and its inhabitants were called Surastra and the Saurastras, probably after the Rattas akin to the Rastrikas of Asoka's rock Edicts, now known as Maharashtra and the Marathas.History
Ancient to medieval period
During the ancient period, around 230 BC, Maharashtra came under the rule of the Satavahana dynasty, which ruled the region for 400 years. The Vakataka dynasty then ruled Maharashtra from the 3rd century to the 5th century AD, and the Chalukya dynasty from the 6th century to the 8th century. The two prominent rulers were Pulakeshin II, who defeated the Kannauj Emperor Harsh, and Vikramaditya II, who defeated Arab invaders in the 8th century. The Rashtrakuta dynasty ruled Maharashtra from the 8th to the 10th century. The Persian merchant and traveller, Sulaiman al-Tajir, who wrote of his many voyages to India and China in the CE, called the ruler of the Rashtrakuta dynasty, Amoghavarsha, "one of the four great kings of the world".From the early 11th century to the 12th century, the Deccan Plateau was dominated by the Western Chalukya Empire and the Chola dynasty.
The Yadava dynasty of Deogiri, ruled Maharashtra from the 13th century to the 14th century. The Yadavas were defeated by the Khaljis in 1321. After the defeat of Yadavas, the area was ruled for the next 300 years by a succession of Muslim rulers including : the Khaljis, the Tughlaqs, and the Bahmani Sultanate and its successor states called the Deccan sultanates, such as Adilshahi, Nizamshahi, and the Mughal Empire.
The early period of Islamic rule saw the imposition of a Jaziya tax on non-Muslims, temple destruction and forcible conversions. However, the mainly Hindu population and their Islamic rulers came to an accommodation over time. For most of this period Brahmins were in charge of accounts, whereas revenue collection was in the hands of Marathas who held watans of Patilki, and Deshmukhi. A number of families such as Bhosale, Shirke, Ghorpade, Jadhav, More, Mahadik, Ghatge, Gharge and Nimbalkar loyally served different sultans at different periods of time. All watandar considered their watan a source of economic power and pride and were reluctant to part with it. The watandars were the first to oppose Shivaji because it hurt their economic interests. Since most of the population was Hindu and spoke Marathi, even the sultans such as Ibrahim Adil Shah I adopted Marathi as the court language for administration and record-keeping.
Islamic rule also led to Persian vocabulary entering the Marathi language. Per Kulkarni, for the elites of the era using Persian words was a status symbol. Surnames derived from service during that period such as Fadnis, Chitnis, Mirasdar, etc. are still in use today.
Most of the Marathi Bhakti poet saints, who worshipped Vitthal, belonged to the period between late Yadava and the late Islamic era. These include Dnyaneshwar, Namdev, Eknath, Bahinabai and Tukaram. Other important religious figures of this era were Narsimha Saraswati, and Mahanubhava sect founder Chakradhar Swami. Shaivite saints like Manmath swami, Gajanan Maharaj, Sant Narhari Sonar. All of them used the Marathi language rather than Sanskrit for their devotional and philosophical compositions.
The decline of Islamic rule in Deccan started when Shivaji founded the Maratha Kingdom by annexing a portion of the Bijapur Sultanate. Shivaji later led rebellions against Mughal rule, thus becoming a symbol of Hindu resistance and self-rule. The Marathas contributed greatly to weakening imperial Mughal rule and went on to rule over a large realm stretching from Gwalior to Cuttack.
Early modern period (1650–1818)
Political history
In the mid-17th century, Shivaji founded the Maratha Kingdom by conquering the Desh and the Konkan regions from Bijapur kingdom, and established Hindavi Swaraj. The Marathas are credited to a large extent with weakening Mughal rule in India. After Shivaji's death, the Mughals invaded the Deccan in 1681. Shivaji's son Sambhaji, also his successor as Chhatrapati, led the Marathas against the much stronger Mughal opponent, but in 1689, after being betrayed, Sambhaji was captured, tortured and killed by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. The war against the Mughals was then led by Sambhaji's younger brother and successor Rajaram I. Upon Rajaram's death in 1700, his widow Tarabai became the regent of her infant son and took command of Maratha forces. In 1707, upon the death of Aurangzeb, the Deccan wars came to an end after Shahu, son of Sambhaji who had grown up under Mughal captivity was released, and quickly reclaimed the Maratha throne. Shahu and Tarabai briefly fought a succession battle with Shahu eventually prevailing. Shahu formally recognised Mughal suzerainty in return for tax collection rights over six Deccan provinces, and the release of his mother from Mughal captivity.Shahu I, the grandson of Shivaji, with the help of capable Maratha administrators and generals such as the Peshwa Balaji Vishwanath and his descendants, saw the greatest expansion of the Maratha power. After Shahu's death in 1749, the Peshwa Nanasaheb and his successors became the virtual rulers of the Maratha Confederacy. The Maratha Confederacy was expanded by many Marathi chieftains including Peshwa Bajirao Ballal I and his descendants, the Shindes, Gaekwad, Pawar, Bhonsale of Nagpur, and the Holkars. The Confederacy at its peak stretched from northern Karnataka in the south to Peshawar briefly during the Maratha–Afghan War in the north, and to Orissa in the east. However, after the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761, in which the Marathas were defeated by the Afghans under Ahmed Shah Abdali, the Maratha power was greatly diminished. Due to the efforts of Mahadji Shinde, it remained a confederacy until the British East India Company defeated Peshwa Bajirao II. Nevertheless, several Maratha states remained as vassals of the British until 1947 when they acceded to the Dominion of India.
The Marathas also developed a potent coastal navy around the 1660s. At its peak under Maratha Koli Admiral Kanhoji Angre, the naval force dominated the territorial waters of the western coast of India from Mumbai to Sawantwadi. It would engage in attacking British, Portuguese, Dutch, and Siddi naval ships and kept a check on their naval ambitions. The Maratha Navy dominated until around the 1730s, but was in a state of decline by the 1770s, and ceased to exist entirely by 1818.
Social history
Before British rule, the Maharashtra region was divided into many revenue divisions. The medieval equivalent of a county or district was the pargana. The chief of the pargana was called Deshmukh and record keepers were called Deshpande. The lowest administrative unit was the village. Village society in Marathi areas included the Patil or the head of the village, collector of revenue, and Kulkarni, the village record-keeper. These were hereditary positions. The Patil usually came from the Maratha caste. The Kulkarni were usually from the Marathi Brahmin or CKP caste. The village also used to have twelve hereditary servants called the Balutedar. The Balutedar system was supportive of the agriculture sector. Servants under this system provided services to the farmers and the economic system of the village. The base of this system was caste. The servants were responsible for tasks specific to their castes. There were twelve kinds of servants under Bara Balutedar: Joshi, Sonar, Sutar, Gurav, Nhawi, Parit, Teli, Kumbhar, Chambhar, Dhor, Koli, Chougula, Mang, and Mahar. In this list of Balutedar: Dhor, Mang, Mahar, and Chambhar belonged to the untouchable group of castes.In exchange for their services, the Balutedars were granted complex sets of hereditary rights to a share in the village harvest.
British colonial rule
The British rule of more than a century in the present-day Maharashtra region saw huge changes for the Marathi people in every aspect of their lives. Areas that correspond to present-day Maharashtra were under direct or indirect British rule, first under the East India Trading Company and then under the British Raj, from 1858. During this era Marathi people resided in the Bombay presidency, Berar, Central provinces, Hyderabad state and in various princely states that are currently part of present-day Maharashtra. The 1951 census of India had 4.5 million people in the erstwhile Hyderabad state who stated Marathi as their mother tongue. Significant Marathi populations also resided in Maratha princely states far from Maharashtra such as Baroda, Gwalior, Indore, and Tanjore.The British colonial period saw standardisation of Marathi grammar through the efforts of the Christian missionary William Carey. Carey also published the first dictionary of Marathi in Devanagari script. The most comprehensive Marathi-English dictionary was compiled by Captain James Thomas Molesworth and Major Thomas Candy in 1831. The book is still in print nearly two centuries after its publication. Molesworth also worked on standardising Marathi. He used Brahmins of Pune for this task and adopted the Sanskrit-dominated dialect spoken by this caste in the city as the standard dialect for Marathi. The introduction of printing, standardisation of Marathi, and establishment of modern schools and colleges during the early colonial era led to the spread of literacy and knowledge to many different sections of society such as women, the dalits and the cultivator classes.
The Marathi community played an important part in the social and religious reform movements, as well as the Indian nationalist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Notable civil society bodies founded by Marathi leaders during the 19th century include the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, the Prarthana Samaj, the Arya Mahila Samaj, and the Satya Shodhak Samaj. The Pune Sarvajanik Sabha took an active part in relief efforts during the famine of 1875–1876. It is considered the forerunner of the Indian National Congress established in 1885. The most prominent personalities of Indian nationalism in the late 19th and early 20th century, Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Bal Gangadhar Tilak, on opposite sides of the political spectrum, were both Marathi. Tilak was instrumental in using Shivaji and Ganesh worship in forging a collective Maharashtrian identity for the Marathi people. Marathi social reformers of the colonial era include Mahatma Jyotirao Phule and his wife Savitribai Phule, Justice Ranade, feminist Tarabai Shinde, Dhondo Keshav Karve, Vitthal Ramji Shinde, and Pandita Ramabai. Jyotirao Phule was a pioneer in opening schools for girls and Marathi dalits castes.
The non-Brahmin Hindu castes started organising at the beginning of the 20th century with the blessing of Shahu, the ruler of the princely state of Kolhapur. The campaign took off in the early 1920s under the leadership of Keshavrao Jedhe and Baburao Javalkar. Both belonged to the non-Brahmin party. Capturing the Ganpati and Shivaji festivals from Brahmin domination were their early goals. They combined nationalism with anti-casteism as the party's aims. Later on in the 1930s, Jedhe merged the non-Brahmin party with the Congress party and changed that party from an upper-caste-dominated body to a more broadly based but also Maratha-dominated party.
The early 20th century also saw the rise of B. R. Ambedkar, who led the campaign for the rights of the dalits caste that included his own Mahar caste.
The Hindu nationalist organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was founded and led by Marathis from Nagpur for many decades. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, a Marathi from Nashik district, an Indian independence activist, who advocated violence to overthrow British rule in his youth, later formulated the Hindu nationalist philosophy of Hindutva. He was a leading figure in the Hindu Mahasabha. Savarkar's Hindutva philosophy remains the guiding principle for organisations that are part of the RSS-affiliated organisations.
Although the British originally regarded India as a place for the supply of raw materials for the factories of England, by the end of the 19th century a modern manufacturing industry was developing in the city of Mumbai. The main product was cotton and the bulk of the workforce in these mills was of Marathi origin from Western Maharashtra, but more specifically from the coastal Konkan region.
The census recorded for the city in the first half of the 20th century showed nearly half the city's population listed Marathi as their mother tongue.
During the period of 1835–1907, a large number of Indians, including Marathi people, were taken to the island of Mauritius as indentured labourers to work on sugarcane plantations. The Marathi people on the island form the oldest diaspora of Marathi people outside India.