Marathi Brahmin
However, their training as priests, expertise in Hindu laws and scriptures, and administrative skills have historically led them to find employment in all corners of India.
Peshwa, Holkars, Scindia, and Gaekwad dynastic leaders took with them a considerable population of priests, clerks, and army men when they established new seats of power.
These groups formed the backbone of administration in the new Maratha Empire states in many places such as Baroda, Indore, Gwalior, Bundelkhand, and Tanjore.
[4] In modern times the Maharashtrian brahmin and CKP communities of Indore dominated the RSS and Bharatiya Janasangh (the forerunner of the BJP).
[7][8] In Maharashtra Brahmins have had a wider occupational basis, including as priests, vedic scholars, administrators, warriors, courtiers, business and politics.
[16][17] During the peshwa rule, Pune became the de facto financial capital of the empire with the bankers (sawakar in Marathi) being mainly Maharashtrian brahmins.
[18] During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many Marathi brahmins migrated north to Hindu holy city of Benaras on the Ganga River.
Seven Marathi brahmin clans became the intellectual elites of the city with patronage from wealthy benefactors during the early Mughal era or even from an earlier period.
Most them also mentioned maintained close connections to their original homes in the centers of learning on the Godavari River such as Paithan, Puntamba, and Trimbakeshwar.
[21] A number of Maharashtrian brahmins settled in the Kumaon and Garhwal region of present day Indian state of Uttarakhand in places such as Almora.
[24][25] John Roberts has argued that from the time of the Maratha Empire and into the period when the British East India Company was forming the administrative unit of the Bombay Presidency, they were mostly urban dwellers, along with other non-Brahmin clerical castes, and shunned trading roles.
[26][clarification needed] This view appears to be distinct to that of Edmund Leech and S. N. Mukherjee, who note the Chitpavan incomers to the region as being involved also in trade and cultivation.
[27] The British rulers of Maharashtra region during early years of colonial rule in the nineteenth century recruited for clerical and lower level administrative work mainly from castes such as brahmin and CKP whose traditional occupations involved scholarship, teaching, and record keeping.
[31] In the twentieth century, Maharashtrian brahmins such as Savarkar formulated the Hindutva ideology, and Hedgewar, and his successor Golwalkar founded or led the Hindu nationalist organization, the RSS.
In the last one hundred years, many brahmin families such Kirloskar, Garware, Ogale,[32] and Mhaiskar have been successful in creating large manufacturing, and construction businesses.
Christophe Jaffrelot, a political scientist, states that even in Indore (a city in Madhya Pradesh), from 1950 to 1965, Maharashtrian Brahmins and CKP together accounted for two-third or three-fourth of the Hindu nationalist representation in the municipal councils.
[55][56] V. M. Sirsikar, a political scientist at the University of Pune, noted that It will be too much to believe that the riots took place because of the intense love of Gandhiji on the part of the Marathas.
