Kunbi
[4][5][6] These include the Dhonoje, Ghatole, Masaram, Hindre, Jadav, Jhare, Khaire, Lewa (Leva Patil), Lonare and Tirole communities of Vidarbha.
[14] In the fourteenth century and later, several Kunbis who had taken up employment as military men in the armies of various rulers underwent a process of Sanskritisation and began to identify themselves as Marathas.
The boundary between the Marathas and the Kunbi became obscure in the early 20th century due to the effects of colonisation, and the two groups came to form one block, the Maratha-Kunbi.
Anthropologist Donald Attwood shows giving an example of the Karekars of Ahmednagar that this trend continues even in recent times indicating that the social order between the two is fluid and flexible.
[25] Several years later, as the Bahamani kings started employing the local population in their military, the term Maratha acquired a martial connotation.
[29] Karve says that the Maratha caste precipitated from the Kunbi through the Sanskritisation process, the two were later consolidated due to social reforms as well as political and economic development during British rule in the early 20th century.
[30] The British installed Chatrapati Pratapsinh Bhonsle, a descendant of Shivaji, noted in his diary in the 1820s–1830s that the Gaekwads (another powerful Maratha dynasty) had Kunbi origins.
"[31] Later, in September 1965, the Marathi Dnyan Prasarak newspaper published a piece which addressed the changing meaning of the term Maratha, the social mobility of the day, the origins of the Maratha-Kunbi castes, the eating habits and the living conditions of the people of Maharashtra.
[34] Lele notes in 1990 that a subset of the Maratha-Kunbi group of castes became the political elite in the state of Maharashtra in the 1960s and 1970s and have remained so to the present day.
According to a report in 2009, the Ghatole Kunbi community in the Akola and Washim areas of Vidarbha prefer the Shivsena political party.
[39] Based on evidence from an old Marathi document, Karve concludes that the Tirole Kunbi differ significantly from the Kubis west of Nagpur, and that they did not formerly claim to be Kshatriyas.
[42] The Charotar (Anand) region, tilled by the Lewa Kunbis, had been well-known since the 15th century for high productivity levels which produced potentially high-revenue crops like cotton and food grains.
[44] The changes implemented to land tenure policy during the colonial era led to the ascendency of the Kunbis in central Gujarat.
The etymology of term Patidar, which implied a higher economic status due to land-ownership, comes from one who holds pieces of land called patis.
[45] A population of Kunbi (locally called Kurumbi) is also found in Goa, where they are believed to be descendants of the area's aboriginal inhabitants.
They are largely poor agriculturalists,[citation needed] though some of the oldest known landowners in Goa were of this class, and claimed for themselves the Vaishya (merchant) varna.
[50] According to the Indian Express, soon after its inception in May 1999 the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) worked hard to get rid of its "Kunbi Only" image.
In order to attract the non-Kunbi OBC vote, estimated to form 40% of the electorate, Pawar recruited Chhagan Bhujbal (a Mali), and Pandurang Hajare (a Teli).
[51] In 2009, the NCP president Sharad Pawar chose Anil Deshmukh over Rajendra Shingane as party candidate from the Vidarbha region because he represented the huge Kunbi-Marathi community there.
According to Hansen, it is critically important for the politicians of the state to ensure a narrow definition of OBC and maximise the Maratha representation.
While the organization never received success outside of Mumbai, it showed that political leaders were willing to counter the rising OBC assertiveness.
[56] A similar case of forgery was reported in 2003 when the former Shiv Sena corporator, Geeta Gore, was sent to jail for falsely claiming to be a Kunbi-Maratha.
[60] The Times of India reported in February 2011 that an honour killing of a Dalit man and Kunbi woman was suspected in Murbad of the Thane district.
[61] In September of the same year, a 20-year-old Dalit woman alleged that she was raped by a Someshwar Baburao Kuthe of the Kunbi caste in the Sarandi (Bujaruk) village of Lakhandur taluka.
Marathas ("Assal" or true i.e. belonging to 96 clans), who were distinguished from the Kunbi, in the past claimed genealogical connections with Rajputs of Northern India.
Eaton gives an example of the Holkar family that originally belonged to the Dhangar(Shepherd) caste but was given a Maratha or even an "arch-Maratha" identity.
[64][65] The other example, given by Professor Susan Bayly of Cambridge University, is of the Bhonsles who originated among the populations of the Deccani tiller-plainsmen who were known by the names Kunbi and Maratha.
