Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, 30 Aug

Coming from a humble farming background in a Maharashtra village to working in a hotel and a sugar factory before becoming the face of the Maratha reservation agitation, 43-year-old Manoj Jarange has come a long way.

As Jarange began his yet another round of indefinite fast on Friday - his seventh since 2023 and touted as the community's final fight to get reservation - a large number of Marathas gathered at the Azad Maidan in south Mumbai, the venue of the protest, to show solidarity for the activist, whom they virtually revere as a hero.

His fight for the Maratha cause has earlier forced the government and the ruling parties to take note of his demands and send their representatives for talks due to fear of facing a backlash.

Always seen in white clothes and sporting a saffron scarf, this lanky activist's aggressive posture and challenge to political heavyweights has made parties wary of him.

People known to him say he was a Congress activist for a brief period before quitting active politics and launching agitations for farmers and the Marathas, a politically influential community that constitutes around 30 per cent of the state's population.

Till two years ago, Manoj Jarange was not a known name. When he started his indefinite hunger strike to demand quota for Marathas in his Antarwali Sarati village in Jalna district on 29 August  2023, it largely went unnoticed.

However, everything changed in a matter of three days after violence broke out on 1 September when local authorities forcibly tried to admit Jarange to a hospital.

The subsequent chain of events threw up a huge challenge before the then 14-month-old Eknath Shinde-led government as the Opposition gunned for the then Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who held the home portfolio, and sought his resignation for the police action against Jarange's supporters and pro-Maratha quota protesters.

Police baton-charged and lobbed tear gas shells to disperse the protesters as they refused to let authorities shift Jarange to a hospital. Several persons, including 40 police personnel, were injured and more than 15 state transport buses set ablaze in the violence.

The protest and the subsequent police action catapulted Jarange into prominence and forced the Shiv Sena-BJP-NCP government to once again start talking about reservation for Marathas in education and jobs, an emotive issue which is now caught in legal tangle.

Jarange hails from Matori, a small village in Beed district of central Maharashtra. He completed his school education there. After spending some initial years in the village, he moved to Shahgad in Ambad tehsil of Jalna district, where he worked in a hotel, Rajendra Kale, a journalist based in Matori, told PTI earlier.

Later, he got a job in a sugar factory at Ambad from where he joined politics, he said, adding that Jarange's wife and children live in Shahgad.

Jarange played a key role in getting compensation from the government for the families of those who lost their lives during the Maratha reservation agitation earlier, Kale said.

"While working for the Congress party, he became the district president of the Youth Congress around 2000. However, due to the ideological differences over some political issues, he left the Congress and started working for a Maratha community organisation," said Prof Chandrakant Bharat, co-ordinator of the Maratha Kranti Morcha (MKM), one of the outfits that has been agitating for quota to the community.

Around 2011, Jarange formed an organisation named 'Shivba Sanghatana', he said.

Jarange's agitations are not limited to the Maratha quota issue alone. He also took up issues related to farmers. In 2013, he launched an agitation for the demand to release water from the Jayakwadi dam for the cultivators in Jalna, Bharat added.

"He was actively involved in the pro-Maratha quota marches that were taken out in 2016 across the state and took community members from Marathwada in central Maharashtra to Mumbai to put forward their demands before the then-BJP government led by Devendra Fadnavis," the MKM functionary said.

Jarange's agitation in Sashti Pimpalgaon of Jalna district lasted for nearly 90 days, Bharat said.

Anil Maharaj Jarange, a relative of Manoj Jarange, said the activist left Matori village around 2005.

His father Raosaheb and mother Prabhabai still reside in Matori. His elder brothers Jagannath and Kakasaheb also live there and do farming, he said.

"Manoj Jarange purchased some land near Shahgad but his family always had an average income. He also encouraged others to work for the community," the relative added.

Jarange has been demanding a 10 per cent quota for Marathas under the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category. He wants all Marathas to be recognised as Kunbis – an agrarian caste included in the OBC category – which will make them eligible for reservation in government jobs and education.