Sambhaji Brigade
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Sambhaji Brigade is All Caste Maratha youth organization situated in Maharashtra, a western state of India. Among the organization's missions is to revive the glory of the Maratha Empire, which at its peak, extended from present-day Afghanistan to Myanmar.
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[edit] History
The organization was founded by Purushottam Khedekar. The organisation is promoted by the Maratha Seva Sangh. Khedekar, an executive engineer in the state Public Works Department, founded the MSS in 1990 to work for upliftment of the Maratha community. Soon, many unemployed youths from the rural areas joined the organization. The organization's network is now spread almost all over Maharashtra and even Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and in farther states like Hariyana.
[edit] Ideology
The outfit distances itself from the Hindutva organisations and considers itself as the ideological descendant of the secular Maratha Empire. The outfit's members consists of mostly Maratha youths from the rural interiors of Maharashtra. Though vast majority of Maratha population does not support MSS. There are many Marathi-speaking Muslim youths in the outfit as well. The organisation's ideology is directed against the Brahmins of Marathi society. The parent organisation MSS's founder Khedekar is alleged to have close ties with many Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leaders, although the NCP denies it. Although politically inactive, the organization is a social forum for Maratha revival.
[edit] Controversies
This group vandalised and destroyed some portions of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute which is a UNESCO recognised heritage site and ransacked precious artifacts, to protest against the allegedly slanderous remarks about Maratha Empire founder Shivaji and Rajmata Jijaai by American academic James Laine.
The group's activists were also in the news for attacking Hindutva leader K. S. Sudarshan with footwear, when he was in Solapur, protesting against the alleged communal and caste policies of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
In 2006, the organisation's activists ransacked the office of Marathi daily Loksatta, protesting that the newspaper did not publish photograph of Chhatrapati Shivaji on the front page on Shivjayanti, the birth anniversary of Shivaji.
In HSC examination, Marathi language paper has a question which contained malicious remark about Saint Tukaram, Sambhaji Brigade lodged complaint against HSC Board, Board offered their apology.
