Tatya Tope and Rani Laxmibai beg to differ.

The comments are all mostly from non-marathas, southern states, Bengal and more.

The Maratha mindset is pan India now

They are not outlier to any ethnic linguistic group including current one in power under Modi. The region of people in leadership is seen to be benefiting at expense of others.

As rightly pointed out this is just exploited by left to demonize people they dont see furthering their cause.

I agree.

A lot of the strife can be linked back to the dispute over Mumbai city and Bombay state.
Both communities in Mumbai have pejorative stereotypes of the other.
There is also envy of Gujju material success among Marathis

I dunno I never hear any negative sentiment about historic marathas.

The Gaekwads and their descendants are still highly regarded.

Gujju dislike of post-independence maratha politics stems from this…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombay_State

Basically in Mumbai they would complain about migrants from the interior regions that had only been recently added on telling Gujaratis to get out of Mumbai etc.

Also the same sentiments are reciprocated by the Marathis regarding Gujjus after Independence

roma, marathas may have been thugs, but at least they were *our* thugs.

you see, conquering people everywhere plunder the conquered people. empires are just extraction machines for rent seeking rulers. marathas were no different.

the difference lies in the fact that they were authentic indians, so whatever they plundered from the land was ploughed back into the land. by contrast, mughals and awadh nawabs and hyderabad nizams sent shiploads of indian gold to their holy lands in hejaz and iraq. british famously built their industrial empire from the indian raw material.

and since marathas were hindu, they did not damage the core identity of india. by contrast muslim rulers apparently inflicted such deep wounds on the indian soul that its repercussions are felt to this day. ( in calamities like partition, indo- pak wars, hindu muslim riots and raging debates on blogs like this).

The Marathas are seen as liberators in many regions as well. The Bhonsles in Orissa. In entire MP and Bundelkhand, parts of UP as well. The whole Marathas were only looters meme started when the marxist couldn’t co-opt the Marathas in their “secular” pantheons because of their “Hindu” antecedents. It didn;t help that in addition they were co-opted by Hindu-right.

Since the bulk of those historians were from regions who suffered their excess, they pushed this narrative, and other folks who also faced those excess, started bandwagoning on it. So eventually the only folks who stood up for Marathas were (obviously) Marathis and Hindu right.

“They are considered thugs in Gujarat (they looted us).”

Weren’t the Gaekwads very progressive?