Amid futile attempts by Sangh Parivar leaders to infuse anti-Muslim ideologies in Telangana, another political contestation began in August in the name of ‘Marwadi Go Back’.
The spark came from a violent incident in Hyderabad’s historic Monda Market, where a Marwadi shop owner and his relatives allegedly attacked a Dalit man and a few OBC persons, all Telugu-speaking natives of Telangana. The shop owner allegedly went so far as to hurl casteist slurs at the Dalit person.
Visuals of this incident went viral on social media platforms. The outrage grew further when members of the prosperous Marwadi business caste made insulting or threatening comments towards Telangana leaders who had launched the ‘Marwadi Go Back’ movement. What began as a local resistance soon turned into protests, strikes, and hartals erupting across Telangana.
Many leaders such as Telangana Shyam of Vimuktha Chiruthala Kakshi (VCK), Pruthviraj Yadav, leader of Telangana Kranti Dal, M. Paripurna Chari, the Telangana State Youth President of the Telangana Vishwakarma Sangham (Vishwakarmas are OBC castes who are traditional gold-smiths, black-smiths, carpenters etc.) extended their unequivocal support to the movement. Their voices gave strength, legitimacy, and momentum to the call of “Marwadi Go Back.”
Who are Marwadis and what is their culture?
BJP leaders such as Madhavi Latha and others have challenged Telangana leaders of the Marwadi Go Back campaign to focus on expelling Rohingyas rather than fighting their Hindu brothers, Marwadis who uphold Hindu culture in their everyday life.
While the Marwadis are a rich and prosperous business community, the Rohingyas remain a stateless refugee population. Meanwhile, some Sangh Parivar leaders object to the very usage of the term Marwadi, claiming it simply refers to people from a specific region of Marwar in Rajasthan. They tried to portray the ‘Marwadi Go Back’ movement as creating a split among Hindu brothers.
However, the reality of Marwadi presence in South India is more complex. The Marwadis who migrate to south India for business largely belong to the Bania trading caste. While Dalits and OBCs certainly live in the Marwar region, it is predominantly the Bania community that relocates for commercial expansion. As a result, the term Marwadi has come to be used synonymously with Bania.
In many instances, Marwadis in Telangana have been accused of exploiting local Dalit and OBC communities using them as their cheap labour.
Most gold shops in Telangana are monopolised by Marwadi Banias. The actual artisans who make the jewelry in Telangana belong to the Vishwakarma community—particularly the Kamsali or Vishwabrahmana caste—who provide the skilled labour but remain socially and economically marginalised, while Marwadi traders allegedly profit from their work.
The textile trade in Telangana is also largely monopolised by Marwadis, while weaving itself has historically been a caste-based occupation associated with communities stigmatised as “lower” castes, such as the Padmashalis and Devangulus.
Speaking on this issue, Jageevan, a leader of the Vishwakarma Sangham, pointed out that artisan communities such as goldsmiths and blacksmiths, who have long been marginalised as lower castes, are now driven to the brink of suicide. He attributed this crisis directly to the Marwadi takeover of their traditional artisanal occupations.
Economically prosperous and well-networked, Marwadis are also known to contribute significantly to institutions aligned with Hindutva ideologies, such as cow-protection groups, ISKCON, and the Gita Press. Leaders of the Sangh Parivar and BJP have publicly praised Marwadis for upholding what is framed as “Hindu” culture, emphasising vegetarianism and gau raksha.
Another important aspect of Marwadi social life is the preservation of strong caste-based business networks. Marwadi patriarchal structures continue to draw legitimacy from the historical practice of sati worship, where the glorification of women’s sacrifice was woven into community honour, reinforcing women’s subordination. Their community is often misconstrued as a cultural carrier of tradition, while in reality, these practices primarily serve to sustain patriarchal control and regulate women.
Historically, the Marwadi community rose to prominence with the patronage of the Mughal kings. With the royal support of Mughal kings, they expanded their wealth and influence, eventually reaching the status of financiers to both the Mughal and Rajput rulers. Their growth was not only due to profitable trade but also through the monopolisation of markets, relying on their tightly knit caste networks and, at times, exploiting local resources, labourers and populations.
In Hyderabad, the Marwadis first entered with the backing of the Nizams, who granted them space and opportunities in commerce and trade. They quickly established control over major trading hubs such as Begum Bazaar, Sultan Bazaar, Kishan Bagh, Monda Market, and Charminar. From there, their presence spread across Telangana, including Warangal, Nizamabad, Karimnagar, Khammam, Medak, Adilabad, Mahbubnagar, and Rangareddy, particularly after 1948 when Hyderabad was integrated into the Indian Union.
With their tightly-knit caste networks, the Marwadi community has historically monopolised value chains, making it difficult for others to enter these sectors.
“They purchase timber at cheaper rates and control almost the entire marketing of plywood and hardwood, keeping these trades almost exclusively in their hands,” alleged one of the supporters of the ‘Marwadi Go Back’ movement.
The Marwadi community’s objective is often not merely trade but securing an overall grip on the market. Highly lucrative industries such as carpentry, construction, textiles, and real estate—sectors central to the economic life of cities like Hyderabad—are today largely controlled by Marwadis. This dominance has often gone hand in hand with practices that erode transparency, strengthened further by their close ties to ruling political parties in India. They carry with them a long-standing history of involvement in alleged land mafias in various parts of India.
At the front end, they project themselves as vegetarians. As aptly portrayed in the recent television series Arabia Kadali (2025) directed by VV Surya Kumar, streaming on Amazon Prime, the owners of fishing boats and fish export business outlets—predominantly Marwadi Jains—are shown eating “pure” vegetarian food in one scene, even as they discuss soaring profits from the fish trade.
Many among the Marwadi community are believed to own beef export companies, making India the second-largest beef exporter after Brazil while at the front end, they run gau raksha groups. Their vegetarianism is as flawed as the so-called vegetarianism and non-violence (ahimsa) of the ancient Vedas, which simultaneously glorified rituals like the Ashwamedha Yaga (sacrificial killing of the horse) and the Sarpa Yajna (burning of serpents).
In response to Marwadi leaders’ claims of being the guardians of Hindu culture, Osmania University leader Naveen Yadav argued that, in reality, their closeness to the political parties in power has allegedly enabled them to profit from the illegal trade of banned products such as gutka, khaini, and pan parag—fueling the surge in mouth cancer cases across Telangana. The community has also been involved in the opium trade in India since the colonial period.
The Politics of Threats and Resistance in Telangana
Despite Telangana’s long history of social struggles against feudal and caste oppression, the leaders of Telangana have now faced a threat from a member of the Marwadi community. A man claiming to be the President of Telangana Gauputra Sena (Telangana Army of Sons of Cow) has issued threats against Telangana Shyam, a prominent leader of the Marwadi Go Back movement.
In retaliation, the Marwadi leader used abusive language and casteist slurs in a recorded audio clip, which was later published on Telangana news portals such as Tolivelugu and widely circulated across social media platforms.
Former Osmania University student, Telangana statehood movement leader and the first chairman of the Telangana SC (Scheduled Castes) Corporation, Pidamarthi Ravi reacted sharply to this wave of intimidation. He described the Marwadis as “the new East India Company”—calling them invaders who wrecked the lives of Telangana artisans, leading to further marginalisation and unemployment in the state.
He denounced their alleged evasion of GST and other taxes, systematic exploitation of local resources, and their alleged history of forgery, adulteration, tampering, and economic exploitation. To channel public anger, he coined new slogans such as “Pan Parag, Go Back” and “Panipoori Go Back.”
Telangana Shyam, responding to BJP leader Madhavi Latha’s call for Hindu unity, exposed the contradictions within such rhetoric in a statement: “If Hindus are all one, why did you not respond to the killing of a woman for marrying a Mala (Dalit) man?”
He further criticised the state for siding with capitalist Marwadis over Telangana's own swarnakarulu (goldsmiths), whose livelihoods have been eroded by the alleged monopoly of Marwadis over gold business.
Shyam strongly condemned Madhavi Latha for disrespecting Telangana’s religious traditions. He reminded the public of her own admission that she felt weak and nearly fainted while carrying the Bonam (a ritual pot filled with rice, yoghurt, and jaggery offered to the goddess Mahakali) during the Bonalu Jatara, an indigenousTelangana festival. In contrast, he invoked the resilience of Telangana women, noting that “our women often fast without food or water, yet draw immense strength and stamina from being possessed by the goddess.”
Shyam also questioned why Sangh Parivar leaders remained silent when Hindu spiritual leader Chinna Jeeyar Swamy insulted the Telangana goddesses Sammakka and Saralamma by dismissing them as mere mortals, even though these deities have long been venerated by Telangana’s people as embodiments of divine power.
Shyam raised another provocative question: “Why are ministers in power (such as Union Minister Bandi Sanjay Kumar) challenging Telangana leaders to launch a movement against Rohingyas? If this is truly an issue, why are the ruling party leaders deflecting responsibility onto common people instead of using state power to act?”
This series of confrontations reveals not only the sharp fractures between Telangana’s historical struggles and contemporary Hindutva politics but also the deep resentment against Marwadi capitalist dominance, which is increasingly being framed as both an economic and cultural “invasion”.
Understanding the Social Movement of ‘Marwadi Go Back’
What do the Sangh Parivar’s anti-Muslim propaganda and the ‘Marwadi Go Back’ movement signify? They bring to the surface the historical struggle between the entrenched, oppressive higher strata of the caste system and the historically marginalised and subjugated communities.
The former has always pursued the agenda of domination, exploitation, control, and colonisation, while the latter has struggled for dignity, self-respect, and secure livelihoods. These two projects stand in direct opposition, with no possible reconciliation between them.
Recent Hindutva propaganda revolves around three interconnected claims. First, it asserts that Sanatan Dharma is the “original” form of Hinduism, rooted exclusively in the Vedas. Second, it insists that Sanatan Dharma contains only the varna system, while blaming the proliferation of innumerable jatis on the Mughals and the British rulers. Third, it seeks to mobilise Dalits and lower castes by portraying Muslims as the common enemy of all “Hindus.” As part of this project, severe criticism is directed against Scheduled Castes who have converted to Christianity, branding them as “anti-national” and disloyal.
In this context, the ‘Marwadi Go Back’ movement represents a refusal to accept these politics of appropriation and distortion. It is an assertion by the marginalised against both casteist exploitation and communal propaganda that seeks to pit oppressed groups of Dalits-OBCs and Muslims against each other for the benefit of the dominant-caste elite.
Even if one accepts that the Vedic religion and present-day Hinduism are the same, the varna system itself represents a rigid hierarchical division of social groups—placing Shudras in the position of slaves while elevating Brahmins as the highest social group, with a strict and unequal division of labour.
If the varna system was truly limited to only four categories, and the British or Mughals were solely responsible for multiplying them into thousands of jatis and sub-castes as the Sangh Parivar leaders claim, then the Vedas, or the so-called Sanatana Dharma, clearly had no internal strength or authority to sustain their own social order.
Furthermore, if present-day “Hindu” society is vastly different from what is described as Sanatan Dharma, how can the two be equated as one continuous religion? No Vedic text ever used the term “Hindu.” The very word “Hindu" is absent in ancient scriptures and was popularised only around the early 20th century.
If today’s Hindus insist on vegetarianism as a marker of “purity” and their ideology of “non-violence,” how do they reconcile this with Vedic literature that vividly portrays the process of butchering horses and cows in Yagas, burning the serpents in Sarpayaga, and Janamejaya beating and chasing the dogs and puppies in the Mahabharata? Where did vegetarianism suddenly appear in place of ritual animal sacrifice?
The propaganda of equating the Sanatana Dharma with present-day “Hinduism” is riddled with contradictions and paradoxes. Even if one insists on treating them as a single continuous religion, both have consistently upheld social inequalities, sanctioned violence against women, oppressed Dalits and Shudras, and perpetuated cruelty against animals.
Hindutva propaganda reflects not historical truth but a deep fear and anxiety about losing control over certain populations who were never truly part of their “Hinduism” or Sanatana Dharma. The unresolved questions of untouchability, the graded inequalities of caste, the systemic oppression and violence against women—none of these are addressed by the dominant castes loudly expressing fear of “Hinduism under threat” whenever they are questioned.
But the ideology of dominance will always be challenged by those it oppresses. That is why “Hinduism” has been, and will continue to be, confronted—by the egalitarian challenge of Buddhism in ancient times, later by the Bhakti saints who carved out spaces for the lower castes, by the Sufi saints whose egalitarian spirituality resonated with Dalits and oppressed groups, by the spread of Christianity in another period, and, most relentlessly, by the struggles of Dalits and OBCs.
Instead of confronting these structural injustices, the Hindutva leaders are investing their energy in divisive agendas—anti–love jihad campaigns, anti-Muslim propaganda, and anti-Rohingya mobilisations—all of which serve to distract from the exploitative foundations of caste society.
Sowjanya is an Associate Professor at Woxsen University