On December 11, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge in Parliament responded sharply to the BJP’s comments on internal differences within his party in Karnataka over the release of a caste census report that it had commissioned when in power in 2015. “Our Deputy Chief Minister (D K Shivakumar) himself is opposing the caste census. He is also opposing and you are also opposing. All the upper caste people have joined hands internally,” Kharge said in response to Pralhad Joshi, the BJP MP and central minister from Karnataka. The Congress president’s exasperation reflects the reality of the struggle of over seven decades of the backward classes, Dalits and Scheduled Tribes (STs) in Karnataka to overcome the political hegemony of Lingayats and Vokkaligas, the two dominant intermediate caste groups in the state, in an alliance with upper castes. Ahead of the parliamentary elections, the Karnataka Congress is at a crossroads over a strategy that was until recently seen as a game changer for the polls. The party was upbeat about the issue of a nationwide caste survey but the BJP’s victories in the Hindi heartland states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan took the wind out of its sails. After the BJP’s victories on December 3 and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pitch that the “poor, youth, women and farmers” are the only castes he knows, the Congress appears to have stepped back on its push for a nationwide caste survey to understand the status of various castes in India, especially the backward classes. Karnataka, incidentally, is the one state where the Congress can walk the talk on its promise if voted to power in 2024. A survey commissioned in 2015 by the Congress government headed by backward classes leader Siddaramaiah is ready for release by the Karnataka Backward Classes Commission at the first nod from the government, headed once again by Siddaramaiah. The survey was initially conducted in 2015 by the state commission headed by lawyer H Kantharaj but a report is now being readied by the panel under the leadership of former MLA Jayprakash Hegde. The report was expected to be released in the run-up to the elections to five states in November but was delayed amid opposition from Vokkaligas and Lingayats. D K Shivakumar, the CM's longtime rival within the party, was a signatory to a letter from the state Vokkaliga Sangha opposing the survey. At the same time, veteran Congress leader Shamanur Shivashankarappa flew the flag of resistance by the Lingayat Veerashaiva Mahasabha. The two communities have labelled the 2015 survey “unscientific”. But, in a sign that Siddaramaiah, a vocal advocate of social justice, is keen on releasing the report ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, the term of the Backward Classes Commission chairman was extended by two months from November 24 to January 31, 2024. The Devaraj Urs experiment As much as releasing the caste survey report is a test of the Congress’s commitment to the backward classes, it is a test of Siddaramaiah's commitment to the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) that helped him emerge as one of the last standing mass leaders in the state. Siddaramaiah is keen to follow in the footsteps of the state’s CM from an OBC community, Devaraj Urs, who upended the traditional power hegemony of Vokkaligas and Lingayats (about 30% of the state’s population) between 1972 and 1980 by forging an alliance of the backward classes, SC-STs, and religious minorities for the Congress on the back of a report on their social and economic status provided by the first state backward classes commission headed by L G Havanur. Congress insiders said Siddaramaiah sold the idea of the value of a caste survey to the party's top leadership — to dismantle the BJP's hold on the polity through its religion and class-based politics — by citing the example of Urs. While Karnataka was governed by three Vokkaliga CMs between 1947 and 1956 and four Lingayat CMs from 1956 to 1972, Urs was the first CM from a non-dominant caste. “Vokkaliga and Lingayat dominance was a hegemonic alliance of upper caste Brahmins with dominant middle caste groups supported by SC groups and Muslims under the Congress umbrella. From this power-holding alliance the heterogeneous group of intermediate castes also known as backward castes were excluded,” political theorist K Raghavendra Rao noted in the 1983 book Shift in Indian Politics: 1983 elections in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, edited by Prof George Mathew. “In Karnataka under Indira Gandhi's overall strategy, Devaraj Urs pursued a policy of retaining the Muslim and SC components of the old alliance while jettisoning the upper caste and middle caste groups in the intermediate castes. These were numerically significant and they were used to break the political back of the dominant middle castes of Lingayats and Vokkaligas,” the book noted. The Devaraj Urs era was the last time a Congress government was voted back to power as the pro-backward class policies provided social mobility and farmers from the rural middle class and lower middle class managed to displace the landlords of dominant castes from the power circle. Despite the opposition of Vokkaliga and Lingayat leaders in his party, Siddaramaiah who wavered on releasing the report in his first term between 2013 and 2018 is keen on leaving his mark as an OBC leader in his current term. The million-dollar question is whether Siddaramaiah will accept the report before the Lok Sabha polls, given the growing angst among the dominant communities, including a proposed protest by Lingayats this month. “It is not right to say the caste census is unscientific even before the report is out. Since the report has not been submitted it cannot be accepted. The question will arise only after the submission of the report. Some people are already commenting that the report is not scientific. This is based on speculation without knowing the contents of the report,” he said recently. The CM also recently iterated that it was imperative for all Congress-ruled states to conduct a caste survey since this decision was taken at a meeting of the Congress Working Committee. One of the arguments of the party’s backward class leaders is that the survey was only a factual report and not a recommendation report. “As I understood it will only be a factual thing, the numerical strength of a community, its social, educational, economical, and political data will be provided that is all,” said a party leader from a backward community. “The government can formulate some programmes to improve the conditions of the communities that are backward. This will not be a report that will destroy the destiny of any community. It will be helpful to the ruling party even if it is accepted before (Lok Sabha) elections. Unfortunately, national leadership is not keen on many issues. We have to wait.” Previous caste surveys Incidentally, since 1919 when the first study of the backward classes in the region was conducted by the Miller Commission appointed by Mysore Maharaja Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar, there has been resistance from dominant communities to the surveys. The Miller Commission report was opposed by Sir M Vishweshwaraiah who quit the government over the omission of Brahmins from the report. In 1960, the Nagan Gouda Committee classified Lingayats as a forward community based on literacy levels and the percentage of government jobs they held and this was challenged in court and struck down. The Havanur Commission appointed by Urs in 1972 dropped Lingayats, Muslims, and Christians from the backward classes but the Congress leader brought Muslims back into the list. The Lingayats challenged the report and the case reached the Supreme Court. The judgment was withheld after a promise by the subsequent Gundu Rao-led Congress government of a new commission. In 1983, the Ramakrishna Hegde-led Janata Party-BJP government appointed the T Venkataswamy Commission to review the existing reservation policy. The panel omitted Vokkaligas from the backward classes category, leading to protests. The Lingayats also began protests over the Havanur report during this period. The Hegde government rejected the Venkataswamy report. “This is a society in which no single caste can be dominant and the source of any kind of power will have to be some form of multi-caste alliance,” the Shift in Indian Politics book noted.
