Bengaluru: Nearly 10 years after it was commissioned, the caste census in Karnataka remains under wraps, with Chief Minister Siddaramaiah still non-committal about its release. “I still have not seen the report. It needs to come to the Cabinet for a discussion. I’ll keep it before the Cabinet,” Siddaramaiah told reporters last week.
By not specifying a timeframe, the chief minister continues to fall back on a strategy not to release the socio-economic and educational survey findings even though he commissioned it in 2015 during his first term as CM. The Karnataka State Commission for Backward Classes had submitted the report to the CM before the Lok Sabha elections this year.
The ruling Congress has been blaming the BJP and the loss of power in the state in 2018 as among the reasons for the delay in the release of the report. Additionally, ministers of Siddaramaiah’s Cabinet have also opposed the release of the findings.
Meanwhile, similar exercises by states such as Bihar and Rahul Gandhi’s demand for a nationwide caste census by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government have put Siddaramaiah in a spot.
Unlike the dominant communities in Karnataka, that is, the Lingayats and the Vokkaligas, communities viewed as largely oppressed have demanded the release of the findings, hoping for a more proportionate right to resources and reservation.
Leaks have shown that the population of Lingayats and Vokkaligas in the state are below 10 percent rather than the earlier estimates of 17 percent and 14 percent, respectively, experts said. With their numbers lower than expected, the two communities stand to lose out on the commensurate social and welfare benefits, which explains their opposition to the findings of the caste census. However, this has created a dilemma for the ruling Congress, considering these communities have significant political clout in the state.
Speaking with ThePrint, K. Jayaprakash Hegde, former chairman of the state backward classes commission, reiterated the importance of the report, saying, “Earlier, there was no empirical data, but now, we have carried out door-to-door data (collection). Earlier, all claims were more or less estimates, but now, we have actual numbers.”
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‘Same caste, different categories’
Karnataka is home to a 70 million-strong population, and according to the latest estimates, nearly 1,500 castes, sub-castes, and several other large- and micro-groups co-exist in the state.
A common problem in categorising them is that similar-sounding names or similar occupations create a “false equivalency”, often boosted by leaders from the community to push their communities into a category with higher reservations or benefits, according to experts who spoke to ThePrint.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is from the Kuruba community, a clan of sheepherders who fall in the 2A category of the state Other Backward Classes (OBC) list.
However, the Jenu Kurubas, Betta Kurubas and Kadu Kurubas, with their similar sounding names, are forest dwellers and come in the Scheduled Tribes (ST) list. For some time now, the shepherding Kurubas have been pushing for their inclusion in the ST list.
Former chief minister B.S.Yediyurappa is a Lingayat-Ganiga, oil mongers traditionally and a sub-sect of the Lingayats, Karnataka’s largest and most dominant caste group. The Lingayats come in the 3B OBC category with a 5 percent reservation, but there is a Ganiga listed with no Lingayat prefix in the more backward 2A OBC category, with a 15 percent reservation. For some time now, another Lingayat sub-sect, the Panchamasalis, has been seeking inclusion in the 2A category.
A Karnataka Congress leader, requesting anonymity, said, “Once this caste census is out, even Yediyurappa will be considered a part of backward classes (Ganiga) and not a Lingayat. The caste census was done that way, and it will bring down the total numbers of the Lingayat community.”
Mahantesh Patil, a working committee member and former youth president of the All India Veerashaiva Mahasabha, told ThePrint, “Earlier, we used to put Hindu in the religion column, and under caste, we used to put it as Lingayat-Ganiga, Lingayat-Banajiga, or Lingayat-Sadr…that’s when we were eligible for 3B. Later, this changed — religion as Hindu, and caste as only Ganiga, and those people became eligible for 2A.”
According to experts who spoke to ThePrint, with elders trying to end the confusion among children about the differences in education and other requirements between the Ganigas and the Lingayats, the Ganiga sub-sect eventually lost the Lingayat prefix before their name.
Patil said he, considering the situation, contends that if the whole of the Lingayat community gets the 2A-category reservation, the issue of sub-sect will not arise.
There are similar demands by other dominant communities, such as the Vokkaligas.
However, oppressed communities are pushing back and resisting the entry of these bigger caste groups into their categories to prevent them from cutting into their share of reservations.
The 1871 Mysore census categorised the Lingayats as a religious group separate from Hindus. According to the 1801 census of the erstwhile state of Mysore, there were 38 sub-sects of Lingayats. There are at least 99 now, and community members believe many others are categorised differently but are “actually Lingayats”.
Dr M.N. Javaraiah’s 1997 book, Dalita Vargada Sharanaru Mattu Sharaneyaru–Ondu Adhyayana, which loosely translates to sections of Dalits, who are Sharanas, that is, free of caste, or practice the tenets of Lingayats, discusses the history of the community, and 12th-century social reformer Basavanna, who advocated for equality and cessation of traditional evils among his followers.
Dasannur Kusanna, an expert on caste-based studies, said that Hendada Marayya, whose name suggests he was toddy tapping, became a follower of reformer Basavanna, as did Dohara Kakkayya, a cobbler. They identified themselves as Lingayats, but today, are seen differently, Kusanna said, adding that the structure of the Lingayat community is complex, including what people see as “pure”, “half” and “affiliated” branches.
Similarly, people identify the same caste by different names in different regions. A traditional toddy tapper community in coastal Karnataka, Billavas, are known as Eediga as you move towards Shivamogga. Sometimes, these names are interchangeable, but they find separate mentions in the backward classes list.
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‘Extrapolated numbers’
The 2015 exercise had 55 questions, which surveyors asked and verified with individual caste certificates, school records, or historically documented references.
The exercise cost the state over Rs 160 crore. It involved 1.6 lakh people visiting each of the 1.35 crore households in the state over a period of nearly 45 days, according to the Karnataka State Commission for Backward Classes.
The findings are likely to have been “extrapolated” to find out the representation of the community and its number.
“Whatever the data, they may take for tabulations…they may be using statistical methods like extrapolation,” said a Bengaluru-based caste expert, requesting anonymity.
This possibility has added to the apprehensions of dominant groups.
“The census has not been done scientifically. In a census, every single person should be reached. But in this case, they have done it as a sampling process,” Patil said.
Dominant groups have also raised other concerns. In some cases, when the wife and husband are from different caste groups, there is a tendency to count the woman in her “original” category and the one she has been married into, resulting in inflated and inaccurate numbers.
Siddaramaiah has long challenged the dominance of the Lingayats and Vokkaligas, trying to build a coalition of castes from the backward and oppressed communities, termed AHINDA (Kannada acronym for minorities, backward classes and Dalits).
Siddaramaiah’s 34-member Cabinet highlights the pressing need to ensure adequate representation for the disadvantaged sections or risk their wrath. There are eight Lingayats, five Vokkaligas, six members from the Scheduled Castes, three from the Scheduled Tribes, two each from the Kuruba and Muslim communities, and one Brahmin, and the rest belong to the Other Backward Classes (OBC).
However, the dominant groups hold sway over the elections. In 2018, when Siddaramaiah backed calls to accord a separate religion tag for the Lingayats, different from the community’s Veerashaivas, that is, those who practise Vedic rituals against the original teachings of Basavanna, he suffered a defeat in the state elections. Lingayat leader Yediyurappa, at the time, accused Siddaramaiah of trying to “break Hindu society” despite the Lingayats, at least the so-called pure ones, not identifying as Hindus.
Patil from the All India Veerashaiva Mahasabha, however, asserted that Lingayats are Hindus whose pattern of worship is different and that Basavanna did not deny the existence of God or Shiva but advocated against the evils of discrimination based on caste, gender, etc.
On the release of the census, Siddaramaiah is also facing dissent within his party, with some leaders putting caste before party or ideology. For instance, senior Cabinet ministers M.B. Patil and D.K. Shivakumar opposed the release of the census findings.
“We do not know the content (of caste census); we will discuss it in the Cabinet. Based on the content, we hope the census will be balanced for all communities. If that is there, there is no problem. Why should I have apprehensions?” Patil told reporters in Bengaluru Tuesday.
On the other hand, Lakshmi Hebbalkar, the women and child development minister, has echoed the sentiments of the Lingayat-Panchamasali for better reservation opportunities.
Even today, there are more than 36 caste groups whose applications and petitions for change in the reservation category or correction in spellings remain before the state backward classes commission. At the same time, several micro caste groups do not have any documentation and live in small groups across regions. It becomes difficult to ascertain which category they belong to and what benefits, if any, can reach them.
One of the objectives of the caste census was to identify these micro-groups and bring them into the mainstream. But for now, the findings remain sealed.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)