In a decision that is bound to have far-reaching social implications in Karnataka, the State Cabinet, in late October, approved implementation of internal reservation within the Scheduled Caste quota in the State, which currently stands at 17 per cent. The decision follows the landmark Supreme Court judgment on August 1, delivered by a seven-judge Constitution Bench, empowering State governments to subclassify Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities to give preferential reservation to the most backward subcastes within these broad categories.

Recognising the apex court’s ruling that subclassification must be justified by “quantifiable and demonstrable data by the States which cannot act on its whims”, the Karnataka government appointed a one-man commission headed by Justice H. N. Nagamohan Das on November 13. The commission is tasked with collecting empirical data that will be used by a Cabinet subcommittee to fix the matrix of internal reservation in three months. The government also declared that “all upcoming government recruitments for at least three months will be frozen till the submission of the report of the one-man commission”.

Justice A.J. Sadashiva Commission

The Siddaramaiah government’s decision marks the culmination of a demand by the Madigas, a Dalit subcaste, for nearly 50 years. Inspired by a similar movement in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, the community members have been arguing that they are socioeconomically backwards compared with other Dalits in Karnataka. The Justice A.J. Sadashiva Commission on Internal reservation, which was constituted in 2004, highlighted the Madigas’ relative backwardness in its report submitted in 2012.

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According to the report, Dalits in Karnataka are classified into 101 subcastes, which have been historically grouped into two agglomerations: the right hand or the Holeya (24 subcastes accounting for 32.01 per cent of the SC population) and the left hand or the Madiga (29 castes accounting for 33.47 per cent). Madigas have historically worked with leather, which is considered a polluting occupation, while Holeyas have been primarily agricultural labourers. ”Touchable” Dalit castes such as Lambani, Bhovi, Korama, and Koracha account for 23.64 per cent of the population. Other “untouchable” Dalit subcastes, outside the Madiga and Holeya agglomerations, constitute 4.65 per cent of the SC population. (A further 6.23 per cent of the SC population did not mention its subcaste.)

The Justice Sadashiva Commission established that the “touchable” SCs had garnered a disproportionately high share of government jobs and that Madigas were relatively under-represented in government jobs vis-a-vis even the Holeyas. Its report estimated that the community deserved 32,200 additional government jobs within the SC quota (on the basis of 2012 figures). It proposed a 6 per cent quota for internal reservation for Madigas, 5 per cent for Holeyas, 3 per cent for “touchable” Dalits and 1 per cent for the rest of Dalits. (The BJP government in 2022 increased the reservation quota for SCs from 15 per cent to 17 per cent.)

Successive Karnataka governments since then, led by the BJP, the Congress, or the Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) coalition, have assured Madiga community leaders of implementing internal reservation but did not do so.

This was mainly because of two reasons. The first is the fear of a political backlash. Any decision to implement internal reservation in Karnataka, especially in the ratio proposed by Justice Sadashiva, would alienate the Holeyas and “touchable” Dalit castes from the ruling party.

In an opportunistic and hasty decision taken at the end of its tenure in 2023, the Basavaraj Bommai-led BJP government approved internal reservation based on a report by the then Law Minister J. C. Madhu Swamy. However, this could not be implemented because of legal challenges. Significantly, the announcement itself led to protests by members of the Lambani community which feared that its share in government jobs would decline.

There has also been considerable opposition within the Congress party to implementing any form of quota within quota. A former MLC of the Congress, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that senior Dalit leaders in the party, such as G. Parameshwara and Mallikarjun Kharge (both Holeyas), were against internal reservation.

The second reason why no ruling party could implement the internal reservation quota was constitutional legality. Only a constitutional amendment can empower Assemblies to implement reservation within the Dalit quota, which Justice Sadashiva had stated in his report. “Political parties in Karnataka were merely fooling Dalits by including internal reservation in their manifestos as this could never be implemented,” Shivasundar, a senior journalist and activist, said.

The August 1 Supreme Court judgment, however, paved the way for a quota within quota. Shivasundar said he was still “sceptical” of the Karnataka government’s decision because “even though Siddaramaiah was among the first leaders to publicly declare that he would implement internal reservation after the SC judgment, he remained silent after the Congress high command said that it would appoint a commission to study the issue”. According to Shivasundar, the government relented “only because of the massive street-level agitations all over Karnataka following the SC decision by Madiga organisations and the ensuing byelections on November 13”.

There is still no clarity as to how the Nagamohan Das Commission will gather empirical data within three months to assess the socioeconomic status of various Dalit sub-castes. One potential resource could be the Justice Sadashiva Commission’s figures, but Social Welfare Minister H.C. Mahadevappa said that its recommendations could not be as used as the previous BJP government had rejected them in 2022.

Political analyst D. Umapathi disagreed with this explanation, calling the appointment of a new commission a delaying tactic. “It reveals the pressure within the Congress of Dalit leaders belonging to the Holeya and touchable Dalit castes who are against internal reservation. In the past, incumbent governments have overturned the decisions of previous governments and accepted various commissions’ recommendations. So what prevents the Congress from accepting the recommendation of the Sadashiva Commission? The three-month deadline is meaningless as we know how a commission’s tenure is extended, but the silver lining in this decision is the freeze on recruitment.” The Sadashiva Commission proposal too will need a rejig because of the increase in SC reservation in Karnataka to 17 per cent from 15 per cent in 2022.

Socio-Economic and Educational Survey

Another source for empirical data could be the Socio-Economic and Educational Survey conducted in the State in 2015, which recorded the respondents’ caste (and hence known as the “caste census”). The caste census has become a politically volatile issue in Karnataka with the dominant castes (the Lingayats and Vokkaligas) opposing the tabling of the report in the Assembly. The ostensible reason for this is that the caste census was “not done scientifically”, but the real reason could be that leaked figures reveal that the numbers of Lingayats and Vokkaligas are much lower than what they claim.

Dasanuru Koosanna, a researcher at the Institute of Social and Economic Change in Bengaluru, said the problem could be resolved if the Central government made public the data of the Socio-Economic and Caste Survey it conducted in 2011.

Former Social Welfare Minister H. Anjaneya of the Congress, who is a Madiga, said that Madigas deserved a 7 per cent share in the 17 per cent Dalit quota in Karnataka. He has based his argument on the documents that he has provided to Justice Nagamohan Das.

The confusion over which data set is usable also stems from the fact that none of the reports, be it the Justice Sadashiva Commission report or the Karnataka caste census, has been released in the public domain. As R. Mohanraj, State convener of the Dalit Sangharsh Samiti, said, “If these reports are released, we will get to know the methodology used to ascertain the numbers of various Dalit subcastes and their socioeconomic status. Since none of the reports is available, it is unclear whether their data have been scientifically gathered. Perhaps the best solution is that Justice Nagamohan Das conduct a fresh socioeconomic caste census of Dalits in Karnataka.”

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Echoing this thought, Shivasundar said, “There are vested interests even within the Scheduled Castes. Those who are privileged do not want to share the resources. In this scenario, the best solution is to make public the Sadashiva Commission report and the H. Kantharaj report [caste census] so that a public discussion can be held on their contents.” (Kantharaj was chairman of the Karnataka State Commission for Backward Classes when the caste census was conducted in 2015.)

But there is another problem that compounds the move to gather empirical data. It relates to the terminology used to refer to certain castes. For instance, members of certain castes such as Adi Dravida, Adi Karnataka, and Adi Andhra, which Koosanna explained were linguistic categories among Dalits in Karnataka, are unclear whether they belong to the Madiga or Holeya grouping. Explaining this, Mohan Raj said: “I belong to the Adi Karnataka caste which is deemed a Holeya caste in Bengaluru, but when I go to Kolar or Tumakuru, I am identified as a Madiga. There are also Dalit converts to Buddhism, like my children, who only identify as ‘Neo-Buddhist’, which means they are Dalits. But what subcaste do they belong to? There is no clarity.”