On the eve of the Karnataka Assembly elections, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai’s government has announced a new reservation formula. Muslims have been removed from the category of Other Backward Classes (OBC) and accommodated under the Economically Weaker Section (EWS). The quantum of reservation meant for Muslims has instead been redistributed equally among the newly-created OBC categories, under which the dominant castes of Vokkaligas and Lingayats fall. The government has also recommended a long pending internal reclassification of the Scheduled Castes (SC) to the Union government. Here is why each one of these measures reflect the deceptive and divisive politics of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Take, for example, the removal of Muslims from the OBC category. In the press conference announcing the new formula, the Chief Minister justified the exclusion by stating that religion-based reservation is not constitutional, and that a similar quota based on religion in Andhra Pradesh was quashed by the High Court.
Why this is a manipulative interpretation of the Andhra HC judgement, I will explain later in this article. But the basic fact is that Muslims in Karnataka are not availing reservations due to the minority status of their religion. Rather, they were given 4% reservation for being socially and educationally backward, the exact reasons for which the Constitution has put in place the Other Backward “Classes” quota.
The only criteria for inclusion under the OBC category has been social and educational backwardness, and it is hence that the C in OBC denotes ‘classes’ and ‘not castes’. There is, of course, the constitutional wisdom that factors such as caste, community, habitat, occupation, and poverty have to be considered while identifying a backward class. Numerous Backward Class commissions and court judgements have also endorsed this concept.
In Karnataka, right from the Naganagowda Committee — the first ever organised effort to identify backward classes in the state in the 1960s — the social and educational backwardness of Muslims have been duly acknowledged by all commissions and judgements. The second Backward Classes Commission headed by Venkatasvamy, which ventured into a mammoth empirical study and gave its report in 1986, deleted dominant Lingayat castes and Vokkaligas from the list of Backward Classes. But not Muslims. The third Backward Classes Commission headed by Justice O Chinnappareddy, which gave its report in 1990, also emphasised the continued social and educational backwardness of the Muslims as revealed from its empirical study, and hence recommended to continue their reservation under OBC category.
Nevertheless, the first Backward Classes Commission headed by LG Havanur, earlier in 1972, did not accept that the social backwardness of Muslims and Christians can be categorised at par with that of Hindu backward castes. Still, it had recommended a separate reservation for them. But the then Devaraj Urs Government continued the inclusion of Muslims as ‘Backward Communities’ under the OBC category.
When this was challenged in the Karnataka High Court in Somashekarappa and Others Versus State of Karnataka in WP 4371/77, the court in its judgement of April 9, 1979, acknowledged and appreciated the inclusion of Muslims under the OBC category in these clear terms:
“So far as the Muslims are concerned, the commission was unwise in excluding them from the list of Backward Classes solely on the ground that they belong to a religious minority. The Commission has however found that the Muslims are socially and educationally backward and also do not have adequate representation in the service. The fact that they are religious minority [sic] is no ground to exclude them from the list of backward classes. The government in our opinion was perfectly justified in listing the Muslims in the list of Backward classes.”
Clearly, the inclusion of Muslims in the OBC category was never on religious grounds.
Even the Chief Minister’s alibi that the Andhra Pradesh High Court quashed a similar religion-based reservation for Muslims is a lie, aimed at hoodwinking the people of Karnataka. A preliminary understanding of the case exposes the BJP’s hypocrisy here.
The Andhra Pradesh government had announced a 5% reservation for Muslims in 2004, which was challenged in the ‘T. Muralidhar Rao versus State of Andhra Pradesh’ at the High Court. The court quashed the government order not because the reservation was based on religion, but because of two other reasons — (1) the government did not consult the Backward Classes Commission before issuing the order, and (2) if implemented, the quantum of reservation would exceed the upper limit of 50% set by the Supreme Court in the 1992 Indra Sawhney case.
The government immediately approached the state BC commission and, on its recommendation, announced the inclusion of 5% reservation for Muslims in the OBC category. This was also challenged in the ‘Archana Reddy versus State of Andhra Pradesh’, and was quashed by the HC. Again, not because the reservation was based on religion, but because the empirical data provided by the government was not adequate to prove that the state’s entire Muslim population was economically and socially backward.
Later, the AP government formed a committee headed by PS Krishnan, a retired secretary of the Union Ministry of Social Welfare Ministry and dedicated advocate of social justice policies, to look into the backwardness of Muslims in the state and recommend policy measures to mitigate the same. The committee carried out an extensive and intensive study of the community, and finally suggested in 2007 to consider not all, but 14 Muslim communities as ‘backward’. The recommendation was accepted by the BC Commission, and later the state government as well. It was also passed more or less unanimously in the Assembly and made into an Act. This too was challenged in the AP High Court.
A full bench of the High Court of AP in February 2010 quashed this order in a 5-2 majority judgements on two grounds: (1) the procedure undertaken to come to this conclusion was inadequate, and (2) since the order is religion specific, the same could encourage conversion!
But when this order was challenged in the Supreme Court, a three-judge bench headed by the then CJI Balakrishnan stayed the High Court order and allowed reservation as per the government order pending the final judgement. The apex court then referred the case to a constitutional bench, since it entailed many constitutional issues. The constitutional bench before which the case appeared, however, only deals with issues concerning EWS reservation. The last hearing of the case was in September last year.
Even the Government Order (G.O.) dated 27 March 2023, declaring the transfer of Muslims from OBC category to EWS category, makes evidently incorrect claims. In spite of the repeated recommendations based on empirical surveys by the different backward class commissions to include the Muslims under the OBC category, the Bommai Government states in the G.O. that:
“Whereas at the time 2B category was created and the members of Muslim Community were included/ classified as Backward Classes for the purpose of reservation, there was neither any recommendation by any body, nor was there any empirical data nor any material for granting them the said status.”
The empirical data provided by the Third Backward Classes Commission, based on the recommendations of which the 2B reservation with a quantum of 4% was allotted to Muslims, had revealed that the social and educational situation of a majority of Muslims in the state was comparable to that of Scheduled Castes. So while the state’s Muslim community should have ideally received an increased reservation coverage with possible internal categorisation, the Bommai government is now denying them even the existing quota.
While the communal politics behind the Bommai Government’s reservation formula is obvious, the extent of its divisive intentions is revealed in its policy of distributing the 4% reservation of Muslims among other categories which include dominant communities such as Vokkaligas and the Lingayats, who have been demanding an increase in their quantum of reservation. The BJP is essentially attempting to make these communities willing partners in its vicious communal agenda. At least to an extent, the party also seems to have been successful in achieving this end, given the silence of the Lingayats and the Vokkaligas about Muslims being removed from the OBC list.
The recommendation for the internal reclassification of SC reservations based on the AJ Sadashiva Commission report has also polarised the communities listed under the SC category, providing the BJP with yet another opportunity for divisive politics. The commission does not recommend the exclusion of any existing castes from the SC list, and has rather only categorised the less benefitted as an exclusive category so that they access the benefit of reservations. It had suggested a reclassification under four categories — SC Left, SC Right, Touchables, and Others.
Karnataka has a peculiar situation where some ‘touchable’ castes are also part of the SC reservation. It is popularly believed that these castes have politically benefited more from their position in the SC category. Not surprisingly, the Touchable castes in the SC grouping have been wary of this internal reclassification.
It is to be noted that though the Sadashiva report was submitted in 2012 to the then BJP government headed by Sadananda Gowda, it was never tabled in the house either by the BJP government in 2012-13 or 2019-23 period, or the Congress government in 2013-2018 period.
In fact, the irony of the situation is that according to a judgement by a constitutional bench of five Supreme Court judges in the ‘Chinnaiah versus State of AP’ case in 2004, legislative assemblies do not have the legislative competence to implement the internal reservation among Scheduled Castes. Even though another Supreme Court bench verdict in ‘Davinder Singh versus State of Punjab’ in 2020 differed with the 2004 judgement and opined that the state legislature do have the legislative competence, the issue was subsequently referred to a higher bench since this bench was also of an equal strength of five judges. But till date, the higher bench for the case has not been constituted.
Meanwhile, the Justice Usha Mehra Committee constituted in 2007 by India’s then United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government provided a legislative solution for the problem. It recommended a constitutional amendment to Article 341 with an inclusion of Article 341 (3), enabling the state legislatures to implement internal reclassification of SC reservations.
But the fact is that given the numerical strength of the BJP and its partners in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, and their political prowess in mobilising even the Opposition in support of the EWS Bill, the BJP-led Union government has all the legislative strength to bring in a constitutional amendment for internal reclassification of SC reservations too. Many state legislatures have already recommended the implementation of the Usha Mehra solution. The Karnataka government’s recommendation is thus one more in the list.
That the BJP wants to make use of this faultline among the Scheduled Castes to its electoral benefit has been proved by the way in which it has declared the recommendation of the internal reclassification just prior to the announcement of elections and the implementation of the model code of conduct in the state.
The Justice Nagamohan Das committee was constituted by the Congress-JDS government in 2018, to look into the possibility of the hike in the quantum of SC-ST reservations in Karnataka. It gave its recommendation to hike Scheduled Caste reservation by 2% and Scheduled Tribe (ST) by 4% by a state law. It had also appealed to the Union government, at least two years ago, to protect the Act by including it in the ninth schedule, since the overall reservation breaches the upper limit of 50%.
But even though the proposed hike itself is not certain, the Bommai government has now ventured to reclassify the SC reservation assuming the hike as de facto.
The Sadashiva Commission had provided a scientific basis of reclassification of the 15% reservation among the four categories within the SC, based on their population, in the following order:
But the Bommai government has distributed the extra 2% reservation, which it assumes has already escaped judicial scrutiny, unscientifically among the four sub categories. It has not increased the quantum of reservation for Madigas, the most discriminated caste group among the SCs, or of the other non-Holeya, non-Madiga ‘untouchables’ category. The Bommai government has allotted 0.5% of the 2% to the Holeya and related category, and a bulk of 1.5% hike for the ‘touchable’ SCs such as Lambanis and others, who are traditional supporters of the BJP. Obviously, none of these have any scientific basis. Nor does the Bommai government have the legislative power to enact this reclassification as per the judicial verdicts so far. At best, it could only recommend the reclassification to the Union government, which is what it has done.
But the BJP and the RSS bandwagon had already been campaigning that it has brought in internal reclassification, with the BJP also sponsoring a celebration in this regard. On the flip side, the ‘touchable’ castes in the SC category such as the Lambanis are firing salvos against the BJP government instead of bursting crackers, since they are wary of the very concept of reclassification. Thus, to placate their committed support base, the CM backtracked to say that they have not sent the recommendations of the Sadashiva report to the Union government, but the recommendations of the cabinet sub-committee.
Either way, the Dalits, especially the ‘untouchable’ caste groups, have been deceived by the Bommai government’s election formula of reservation.
Although the government order based on lies might not stand judicial scrutiny, the very purpose behind such an announcement immediately before the election is not just deceptive, but also inherently divisive and vicious. It is part of the BJP’s relentless agenda towards the reestablishment of the Brahmanical order by systematically destroying social justice measures that the post independent India reluctantly and partially implemented.
On the positive side, this duplicitous policy could also provide a platform for the unity of Dalits, Muslims, and also Vokkaligas and Lingayats to fight the Brahmanical Sangh Parivar-BJP combine. But maybe the die is not yet cast for that possibility.
Shivasundar is an activist and freelance journalist. Views expressed are the author’s own.