From ‘Kamandal' to Mandal, politics takes a new direction
Caste politics is a grim and ever-present reality in India. Over the years, it has become a desensitised, easy to calculate arithmetic for all political parties. No outfit that survives only on casteist politics attempts to justify its existence anymore, as it has become part of mainstream political tactics. However, the muddled and manipulative methods to inflate the influence of each of the leading caste groups for brazen political mileage and allied benefits would have to undergo a reality check soon. Hopefully. The Centre has bitten the bullet and is to take up a caste census survey alongside the Census enumeration exercise, in two phases. While this activity is still nearly two years away from gaining momentum, in the neighbourhood, the Congress government in Karnataka has retracted its earlier 2015-16 caste census report and announced a fresh one. This was because the Siddaramaiah government had to acknowledge the vociferous opposition by two of the leading castes – Vokkaligas and Lingayats – who accused the report of underrepresenting their numbers while inflating others, including the minority population, which avowedly was more than one of the castes.
Even as the new caste census is waiting to take-off, the BJP, as expected, has not stopped its trenchant criticism in this regard. They not only accuse the government of having been dishonest with the earlier report but allege that the new caste survey announcement is to divert attention from the monumental stampede tragedy which rocked the state and the cricket-loving country in the first week of June.
The official reason is still that the new socio-economic and educational survey would be more inclusive as the earlier one was found deficient in certain aspects. This opinion too has not gone uncontested as some OBC castes seem to be content with the findings of the earlier survey and have agreed to its implementation. With the High Command in Delhi setting a deadline of less than three months to complete the re-enumeration exercise as of present, the Karnataka government may take it up expeditiously. Moreover, with the bragging rights still with the GOP for initiating this contentious exercise and coming up with a report, however contentious, it would want to hold on to its head start in this regard.
Meanwhile, opposition to the findings of the earlier report was not just from various caste groups in the State, but also from ministers, representing different castes, who feared that the ground would slip from beneath their feet if they allowed implementation of the survey report. Interestingly, Yathindra, Congress MLC and son of the incumbent Chief Minister, said something similar that highlights the collective backing for the earlier survey report among the non-Vokkaliga, Lingayat formations. He even explained in detail how the backward classes, including the minorities, accounted for 75 per cent of the population, while decrying the fact they were not adequately represented in society. In the 1990s, the BJP had used 'Kamandal', a reference to the Hindu sentiment to blunt the rise of Mandal Commission fallout to come to power in various states, before optimally exploiting it to seize control at the Centre in 2014. Is history about to repeat itself?
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