Looking At Caste Census Beyond the Big Numbers

Karnataka data offers glimpses of issues that may be at stake in undertaking a caste census, writes Chandan Gowda.

Individual state governments in the country have indeed carried out caste-linked socio-economic surveys earlier, but such exercises have not been done at the national level since the 1931 Census.

(Photo: Aroop Mishra/The Quint)

The Central government’s announcement that the next national population census would enumerate caste is a welcome decision. Although the date of when the already delayed decennial census will be undertaken is not known yet, the move to collect data on the caste background of Indians is valuable.

Individual state governments in the country have indeed carried out caste-linked socio-economic surveys earlier, but such exercises have not been done at the national level since the 1931 Census. In this regard, it will be difficult to not acknowledge the vocal campaign in favour of the caste census done in recent months by Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, and other opposition leaders like Tejashwi Yadav in Bihar.

The Karnataka Conundrum: SES Data

The recent controversy over the Social-Economic and Educational Survey (SES) report, or the caste census, as it is popularly known, in Karnataka offers a glimpse of the kind of issues that are at stake in undertaking a caste census.

At least 2.53 lakh people refused to reveal their caste identity, 1.34 lakh people said they did not belong to any caste, and 1.94 lakh people did not know the caste they belonged to.

These respondents, most of whom reside in urban areas, form about one percent of Karnataka’s population.

No one would guess details like these are part of the SES report, submitted to the government of Karnataka recently. Leaked to the public within no time, this overview - focused mostly on community composition data -elicited sharp protests from several leaders and mathas (monasteries) of the Lingayats and Vokkaligas, the two dominant castes of Karnataka, about their diminished numbers in this report.

These community leaders had indeed been wary of the SES ever since the state government asked the Karnataka State Commission for Backward Classes (KSCBC) to carry it out in 2015.

Since Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had emerged as a leader of the backward castes, they were apprehensive about the survey paring down the demographic size of their communities to decrease their political bargaining power.

The pressure of these community leaders and several of the Ministers and MLAs from these communities has held back the findings of a survey, which was completed within forty days in 2015 itself, from being formally released till the present.

Contrast the experience in two other states. With a population twice the size of Karnataka’s, Bihar was able to complete its SES and formally approve its findings and recommendations within ten months in 2023.

The smaller state of Telangana did the same within four months in 2024-25. The swift completion of the survey and compilation of the collected data lend credibility to the socio-economic census reports.

Carried out between April and May 2015, the KSCBC survey, led by H Kantharaj, gathered data from about 1.35 crore households covering 5.98 crore people which formed about 95 percent of the estimated 6.35 crore state’s population. About two thirds of the 37 lakh people who missed being surveyed were residents of cities and towns.

Although the SES findings and recommendations were ready by 2017, the Congress government did not make them public to avoid the risk, perhaps, of antagonising the two dominant castes with the Assembly elections due the following year.

The SES report stayed in cold storage for the next five years as well, ie, between 2018 and 2023, when the state government was led by the Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) coalition, and then by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The Big Reveal

In mid-2021, when the sealed SES data was opened, the signature of the Member Secretary of the Kantharaj Commission was found missing on the report and thus the report stayed unreleased.

Jayaprakash Hegde, the new Chair of the KSCBC appointed by the BJP government in November 2020, set to work on preparing another report based on his predecessor’s report but could not finalise it before the term of the BJP government ended.

Indeed, in the run-up to the 2023 Assembly elections, CM Basavaraj Bommai announced the removal of Muslims from the OBC state list and the apportioning of their quota among the Lingayats and Vokkaligas, a decision that is currently under appeal in the Supreme Court.

The SES report was finally submitted to the Karnataka government in February 2025, when the Congress was back in power. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s push for collecting socio-economic data for all castes appears to have made the Karnataka government release the report last month in April.

The following are some of the key findings and observations of the SES:

• The SES report puts Karnataka’s OBC population at 70 percent.

• Forming 11 percent and 10.29 percent of Karnataka’s population respectively, the Lingayats and the Vokkaligas are the first and second largest caste communities in Karnataka.

• Adding up to 12.58 percent of the state population, the community of Muslims, inclusive of all its sub-sects and castes, is the second-largest religious community in Karnataka.

• The Scheduled Castes (SC) and the Scheduled Tribes (ST) respectively form 18.2 percent and 7.1 percent of the state’s population.

• The 'upper castes' in the general category, including Brahmins and Arya Vaishyas, form 4.9 percent of the population.

• A major recommendation of the SES report is that the total reservation for backward classes should be hiked from the current 32 percent to 51 percent, which along with the 24 percent and 10 percent set aside respectively for the SCs and STs and the EWS sections, would take the total reservation in Karnataka to 85 percent.

Several Lingayat and Vokkaliga representatives disputed their numerical size straightaway. The figure for the Lingayats was claimed to be 17 percent while that for the Vokkaligas varied between 12 percent and 14 percent.

The Third Backward Classes Commission Report of 1990, known as the Chinnappa Reddy Report, had put their number at 15.33 percent and 10.8 percent respectively. These figures were based on the data gathered from the highly regarded total household survey carried out in Karnataka in 1984 by the Second Backward Classes Commission. Except for the Lingayats and the Vokkaligas, a comparison of the figures found in the Chinnappa Reddy report and the 2025 SES report shows an increase: The figures saw a hike of 1.5 percent for the SCs, 1.04 percent for the Kurubas, 0.91 percent for the Muslims, and 0.40 percent for the STs.

Reading Between the Numbers

What might explain the drop in the Lingayat and Vokkaliga numbers in the 2025 SES? A few sizable sub-castes among them are known to have disidentified themselves as Lingayat and Vokkaliga to become eligible for larger reservation quotas.

The Vokkaliga caste association has also claimed that sub-castes that ought to have been classified as Vokkaliga have not been done so. The Idiga caste representatives have made a similar complaint to explain their community size reduction by 0.25 percent.

This dynamic alerts us, yet again, to the shifting nature of caste boundaries, which the census operations have tried to fix and stabilise since their operations began in late 19th century colonial India. 

In a 1972 essay titled, “The Evolution of Political Arenas and Units of Social Organisation: The Lingayats and Okkaligas of Princely Mysore,” the political scientist James Manor showed that what now appear naturally formed castes and sub-castes in Karnataka are a result of census labelling practices as well as caste mobilisation politics over the 20th century.

Although the SES report enhances the OBC quota for Vokkaligas and Lingayats from four percent to seven percent and five percent to eight percent respectively, the agitating leaders find their diminished number count to be the key issue as that will affect their negotiation power in relation to election tickets, ministerial berths, spots in state-run corporations and boards, and so forth. Announcing that they would campaign together, their caste associations have demanded a fresh survey to be undertaken in the state.

With the next national census taking cognisance of the caste backgrounds of Indians, its collected data on caste might well provide the fresh data that these communities are asking for.  

Discussions with the KSCBC can help determine the soundness of the data possessed by the caste associations. They can also clear up any possible errors in how sub-castes have been grouped. But this can happen only when the SES Report and its data gathered in fifty volumes are made public. 

Following a Cabinet discussion of this report two weeks ago, the Congress government has sought time for follow up discussions.

Castes Beyond the Schedule

Whether used for affirmative action policies or not, socio-economic data about communities does prove essential for modern administration and for scholarly analyses of social trends and indeed for the communities themselves. Since Independence, the national censuses in India have compiled such data for religions and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, but not for castes. 

The quality and credibility of the caste data collected for Hindus as well as for Muslim, Christian, and other religious communities along with the data on their socio-educational attainments and economic assets will be high since the Indian census operation is among the most rigorous ones seen in the world. Such data will help provide a valuable picture of how the social and economic privileges are distributed among them. They might even elicit new forms of electoral mobilisation among them.

The early reasoning against caste enumeration was rooted in a fear that that would strengthen caste identities and subvert secular ideals. Another reason, which became prominent in later decades, was that counting caste would reveal the disproportionate privileges of the upper castes, jeopardising the project of unifying castes under the master identity of Hinduism. In any case, the counting of castes other than the Scheduled Castes cannot be withheld given India’s existing affirmative action commitments towards the Other Backward Classes (OBCs). 

Censuses also hold a mirror to shifting community dynamics.

About 21 OBC castes consisted of fewer than a hundred individuals. Apart from providing formal education and jobs to these marginalised communities, sustaining and nourishing their traditional professions as well as understanding the sophisticated knowledges behind them also demands attention in the present.

Upon the completion of its survey in 2015, the Kantharaj Commission had recorded 470 castes and sub-castes that were not known to them at the time of commencing their work.  All of these communities were of recent migrants to Karnataka.  Testifying perhaps to the trend of increased attachment to particular identities, 182 sub-castes were recorded among the Scheduled Castes, a finding which shows a jump from the previous count of 101 sub-castes and also renders the task of sub-classification for internal reservation among them more challenging. 

The need for individual states to undertake costly, labour-intensive surveys of socio-economic data pertaining to castes has now been obviated by the Central Government’s decision to collect data on the caste identity of Indians alongside other data in the forthcoming national census. It would be ideal if caste is enumerated in every subsequent national census as well.

The National Commission of Backward Classes Act, 1993, indeed mandates that the list of backward classes be revised every ten years. 

Social justice is clearly undermined if those communities whose economic and educational status has improved do not make way for those truly deserving of affirmative action. 

One hopes that the availability of caste data at the all-India level will enable such just measures alongside offering a much needed, updated map of the social, economic and educational realities of communities at the level of caste in India.

Author’s Note: I'm thankful to K Srinivasa and YV Harisha, my colleagues at the ISEC library, for their help in procuring the Chinnappa Reddy Report for me.

(Chandan Gowda is the Ramakrishna Hegde Chair Professor of Decentralisation and Development, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru. He is the author of Another India: Events, Memories, People (2024). This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)