The Numbers Game

By the time the Karnataka cabinet met on April 17, the damage was already done. The numbers were out—if not officially, then virally. A 50-volume report, nine years in the making, had been reduced to a series of screenshots, forwards, and TV panel speculation. Its leak was as politically consequential as the data it held: that the state’s most dominant castes—Lingayats and Vokkaligas—together accounted for less than a quarter of the population, and that Other Backward Classes, long a loosely defined electoral umbrella, made up a commanding 70 percent. Muslims were pegged at 13.1%, their diversity laid bare across 99 sub-castes; Christians, often imagined as a monolith, were listed under 57.

And yet, for all its anticipatory fire, the cabinet did not decide. Instead, it adjourned with caution and calculation. A new date was set: May 2, a special cabinet session to once again pore over the caste census and determine its political afterlife.

The delay was expected. In Karnataka, where electoral strategy is caste calculus by another name, the census has become a spark in a room full of paper. What began as enumeration has grown teeth. Should the government formally adopt the report and with it, the data’s implied challenge to the existing order of reservations and representation? Or should it—as former governments have done with inconvenient truths—put it back on the shelf and wait for memory to blur?

The politics around the leak have hardened. JD(S) leader H.D. Kumaraswamy, whose party’s fortunes are entwined with the Vokkaliga community, called the report “unauthorised” and “poisonous,” demanding that it not even be tabled. “This is psychological warfare,” he told reporters, accusing the Congress of “creating panic between castes”. His concern was less about accuracy than momentum — that the numbers, even if disputed, were already shaping public perception.

The BJP, for its part, kept a strategic silence. There were no fireworks, only unease. Former Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa, widely viewed as the political face of the Lingayats, dismissed the survey as “unscientific” and called for a new one. Others echoed him, questioning its fieldwork and its classification criteria.

The Congress stands at the centre of the storm, and not for the first time. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, whose AHINDA alliance—minorities, backward classes, and Dalits—has shaped his political identity, now finds his theory substantiated by data. But the numbers don’t simply validate his position; they demand action. The report recommends raising reservations for OBCs to 51% and Muslims from 4% to 8%, pushing Karnataka’s total quotas well past the 50% ceiling laid down by the Supreme Court in Indra Sawhney. That line has not been openly debated by the cabinet yet. But it hangs over the discussions like a legal tripwire.

Meanwhile, the state’s Governor, Thawarchand Gehlot, added another layer to the ongoing debate. Last week, he referred the Karnataka Transparency in Public Procurement (Amendment) Bill — which proposed a 4% quota for Muslim contractors — to the President, flagging potential concerns about religion-based reservation.

The caste census has exposed more than numerical imbalance. It has stirred up the question of what constitutes dominance — and whether it flows from population, land ownership, party patronage, or political myth. For decades, Lingayats and Vokkaligas have occupied the central space in Karnataka’s electoral imagination. Their leaders have helmed most major parties. Their institutions dominate education and religion. But the data suggests something different — that dominance, in Karnataka, may have been less about numbers and more about narrative.

Critics of the survey have pointed to gaps in classification and verification. Proponents argue that the data, while imperfect, is the closest Karnataka has come to mapping its social reality. In the absence of official rebuttals or endorsements, the public conversation has been animated by fragments, speculation, and apprehension. On May 2, the cabinet will meet again to decide the fate of the report. Whether the government will publish it in full, adopt its recommendations, or commission a fresh survey remains unclear.

caste politicsHD KumaraswamyIndian politicsKarnatakaLingayatsOBCsVokkaligasWeb Exclusive