<p><em>Satish Deshpande</em></p>.<p>November 19 this year marked the fiftieth anniversary of a significant event in the history of the continuing struggle for social justice in India. </p>.<p>On this day in 1975, the then chairperson of the Karnataka Backward Classes Commission (KBCC), the lawyer, legal scholar and activist L G Havanur presented his commission’s report to Devaraj Urs, the then chief minister of Karnataka. </p>.<p>Though a bust of Havanur was unveiled by the current chief minister and deputy chief minister and a commemorative event was held by caste associations in Bengaluru on November 19, 2025, the anniversary seems to have escaped the notice of the dominant media.</p>.<p>It is a known feature of our rapidly eroding federal structure that certain states have played a disproportionately important role in directing the path of the Union in particular areas. </p>.<p>Just as Assam has shaped the Indian State’s thinking on citizenship, Karnataka has impacted the nation’s laws and policies addressing the “Other Backward Classes” (OBCs), arguably in a more progressive direction.</p>.So did no one kill Akhlaq Ahmed?.<p>The Report of the Second Karnataka Backward Classes Commission – known as the Havanur Report, famously termed the “Bible of the Backward Classes” by Devaraj Urs – marks the moment when this influence became recognisable. </p>.<p>The four-volume report (a 353-page main text, with three volumes of supporting evidence, including a primary sample survey of 3.5 lakh persons across all the districts of Karnataka) is a landmark document for both conceptual and practical reasons.</p>.<p>Its most important conceptual contribution – clearly visible only in retrospect – is that it shows us what it might mean to think with caste rather than to think about or from within caste. </p>.<p>Thinking from within caste means that one is limited to a caste-specific view of the world, with its obvious problems for nation building. However, this caste-based view is at least aware of its own standpoint, though unable (or unwilling) to transcend it.</p>.<p>Thinking about caste is the sort of thinking that dominated caste policy (or non-policy) in the Nehru era, where the standpoint is that of an abstract, asocial “casteless” individual acutely aware of the moral indefensibility of caste but unaware of its continuing influence.</p>.<p>Thinking with caste is the challenging art of acknowledging the insidious influence of caste and yet struggling to think beyond it – a new social response to caste without denial or immersion.</p>.<p>A concrete example will help: Appendix I of Part II of Havanur Report, effectively the first item of supporting evidence, is titled “Caste composition of the Commission and Staff”, which lists the actual castes and sub-castes (jatis) of everyone from the Chairman down to the lowest ranking staffer. </p>.<p><strong>Unifying thought and action</strong></p>.<p>As Indians, we have become used to the split between public language and private actions on caste. Every commission, Cabinet, or other body of power is immediately analysed for its caste composition, but we – and especially the members of such bodies themselves – never speak about this in their public roles. </p>.<p>We may argue about how successful its effort was, but we cannot deny that the Havanur Report was trying to break out of this split mindset by explicitly and officially recording its own “caste”.</p>.<p>A second set of conceptual contributions have to do with the jurisprudence on caste. Laxman Gulappa Havanur, who began his career as an activist-advocate in the small town of Ranebennur in northern Karnataka, was already a legal scholar noted for his contributions to caste law at the time he was appointed to the KBCC in 1972 (His writings, especially the 1965 essay Specifying the Backward Classes Without the ‘Caste’ Basis are repeatedly cited in Marc Galanter’s classic work, Competing Equalities: Law and the Backward Classes in India). </p>.<p>The best example here is the longstanding problem of conflating caste as the name for a social group (i.e., a noun) and caste as the marker of a status-position in a hierarchy (i.e., an adjective). </p>.<p>As Galanter notes, Havanur was the first to recognise this problem and try to figure out how to work with both without collapsing one into the other. This problem is still with us in the context of the identification of particular castes as “backward” – can one take membership in a caste by itself to be an indicator, or must there always be reference to external evidence, such as educational levels or occupation etc?</p>.<p>Produced after a string of important cases in the (then) Mysore High Court had led to important shifts in the approach of the Supreme Court, the Havanur Report tries its best to negotiate this difference with clarity and explicit justification.</p>.<p>As for its practical and methodological contributions, one can simply say that the Havanur Report is the first significant example in independent India of a conscious attempt to produce what is now called “evidence-based policy”. </p>.<p>Apart from conducting a pioneering socio-economic sample survey covering the entire state, the Havanur Report used numerous other sources of evidence including recorded testimony of 365 witnesses; seminars with jurists, academics and caste associations; study tours of the state; analysis of secondary data (census and various government departments); and consultations with organisations and individual experts. </p>.<p>With a skeletal staff and minimal resources, Havanur managed to <br>produce a Report that, despite inevitable flaws, was ahead of its time in vision and method.</p>.<p>In an obituary note (L G Havanur died in September 2006) in DH, V K Nataraj (former Director of the Madras Institute of Development Studies) <br>recounted how the chairman of the KBCC would come on his scooter to take him to the Government Press where they would work on proof-reading the report. </p>.<p>Hopefully, the newly unveiled bust at the Karnataka State Commission for the Backward Classes will not remain the only recognition accorded this landmark document.</p>.<p>(The author is a former teacher of sociology, now an independent scholar based in Bengaluru)</p><p><em>Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.</em></p>
<p><em>Satish Deshpande</em></p>.<p>November 19 this year marked the fiftieth anniversary of a significant event in the history of the continuing struggle for social justice in India. </p>.<p>On this day in 1975, the then chairperson of the Karnataka Backward Classes Commission (KBCC), the lawyer, legal scholar and activist L G Havanur presented his commission’s report to Devaraj Urs, the then chief minister of Karnataka. </p>.<p>Though a bust of Havanur was unveiled by the current chief minister and deputy chief minister and a commemorative event was held by caste associations in Bengaluru on November 19, 2025, the anniversary seems to have escaped the notice of the dominant media.</p>.<p>It is a known feature of our rapidly eroding federal structure that certain states have played a disproportionately important role in directing the path of the Union in particular areas. </p>.<p>Just as Assam has shaped the Indian State’s thinking on citizenship, Karnataka has impacted the nation’s laws and policies addressing the “Other Backward Classes” (OBCs), arguably in a more progressive direction.</p>.So did no one kill Akhlaq Ahmed?.<p>The Report of the Second Karnataka Backward Classes Commission – known as the Havanur Report, famously termed the “Bible of the Backward Classes” by Devaraj Urs – marks the moment when this influence became recognisable. </p>.<p>The four-volume report (a 353-page main text, with three volumes of supporting evidence, including a primary sample survey of 3.5 lakh persons across all the districts of Karnataka) is a landmark document for both conceptual and practical reasons.</p>.<p>Its most important conceptual contribution – clearly visible only in retrospect – is that it shows us what it might mean to think with caste rather than to think about or from within caste. </p>.<p>Thinking from within caste means that one is limited to a caste-specific view of the world, with its obvious problems for nation building. However, this caste-based view is at least aware of its own standpoint, though unable (or unwilling) to transcend it.</p>.<p>Thinking about caste is the sort of thinking that dominated caste policy (or non-policy) in the Nehru era, where the standpoint is that of an abstract, asocial “casteless” individual acutely aware of the moral indefensibility of caste but unaware of its continuing influence.</p>.<p>Thinking with caste is the challenging art of acknowledging the insidious influence of caste and yet struggling to think beyond it – a new social response to caste without denial or immersion.</p>.<p>A concrete example will help: Appendix I of Part II of Havanur Report, effectively the first item of supporting evidence, is titled “Caste composition of the Commission and Staff”, which lists the actual castes and sub-castes (jatis) of everyone from the Chairman down to the lowest ranking staffer. </p>.<p><strong>Unifying thought and action</strong></p>.<p>As Indians, we have become used to the split between public language and private actions on caste. Every commission, Cabinet, or other body of power is immediately analysed for its caste composition, but we – and especially the members of such bodies themselves – never speak about this in their public roles. </p>.<p>We may argue about how successful its effort was, but we cannot deny that the Havanur Report was trying to break out of this split mindset by explicitly and officially recording its own “caste”.</p>.<p>A second set of conceptual contributions have to do with the jurisprudence on caste. Laxman Gulappa Havanur, who began his career as an activist-advocate in the small town of Ranebennur in northern Karnataka, was already a legal scholar noted for his contributions to caste law at the time he was appointed to the KBCC in 1972 (His writings, especially the 1965 essay Specifying the Backward Classes Without the ‘Caste’ Basis are repeatedly cited in Marc Galanter’s classic work, Competing Equalities: Law and the Backward Classes in India). </p>.<p>The best example here is the longstanding problem of conflating caste as the name for a social group (i.e., a noun) and caste as the marker of a status-position in a hierarchy (i.e., an adjective). </p>.<p>As Galanter notes, Havanur was the first to recognise this problem and try to figure out how to work with both without collapsing one into the other. This problem is still with us in the context of the identification of particular castes as “backward” – can one take membership in a caste by itself to be an indicator, or must there always be reference to external evidence, such as educational levels or occupation etc?</p>.<p>Produced after a string of important cases in the (then) Mysore High Court had led to important shifts in the approach of the Supreme Court, the Havanur Report tries its best to negotiate this difference with clarity and explicit justification.</p>.<p>As for its practical and methodological contributions, one can simply say that the Havanur Report is the first significant example in independent India of a conscious attempt to produce what is now called “evidence-based policy”. </p>.<p>Apart from conducting a pioneering socio-economic sample survey covering the entire state, the Havanur Report used numerous other sources of evidence including recorded testimony of 365 witnesses; seminars with jurists, academics and caste associations; study tours of the state; analysis of secondary data (census and various government departments); and consultations with organisations and individual experts. </p>.<p>With a skeletal staff and minimal resources, Havanur managed to <br>produce a Report that, despite inevitable flaws, was ahead of its time in vision and method.</p>.<p>In an obituary note (L G Havanur died in September 2006) in DH, V K Nataraj (former Director of the Madras Institute of Development Studies) <br>recounted how the chairman of the KBCC would come on his scooter to take him to the Government Press where they would work on proof-reading the report. </p>.<p>Hopefully, the newly unveiled bust at the Karnataka State Commission for the Backward Classes will not remain the only recognition accorded this landmark document.</p>.<p>(The author is a former teacher of sociology, now an independent scholar based in Bengaluru)</p><p><em>Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.</em></p>
