Casteist Nature of the Democratic State: Does Congress Really Care About the Constitution? Case of Telangana!
Ashok Danavath
On July 20, Mr. Revanth Reddy, the Chief Minister of Telangana and Head of the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC), attended the inaugural Kamma Global Summit at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre. The summit was organized by the Kamma Global Federation (KGF), founded by an Indian National Congress leader from the Kamma caste. KGF aims to be a global movement for Kamma people, irrespective of their geographical borders. Representatives from Kamma communities worldwide, including Canada, Australia, Peru, Ukraine, the Middle East, and the US, joined the meeting.
The irony of the Kamma summit lies in the fact that, while the Congress party has recently been advocating for safeguarding the constitution, Revanth Reddy joined a summit that glorifies Kamma caste domination. This domination is often portrayed as progress but is, in reality, leveraged on caste-based capital. Hence, Revanth Reddy’s attendance at the Kamma summit is problematic. As a state official, participating in an event that promotes caste superiority is unacceptable. While inviting investors is necessary, doing so through casteist events is highly questionable. Reddy’s involvement with a summit that celebrates a dominant supremacist caste ideology highlights the problematic intertwining of democratic state power and caste dominance in Telangana and India. Therefore, this event, the Congress party’s role, and its stance on caste issues, particularly in Telangana, needs critical examination.
Kamma is the most dominant caste community in socio-political-economic affairs in Andhra Pradesh, equivalent to that of the Reddy community. Until 2014, this dominance extended throughout United Andhra Pradesh. However, after the formation of the Telangana as a separate state, the Kamma community lost its influence in Telangana over the past ten years. Despite attempts at survival politics, the emergence of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) as the largest party after the 2014 first Telangana state assembly election created a rivalry between the TRS (now BRS) and the Congress party. This political conflict has become a war between the dominant Reddy and Velama castes in Telangana.
The current CM, Revanth Reddy, initially encouraged his party colleague and the founder of KGF, Jetti Kusuma Kumar, to hold this summit in 2023 prior to the state election. If that had been the case, it would have provided the benefit of electoral support from the Kamma caste community for Revanth Reddy and the Congress party, as the Kamma-owned Telugu Desam Party (TDP) was not influential. However, due to the complexity of electoral schedules for both these Congress leaders, the summit is taking place now. Nonetheless, the Kamma community considered shifting their support from TDP to BJP or Congress, as the KCR-led BRS was not favorable to Kamma politics and did not maintain close relations with Chandrababu Naidu when his party was in power from 2014-2019 or in later years. The Kamma caste residents of Telangana also staged protests in Hyderabad, citing that the TRS was not speaking out about the TDP chief’s arrest in Andhra Pradesh.
This caste politics might have led the Kamma community to support Congress, with Revanth Reddy, a known loyalist of Chandrababu Naidu and TDP. Although Reddy shifted to Congress in 2017, he has maintained his ties with Naidu. After the Congress election victory in December 2023, TDP supporters in Telangana celebrated at the Congress party office, symbolizing their political influence in the state. They were celebrating, not necessarily the victory of Congress, but the defeat of the BRS to showcase their relevance. This was reciprocated last month when the TDP alliance won in AP, the Kamma caste Minister in Telangana congress celebrated the TDP victory by going to the Khammam TDP office. This further poses a question: do these leaders really care about their party’s ideological base or caste ideology?
This summit aims to influence state politics and demonstrate the Kamma community’s control in Telangana. While the Kamma caste may not make significant immediate moves in Telangana politics, the visit of the TDP chief and CM Chandrababu Naidu to Hyderabad earlier this month after the state assembly elections victory in AP, and his expressed intention to strengthen the TDP in Telangana, highlight how caste politics play a key role in so-called democracy.
As discussed above, while Revanth Reddy joining the summit as an individual may appear natural, his current role as the CM of Telangana poses a greater problem in amplifying symbolic casteist politics in the state.
The dominance of the Kammas in socio-political and economic affairs would be troublesome to any democratic person, as this event was hosted to celebrate casteist ideology at its core. Revanth Reddy and his party, which claims to believe solely in constitutional spirits, should worry after examining the few incidents with Kamma casteist politics. For the summit, Revanth Reddy stayed close to 1 hour and 30 minutes. Within that, he spoke for 14 minutes, discussing the glorification of the Kamma caste and its achievements, and how they are very humanitarian people and a generous community that supports the poor in need. He also discussed the lack of Telugu leadership in Delhi. One important point struck as Revanth Reddy said that, “Kammas are like “amma” or mother”, who feed when someone is hungry. However, Revanth Reddy should answer to the victims of the Karamchedu massacre in AP, which just passed its 39th anniversary on July 17. If the Kammas are people who are down to earth, then who killed the Dalits of Madiga Palle? Also, Revanth Reddy praised NTR and his leadership and how he extended support to everyone entering politics in United Andhra Pradesh. Mr. Revanth should know that Mr. NTR did very little for the majority population, the Dalit-Adivasi-Muslim-OBC communities of Telangana state or United Andhra Pradesh. Whatever leadership came from these communities was due to constitutional guarantees, not because of Kamma support or amplification. Mr. NTR, an actor turned politician, was also silent about the massacre when he was the Chief Minister of United AP.
Also in the summit, CM Reddy talked about land and how this community is very much dependent on agriculture and contributes to the agrarian economy. However, he never mentioned the vast amount of land the Kamma caste owns. Rather, Mr. Reddy spoke as if they own very marginal or small portions of land in the states. In reality, they hold land similar to the Reddys – the most fertile lands. Even though the CM sees them as farmers, no developmental economist or social scientist would look at them just as farmers. They are extremely rich feudal landlords, and Mr. Reddy failed to acknowledge that, whitewashing their control of land. In Telangana and AP various socio-political movements took place to democratize lands. As the son of a landlord, Reddy’s failure in recognizing the land’s centrality to caste and class politics is questionable. In India, land is central to caste and its order, and its accessibility is based on caste even today. It is central to capital and its resources. Failing to acknowledge this while claiming to protect the constitution seems very opposite and contradictory. Being in a constitutional position, Mr. Reddy going to a caste supremacist ideological summit raises all levels of unconstitutional red flags!
The Congress party claims to protect the constitution. However, in Telangana, where 94% of the population comprises SC, ST, Muslim, and BC, other minorities, Congress’s allocation of legislative assembly seats and parliamentary seats is very contradictory to its aim of constitutional protection. In the appointment of state corporation-level positions in Telangana, the majority have gone to the Reddy caste community. While on one hand, Congress talks about protecting the constitution, on the other hand, it sidelines the very constitution it talks about. Congress national leader Rahul Gandhi criticizes the Hindu nationalist party BJP for poor representation of backward castes and other caste oppressed communities in union offices, yet similar trends are seen in states where Congress is in power.
An important example is that, on April 14, 2024, Ambedkar Jayanti, Chief Minister of Telangana, Mr. Reddy chose to pay state respects to Dr. Ambedkar, the father of India’s constitution, at a smaller statue of Ambedkar. The world’s tallest statue of Dr. Ambedkar, inaugurated on April 14, 2023, by the then Chief Minister KCR and Ambedkar’s grandson Prakash Ambedkar, is located within less than a kilometer radius of the Dr. Ambedkar Telangana State Secretariat in Hyderabad. Mr. Reddy conveniently chose not to pay respects to the tallest Ambedkar statue in Telangana. This choice reflects a casteist attitude. Although the statue was commissioned by the previous government, it is state property and not the property of any political party. The decision not to pay state respect at the tallest statue symbolizes the discomfort of dominant caste leaders of congress and a broader issue of casteist attitude.
Finally, while Congress might look as an alternative to the BJP but when Congress is in power it perpetuates the same old tactics of sidelining concern s of India’s majority oppressed caste communities. Congress leaders go very much against the constitutional spirit and morality. It is important for Congress to first encourage their own party leaders to read the constitution before going public. These two leaders, one who has worked as a working president and the other heading the chief minister’s position in Telangana state, both seem very active in celebrating caste glorification. They said in this meeting that there is nothing wrong with celebrating such events, and Mr. Revanth Reddy further stated that their party as government of Telangana that would continue to support such events in the future and amplify them.
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Ashok Danavath is a first-generation post-graduate scholar from Telangana and a former Government of India National Overseas Scholarship Fellow at the International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. He is currently, working as a Senior Researcher for the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR).
