The Kaka Kalelkar Commission

India’s first attempt to find backward classes beyond Dalits and Adivasis produced a list of 2,399 castes and communities. The government rejected the report anyway. Even the chairman, Kaka Kalelkar, doubted parts of it.

1Chapter 1: The First Backward Classes Commission

Must Know

Set up and led

• The Kalelkar Commission is formally the First Backward Classes Commission.
• It was set up on 29 January 1953 by a Presidential Order, under Article 340.
• Its chairman was Kaka Kalelkar, a Gandhian writer and social reformer.

Its task

• It had to identify which sections of society, beyond Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, were socially and educationally backward.
• It also had to recommend steps to help them.

The report

• The Commission submitted its report on 30 March 1955.
• It listed 2,399 castes and communities as backward, across the country.
• Of these, 837 were classed as “most backward”.
• It recommended quotas in government services: 25% in Class I, 33.5% in Class II, and 40% in Classes III and IV.
• It also recommended 70% reservation for backward-class students in technical and professional institutions.

The rejection

• The Central Government rejected the report.
• Its argument: the Commission had relied on caste, not objective non-caste criteria.

2Chapter 2: Inside the Report

Good to Know

How it defined “backward”

• Low position in the traditional Hindu caste hierarchy.
• Lack of general educational advancement.
• Inadequate representation in government service, trade and industry.

A chairman with doubts

• Kalelkar himself had doubts about some recommendations.
• In his forwarding letter to the President, he expressed reservations.
• He did not file a formal note of dissent.
• A chairman questioning his own report is unusual.
• It shows real internal disagreement, not unanimous certainty.

Other recommendations

• It reviewed the existing SC and ST lists and recommended changes.
• These went into the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1956.
• It recommended caste-wise enumeration in the 1961 Census.
• That was not implemented at the time.
• It also recommended treating all women, as a group, as a backward class.

About Kaka Kalelkar

• He lived from 1885 to 1981.
• He was a Rajya Sabha member from 1952 to 1964.
• He received the Padma Vibhushan in 1964.
• See Padma Awards.

3Chapter 3: The Dilemma That Stayed

Great to Know

Twenty-four years later

• After the rejection, India waited 24 years before setting up a similar body.
• That was the Second Backward Classes Commission, the Mandal Commission, set up in 1979.
• Its 27% OBC quota reached the Supreme Court in Indra Sawhney v. Union of India (1992).
• A nine-judge Bench upheld it, by 6:3.
• The same ruling introduced the “creamy layer”, excluding well-off OBC members.
• It also fixed a 50% general ceiling on reservations, still debated today.
• See V.P. Singh and the Mandal Commission Controversy and Revisiting the 50% Cap on Reservation.

Different numbers, same question

• Kalelkar’s 25/33.5/40 percentages differ from the familiar 27% OBC quota that came from Mandal.
• Both reports tried to answer the same question.
• Is caste a valid measure of disadvantage, or just one proxy among several?
• That dilemma was never fully settled.

An idea that came back

• The 1955 push for caste-wise Census counts anticipates today’s caste-census debates.
• See Caste Census: The Bihar Survey and the National Debate.
• And see Census 2027, which revives the idea about 70 years later.

Quick Q&A

• Commission set up? 29 January 1953.
• Report date? 30 March 1955.
• Castes listed? 2,399.
• Most backward? 837.
• Mandal Commission set up? 1979.