How is it that the south, particularly Tamil Nadu (TN), remained cool when protests against the move to provide reservation for OBCs in elite educational institutions raged like wild fire across north India? Do the fears raised over reservation — on sacrificing merit, promoting inefficiency, and the fuelling of caste politics — have no relevance in the south? The popular perception here, where the first stirrings in favour of job reservation were felt as early as the 1854, seems to be that there is nothing to fear about reservation.

TN, which now adopts a 69 per cent reservation policy, has seen it all: government orders, litigation, committees, debates, protests, experimentation with creamy layer based on economic status — over the past 152 years, ever since the then British government issued a standing order urging collectors to divide subordinate appointments among the principal castes.

It was not the Britishers alone who felt the need for reservation in jobs. In Mysore, the king issued a similar directive in 1894 and then followed it up in 1921 by issuing an order after appointing a committee under Justice Leslie Miller in 1918 to study the issue. The then diwan, Vishweswaraya, resigned his job in protest. Madras Presidency paved the way for a reservation policy through a 1921 order clearly listing out job quota — 44 per cent for non-Brahmins, 16 per cent for Brahmins, 16 per cent for Muslims, 16 per cent for Anglo-Indians/ Christians and eight per cent for Scheduled Castes. The government order remained only on paper till 1927, when Muthiah Mudaliar, a minister in the next government headed by Subarayan, issued fresh orders, which came to be known as the ‘Communal GO’, to ensure job reservation in the registry department.

... contd.