Chalavadi leaders urge community members to mention religion as ‘Navabouddha’ during caste census

Navabouddha Chalavadi community leaders urge members to identify as 'Navabouddha' in religion column during upcoming caste census.

The ‘Navabouddha’ Chalavadi community leaders on Saturday urged the State government to include the religion column in the caste census to be conducted in the State from May 5 and appealed to the community members to mention their religion as ‘Navabouddha’ and caste as Chalavadi or Holeyar.

State convenor of Bharatiya Mula Nivasi Dravida Okkuta Shankar Ajamani and other office bearers, while addressing press persons in Hubballi on Saturday, appealed to the community members to stick to Baba Saheb Ambedkar’s ideology and what he had said while converting to Buddhism in the 1990s.

Mr. Shankar said that they have already submitted a memorandum to the Justice H.N. Nagmohan Das Commission regarding educating the enumerators on mentioning religion during the caste census, adding that through media, they would appeal to the community members to mention ‘Navabouddha’ in the religion column and ‘Chalavadi’ or ‘Holeyar’ in the caste column.

To a query, he said that the Okkuta would be carrying out extensive awareness programmes on the need for mentioning the religion and caste, and would also appeal to the community organisations to carry out door-to-door awareness programmes to sensitise the community members. “As the caste census will be carried out in three phases, we want young men and women from the community to sensitise the community members in this regard,” he said.

Mr. Shankar said that the community member were known by different caste names like Adi Karnataka, Adi Dravida, Adi Andhra and others and they would request them to identify themselves as either ‘chalavadi’ or ‘holeyar’.

Community leader Ganesh Doddamani clarified that mentioning ‘Navabouddha’ in the religion column would not affect the reservation extended to the community. Other leaders, Manjunath Gudimani, Fakkirappa Chalavadi, Indumath Shiragavi, Shankar Buddappanavar were also present.