Caste Census Twist: Has BJP punctured Congress' core election plank ahead of Bihar polls? Explained in 5 points

Mint

01-05-2025

Caste Census Twist: The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government's push for caste enumeration has stirred the political pot in the country ahead of the Bihar Assembly election.
The decision to conduct caste enumeration along with the upcoming census was taken in the high-level Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs (CCPA) meeting held after the Pahalgam terror attack.
Here's what it means — broken down in five key points.
Many expected the Modi government to make a decision on Pakistan during the CCPA meeting held on 1 May, a week after the Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 people. The last meeting of the CCPA, also referred to as the 'super cabinet', was held in 2019 following the Pulwama terror attack, which saw India respond with the Balakot airstrike on Pakistan.
However, the government announced a caste census – a decision that surprised many, within and outside political circles.
For long, the BJP was seen as averse to the caste census. In fact, many party leaders often targeted the Congress, accusing it of using caste to divide the society.
On 29 April, a day before the announcement, senior BJP leader Nitin Gadkari spoke on how caste divisions were against Hindutva's core ideology of 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam' (the world is one family) and how this has been adulterated in recent years.
'This is not Hindutva. That is not Hindu Dharma,' Gadkari said, emphasising on rejection of both jyatiyata (casteism) and rashtra-shyata (extreme nationalism) in public life."
Gadkari, who is a member of the CCPA, was speaking during a book launch at New Delhi's India International Centre. Congress leader Shashi Tharoor was also present on stage.
On 20 July 2021, Minister of State (Home Affairs), Nityanand Rai, told the Parliament that the Modi government has decided it's a matter of policy not to enumerate caste-wise population other than SCS and STs in the Census.
In September 2024, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), however, the BJP's ideological mentor, cautioned against using caste census as a political tool while acknowledging that the government needs numbers for all welfare activities to benefit castes which are lagging behind.
In slogans and on posters, the BJP has been expressing its stand against the caste census.
Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who announced the decision, called it the reversal of the Congress's policy. He blamed the Congress party for never conducting a caste census since independence and all the years it was in power.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the consolidation of disadvantaged sections of society within the SCs, OBCs, and STs around the opposition's agenda impacted the BJP's numbers in many states and, in fact, denied it a simple majority, unlike in 2014 and 2019, according to analysts.
A senior BJP leader told news agency PTI that the party's lesson from the 2024 results was the need to make constant efforts to win over the deprived sections. These sections have been voting for the party in good numbers since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's advent on the national scene but are not its committed voters.
"That it is a BJP government which undertook the first nationwide caste census in independent India will always go in our favour at a time of political assertion by numerous smaller backwards castes," he said.
The government has yet to announce the next census, which was held in 2011. So, the timeline of the caste census and its political implications remains far from clear.
The announcement comes at a time when the Opposition — with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi at the forefront — has adopted caste census as a key election plank. It also comes six months ahead of the assembly election in Bihar, one of the key Hindi heartland states considered a cauldron of caste politics in India.
Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday welcomed the government's 'sudden' decision to include caste enumeration in the forthcoming census after '11 years of opposing it.'
Crediting the sustained campaign run by the Congress for the government's announcement on the caste census, Gandhi said his immediate suspicion is that this could go the women's bill way in terms of implementation and demanded a specific date for it.
BJP's rivals, including the Congress, often turned to social justice politics, speaking about the empowerment of non-general castes, to counter its overarching plank of Hindutva. With the Modi government's decision on caste census, the BJP hopes to disarm them, at least for now.
'The Congress, especially post-2024 results, felt that Caste is the only alternative to Hindutva. Rahul Gandhi has been at the forefront of this larger campaign, which talked about the upliftment of the backwards classes. Two Congress-ruled states, Telangana and Karnataka, have already conducted a survey on caste. In the meantime, the BJP realised its wider political implications and decided to own a cause which was never its original idea,' said a political analyst.
While the Modi government's move may have vindicated Congress and Rahul Gandhi, it also indicates the BJP's expansive intentions for larger political gains.
In the 1980s, the BJP was known as a party with Hindutva at its core. The country saw a churn in political dynamics when former Prime Minister VP Singh implemented the Mandal Commission recommendations in December 1990, reserving 27 per cent of government jobs for OBCS.
BJP started roping in OBC leaders like late Kalyan Singh and Uma Bharti. A fresh OBC leadership started emerging. Some of the prominent among those are Narendra Modi in Gujarat, Shivraj Singh Chouhan in MP, and the late Sushil Modi in Bihar.
The BJP adapted to changed realities in the past, too. The saffron party adopted popular schemes powered by freebies, which were first offered by opposition parties in states like Karnataka and Delhi, after initially slamming them as ''revdi' as it realised their electoral appeal.
The BJP rode on welfare schemes built on cash assistance to notch up big successes in states like Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, and outmatched the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi on populist promises.
In Bihar, the cradle of social justice politics, the BJP-JD(U) alliance, has an advantage over the rival RJD-Congress-Left combine. But a decline of its biggest OBC satrap and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has been a concern in its camp ahead of the assembly polls scheduled later this year.
The Union government's move will boost the National Democratic Alliance's fortunes and may rally the traditional support base of numerous smaller backwards castes towards it.
Bihar carried and published its own caste census in 2023 during the JDU-RJD-Congress government led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
Not just in Bihar, caste census is a key plank of the Congress-SP alliance in Uttar Pradesh, a state with some similarity to Bihar in terms of the influence of OBC voters. In UP, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance met with a setback in the Lok Sabha polls, with the rival INDIA bloc winning most of the seats.
The Samajwadi Party's PDA (Pichchda, Dalit, Alpsankhyak) narrative was said to have cornered the BJP in the 2024 general election.
"The decision of the caste census is a 100% victory of the unity of 90% PDA. Due to the combined pressure of all of us, the BJP government has been forced to take this decision. This is a very important phase of PDA's victory in the fight for social justice," SP chief Akhilesh Yadav wrote in X.
Clearly, with the announcement, the BJP has mitigated the Congress party's recent build-up on caste; however, it does not leave the opposition without a plank.
"An announcement of a caste census doesn't mean anything. To me, it is high on optics and political rhetoric. We need to wait for numbers to come out and see how parties weaponise them to seek quotas and sub-quotas in jobs and education proportional to caste representation,' author and political commentator, Rasheed Kidwai, said.
The decision of the caste census is a 100% victory of the unity of 90% PDA.
As the Modi government and Congress-led opposition trade barbs over credit, the run-up to the Bihar Assembly election is set to witness intense political churn around caste dynamics in India
First Published: 1 May 2025, 07:48 AM IST