Opinion The caste that doesn't want to be counted

Indian Express

06-05-2025

In a village on the outskirts of Kaliyaganj, near the Bangladesh border in West Bengal's Uttar Dinajpur district, I once sat with Robin, a retired schoolteacher and former census enumerator. 'I didn't mark anyone as Paliya. I counted their names as Rajbanshi. No one should remain Paliya,' he told me. This wasn't done with the intention to deceive, but out of a sense of duty. As if he was righting some historical wrong — removing a 'slur', read as a caste name that carries social stigma.
This encounter unveiled a dilemma around caste counting: People's yearning for dignity, individuals negotiating stigma, and the state machinery that both conceals and discloses caste. Amidst the move for a national caste census, my ethnographic experience made me ask: What happens when the state counts caste, but a caste does not want to name itself?
The decline of a community
The Paliya community, officially listed among West Bengal's 61 Scheduled Castes (SCs), is facing statistical erasure. Census data reveals a sharp decline in their recorded population: From 1.33 million in 1991, to 1.31 million in 2001, and then a steep fall to 1.01 million by 2011.
This isn't a demographic accident. It's the outcome of reshaping identity, everyday acts of concealment, renaming, and reclassification. In many villages across Uttar and Dakshin Dinajpur, Paliyas now call themselves Rajbanshi or Kshatriya — names that offer recognition and less stigma.
Chitra, a retired teacher and social activist, told me, 'We have to be cultured. Those who still call themselves Paliya don't know about our heroes, our history, or Panchanan Barma.' He added, 'If past generations didn't know, will we continue to remain ignorant and call ourselves Paliyas?'
Much of this 'identity work' is driven by stigma. The term 'Paliya' is linked with notions of impurity, 'untouchability', and foreignness. Colonial ethnographers and Hindu scriptures have both framed Paliyas as 'depressed', 'pisacha', or 'kuvacha' — beings with demonic tongues and impure habits. Contemporary stereotypes often paint them as a community of 'quarrelsome women', 'pork-eating men', or 'unclean' migrants.
These labels are not abstract, they shape the everyday life of the community. Many Paliyas adopt surnames like Ray or Sarkar, participate in sacred thread ceremonies, and seek blessings from Brahmin priests — all to symbolically affirm their Kshatriya status. During census years, they change not only their self-perception, but official identities on documents that influence policy and representation.
Enumerators as agents of erasure
The story becomes complicated as many Paliyas often serve as census enumerators. Robin wasn't alone. Jitu, another resident, confided he had two caste certificates — one saying Paliya and the other Rajbanshi. 'It doesn't feel good to hear 'Paliya',' he said. 'So I thought, let it be Rajbanshi.'
Field interviews with an enumerator, now a retired schoolteacher, from the Desia/Rajbanshi community corroborated this pattern. He insisted: 'We must write what people tell us. But in this area, everyone says Rajbanshi. Only one in a thousand says Paliya. So that's what we write.'
Thus, a complex circuit of silence emerges, where individuals avoid naming themselves, and the state stops asking. Stigma creates denial. Denial feeds erasure.
Misalignment — A tactic?
This isn't just confusion. It's a politics of misalignment — the widening gap between lived caste realities and official categories. The stigmatised misreport caste to escape caste. Misalignment becomes a survival strategy.
But this misalignment is uneven. Those with bureaucratic savvy or political networks can successfully 'pass' as Rajbanshi or Kshatriya. Others — without certificates or rituals of concealment — remain marked. Ironically, they're stigmatised for failing to escape stigma.
As one elderly resident explained, 'The Babu Paliyas can eat everything — even pigs. But we are Sadhu Paliyas. We are clean. We are Barman.' These internal hierarchies — Matal, Sadhu, Desi — reveal how stigma is not erased but percolates within the community itself.
This is not new. In colonial times, Rajbanshi leaders distanced themselves from 'semi-Hindu' Paliyas or Koches in their campaign for Kshatriya status. The postcolonial state grouped Koch, Rajbanshi, and Paliya under three broad SC categories, quietly allowing realignments through electoral, welfare and symbolic rewards.
Can the census see stigma?
A caste census, in theory, promises to rectify these gaps by producing accurate data to inform policy, redress injustice, and ensure representation. But in Bengal, where caste is seen as a 'non-issue,' this promise is fragile.
Enumeration cannot work when shame, concealment, and fiction shape self-presentation. It cannot capture caste when people, understandably, lie to escape it, and when enumerators are not trained to handle caste sensitivity. The result is a statistical picture that hides more than it reveals. Data cannot produce justice when visibility invites ridicule and silence offers safety.
Moreover, the state's own actions have muddied the waters. By failing to address sub-caste realities, refusing public engagement with caste stigma, and using umbrella categories, the state has institutionalised misalignment, mirroring colonial-Brahmanical mislabelling.
This has larger implications in times of increasing digitalisation, where this data becomes the basis of decision-making. Digital tools, built on such flawed inputs, amplify these gaps unless we push for a census that captures caste's complexity — its social, behavioural, ethnic, historical, emotional, and linguistic aspects shaping every facet of life.
Toward a just enumeration
Where do we go from here? First, we must reject the myth that Bengal is casteless. Silence signals not absence but internalised stigma. Second, caste must be treated not as a static data point but as lived experience, marked by improvisation, concealment, and pain. A just caste census must listen like an ethnographer, document like a historian, and critique its own categories. Finally, enumeration must be accountable. Forms, classification processes, and enumerator training should be open to public scrutiny.
Names like 'Paliya' are not just labels. They are wounds — and also acts of survival, dignity, and resistance. A just census must see without shaming, count without erasing, and recognise without punishing. For the Paliyas of Bengal — and many others — it may be the only way to be seen at all.