02-05-2025
Opinion Caste census is not mere data collection — it will reshape social identities
The recent decision by the NDA government to reintroduce caste enumeration in the Census marks a significant shift in India's approach to identity politics and social equity. Post-Independence, the Indian state restricted caste-based data collection to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, adhering to constitutional mandates for affirmative action. The move away from counting caste was an attempt to distance itself from colonial statecraft. The mainstream political leadership believed that the colonial state had weaponised caste categorisation to institutionalise social fragmentation. It is precisely for this reason that early policymakers sought to dismantle this legacy by suppressing caste consciousness in public discourse.
Yet, even during those formative years, dissenting voices such as Panjabrao Deshmukh, India's first agriculture minister, consistently emphasised the necessity of documenting all castes in the census to confront systemic inequalities. Ultimately, however, the idealistic vision of a unified nation envisioned by Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhai Patel prevailed, and information on caste was excluded from the Census data. Paradoxically, the government mandated the gathering of language and religious demographics, which have themselves fuelled enduring conflicts.
The colonial Census, as historians have noted, was a double-edged sword. It seemed to have exacerbated Hindu-Muslim divides through communal categorisation and aggravated religious conflicts. On the other hand, it profoundly reshaped caste identities, transforming fluid social hierarchies into rigid administrative classifications. Scholarly critiques emphasise how colonial enumeration compartmentalised communities into enumerated boxes. Furthermore, it resulted in hardening religious and caste boundaries, laying the groundwork for divisive politics. However, what has been largely ignored is how this process inadvertently democratised political culture and expanded debates about political representation. For instance, marginalised groups leveraged Census data to demand equitable shares in resources and political rights. However, to attribute India's enduring caste inequities solely to colonial interventions risks obscuring a more profound truth. That is, caste hierarchies, codified over millennia through Brahminical norms and material dispossession, predate and outlast colonial rule. The push for caste enumeration today, then, must be understood as more than a bureaucratic exercise. It is a reckoning with both colonial legacies and deeper historical inequalities based on caste. By exposing disparities in land ownership, education, and employment, a caste census could dismantle the myth of a 'post-caste' India. It has the potential to empower marginalised voices to challenge systemic exclusion.
Over the past seven decades, the absence of official caste data in the census has done little to erode its influence. Instead, caste has entrenched itself through informal yet potent channels. Caste associations have proliferated in urban areas to cater to the needs of their community members, such as matrimonial alliances and furthering religious and cultural practices. Further, these associations have also mobilised their communities to gain political clout and access to state patronage. At times, caste associations have taken violent forms, as seen in Bihar's Ranveer Sena, a group representing landed upper-caste interests. Political parties, irrespective of ideology, have meticulously mapped caste demographics to craft electoral strategies, distribute tickets, and cultivate patronage networks.
Dominant castes have leveraged their numerical strength to corner a larger share of political power. They have utilised their position to corner a larger share of state resources. For instance, the Marathas, Jats, and Patidars have evolved into regionally influential capitalist blocs. These groups now control agrarian capital as well as the real estate sector. Interestingly, the economically weaker sections within these dominant castes have been at the forefront in demanding exclusive quotas in higher education and public employment. These claims, however, failed to stand judicial scrutiny due to a glaring absence of empirical evidence proving social and educational backwardness.
The case of Maharashtra's Maratha community epitomises the fluidity and strategic manipulation of caste identity in pursuit of political and economic advantage. In recent years, the state government attempted to institutionalise Marathas' backwardness to justify separate reservation quotas. However, the Supreme Court struck down these quotas because of a lack of empirical evidence. Undeterred, Marathas have argued that the Marathas and the Kunbi caste are similar. They claimed that, as the Kunbis — historically an agrarian community — are classified as Other Backward Classes (OBC), Marathas should also benefit from the reservation. Despite the opposition from the Kunbi community and OBC groups, the Maharashtra government issued Kunbi certificates to Marathas in the Marathwada region. These developments starkly contrast the 1931 colonial Census, when Maratha-Kunbi elites encouraged Kunbis to self-identify as Marathas. These instances underscore that censuses are not neutral exercises in data collection but contested arenas where identities are actively reshaped. It also exposes the paradox of caste enumeration. While it risks entrenching divisions, its absence allows dominant groups to exploit ambiguities and perpetuate inequity under the guise of formal equality. Therefore, data on castes in the Census would provide an evidentiary foundation to confront castes not as a relic of the past but as a living structure of power, which demands targeted redressal and not erasure through silence.
