Modi’s U-Turn on Caste Census
Divisive count could show upper castes’ stranglehold on privileged positions
By: Nirupama Subramaniam
On April 30, as India waited to see how the BJP-led Hindu nationalist government would respond to the terrorist attack eight days earlier in Jammu & Kashmir in which 25 tourists and a guide were killed, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stunned both his constituents and his opponents by announcing a U-turn. His government, in a reversal of the BJP's long-held policy, would hold a caste census.
Caste is an important marker of Hindu social identity, a system that determines social status at birth. Education, professional achievements, and wealth make little difference to this ascribed status. Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaisya, and Sudra are the four main castes. The first three are “upper castes,” while the last is a “low caste.” Within each category exist thousands of subcastes, differing by region. Outside this hierarchy are the “outcasts” or “untouchables,” known as “Scheduled Castes” in constitutional and official parlance, but whose preferred self-identification is Dalit, which means oppressed. Nor are Indian Muslims and Christians free of caste.
The practice of holding a once-a-decade country-wide population count, including caste enumeration, began in 1881 in British-ruled India, with the last published census in British India in 1931. Independent India decided that caste details would not be enumerated, believing that the system would lose its relevance with modernity. The opposite happened. Caste identities are stronger than ever, as India's vast numbers have found it easier to battle for education and employment opportunities as caste groups rather than as individuals. Political representation is key to such assertion, so caste- based political parties are also a feature of Indian politics.
Defying sociological predictions that increasing migration from villages to the cities would lead to intermixing of castes and the gradual falling away of caste taboos, regressive caste practices such as the prohibition of inter-caste marriages and eating taboos have gained traction in the 21st century. Violence against lower castes, particularly against women, and “honor” killings are a regular occurrence. Many workplaces – government and private – have coded practices that are discriminatory against lower castes and Dalits.
At first, the Constitution made provisions for affirmative action in education and government employment for Dalits, and indigenous people spread across the country, recognizing them as historically oppressed groups. The Constitution describes them as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. These were the only two categories of caste groups to be enumerated from the first census after independence onward.
In the 1990s, another group of castes recognized as “socially and economically backward” and described officially as “other backward classes (OBC)”, including some non-Hindu communities, were also included in the government's affirmative action policy. With a quota of 7 percent for members of tribes, 12.5 percent for Dalits, and 22 percent for OBCs, the Supreme Court capped the affirmative action quota at 50 percent.
The demand for a caste census, particularly by the OBC, is decades old. In the 1970s, when they were enumerated as part of an earlier effort to extend quotas to them, they constituted over 50 percent.
Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition Congress party, was rooting for caste enumeration as part of the census since the time he went on his Bharat Jodo Yatra, his 2022-2023 walking tour across the length of India. In the 2024 election, the party promised to carry out a socio-economic and caste census if voted to power, to enumerate all the castes and sub-castes. Gandhi said such an enumeration was necessary as “90 percent of people are sitting outside the system, they have skills and knowledge but they don’t have access [to jobs]”.
Enumerating castes could determine which specific castes or sub-castes have cornered the largest share of the quotas even within the SC and OBC, and which ones continue to get left out. Gandhi said that a caste census was “the foundation for policy making”.
Under pressure from caste-based parties that were part of the ruling coalition, the previous Congress-led UPA government did carry out an enumeration in 2011, not as part of the main census but as a separate “socio-economic caste census.” But the question about caste in the survey was so poorly framed that enumerators counted millions of castes, rendering the exercise unusable. The results were not published or made public.
Modi effectively took Gandhi's promise out of his hands and announced it as his policy in the middle of a national crisis and months ahead of the state assembly election in Bihar in eastern India, the country's most populous state after Uttar Pradesh, and in terms of its social and economic parameters, the worst performing. The election is due in November.
It was an astonishing reversal of a long-held opposition by the BJP and its ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. They have always seen a caste census as dividing Hindus, something that would pit them against each other over economic issues and hinder the larger project of building a Hindu nation. When the OBC reservation was introduced in 1990, it was seen as a clever political ploy to blunt the BJP's violent nationwide campaign, then underway, for a Ram temple at Ayodhya, which was aimed at consolidating Hindus and pushing Muslims to the side.
The leadership of the party, mostly drawn from the higher castes, hates the idea of a caste census, as this is sure to show up in raw numbers an unpalatable truth. Contrary to the claims of members of higher castes that most government employment and places in educational institutions were being given away to “undeserving,” “non-merit,” “reservation categories,” they still dominate both. The numbers would increase demands from lower castes for higher quotas.
States are empowered to do their own caste “surveys” though these do not carry the same authority as a national census. Bihar, which has seen three decades of political mobilization around the idea of social justice as a response to historic caste oppression, carried out one in 2023, much against the wishes of the Modi government. The results showed an increase in the OBC population and a clear link between poverty, Scheduled Castes, and OBC. Members of the “general category” the official term for upper castes, had the highest share of government jobs and the highest number of college graduates. Telangana state, held by the Congress, conducted its own caste count, arriving at similar conclusions.
Modi's U-turn angered sections of his vast following. But the decision came from the realization that the BJP must shed its image as a party of and for upper castes. That image has persisted even though the party's election-winning machinery has worked overtime to woo Dalits, backward castes, and lower caste Muslims. Modi himself belongs to an OBC community.
In the campaign for the 2024 election, Gandhi had warned that the BJP would amend the Constitution to abolish quotas, a charge that seemed to stick, losing the party seats in Uttar Pradesh. In Bihar, where OBC coalitions have held the key to winning elections and forming governments, the BJP will now hope to own these castes, cutting its dependence on troublesome alliances with caste leaders.
The government has announced that a caste count would be included in the next census. A census was due in 2021, but was postponed due to the COVID pandemic. No new date has been fixed for it yet.
Modi may have also taken the gamble that he has earned enough Hindu goodwill from an earlier decision targeting Muslim organizations, known as Waqf Boards, established by an Act of parliament to administer endowment, mainly land, dedicated by wealthy members of the community to Allah and used to set up schools, hospitals, mosques or other entities that serve the community. The Modi government amended the Act to give itself a larger role in the management of the Boards, including the appointment of non-Muslims, sparking protests nationwide. The government's stand is that the Boards have become land grabbers. The Supreme Court is hearing challenges to the changes.
The Modi government's May 7 military strikes inside Pakistan in response to the Kashmir terrorist attack have also helped consolidate Hindus behind his leadership, though there is disappointment too that he agreed to a ceasefire at the apparent insistence of US President Donald Trump.