The case for and towards counting castes in India

[ad_1] Soutik Biswas India correspondent

<img sizes="(min-width: 1280px) 50vw, (min-width: 1008px) 66vw, 96vw" srcset="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/240/cpsprodpb/e838/live/e7beb310-b967-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp 240w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/320/cpsprodpb/e838/live/e7beb310-b967-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp 320w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/e838/live/e7beb310-b967-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp 480w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/e838/live/e7beb310-b967-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp 640w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/e838/live/e7beb310-b967-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp 800w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/e838/live/e7beb310-b967-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp 1024w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/e838/live/e7beb310-b967-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp 1536w" src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/e838/live/e7beb310-b967-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp" loading="eager" alt="Praful Gangurde/Hindustan Times via Getty Images Members of the Banjara community from across Maharashtra gathered in Thane on Saturday to press their key demands implementation of the Hyderabad Gazette and inclusion of the community in the Scheduled Tribes (ST) category to secure reservation benefits, on October 4, 2025 in Mumbai, India. Thousands of community members participated in the morcha, raising slogans as they marched through major roads of the city before reaching the District Collector's office. The protesters urged the government to take an immediate and positive decision to ensure justice for the Banjara community. (Photo by Praful Gangurde/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)" class="sc-5340b511-0 hLdNfA"/> Praful Gangurde/Hindustan Instances by way of Getty Pictures Members of India's Banjara group demand reservation advantages in Mumbai

Counting castes in India has all the time been about greater than numbers - it's about who will get a share of presidency advantages and who would not.

The nation's subsequent nationwide census, scheduled for 2027, will - for the primary time in practically a century - rely each caste, a social hierarchy that has lengthy outlived kingdoms, empires and ideologies. The transfer ends a long time of political hesitation and follows stress from opposition events and no less than three states which have already gone forward with their very own surveys.

A 2011 survey - neither run nor verified by census authorities or launched by the federal government - recorded an astonishing 4.6 million caste names.

A full rely of castes guarantees a sharper image of who really advantages from affirmative motion and who's left behind. Advocates say it may make welfare spending extra focused and assist recalibrate quotas in jobs and schooling with laborious proof.

But in a provocative new e book, The Caste Con Census, scholar-activist Anand Teltumbde warns that the train could harden the deeply discriminatory caste system, when the necessity is to dismantle it.

The argument cuts towards the prevailing view that higher knowledge will produce fairer coverage. For Mr Teltumbde, castes are "too pernicious to be managed for any progressive objective".

"Caste is, at its core, a hierarchy looking for impulse that defies measurement," he writes.

Mr Teltumbde sees the fashionable caste census as a colonial echo.

British directors started counting castes in 1871 as a "deliberate response to the post-1857 unity of Indians throughout caste and faith", turning it into an "efficient device of imperial management". They held six caste censuses between 1871 and 1931 - the final full caste enumeration in India.

Every rely, Mr Teltumbde argues, "didn't merely file caste, however reified and hardened it".

Unbiased India, in Mr Teltumbde's studying, preserved the system underneath the ethical banner of social justice, "whereas successfully evading its core obligation of constructing the capacities of all folks, which is a prerequisite for the success of any real social justice coverage".

The obsession with counting, he says, bureaucratises inequality. By turning caste right into a ledger of entitlements and grievances, the census reduces politics to arithmetic - who will get how a lot - relatively than addressing what Mr Teltumbde calls the "structure of social injustice".

He sees the demand for a caste census as a push for extra reservations - a trigger pushed by an "upwardly cellular minority", whereas the bulk slips into deprivation and dependence on state support. Practically 800 million Indians, he notes, now depend on free rations.

<img sizes="(min-width: 1280px) 50vw, (min-width: 1008px) 66vw, 96vw" srcset="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/240/cpsprodpb/42d8/live/dd23b400-b967-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp 240w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/320/cpsprodpb/42d8/live/dd23b400-b967-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp 320w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/42d8/live/dd23b400-b967-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp 480w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/42d8/live/dd23b400-b967-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp 640w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/42d8/live/dd23b400-b967-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp 800w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/42d8/live/dd23b400-b967-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp 1024w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/42d8/live/dd23b400-b967-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp 1536w" src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/42d8/live/dd23b400-b967-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp" loading="lazy" alt="Fairfax Media via Getty Images CHANDGRAH, INDIA - AUGUST 24: An example of the receipt given to participants in the caste census in India. The last caste census was held by British colonial authorities in 1931. (Photo by Kate Geraghty/The Sydney Morning Herald/Fairfax Media via Getty Images via Getty Images)." class="sc-5340b511-0 hLdNfA"/> Fairfax Media by way of Getty Pictures A 2011 unreleased survey recorded an astonishing 4.6 million caste names in India

Affirmative motion quotas have been first reserved for Dalits - previously referred to as untouchables - and Adivasis (tribespeople), India's most oppressed teams. However quickly, the much less deprived "different backward lessons" (OBCs) started clamouring for a share of the pie. Politics rapidly coalesced round calls for for brand new or larger caste-based quotas.

Mr Teltumbde's deeper fear is that enumeration legitimises what it measures. Political events, he warns, will exploit the information to redraw quotas or convert caste resentment into electoral capital.

For Mr Teltumbde, the one rational politics is one in every of "annihilation of caste", not its administration - echoing what BR Ambedkar, the architect of India's structure, argued when he mentioned that caste can't be reformed, it "have to be destroyed".

However in an India the place even its victims "see worth in its preservation", that purpose feels utopian, the creator admits. The looming caste census, Mr Teltumbde argues, is not going to expose inequality however entrench it.

Many students do not fairly agree, seeing the census as a mandatory device for attaining social justice.

Sociologist Satish Deshpande and economist Mary E John name the choice to not rely castes "one in every of impartial India's largest errors".

At present, they be aware in a paper, caste has come to be seen because the burden solely of India's decrease castes - Dalits and Adivasis - who should always show their identification by way of official labels.

What's wanted, they write, is "a fuller, extra inclusive image the place everybody should reply the query of their caste". This is not an "endorsement of an unequal system", they stress, however a recognition that "there isn't a caste disprivilege with no corresponding privilege accruing to another caste".

In different phrases, the shortage of dependable caste knowledge obscures each privilege and deprivation.

Sociologist and demographer Sonalde Desai informed me that with no recent caste census, India's affirmative motion insurance policies function "blindly", counting on outdated colonial knowledge.

"If surveys and censuses may form social actuality, we might not want social insurance policies. We may merely begin asking questions on home violence to disgrace folks into refraining from wife-beating. Now we have not requested any questions within the census about caste since 1931. Has it eradicated caste equations?" she asks.

<img sizes="(min-width: 1280px) 50vw, (min-width: 1008px) 66vw, 96vw" srcset="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/240/cpsprodpb/99e5/live/25391280-b968-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp 240w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/320/cpsprodpb/99e5/live/25391280-b968-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp 320w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/99e5/live/25391280-b968-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp 480w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/99e5/live/25391280-b968-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp 640w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/99e5/live/25391280-b968-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp 800w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/99e5/live/25391280-b968-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp 1024w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/99e5/live/25391280-b968-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp 1536w" src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/99e5/live/25391280-b968-11f0-8ece-6904e2149bdb.jpg.webp" loading="lazy" alt="AFP via Getty Images Indian activists holds portraits of 20th century Indian social reformer B. R. Ambedkar while shouting slogans during a protest against a Supreme Court order that allegedly diluted the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act in Kolkata on April 4, 2018. Street battles and widespread protests by Indian 'low-caste' groups enraged by what they consider the undermining of a law protecting their safety left at least one dead, police said. Clashes with police, attacks on buses and government buildings, blocked trains and roads were reported across five Indian states. / AFP PHOTO / Dibyangshu SARKAR (Photo credit should read DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP via Getty Images)" class="sc-5340b511-0 hLdNfA"/> AFP by way of Getty Pictures BR Ambedkar, architect of India's structure, argued that caste have to be destroyed

Political scientist Sudha Pai, nonetheless, broadly agrees with Mr Teltumbde's critique that counting castes can solidify identities and distract from deeper inequalities based mostly on "land, schooling, energy and dignity".

But she acknowledges that caste has already been politicised by way of welfare and electoral methods, making a caste census inevitable.

"A caste census could be helpful if the earnings ranges inside every caste group are collected. The federal government may then use the information collected to establish inside every caste the wants of the really needy and supply them the required advantages and alternatives, reminiscent of schooling and jobs for upward mobility," Dr Pai says.

"This is able to require transferring away from merely utilizing caste because the parameter for redistribution of obtainable sources, to make use of of each caste and earnings ranges in policymaking."

Dr Pai argues that if executed "thoughtfully" - linking caste knowledge to earnings and academic indicators - it may shift India from a "caste-based to a rights-based welfare system".

But, students warn that counting castes and deciphering the information will likely be fraught with challenges.

"It will not be painless. India has modified tremendously within the century since 1931. Castes that have been designated as being poor and susceptible could have moved out of poverty, some new vulnerabilities could have emerged. So if we're to have interaction on this train truthfully, it can't be executed with out reshuffling the teams which might be eligible for advantages," says Professor Desai.

One other problem lies in knowledge assortment - castes have many subgroups, elevating questions on the best degree of classification. Sub-categorisation goals to divide broader caste teams into smaller ones so probably the most deprived amongst them obtain a fair proportion of quotas and advantages.

"Castes are usually not product of a single layer. There are a lot of subgroups inside a single caste. What degree of aggregation ought to be used? How will the respondents in a census reply to this query? This requires substantial experimentation. I don't imagine this has but been executed," says Prof Desai.

Mr Teltumbde stays unconvinced. He argues that countless enumeration can't treatment a system constructed on hierarchy.

"You'll be counting all of your life and nonetheless not remedy the caste downside. So what will likely be using that counting?," he wonders. "I'm not towards affirmative motion, however this isn't the way in which to do it."