Opinion Can Mandal and Kamandal go together? The logic behind caste census announcement

While the caste census apparently contradicts the Hindutva common sense, conveyed by slogans such as “batenge to katenge”, the logistical and methodological complexities involved in the entire exercise could offer enough manoeuvring space to Hindutva politics. Caste is not akin to gender or age, about which information can be collected with relative ease and certainty. The fluidity of caste identity is manifested by the multiplicity of caste labels, their context-specific usage and the lack of clarity about the defining features of caste as a social formation. The Socio-economic Caste Census, 2011, threw up 46 lakh caste names, many of which were either overlapping or unidentifiable with caste identity. This ruled out the possibility of classifying and categorising them.

Hence, the caste census is not a passive exercise of data collection. It involves reordering our social world through the creation of categories for making sense of an enormous amount of disparate data. The colonial census had played a pivotal role in converting the previously fuzzy caste and religious identities into the ossified enumerated identities. Therefore, the proposed Census will not only gather social facts about caste but will also actively intervene in the social process of making people discover their sense of self and the notion of a social map. In the absence of national-level caste enumeration, opposition-ruled state governments like Telangana and Karnataka conducted caste surveys. Therefore, it makes political sense for the central government to invalidate the rationale of such surveys by announcing a more comprehensive national-level caste census.

Potentially, a caste census can also bring some political advantages to the BJP. For instance, it might help the BJP’s ongoing outreach towards the non-dominant OBCs and smaller Dalit communities through the implementation of sub-quota, as dominant OBC and SC communities mostly remain consolidated behind the traditional social justice parties. The unpublished report of the Rohini Commission, appointed to design sub-categories within the larger group of OBCs, has reportedly revealed that a few dominant groups within the OBCs have managed to secure a lion’s share of the quota, depriving smaller groups. Furthermore, the inclusion of the Pasmanda Muslims in the central OBC list is also a possibility that may fragment the Muslim votes. Alternatively, incorporation in the central OBC list of new intermediate castes, which are not included in existing state lists, can fuel a campaign that “deserving” Hindu castes have been denied their share of quota to favour Muslims. The Mahishyas in West Bengal constitute one such caste, whom the BJP portrays as the victims of Muslim “appeasement”. Lastly, the announcement of the caste census will puncture a hole in the opposition’s allegation about the BJP’s plan to change the constitution and to do away with reservation.

However, the caste census might also present a host of new challenges for the BJP, such as upper caste backlash, perception about ideological dilution among its core voters and disillusionment among the new generation of aspirational youth willing to embrace meritocracy. But at the moment, caste census appears to be a necessary evil that the party has to swallow. However, to understand the political significance of the caste Census, the presumption of an inherent and inevitable incompatibility between the politics of Mandal and Kamandal must be abandoned.

The writer is a British Academy International Fellow, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex