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It has been almost a century since a comprehensive census of all castes in India was compiled. The 1931 census records the most authoritative and official figures on the country's caste diversity. Although caste data was also collected in the 1941 census, it was not published in the context of World War II. In post-independence censuses, questions on caste were only perfunctory. Although data on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes were collected, governments were reluctant to bring out a comprehensive picture of the entire caste and social structure of the country through official censuses. This was clearly based on the wrong approach that emerged from the upper caste mind-set that counting people by caste would increase caste consciousness. However, avoiding enumeration of castes did not only not lead to disappearance of caste but the upper caste continued to dominate in education, employment, land ownership, wealth, power and political representation. Hence the oft-raised demand for a comprehensive caste census during every census.
This time, the demand has developed into a more powerful political slogan for several reasons. The clamour created a huge stir inside and outside Parliament which put the central government led by Narendra Modi under real pressure when the process of conducting a special caste census was initiated in a few opposition states. That is how on April 30, 2025, the Political Affairs Committee of the Union Cabinet announced that caste enumeration would be included in the ongoing census. However, the trap in that announcement came to light when the central government notified 40 questions for data collection a few days ago, ahead of the country moving to the personal census after the housing census. Although caste has been included in the census questionnaire, the government has adopted an approach in this census that undermines the ultimate objectives of the caste census. It is true that the current census asks caste just for the sake of it as an open-ended question. As such, caste is counted; but how it is counted is also relevant. The instruction is not to provide the enumerators with a drop-down list of different castes and sub-castes in each state, but to ask citizens their caste and record whatever they say. The problem here is that the same social category may be known by different names in each state. Caste in some places may be the name of a sub-caste in other areas; it may be a family name in yet another state. As languages and scripts change, the same name may have different pronunciations. It is extremely complex to later consolidate the information obtained from more than 1.4 billion people and convert it into reliable social statistics.
This was realized by the country in the 2011 Socio-Economic-Caste Census itself. When caste-names were entered in that manner, 47 lakh different caste names and variations were came to be listed. With different names of the same caste, sub-castes, local names, spelling variations, family names, etc. coming as separate entries, categorizing the data itself became a huge task. Finally, comprehensive caste information was not officially published. Obviously the same disaster is going to be repeated this time too. That is why the opposition parties who demanded a caste census have come out with protests after the notification was issued. The Congress has described the current procedures as intriguing – an adjective not to be dismissed.
In fact, this is a matter that can be solved easily. If the individual census first records the categories like SC, ST, OBC, General etc., then a system of selecting caste from the official list of the respective states can be adopted and thereby an accurate count is possible. Or, a comprehensive caste census is possible with slight changes in the current questionnaire. However, the fact is that our government is not interested in it. And the reason for this is clear: a scientific and comprehensive caste census will reveal how opportunities, resources and power are distributed among the various social groups in the country. A social map of this kind would be intolerable for a government that bears the ideology of Hindutva for many reasons. The reason is that the driving force behind Hindutva’s hysterical politics is often the Muslim ‘population explosion’ and anti-reservation politics. It is because it is certain that these two conspiracy theories will be shattered by the caste census that the Modi government has in effect frozen the demand for a caste census by manipulating the notification. There ought to be a strong resistance against this secret plan to keep on the margins the backward and minority social groups of the country, who for decades have been denied their share in power and opportunities in governance and land resources.