Caste census: Surveyors today are likely to face the same problems British enumerators did
The colonial administration struggled to make sense of shifting and fluid caste identities, occupations and even tried listing castes alphabetically.
For months, the idea of conducting a nationwide caste census has taken centrestage in political discussions. In January, Telangana became the latest state to announce a caste survey after Karnataka and Bihar. The exercise of counting Indians by caste is expected to provide a clear picture of the country’s social hierarchy and offer a robust framework to conceptualise social justice programmes and allocate resources for them.
As many have noted, the British colonial administration had also had attempted to capture the intricacies of caste in Indian society in decennial censuses starting from 1871-’72. This continued until the 1931 census. The colonial administration believed that caste, as the essence of Indian society, was the key to unlocking what it felt was the true knowledge about India.
After Independence, however, census officials stopped collecting caste data, except in the case of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, fearing this could accentuate caste faultlines and caste consciousness. Then, in 1980, the Mandal Commission report recommended that apart from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, an umbrella category of caste groups under the Other Backward Classes should also be provided reservations. The report was based on the 1931 census.
More than 30 years later, it is difficult to pursue affirmative action...
