Communalisation of census, aided by political parties

Statistical comparisons between states ruled by secular and non-secular parties played an important role in the 2014 Lok Sabha election campaigns. The BJP’s Dr Harsh Vardhan, for instance, claimed that Gujarati Muslims were better off than Muslims in other states. He argued that the Congress took “the anti-national step of suppressing census figures” because the party was “ashamed to admit its failure to take the Muslims out of deep poverty.”

Vardhan added that data was necessary to design better policies for Muslims. His party’s manifesto promised to overhaul the government’s statistical machinery. But more than a year after the BJP came to power, we are still waiting for the census data on religion that was collected half a decade ago. This delay allows communal propaganda to thrive.

Some among Muslims claim that the government deliberately undercounts their population to project India as a Hindu-majority country. Their Hindu counterparts claim that the government diverts attention away from the fact that the higher growth rate of Muslim population threatens to alter India’s Hindu character. They argue that the teachings of Islam, illegal immigration from Bangladesh, and forcible conversion rather than socio-economic deprivation explain the higher growth rate of Muslim population.

Our governments, however, are in no hurry to release demographic statistics about religion. The 2001 Census was conducted under the NDA. But the religion data were released after the 2004 elections by UPA-I. The NDA’s reluctance can be explained by the BJP’s Hindu nationalist commitments. Given the relatively higher growth rate of Muslims, the increase in the population share of Muslims was inevitable.

So, if the NDA government had released the census data, it would have validated the BJP’s concerns about the Islamic demographic threat and compelled the party to explain the steps the government would undertake to address the “problem.” Later, when UPA-I released the data, the BJP promptly published a compilation of articles to expose the hypocrisy of secular parties that overlooked the threat posed by the higher growth rate of Muslims!

Likewise, the compulsions of the Modi government, which always seems to be in election mode, are understandable as the Sangh Parivar has revived the demographic controversy. But it is not clear why UPA-II, which swore by the Sachar Committee Report that statistically documented the Muslim community’s development deficit, did not release the religion data collected during the 2011 Census.

Our governments spend enormous amounts – Rs 1,200 and Rs 2,200 crores on 2001 and 2011 censuses, respectively – to collect data that they do not intend to release or use. Lord Keynes had once observed that “[t]here is nothing a government hates more than to be well-informed; for it makes the process of arriving at decisions much more complicated and difficult.” But the delay in the publication of religion data in India reflects a deeper problem.

It should be treated as an indicator of both the growing political interference with government’s statistical machinery and, possibly, also the deepening communal crisis. Strife-torn Lebanon presents an extreme case of politicisation of census. The Lebanese government did not conduct a proper census for decades in order to preserve the delicate sectarian political arrangement forged during the colonial period. Other ethnically-divided countries such as Pakistan, Nigeria, and Myanmar have also found it difficult to regularly conduct censuses.

The Hindu-Muslim statistical conflict in India has a long history. Muslims have feared the Hindu majority since the late 19th century, whereas the Hindu fear of the fecund Muslim goes back to the first decade of the 20th Century. Interestingly, the same data that convinced Muslims that they were at the mercy of an unassailable Hindu majority, also convinced Hindus that they were a dwindling community soon to be eclipsed by the Muslims.

Inflated headcounts
In the 1941 Census, communities inflated their headcounts in Punjab and Bengal to secure a favourable partition of territory. Eastern India also witnessed struggle over the religious identity of tribes. After independence, Punjab witnessed a protracted Hindu-Sikh power struggle disguised as Punjabi-Hindi language conflict. The Kashmir Valley continues to be unprepared to accept any headcount that affects the Muslim majority status of Jammu and Kashmir or weakens the electoral dominance of Kashmiri Muslims in the state legislative assembly. Assamese (Hindus) have similar concerns vis-à-vis (Muslim) Bengalis.

When we look back at the past century and a half, a few events that deeply politicised the census stand out. The introduction of communal electorates and the communal partition of Bengal (1900s) made people conscious of the political significance of demographic statistics. The communal partition of India (1940s) and mass sterilisation during Emergency (1970s) are the other landmarks.

The lingering impact of the Emergency can be gauged from the fact that in parts of North India, Muslims continue to reject (polio) vaccination, which is viewed as a conspiracy to sterilise their children. The ongoing debate on extending the benefits of reservation to Dalit Christians and Muslims is likely to further politicise the census.

Unfortunately, information technology and advanced statistical tools cannot resolve problems that have roots in a divisive political culture. Information is produced and consumed within a larger ecosystem that includes both the government and people.

Strengthening the autonomy of government bodies that produce information though essential is not sufficient for addressing the trust deficit that vitiates government data.
Other government bodies such as the Information Commission that contribute to transparency in the public sector need to be strengthened and the participation of non-governmental stakeholders needs to be encouraged both during data collection (as was successfully done in the 2011 Nagaland Census) and dissemination.

(The writer teaches economics at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru)