Cast(e) this idea away

It is Census time, and the contentious question to count castes or not has once again reprised itself in political discourse. Understanding contemporary developments, especially those fraught with potential divisions, is a challenge and therefore open to interpretations. The idea of counting castes is, arguably, more self-defeating than might first be supposed by its proponents or opponents alike. The ayes advocating it as a realistic effort to restructure State power, and the nay-sayers dismissing it as a demand driven by expediency rather than justice appear in equal measure to have reflected more on assumptions than its real-world implications.

Every Census in independent India — from 1951 to 2011 — has published data on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, but not on other castes. Hence the question: Is counting castes in the population a necessary condition in our quest for a progressive, equitable and democratic society?

What purpose does the Census serve? The Census operations are not intended to serve as a social justice initiative, but a serialised pan-Indian project. It is a direct survey of the population, in which the enumerators go to the people to collect data on the numbers and their attributes — gender, age, occupation, etc. The data collected can be compared across space-time, and the data fields in the questionnaires centre on consistency in the classification models. The Census data thus provides a representation of the features that characterise us as a country. It generates a collective picture, if you will, with empirical facts and figures of who we are as a national community, and thus offers us the opportunity to look at ourselves and how we are doing.

It is ironic but true that the idea of caste within the framework of State policy was the result of Census operations in colonial India. Even at that time, the introduction of caste in the Census raised complex problems of identification and classification, and the history of enumeration in the Census illustrates the difficulties of defining and classifying castes into one pan-India list.

Second, caste as a denominational identity is unique to India and determines power privileges, material resources, and access to opportunity. The Indian State, regardless of the government and its ideological underpinnings, has been characterised by power coalitions in which personal relationships — who one is, and who one knows — form the basis for social organisation. The neo-liberal policy thrust in India, for the privatisation of enterprises, education, and health has, if anything, reinforced the importance of caste ties. This de-facto nature of the Indian State has, over time, resulted in a limited access society and the absence of impersonal economic and social rights.

Caste today constitutes a major barrier to India transitioning from a traditional hierarchy-bound society to a modern democratic country. Yes, we have thus far failed to exorcise caste, but to cite our collective failure to eliminate caste inequality despite a caste-less Constitution does not constitute rational grounds for a caste census. In the everyday world, we need more anti-casteism, not less.

The Constitutional State — the foundations of which are enshrined in the Constitution — envisioning India as a casteless society, must remain the national aspiration. The Constitution does not legitimise a caste or religion-based governance. It, in fact, defines the normative boundaries for the political State. The Right to Equality — Articles 15(4) and 16(4) – do not refer to castes but classes. The political State and the political parties, on the other hand, thrive on caste-clientism. The solution to this is not undertaking a caste census, but to reform the electoral laws in the country to proscribe caste or community-based nominations in elections or caste-based appeals to voters.

In a democracy, certainly of the kind that has developed in India, this presents a serious challenge — the challenge to define the scope and the range of the public. In practice, where the public should end and the sphere of the private begin is a difficult question. The caste identity in private life must be a function of agency, and one is free to choose or reject caste-based practices; but that should not be a societal or State imposition in public life.

We need to bring alive the conception of justice enshrined in the Constitution towards a progressive, non-sectarian practice of justice; one that centres more on a secular, distributive justice for the contemporary communities facing disadvantage and vulnerability and less on righting past or historic wrongs. We have far graver injustices to address: human trafficking, oppression of women by patriarchy, and multi-dimensional poverty — of health, education, livelihood, nutrition — that are unconscionable, regardless of castes. Besides giving a headcount of castes, the caste census does nothing more. The evidence that the Census already generates on gender, literacy, life expectancy, occupation, and household assets provide the empirical basis to strive to achieve the transformative vision of the Constitution.

Though well and widely known, the principles that represent the foundations of the idea of India as enunciated in the Preamble to the Constitution need constant repetition such that we imbibe them in practice: Justice, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.

As we survey our society today, it remains one dominated by certain central human problems — questions of identity and belonging, inequality and deprivation, narrow ideologies, violence and extremism, and divisive politics – that, by virtue of our humanity, ought to nudge all of us to advance scientific humanism. Ironically, as individuals and communities, we choose instead to limit ourselves by narrow allegiances — religion, caste, ethnicity, and language.

It is perhaps this strangulation in the formative years that transforms otherwise intelligent and sensitive youth to be preoccupied with narrow denominational issues rather than the universal values so essential for societies to thrive and grow as plural, tolerant and bound by solidarity. The Constitution must inspire us to transcend contemporary binaries — Mandal and Kamandal — and notions of a sectarian political State. The integrity of the Census as a secular, non-sectarian national exercise must remain an inestimable national value.

(The writer is Director, Public Affairs Centre)