The announcement of just the possibility of a caste census in 2001, after a lapse of 70 years, the last caste census having been held in 1931, has, as it were, set a cat among the pigeons. There is political protest and academic uproar; the high caste intelligentsia is up in arms.
It is being proclaimed that the Indian state has turned its back on the long held ideal of a casteless society; that caste consciousness will erode and dilute national consciousness, decelerate Hindu consolidation and engender social fragmentation, that the process of Sanskritisation will be inverted into the process of De- Sanskritisation. As it is, to take advantage of reservation in public employment for SC and ST and other governmental measures to promote their education and welfare, members of high castes offer enter into the reserved queue on the basis of false claims of caste affiliation based on false low caste certificates, granted by high caste officers. It has been prophesied by no less a person those Prof. Srinivas, the doyen of Indian sociologists that violence will break out in the streets and youth will set themselves ablaze to stop this atrocious move.
On the face of it, there is nothing reprehensible about a caste count because the caste, as a social institution, is not only recognised by the Constitution; but is a living, indeed flourishing, institution, because the Constitutional reservation for the SC and the ST and the innumerable Central and State Government schemes palpably for their benefit are based on caste-identity and because the latest reservation for the OBCs in public employment - Mandalisation - is also caste-based.
What is more important, the political system, from selection of candidates by parties to formation of Council of Ministers is caste-based. Behind the scene, even the selection of judges for the High Courts is caste- based. The recent introduction of the Panchayati Raj institution, the Gram Panchayat, the Prakhand Samitis and the Zila Parishads allows proportionate representation of the OBCs. How the 10th Lok Sabha unsuccessfully took up the official bill for reservation for women in the legislatures speaks for itself. There is no doubt that all over the country the representation of the OBCs, all them intermediate castes or Shudras has expanded as the representation of the high castes, the Savarnas has gone down. It is a moot question whether it has led to equality of opportunity and justice for all or whether it has merely substituted the Brahminical dominance by Shudra dominance and that too by a well- defined section of the Shudras - the land-owning and the cultivating class. In any case the Age of the Shudras has dawned.
Yet, real power continues to be exercised by the high castes. Under the Sangh Parivar dispensation, as earlier under the Congress dispensation, the Brahmins overwhelmingly occupied the seats of real power. They controlled the commanding heights in the bureaucracy, the armed forces, the para-military forces, the police machinery, the academic world, the mass media and the judiciary. Democracy based on one-man, one-vote, made the OBCs aware of their latent power, generated a hunger, nay, a lust for politics; the legislature was the first to fall to the waves of democracy.
Yet it will take generations before the composition of the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the coercive machinery of the state, the mass media and the academe change. There is in-built resistance - thanks to the succession principle, to the system of 'sifarish' and 'pairvi' and occasional hark-back to the merit principle.
But the instruments of affirmation, active or positive, discrimination have never been effective for lack of accurate and authoritative information which is basic to the implementation of the reservation policy as an instrument of social change and to periodical monitoring of such changes. It is one thing to give away some thing to a persistent beggar; it is another to share power on the basis of social justice.
Given the structure and architecture of the Indian society, the term 'Backward Classes' (which includes the social groups constitutionally labelled as the SC and the ST) largely means the Backward Castes - whether we measure the collective backwardness of all the castes which form the constitutional groups of the SC's, ST's or OBC's together or the individual backwardness of each component caste separately.
Lack of reliable data about the population or the educational or economic backwardness of the caste groups leads to many anomalies and contradictions, fallacies and flaws in the scheme of reservation. For one thing, every caste group, as it wakes up to the reality of deprivation, tends to magnify its population or at least its proportion therein. Secondly, it tends to exaggerate its backwardness; both to get not only sympathetic consideration of its case for protective discrimination but also for as large a piece of the cake as possible.
Lack of data has also led an august body like the Supreme Court to put a 50% limit on the totality of reservation. This is an arbitrary and even absurd limit as the situation may vary from level to level and state to state. That is why some states like Karnataka and Tamilnadu have defiantly pegged their total close to or even exceeding 80. What has been missing in any calculation or computation is a scientific concept of index of backwardness. That there are gradations of backwardness, even if backwardness is defined as below the national or state average in a set of universally accepted and measurable parameters. Earlier, we had a two-fold gradation and categorisation - Backward and Most Backward (the OBC and the MBC, apart from the SC and the ST) in Bihar. Now in Karnataka we have 5 or 6 grades. The quota for a Backward Class (caste, race, tribe, religion) should be indexed to its population and to its level or index of backwardness. The sum total of the individual quotas (for a state or for the country) should be the upper limit for the state or the country, as the case may be. The individual quotas and, therefore, the upper limit should be monitored and they should hopefully fall every 10 years - thus enlarging the open or free space (call it 'merit zone', if you like).
While the quota for any group should be based on its population, the individual beneficiary must belong to a well-defined section - families which are in fact deprived. There is again no doubt that every Backward Class has an elite - educated, land-owning, propertied, rich, well-positioned. Their children enjoy all the advantages. Why should they be permitted to lap up the quota of the community/caste/group/tribe to which they nominally belong? Inversely, those are deprived families within the so-called forward castes. Logic demands that even the forward castes - individually or collectively should enjoy a quota, proportionate to their population and index of backwardness, which should be available for the deprived families among them. Mandalisation supports the logic of this demand.
One needs, therefore, the population, educational and economic data about each segment of society - identified by caste, tribe, race or religion – to work out a rational, universal system of reservation. What mechanism do we have for such data collection except the decennial census?
A Caste Census has yet another advantage. Since it will cover the entire population, it shall serve scientifically to demonstrate which social groups - self-conscious and identifiable, even though they belong to the 'devijas' or the Malechhas are backward and which belonging to the Shudras, the Achhuts and the Adivasis are not. Thus the constitutional remedies can be applied where they hust.
The question has been asked as to how the thousands of castes, sub-castes, sub-sub-castes are to be counted. The reply is very simple. The census should not go beyond the caste and the sub-caste and the census should also, by reference to the original vocation/ profession of the caste/sub-caste establish a system of equivalence, so that, on one hand, the number of categories, can be reduced send, on the other.
The population and the index of backwardness of a caste can be properly determined in the national context. Already every caste-group is seeking a pan-Indian identity whether it is the Vaishyas or the Kurmis or the Yadavs. The Brahmins and the Rajputs were always Pan-Indian in their outlook and intercourse. This is how the caste, instead of being divisive, as is commonly alleged, becomes an integrative force.
The lower Shudras (the MBCs) form, along with the backward SCs and STs, the most deprived social group in the country. They have not woken up; they have no leadership; they continue to be exploited by the feudal classes which include the new land-owning castes the Yadavas and the Kurmis and the Koeris. The census will help to rouse them from centuries of stupor; they shall realise their strength and the opportunity that democracy opens for them; the awakening will throw up their leaders. They shall demand liberation from the shackles of Kurmivad and Yadav-vad as the Kurmis and Yadavs liberated themselves from Brahminvad. So the census will accelerate the march to social justice.
The Muslim community - as a minority group unitedly or as a conglomerate of social sub-groups at different levels of backwardness, will also demand their due share. Even sub-groups, if they are big enough, may. But no more a special share, but a proportionate share. The Indian state will be stronger and the Indian society healthier if Muslim Indians as a group or as a collection of sub-groups are a contented lot. They have been enumerated in every census but now, one hopes, the cross-tabulated educational and economic data will be published which will indicate the level of backwardness at a given point in time and provide logical and rational support for their developmental aspirations. These aspirations have not received mental attention because the national block created by the Partition still exists and the Muslim Indians - even in their miserable state - are seen as a historic and political adversary!
It is interesting to note that the column 'caste' did exist in the census form but it was not tabulated or published. The decision of the Government to enumerate caste is a progressive step and fulfill a longstanding demand of various social groups. Specially among the Shudras and the religious minorities. It is always open to anyone, any family who has evolved beyond the caste system to declare that they have no caste. If the number of such persons is sizeable, the Census may have an additional column. It may be added that Caste Census categorised cannot be based on assets or income or education but purely on his social identity. These data on each group will enable their subsequent classification as Backward Classes.
The essential question is whether enumeration of caste will mean its perpetuation or its annihilation?
Caste cannot be annihilated by recitation of the mantara of nationalism, national unity or even Hindu identity. It cannot be suppressed by administrative means; it cannot be abolished by being swept out of sight, under the carpets, it only goes underground. Caste cannot be ignored in political and electoral equations as it is an existential reality and determines the primary political alignment of most of the voters. it cannot be worked out of the system by education alone because outside the textbooks, in the market place, and what is more important, in the social milieu and in the employment avenues, caste continues to determine choice and selection. Caste cannot be banished by inter-caste marriages because such marriages are too few to make any difference. It cannot be killed even if caste surnames are banned - as in a largely immobile society, one is stock with the caste he is born in.
Caste can be annihilated only by giving equal opportunity, equitable share, equitable say in the management of the society to all caste groups – by nursing the weak and encouraging them up the ladder, till they rub shoulders with the high castes; till they are purged of all sense of inferiority, till they become - in the second, if not the first, generation - visible in every sphere of life. When they are educationally and economically equal and enjoy social dignity under the integrative impact of Freedom and Development - of One Nationhood - caste will stand annihilated. Srinivas bemoans de-Sanskritisation. But social dynamics will mean that those in the upper strata will come down, those in the lower strata will go up and some day, some where, the two shall meet as equal citizens of Free India, all sons of a common motherland.
New Delhi,
1 June, 1998
