Census question over caste identity divides India
TIM SULLIVAN | May 27, 2010 07:25 AM EST |
NEW DELHI — Bollywood's biggest star has an answer ready if census
workers ask about his caste: "Indian."
"My father never believed in caste, and neither do any of us," Amitabh
Bachchan wrote in his obsessively followed blog.
Comments like Bachchan's are common in modern India, which prides
itself on how it has transcended some of its most rigid traditions –
and those beliefs are being heard more often as the government debates
whether the national census should delve into caste.
But Joseph D'Souza doesn't believe such talk for a moment.
"There's a lot of lip service to saying 'I'm an Indian first,' and 'I
don't believe in caste,'" said D'Souza, a prominent campaigner for
dalits, as India's "untouchables" at the very bottom of the caste
system are now known.
"When it comes to sharing power, to interaction, to sharing social
status, low-caste Indians are very much marginalized," he said,
arguing the census could provide firm data about the vast divisions.
India's census, being held in stages over the next year or so, delves
into the wealth, living conditions and other personal details of the
country's 1.2 billion people. But still undecided is one question –
"What is your caste?" – that has infuriated much of India's elite,
energized caste-based political parties and left in doubt millions of
government jobs and university slots.
Story continues below
The debate has also made very clear that caste, the Hindu custom that
for millennia has divided people in a strict social hierarchy based on
their family's traditional livelihood and ethnicity, remains a deeply
sensitive subject.
"The biggest issue (with the census) is the inability of India to come
to terms with this really ingenious form of discrimination," D'Souza
said.
Bachchan, who has dominated Bollywood for decades, proudly says his
family has married across India's vast geographic spectrum – with a
Bengali, a Sindhi, a Punjabi and a Mangalorean. But D'Souza notes that
none of those relatives are low caste and that the movie industry has
not one dalit star.
The question's fiercest backers include India's most powerful caste
politicians, who believe they could use the census data as fodder for
votes and government funding.
Its bitterest opponents include much of the establishment. "At one
stroke, it trivializes all that modern India has stood for, and
condemns it to the tyranny of an insidious kind of identity politics,"
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a prominent Indian commentator, wrote in the
Indian Express newspaper.
The last Indian census that measured castes was in 1931, when colonial
Britain still ruled.
The founders of modern India – nearly all high caste – were, at least
publicly, staunch believers in a caste-blind society. While many would
have been aghast if one of their children had married a dalit, they
also fought hard for dalit rights.
Most felt that counting caste sizes in a census reinforced a tradition
they wanted to fade.
It's an argument still heard today.
"No one denies that there are a lot of problems in India, that there
is social discrimination," said Barun Mitra, who runs a New
Delhi-based research center. But "this process of identifying caste
with a census is unlikely to help."
Like many critics, he also worries about the rise of the caste-based
politicians.
"What purpose would it serve by drawing and redrawing the identity one
more time, particularly when it is politically motivated?" he asked.
In recent decades, some of the sharpest edges of caste traditions have
been softened by urbanization and economic growth. Inter-caste
marriages are now fairly common, and there are powerful low-caste
politicians and businesspeople.
But caste also remains a deeply felt part of Indian life. Brahmins,
the highest caste, still dominate everything from politics to
journalism. Caste-specific marriage advertisements are newspaper
staples. Studies show low-caste Indians and dalits face daily
challenges for decent schools, medical care and jobs.
"Caste is part of every social agenda, every political agenda," said
Shaibal Gupta with the Asian Development Research Institute. "Even
when someone is considering a neighborhood, caste is an important
consideration."
But caste calculations have become far more complicated, with jobs and
university slots reserved for lower castes and a new generation of
politicians learning to use their lower-caste backgrounds to create
massive vote banks.
Laws give specific breakdowns of those reserved positions, but since
the numbers are based on the 1931 census, their accuracy is
questioned. And protests have been violent as caste leaders try to
have their group's status officially lowered to be eligible for
reserved jobs and school slots.
For some opponents, complexity alone makes caste an impossible census
question. While there are just four main castes, there may be more
than 20,000 sub-castes. Then there are the sub-sub-castes, clans and a
multitude of other variations.
But for proponents like D'Souza, such arguments prove the necessity of
the question. In a country where caste is so important, he asks, how
can India not know the facts?
"You can't hide it and put it under the carpet and say caste is not
there," he said.
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