Caste And The Census
By Gail Omvedt
26 May, 2010
Sanhati.com
"See no caste, hear no caste, speak no caste." The policy of the
Indian elite towards the issue of caste has been that of the three
monkeys: one of denial. It doesn't exist; if it does it is not so bad;
it should not be talked about, and those who do talk about it or try
to act on it are the ones who are "casteist." The entire onus is
placed on the victims of the system trying to fight it.
This has also guided the policy of the government of India. Now that
the Census of 2011 is coming closer, with preparations getting well in
hand, it is clear that once again there will be no question of caste
identification, except for the broad and rather useless (for most
purposes) categories of "Scheduled Caste" and "Scheduled Tribe." The
issue has been raised in the past, and quite frequently has met with a
rather frantic response that this would lead to turmoil, dissension
and bitter conflict.
Yet for years the British government asked questions about caste in
the Census; though the issue became politicized (with some groups
seeking and proclaiming new identities) it led to no really serious
problems. Again, the United States asks about race in each of its
censuses; and while race in the U.S. is as contentious an issue as
caste in India, it has led to no great problems.
The fact is that to deal with an issue, one has to have information
about it. Policies require understanding and analysis; pretending that
caste doesn't exist is perhaps the best way to perpetuate it. On one
hand, there are numerous acts and regulations dealing with caste; on
the other hand, there is a genuine dearth of information. There is no
encouragement for studies of caste; indeed, the only sociology
students who are at all encouraged to deal with the issue are an
occasional student from subaltern caste background who is taught to
write on his own people. But looking at the caste system as a system
is not so often done. The National Sample Surveys, for example, have
only recently started using the very broad (and often not very useful)
categorization of "OBC"; but this pulls together a diverse and
hierarchically broad group of castes or jatis into one overall
category. And Brahmans - those who, as sociologist Satish Deshpande
has argued, "ride incognito in our social system" - are never looked
at; all the "upper" castes together are lumped in the "other" group.
There is almost no solid statistical data available about them. And
issues like intermarriage - all we can do is speculate, on the basis
of scattered personal experience and matrimonial ads in the
newspapers, about what percentage of marriages (95%? 99%?) are still
within caste marriages.
Yet it would be so simple to include a question about caste in the
Census. Let it be a matter of self-identification; people would be
free to identify their caste as they like, or (if they wish), reply
"no caste" or "mixed." This itself would yield valuable data. I would
guess that the number saying "no caste" would be less than one
percent! Then, a committee at the state level could identify the broad
categories within which the data can be summarized.
This would hardly be a utopia. But it would provide a beginning for an
honest attempt to deal with the issue, to gather data to deal with the
issue. Caste has undoubtedly changed in modern India - though some
extremely "feudal" and backward forms remain, such as the fact that
cleaning human excrement is still done in so many places in India by
members of particular dalit castes. Even cases such as those of
Chitralekha in "developed" and "left-progressive" Kerala show the
degree to which many occupations are "reserved" by ongoing, brutally
enforced tradition for members of particular caste groups. In other
cases, most of the old forms of the jajmani system have vanished. Yet
the correlation of caste and economic status remains strong. Education
continues to be two-track and it is the children of the subaltern
castes who suffer particularly from this.
Another Census is going by without dealing with the harshest, most
peculiar aspect of india's social system. Let this be the last one.
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