Counting Castes: Advantage Ruling Class
By Anand Teltumbde
14 July, 2010
Countercurrents.org
The debate over whether caste should be included in the decennial
census 2011, which has actually begun, has provoked the government to
constitute a Group of Ministers (GoM), the magical invention of the
UPA government that yields decisions on any vexatious issue. The
shrill arguments both in favour and against the proposition, with an
amazing degree of embedded confusion, coming from all conceivable
corners (caste, class, individuals, parties, and so on) is making it
difficult to guess what the magical decision of the GOM would be. But
if it comes in favour of enumeration of castes in the census, it will
be the second biggest blow to the emancipation project of the
oppressed people, the first being the Mandal reservations.
Colonial Census of Castes
It is well known that the institution of census (with enumeration of
castes) came as a sequel of measures that were imperatively taken by
the British colonialists after the mutiny of 1857. The mutiny made the
government officials painfully realize that they were woefully
ignorant of local Indian customs and more. The knowledge of natives
would enable them to find local allies to provide insurance against
the possibility of a future uprising and more importantly, use
internal divisions among them for playing groups off one against
another.[1] The inclusion of questions about caste in the census,
entailing huge expenditure of time and money thus was not just for the
sake of 'intellectual curiosity'. There were political reasons for the
intensification of the British interest in the institution of caste.
"District-level manuals and gazetteers began to devote whole chapters
to the ethnography of caste and custom; imperial surveys made caste
into a central object of investigation; and by the time of the first
decennial census of 1872, caste had become the primary subject of
social classification and knowledge… By 1901, when the census
commissioner H. H. Risley announced his ambition for an ethnographic
survey of India, it was clear that caste had attained its colonial
apotheosis."[2]
Notwithstanding the crude formulation of Hindutva nationalists,
relying on some smart American historians that castes were the
colonial creation, it cannot be denied that the introduction of the
Census in particular 'transformed previously 'fuzzy' into 'enumerated'
communities'.[3] As Cohn points out, 'what was entailed in the
construction of census operations was the creation of social
categories by which India was ordered for administrative purposes'.[4]
The Census objectified religious, social and cultural difference. This
objectification later catalysed lower caste movement but as its
unintended by product, which could not be confused with the primary
aim of the colonialists to preserve their rule.
Politics of Castization
The ostensible need to include enumeration of the backward castes
(BCs) flows from the Mandal Commission recommendations, which mandated
monitoring of their progress after 20 years from their implementation.
Before the 2001 Census began, there was a demand made for such
inclusion in the census. But for whatever reasons this proposal was
turned down by the Ministry of Home Affairs, which controls the census
organisation.[5] This time although the government created turbulence
around the issue by referring it to the GoM, it will be under pressure
to accept it.
The core rationale for this caste census may thus lie in the technical
requirement arising from the acceptance of the Mandal Commission
recommendations to extend reservations to the OBCs. Mandal
recommendations and particularly their acceptance by the V P Singh
government in 1989 will be an ominous mark on the path of annihilation
of castes. It gave a new lease of life to castes. The entire caste
game was mischievously played in the name of the Constitution, which
rather had reference to class and individuals. The Constitution under
Articles 15 (4), 16 (4), 46 and 340 refers to "socially and
educationally backward classes" or "backward class citizens". In the
country in which peoples' politics is stuck on the unfortunate duality
of caste and class, the State as well as the judiciary coolly
interpreted class in the Constitution to be synonymous with "caste".
In order that an entire caste is considered socially, economically and
educationally backward, it needed to pass the test of homogeneity and
to formulate a policy for such castes there should have been objective
definability. However, there was none.[6]
Whither Caste Dynamics
The entire load of argument in favour of inclusion of castes in the
census is that it will help in targeting development efforts towards
the specific social groups. But can the social groups be viably
conceived on the basis of castes today? The entire argument smacks of
the colossal confusion in transposing the non-caste dalits and tribals
to others and the enormous ignorance about the contemporary caste
dynamics. It was the Nehruvian project of modernization, mapped mainly
by the land reform and green revolution in rural India that brought
about this change in castes structure as never before. The
displacement of the upper caste landlords from villages, enrichment of
a section of the shudra caste cluster (traditional farming castes)
through this programme, the consolidation of the populous shudra
castes by them into political constituency, has changed the entire
socio-political fabric of the country. Paradoxically, these castes
labeled as backward have full social control of the entire rural and
semi-urban India, dominate politics and significant part of the
economy of the country. The ritual caste differences between them and
dwija castes are no more extant because of these developments. This
caste dynamics reduces caste to the divide between Dalits and
non-Dalits. Although, many people constituting BC/OBC are as backward
as dalits and tribals, the idiom of caste binds them with their
powerful elements and prevents identifying with the dalits and
tribals.
When the so called progressive intellectuals take cudgels for the
'lower castes' they ignore this post-Independence developmental
dynamics. They certainly err in extending the social justice logic
applied to SC and ST to these castes. The rationale behind applying
exceptional measure of 'quota' for these communities was deep rooted
social prejudice against them through the practice of untouchability
(SC) and physical separation (ST). This simply cannot be replicated to
the shudra castes, lest one deliberately undermines the rationale
itself and ignore the structural forces that exploit them. The
backwardness of the BC/OBC is a part of the larger secular
backwardness of the country, depicted by a plethora of disgraceful
indices and statistics on poverty, health and such others. It is the
duty of the state to ensure distributional justice to these classes.
But to say that it should be done along caste axis is playing into the
hands of the ruling classes. It serves them best to tacitly support
caste issues as they deflect peoples' attention from their neoliberal
project, which is fast dispossessing people of even whatever little
they have. The root cause of peoples' woes lies here!
Flawed Arguments
The best of these arguments are perhaps presented in this very journal
by Satish Deshpande and Mary John (The Politics of Not Counting Caste,
June 19, 2010). They dealt with opponents' contentions -'logistcal
challenges' and 'political objections' in their own way. Logistical
challenges, may not be insurmountable if one is reconciled with the
tentative 'collective self portrait' the census provides. But the
question is to what avail? Recognizing the fluidity and polyvalence of
caste identity, they suggest some what clumsily the collection of
supportive synonyms for castes and using technology to resolve them.
Obviously, they belittle the logistical problems by imagining their
complexity and offering such a weird solution. The basic problem is
associated with the characteristics of caste itself. Caste, as one
sociologist puts it, has no precise definition, it is not an
"objective" measurable category like occupation, age, sex, education,
etc. and rather may be seen as "subjective" category related with
identity and perceptions which change from time to time.[7] They have
missed out one dangerous logistical characteristic of caste which is
that caste is essentially hierarchy seeking and hence infinitely
divisive. If with all, one still wishes to have caste data, with pile
of negatives associated with them, one fails to understand why.
The other point they deal with is political objections that caste
enumeration would promote 'divide and rule' and argue that 'subaltern
claims for power sharing' is always taken as divisive by the elites.
The basic point here is whether castes today are viable units to plan
sharing of power, privileges or any resources equitably. This takes us
back to rethink them away from the stereotypes. Today the Indian
political reality may be simply read in terms of rulers as a class
whereas the ruled are castes, whether by volition or by engineering,
as in colonial times. In defence of the caste census, their shadow
boxing reaches a profound pitch that "not counting caste has been one
of independent India's biggest mistake." One fails to know how in face
of the fact that the so called backward castes as a caste group have
done extremely well in coming to dominate political, social and
economic spheres. Why unlike the colonial rulers, the Congress under
Nehru and Gandhi, decided not to count castes is because they were
afraid it would indefinitely fragment their constituency. Despite it,
the state with all its apparatus has not been caste blind as claimed
by them. Any Dalit can vouch for it! But that did not deter the
progress of the BCs. As a caste group, the coalition syndrome, Mandal,
as well as the current demand for the caste census rather reflects
their empowerment, no matter it has resulted in disempowerment of huge
mass of their own members.
No, counting caste can never benefit people; it benefits only the
ruling classes.
References
[1] Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Politics and the Raj: Bengal
1872-1937 (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi & Company), 1990: 29.
[2] Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of
Modern India, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press), 2001, p. 15.
[3] S. Kaviraj, 'The Imaginary Institution of India,' in P. Chatterjee
and G. Pandey (ed.) Subaltern Studies VII (Delhi: Oxford University
Press) 1992.
[4] B. S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge, (Princeton:
Princeton University Press), 1996, 8.]
[5] A. Krishnakumar, "Caste and the census", Frontline, 17(18), 2-15.2000.
[6] G. Shah, 'Caste-based census will compound past blunders', Times
of India, May 22, 1998.
[7] G. Shah, Caste and Democratic Practice in India, (London: Anthem
Press), 2004, 27. Also, See G. Shah, 'Caste-based census will compound
past blunders', Times of India, May 22, 1998.
Dr. Anand Teltumbde is a political analyst and a civil rights activist
with CPDR, Mumbai E-mail: tanandraj@gmail.com
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