India's Caste Count Dilemma
July 14, 2010
Would including caste in India's census next year perpetuate a
sometimes deadly system? Shreyasi Singh reports from Delhi.
By Shreyasi Singh
Photo Credit: Steve Evans
Priyabhanshu Ranjan had no idea how wrong he'd be when he casually
dismissed it as 'trivial.' Priyabhanshu, a 23-year-old Delhi-based
journalist, was in love with Nirupama Pathak, another journalist at a
leading business daily. The two had met while both students at New
Delhi's Indian Institute of Mass Communications, one of the country's
best-known journalism schools.
Like young couples everywhere, they talked of marriage and a life
together, and despite their relationship getting their families' backs
up a little, they were confident their 'well-educated' and 'cultured'
parents would eventually come around.
But on April 29, Nirupama was found dead at her home in Jhumritilaya,
Jharkhand. Although her family cried suicide, her mother was arrested
and is the main suspect in the murder case. Her alleged motive? Trying
to protect the family's honour.
The problem was that although both hail from small-town, middle class
families in eastern India, Priyabhanshu and Nirupama were separated by
caste. She was a Brahmin, the priestly caste at the top of India's
deeply entrenched, centuries-old Varna system. Ranjan, meanwhile, was
a Kayastha and so two rungs lower. For Nirupama's family, it was a
social divide that couldn't be bridged.
'I come from a state which is deeply caste conscious. But I never
thought it would impact my life so brutally,' says Priyabhanshu. 'We
knew this was a hurdle, but I'd just tell Nirupama we were journalists
who can't get bogged down by these trivial issues. "With time, things
will be fine, I'd assure her."'
Priyabhanshu's case is by no means unique. Last month saw a number of
so-called honour killings in Delhi, including a case in which three
members of the same family—a 26-year-old man, his wife and her
cousin—were brutally killed by the wife's brothers and his friends
because she had eloped to get married outside her caste. In nearby
Sonepat town, a woman and her two sons killed two of her
granddaughters because she believed they were having an illicit affair
with a male relative.
These grisly episodes have coincided with an uneasy debate taking
place in Indian political circles over the issue of caste.
India is in the middle of collecting population statistics for its
decadal census, the results of which will be announced next year. It's
a mammoth exercise that will cover 1.2 billion people. Several
political parties have demanded the inclusion of caste data, arguing
that it's critical the country has updated information on caste
demographics, especially as the positive discrimination 'reservations'
policy is based on this information. Supporters have also said the
information will be useful in aiding efficient distribution in
government schemes aimed at traditionally downtrodden castes.
Demands for updated information have been voiced regularly since the
early 1990s, when India first legislated for caste-based reservations
after the findings of the Mandal Commission Report in 1991. But so
far, no central government has shown any real desire to follow
through. It's a position that has the support of liberals across the
country who fear the practice will perpetuate and legitimise the caste
system.
At present, India only collects numbers for the Scheduled
Caste/Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST), or Dalits, who make up the vast depths
of the occupation-based, hierarchical caste structure that is broken
down into four main ranks—Brahmins (priests and scholars), Kshatriyas
(warriors and administrators), Vaishyas (merchants, craftsmen and
farmers) and Shudras (untouchables), the latter of which for centuries
were denied equal treatment and were barred from sitting and dining
together with the upper-castes. Most Dalits are shudras.
The Dalits and SC/STs are the beneficiaries of 'reservation' laws in
government-run education institutions and jobs, laws that were
introduced in an effort to ease centuries of discrimination and
ultimately to create a level playing field for them.
But these efforts are complicated by a myriad of sub-castes, offshoots
and other groups, including some which are referred to as Other
Backward Classes (OBCs are defined as socially and economically
marginalised sections of society by the Indian Constitution).
In the lead up to Census 2011, influential regional politicians,
including Laloo Prasad Yadav (from Bihar) and Mulayam Singh Yadav
(from Uttar Pradesh), have put pressure on Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh's government to include caste in the census findings.
Yadav, former Uttar Pradesh chief minister and Samajwadi Party
president, has repeatedly said a caste-based census is an idea whose
time has come.
'It's those who are against caste census who want to perpetuate
inequalities in society. They don't want to confront the real size of
backward people in the country and take remedial measures to uplift
them,' Yadav said in a recent speech.
But after announcing it would go ahead with a caste-based census, the
Singh government has encountered a number of obstacles. Interestingly,
though, the problems have not come from the main opposition Bharatiya
Janta Party (BJP), whose parliamentary representatives have welcomed
caste-based data. Instead, it's Union ministers from Singh's own
ruling Congress party who have voiced serious concerns.
Home Minister P. Chidambaram, for example, said inclusion at this late
stage (collection of data began several months ago) poses numerous
technical and logistical difficulties. Meanwhile, a number of
ministers have echoed the concerns of liberals across the country,
raising questions about the social repercussions of gathering this
information.
In trying to reach a decision, Manmohan Singh on May 27 launched a
'Group of Minsters,' headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee,
after the Union Cabinet failed to reach a consensus. But during its
first meeting on June 30, the group remained almost evenly divided
between supporters and opponents. In an effort to break the deadlock,
the group has decided to seek out the opinions of every political
party, each of which has four weeks to respond.
D. Shyam Babu, senior fellow at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of
Contemporary Studies, thinks this dithering stems from a refusal to
accept reality. 'You can't wish it (caste system) away. Our elections
are based on caste, our politics is based on caste and there's so much
happening around caste,' he says. 'Doesn't it make sense then to have
access to legitimate data?'
It's hard to see how any consensus between the two sides will be
found. Despite the fact that Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley—two senior
BJP lawmakers—spoke in favour of the caste-based census in both houses
of parliament, the party's parent organisation, the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), strongly criticised the plan in a recent
article in its in-house magazine, Organiser.
In the article, a senior RSS functionary said an Indian should have
only one identity, that of citizenship. It said: 'The counting of
castes in the ongoing census will weaken the efforts of social harmony
and Rashtriya Ekatmata (national integration)…it will also ruin the
dream of creating a casteless society as was emancipated by many great
personalities.'
Babu says he's baffled as to why the inclusion of such data should be
controversial. 'Why are we so defensive about caste,' he asks. 'The
absence of this data (in the census) hasn't negated the prevalence of
caste in our society, nor will its presence perpetuate the system.'
And prevalent it is. Sonalde Desai, a senior fellow at India's
National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), points to a
mass of anecdotal evidence that caste continues to dominate social
organization in India. 'If we look at any newspaper in India today and
see the marriage announcements, most of the ads refer to the caste of
the bride and the groom,' Desai says.
The India Human Development Survey conducted by NCAER and the
University of Maryland found that only 5 percent of women married
outside their caste, Desai says, while about 14 percent of households
belong to caste associations—far more than the 5 percent who belong to
any union for example. 'It would be hard to say that caste is not a
significant dimension of Indian social life,' Desai says.
'It doesn't make sense for a mature civil society to rely on outdated
data for important policy decisions,' she says. 'A carefully
constructed and honestly carried out exercise will lead to the design
of a better system for targeting affirmative action.'
So, setting aside the rights and wrongs of trying, is it even
practically possible to include caste in the census this time around?
Desai says she thinks it is. 'The enumeration stage where information
about individuals (as opposed to households) will be collected will
take place in February 2011 and so they can collect caste information
if needed.' But, she says it would still be better to separate the
tasks to ensure a more thorough job.
'This could be done as a one-time caste census or could be included in
the 2021 census,' she says.
Babu says logistical excuses are anyway a red herring, adding that the
tardy debate hints at politicians' short-term way of operating. 'What
prevented the government from preparing for this properly?' he asks.
'(And) nobody is stopping us from having a parallel exercise, a
special census next year. Why should we have another decade of groping
in the dark, and be having the same discussions in 2021?'
But even if it is possible logistically, many Indians still have their
doubts. 'I understand the intellectual justification for having such
information,' says 39-year-old Amarjeet Singh, a Delhi resident. 'But
I think caste is a visceral issue. As a child, I was ostracised by my
father's family for many years because he married outside of his
caste. My cousins wouldn't play with me. I'm not scarred for life. But
any mention of caste still makes me uncomfortable.'
Priyabhanshu is, understandably, more direct. 'According to official
data, 77 percent of people in our country live on a daily income of
less than Rs. 20 (40 US cents). Lower castes, upper castes, Hindus,
Muslims and Sikhs are all part of this group. Why divide these people
on the basis of caste and religion?' he asks.
'They all have just one caste— deprived and voiceless.'
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