http://www.minnpost.com/worldcsm/2010/06/09/18789/indias_2010_census_considers_asking_taboo_question_whats_your_casteIndia's 2010 census considers asking taboo question: What's your caste?
By Mian Ridge | Published Wed, Jun 9 2010 10:46 am
NEW DELHI — Soma Maiti did not think that her caste was a big deal
until she fell in love.
The Brahmin - a member of the caste at the top of Hinduism's vast
hierarchy - had always had friends from lower castes. Like most
modern, urban Indians, she considered herself largely blind to the
ancient system that for millenniums determined position in life in
India.
But when the charity worker from West Bengal told her parents she
wanted to marry a low-caste man, they were appalled. "They immediately
tried to get me married to someone they regarded as eligible simply
because he was a Brahmin," says Maiti, who married the man of her
choice and endured five years of silence from her family.
In an acknowledgment of the role caste continues to play in Indians'
lives, the government is considering including caste in its
once-a-decade census. If it does, it will be the first time Indians
will be asked their caste since 1931, when the country was ruled by
the British.
The proposal has whipped up a storm of controversy, with critics of
the plan arguing that including caste in the census will reinforce an
unjust and divisive system that India's Constitution sought to banish
60 years ago. Indeed, after winning independence in 1947, India's
political leaders erased caste from official forms and records.
The Congress Party, which formed independent India's first government
and has led the country for much of its subsequent history, has
repeatedly resisted calls to include caste in the census in recent
years.
Its change of heart is probably prompted in part by political
considerations. The calls have come from a number of regional
caste-based parties that have sprung up in the last two decades, using
caste inequality to mobilize voters. As head of a coalition
government, without a majority, Congress needs the support of smaller
parties such as these to push through important legislation in the
coming months.
Benefits for bottom castes
But many also believe that a nationwide caste count is necessary to
bring greater social justice.
This is largely because India reserves a percentage of government jobs
and places in universities for low castes. The Constitution, drawn up
in 1950, set in place quotas for Dalits, the group formerly known as
untouchables that languishes at the bottom of the caste heap. In 1990,
the government extended some reservations to a group of castes a
little higher up the pecking order, but also marginalized, known as
Other Backward Castes (OBCs).
The problem is, without up-to-date figures, quota allocations are made
on the basis of data from the census of 1931 - by any reckoning out of
date.
"How can you have reservations when you don't know how many lower
castes there are?" asks Mahesh Rangarajan, a historian at Delhi
University. "Including caste in the census is an important step
forward."
A social stain
Critics of the plan argue that India is becoming less caste-conscious
and that bringing caste back into the census is a regressive step.
Economic development has had a more transformative effect on social
hierarchies than more than six decades of reservations. As millions of
Indians have migrated to urban areas in search of work, they have
exchanged the rigid social groupings of villages for the relative
anonymity of cities, and swapped inherited trades for jobs in which
family background is largely insignificant.
Caste nonetheless remains an inescapable part of Indian life. Marriage
ads, listed by caste and subcaste, fill the classified sections of
weekend newspapers. Brahmins, the loftiest caste, still dominate many
professions. No Dalits feature in India's new billionaire lists.
Caste feeling manifests itself in more sinister ways, too. Police
believe that the recent murder of a young journalist, engaged to a man
from a lower caste, was one of a growing number of "honor killings" in
which families avenge inter-caste marriages.
Discrimination is most evident, however, in the routine wretchedness
of the lives of Dalits, who remain India's poorest and least educated
people.
"Caste is very much alive - why pretend otherwise?" says Aditi
Phadnis, political editor of the Business Standard, a leading daily
newspaper.
Countless subcastes
She, like many, however, points out that there will be huge practical
obstacles if the government does decide to include caste in the
census.
India has four main caste groups but innumerable subcastes - some put
the figure as high as 30,000 - and it is unclear how their differences
should be tabulated.
If people think certain castes come with benefits, they could be more
likely to lie. And if, as seems likely, India will be found to have
more low castes than is currently assumed, it will face a flood of
requests to increase the number of reservations available to them.
Already, the government is battling campaigns from non-OBC castes,
Muslims, and Hindu converts to Christianity to be included in
reservation lists. As more jobs are created in the business sector,
another campaign to extend quotas to jobs in the private sector is
gaining momentum.
Many commentators point out that India needs better jobs and services
for its poorest people instead of handouts based on their inherited
status.
"At one stroke," wrote commentator Pratap Bhanu Mehta of the plan in
the Indian Express newspaper, "it trivializes all that modern India
has stood for and condemns it to the tyranny of an insidious kind of
identity politics."
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