PERSPECTIVE

The Politics of Not Counting Caste

Satish Deshpande, Mary E John

In the debate on whether or not to count caste in the 2011 Census, there has been too little reflection on the implicit assumptions and analogies about both the census and caste that underpin the positions that have been taken. This article attempts to identify the major models that have been tacitly at work. Questioning the view that the status quo is benign or neutral, it argues that not counting caste has defeated the desire to transcend caste, and suggests that caste blindness be rejected in favour of a fresh beginning.

Satish Deshpande (sdeshpande@sociology.du. ac.in) is with the department of sociology at Delhi University; Mary E John (maryj@cwds. ac.in) is with the Centre for Womens Development Studies, New Delhi.

n obvious and striking feature of the debate on the proposed caste census is that it concerns counterfactuals what if scenarios rather than actual facts. It is thus inevitable that both opponents and proponents argue by analogy and assertion, extrapolating from other times and contexts to make their case. Far from inevitable, however, is the careless extravagance of much of the argument. The treacherous terrain of counterfactuals demands that we be cautious about the weight we place on our speculative assertions. It also requires us to be sensitive to the inherent asymmetry of such debates. Given that the Census does not count caste today and that the debate is about whether it should, the burden of proof is unequally distributed. Those who want a change in the status quo have to shoulder a heavier load than those who are content with the way things are. This is just the way that arguments about counterfactuals are structured, and it would be bad faith for pro-changers (like us) to claim underdog status. However, an important but often invisible aspect of this structural asymmetry is that the status quo escapes strict scrutiny. Without such scrutiny, both sides tend to calibrate their arguments as though the status quo represented a neutral state, a sort of zero-point, against which the possible negatives and positives are measured. But this need not be true the status quo does not default to neutral just because we are debating counterfactuals. If the present already has a strongly negative or positive value, the impact of the future needs to be assessed differently. In short, we must re-calibrate our present, and to do that we need to also ask questions like: What kinds of damage has India suffered because a caste census has not been held since Independence? What is the politics of not counting caste?

While the main objective of this essay is to ask questions of this sort, the following sections revisit the debate on the caste census in an attempt to identify the implicit assumptions and tacit contrasts that shape the most common arguments on view. As proponents of a caste census we are certainly not neutral, but we hope to show that it is not the presence of bias whether our own or of the others that makes for bad arguments, but rather the absence of care.

Implicit Models of Caste and Census

At the risk of oversimplifying, the most common arguments against a caste census are of two broad kinds those that invoke political-moral grounds, and those that cite insurmountable practical-logistical difficulties. The most common pro-caste census arguments tend to be mostly political-moral, with some practical-logistical counter-arguments against the claims of opponents. Though they may often appear so, pro and con arguments are not necessarily mirror images of each other. However, both are based on implicit ideas about the nature and role of caste and the Census. At least three distinct models of what the Census is and ought to do are at work behind these arguments. The first sees the Census as an extension or analogue of a welfare programme or social justice initiative. In this view, the Census is an instrument for rationalising such programmes, making them more efficient and effective. A second model of the Census is that of a device for fixing identities, or creating compulsory identities. In this view, the Census will forever fix the caste identity of every citizen and thus comprehensively sabotage the project of creating a universal Indian citizen. Less common than the previous two but significant in its own right is a third model of the Census as a gigantic research project designed to produce the truth about the categories it counts. In this view, the Census is useful only if it is accurate and truthful; otherwise it is a waste or a liability. While these three are the most commonly employed models, there is also one

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other model that has either been absent or only fleetingly present in the English media, but has received more play in the Hindi press (as has the caste census debate more generally). This fourth model of the census, familiar to us from the literature on nationalism, is that of a collective self-portrait. Like maps, flags and other mnemonic devices, the Census is a representation of the nation; it helps us to concretise an abstractly imagined national community. Seen from this angle a Census is not just about social justice programmes, or fixing identity, or a source of knowledge it is a collection of our collective identities. Because it is available to all, it offers a chance for all groups to look at themselves in relation to others. Only the Census can provide such an aggregated, comprehensive picture of the collectivities that comprise the nation no individual or group has the resources or the power to do this. A comparable effort to list the different models of caste that seem to be at work would yield the following: The first and probably most common model is the one in which caste actually means lower caste, roughly in the same way that gender comes to mean women and race comes to mean non-whites. In this perspective, caste is about the concerns and problems of the lower castes, including especially reservations, quotas and vote banks. Another model of caste heavily influenced by social anthropology sees it as a complex meaning-giving institution of great importance in ordering everyday life. This perspective is concerned to emphasise the complexity of caste and its irreducibility to other social structures like class or ethnicity. A third perspective sees caste as a web of distributional relations that determines the distribution of power, privilege and material resources in conjunction with class. From this perspective, caste is necessarily relational the parts do not make sense outside of the whole they fit into, although fit need not imply harmony and is compatible with conflict. Finally, a fourth perspective on caste sees it as the single most important obstacle to attaining modernity. Caste is a peculiarly Indian affliction, one that is based on clearly un-modern values and it prevents us from becoming fully modern and embracing values of individualism and universality.

These sketchy and rather brief models of census and caste are clearly too rudimentary for too much weight to be placed on them. They are not meant to be exhaustive it is surely possible to think of others but only to indicate the variety of available vantage points. They are all partial, in the sense that the existence of one hardly precludes the others. They are also partial in the sense that they are more or less hospitable to different perspectives on caste, and, more specifically, to different positions vis--vis a caste census. In other words, models of caste and census combine to structure arguments for or against a caste census. One could also say that they determine the possibilities and limits of these arguments. It is not our contention that there is any neat or necessary correspondence between these models; rather, our main point is that, when analysing arguments in this debate, it is useful to look for the implicit models that may be animating them. We now turn to the most common arguments encountered in the caste census debate. As proponents, we pay special attention to the arguments of opponents, saving a brief description of our prefered pro argument for the conclusion.

Logistical Challenges
Perhaps the most common argument against a caste census, one specially favoured by academics, is that it simply cannot be done. There are many strands to this broad argument and they need to be carefully sifted. The thickest strand combines the research project model of the Census with the complex-meaning-givinginstitution model of caste to argue that the capabilities of the former are much too meagre to capture the many-sided intricacies of the latter. One variant of this strand insists that caste is too fluid and polyvalent an identity: the question, What is your caste? can have more than one (sometimes several) context-dependent answers. This usually arises from the fact that, at the micro end, caste usually subsumes within it other distinct entities like sub-caste, sub-subcaste, etc, and at the macro end may itself merge with other castes to form a larger caste-group (such as Maratha or Lingayat, or broader still, Kshatriya for example).

I may answer the question differently depending on whether I am seeking a bride for my son, seeking a favour from someone, or deciding who to vote for. While this is quite plausible, it is still difficult to see why or how this poses a problem for the Census. The typical Indian respondent is not likely to be in any fundamental existential doubt about her caste, for this is a luxury available only to the upper caste urban elite. As for the context-dependence of caste names, this is not a major problem precisely because the census enumerators arrival at my door itself represents a very specific context, and my response will simply be whatever I believe to be appropriate for this context. The fact that I may have responded differently in other contexts is irrelevant here. In fact, one can go further to argue that the Census should in fact ask about synonyms for caste names where they exist and are relevant. Thus, in addition to a question such as What is the name of your caste? there could be a follow-up question like Is your caste known by any other names in your locality? Finally, as an additional aid to future tabulation and grouping, one could also ask for the family surname, if any. (Assuming that this is a household level question asked of the head of the household alone.) It must not be forgotten that since 2001 the Census has had access to technology far superior to that of earlier editions. In particular there is now character recognition software that enables scanning and digitisation of hand-written forms, very inexpensive digital storage media, reliable methods of data retrieval, and, above all, the possibility of retaining raw data down to the unit level, so that downstream procedures for grouping and consolidation are reversible in a costless manner. What this means in practice is that synonyms are not a problem, nor is the gathering of additional information, which is constrained only by the time available to enumerators to canvas each schedule. Unlike what is often implied by opponents, synonyms are certain to be centripetal rather than centrifugal, that is, they will be tightly concentrated around a central core rather than diverging greatly from it. It is very unlikely that persons with some local knowledge (like the local schoolteacher

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who is the most common enumerator) will be unable to recognise the family resemblance common to synonyms. Given that the admittedly difficult job of collation, grouping and consolidation need only be done later and post-digitisation, significant economies of scale can be harnessed. For instance, Census 2001 set up two special task forces in the office of the Registrar General of India to oversee this process for the religion and the caste (SC and ST) data. The same can be done for caste data, and this task force can access local knowledge and compare the data with past records in order to suggest the most prudent modes of consolidation. Should errors be pointed out, digital data bases ensure seamless and costless corrections. At a different level, while the Census ought to be accountable for the reliability and validity of its data, the standards of this accountability must be determined with reference to its role and function. It would be absurd to make the Census accountable in the same way and to the same extent that an individual ethnographer is held accountable for her data. For each produces truths that the other cannot, nor does one falsify the other.

Large Numbers?
Another puzzling argument presents the very large number of castes that will be returned as a self-evidently decisive ob jection. For example, the 2001 Census enumerated a total of 1,234 castes in the SC category and 698 tribes in the ST category. Incidentally, between them, the 1971, 1981 and 1991 Censuses returned a total of 1,700 religion names, which were analysed by a working group set up for this purpose. Do these numbers make the SC-ST or the religion data useless? In a country of 1.2 billion people that is 12 followed by eight zeroes large numbers are likely to be the rule rather than the exception. As such, they do not signify anything in and of themselves. An implied argument could be that such large numbers are hard to handle in the sense of comparing, contrasting and so on. The problem here is that the starting point is itself artificial. The fact that there are 1,234 SCs in India has no meaning at the all-India level because the schedules

are territorial, that is to say, SCs and STs are recognised only in a specific geographical context. In fact, a useful general principle for a caste census is to insist on a conservative strategy for aggregation. The district or even the sub-district or taluka level could be set as the default threshold, with aggregation beyond this point having to be clearly justified. The availability of disaggregated data will enable informed debate and act as a built-in antidote to the misuse of data. This also makes the Census the only possible source for this level of disaggre gation, since no other data source, not even the National Sample Surveys, can provide meaningful sample sizes at the district level. The main point, however, is not simply to prove that counting caste is logistically and practically feasible, which it clearly is. Rather, it is that the Census is not an instrument for producing the truth about caste. With variables like caste, religion, or language the Census effectively records what respondents wish to be recorded, subject to local consistency checks, and this is how it should be. The fears of falsification of census data are often exaggerated and not thought through carefully. Some commentators even go so far as to suggest that people would simply choose what caste to return themselves as, based on expectations of personal gain. This is a rather curious view because the caste that you name in the Census entitles the individual respondent to nothing at all. Benefits such as reservations, etc, depend upon a caste certificate, something which is entirely unrelated to the Census. Given that the Census is counting what people would like to be counted, its main purpose is precisely to perform this act of aggregation that no individual or group can do. In this sense, the Census is indeed about that elusive level of reality called the social, which emerges into view only through aggregation. Though comprised only of individuals, this aggregate turns out to be much larger in social significance than the sum of its parts. Given all this, it is somewhat beside the point to worry about false information; indeed, it is hard to figure out what false and true might mean here. In this sense, and with respect to variables

like caste or religion, the Census is something like a mandatory opinion poll.

Political Objections
This brings us to the political objections to a caste census, the lead argument in which is the claim that to count caste is to return to the colonial era of divide and rule. Even within the framework of this argument it is clear that the colonial census did not only divide but provided power ful support for nationalism and the idea of India. On the other hand, one needs to be clear about where one is standing when talking of divide and rule. From the perspective of the vast majority of the Indian population subjected to centuries of elite rule, the existence of a higher power enabled an otherwise improbable revolt against native authority. It is only from the perspective of an elite that sees itself as the owner of the nation that any and all subaltern claims for power sharing will seem divisive. Finally, the contemporary context needs to be stressed. What could divisiveness mean in the 21st century when there is simply no future in secessionism and the only agenda is power sharing within existing state jurisdictions or boundaries? In short, this is a very different time from the mid-20th century when new nations were being born everywhere. It is not just those who are labelled as divisive who have vested interests; calls for unity are seldom innocent and are often anything but altruistic. Other arguments stress the ways in which a caste census will turn into a mess of political manoeuvring, as everyone attempts to choose the caste identity that provides maximum advantage. Here again it is necessary to reiterate the point that it is not the task of the Census to capture the pure truth of caste apart from what people say they are. The Census cannot stand outside of the politics of its time. But what is often forgotten is that the politics of caste identities is not infinitely fluid and malleable, whether at the level of the individual or the group. For most Indians, caste is an interrelational identity embedded in the politics of everyday life. It is only from the perspective of those who do not live such an identity, that it can somehow be turned into something purely instru mental and volitional. At most, attempts will be

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made by already active social movements and groups to try and use the Census to their advantage, but the Census will not be the creator of such movements. If, indeed, large numbers of people are claiming to be another caste, then perhaps it is time that the Census record this. This is also why it is necessary to ask people in more than one way about their local caste identity. The politics of counting religion might be instructive about the possible effects of counting caste. In 1995 when the 1991 Census population tables based on religion were first made public, right wing Hindu groups (and scholars) tried to use this data to prove that Muslims would soon outnumber Hindus. These were the years of the rise of the Hindu right in all its ferocity. The subject of the rate of growth of Muslims relative to others has since figured in many contexts, political and academic alike, and has seen different arguments being made, including demographic evidence that, at every socio-economic level, Muslim families on average have one child more than their Hindu counterparts. A decade later, the same Census data has been put to very different use by the much cited report on the Economic and Social Status of Muslims in India, popularly known as the Sachar Committee Report. This report has helped engineer a shift in the public perception of Muslims as a pampered minority to that of a community that in social, educational and economic terms is one of the most disenfranchised in the country. This, too, is politics, if clearly for the better.

Breaking with Caste Blindness

We come now to the models and arguments that we ourselves favour. Our central point is that not counting caste has been one of independent Indias biggest mistakes. Perhaps this mistake could not be avoided as it only became visible retrospectively. But at least for the last two decades, the damage wrought by this policy of caste-blindness has been plainly visible for anyone who cares to see it. Most arguments against a caste census treat the implicit contrast with the status quo as though it, were neutral it is not. In fact, arguments against a caste census need to ask not only if we would be worse off with it, but also if we are better off without it.

The model of the Census we are partial to is that of a collective self-portrait, which, along with a model of caste that emphasises its role as a distributional axis, yields the argument outlined below. The most important reason to ask for a caste census is because it offers the opportunity to break with the model of caste blindness that the Indian state and mainstream polity has followed since independence. Starting from the premise that caste was to be singled out for abolition, the notion of caste blindness combined the formal abolition of caste in the Constitution with what amounted to a ban on public discussion of caste. The STs and SCs were treated as a regrettable exception to the rule of caste blindness. However, the formal abolition of caste was not accompanied by serious attempts to abolish its substantive privileges and disprivileges. This half-hearted caste blindness enouraged the perpetuation and deepening of caste inequalities under a supposedly casteless Constitution. Half a century of this perspective brought us to Mandal, or the point where a large plurality of lower castes could no longer ignore the contradiction between their political entitlements and their actual share in the nation. The flip side of rising caste consciousness among the lower castes was the fostering of the upper caste belief that they had left caste behind and were now casteless. For the most privileged sections of the upper castes this was true in a certain sense because three generations of caste blindness had allowed them to fully encash their caste advantages. They were now in a situation where they no longer needed to invoke caste explicitly, having acquired all the other resources that guaranteed them the legitimate advantages of inherited wealth, expensive education and abundant connections among their own kind. It is these groups of upper castes who are the most vociferous a dvocates of caste blindness today. It is they who believe that the Census is mainly about and for the lower castes and their squabbling about quotas. The col lective portrait model of the Census insists that everyones caste be counted and that the upper castes be denied the anonymity that they have enjoyed under caste blindness. In this sense, a caste census can mark the

end of a remarkably unsuccessful phase of Indias attempt to transcend caste and inaugurate a fresh initiative. In our view, therefore, arguments in favour of a caste census should begin by detailing the harm that its absence has done and is doing to our ambitions of annihilating caste. Today we are in a situation where caste is exclusively associated with Indias lower castes, specially dalits and adivasis, who must prove their membership as SCs and STs by giving identifiable caste and tribe names. We have been arguing that this situation must change in favour of a fuller, more inclusive picture, where everyone must answer the question of their caste. This is by no means an endorsement of an unequal system. Saying one has no caste is an option for those who wish to exercise it. However, it is in the interests of a democratic politics that the false image of caste as the exception suffered only by its most discriminated citizens give way to a situation where we are willing to recognise that caste is relational. There is no caste disprivilege without a corresponding privilege accruing to some other caste. It is this mutual connectedness that we have denied so strenuously throughout our post-colonial history. It is time to recognise that contrary to Kabirs famous prem gali (or alley of love and devotion) which admits only one at a time, the alley of caste requires that we enter and leave together. A universal caste census for all Indians will be a fitting acknowledgement of the undeniable fact that, when it comes to caste and its injustices, our complicity and our redemption are both inescapably mutual.

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