The downside of a caste census

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- ADITI PHADNIS

What should we do with caste? Annihilate it, says Anand Teltumbde echoing B R Ambedkar, not count it, because if we start on that exercise we will be doing it till kingdom come.

The net effect of a caste census, he argues, will be no better than the decennial census, launched in 1871 and formalised in 1881, (and the ones that followed) which only strengthened caste, transforming social affiliations into rigid and state-recognised categories, enabling a “segmental control of society”.

In April 2025, the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs approved the enumeration of caste in the decennial census to be carried out in 2026-27. For most observers of Indian politics, this was equivalent to an exclamation mark: Because prior to this both Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had been vocal in their opposition to a caste census. In the 2024 election campaign, Mr Modi had denounced the push to count the Indian people according to their caste, pronouncing that for him there were only four big castes: Women, youth, farmers, and the poor. The complete story of how that change of heart came about is yet to be told: Maybe it was the political pressure of the caste survey undertaken by Bihar (where an election was due — and the BJP was and continues to be a partner in power) and Karnataka.