Will Caste Census Kill Caste Politics?

When census findings reveal that electing caste leaders to office does not alter the material conditions of the bulk of their followers, people would lose faith in caste politics

Will caste census kill caste politics?

Harping on caste in modern-day India could re-legitimise and reinforce an institution that modernity has rendered illegal and the Constitution and its democratic order have put beyond the pale of law, say many conscientious objectors to the caste census. Some would find this naïve. More to the point, objections to the caste census ignore the possibility that the findings of such a census could mark the beginning of the end of caste politics.

Caste is lived reality in contemporary India, regardless of legal norms. A good many surnames are caste identifiers. Marriages are arranged within the caste. In rural and smalltown India, members of subaltern castes continue to suffer not just discrimination but also oppression based on their social status.

To pretend that caste has become irrelevant and caste surveys and quotas based on caste only serve to give new life to an old evil is not particularly useful. A caste census would provide data against which to test assumptions and hypotheses.

How to design a survey questionnaire, given the sheer number of castes across the land, the regional variation in caste names, the difficulty in attribution, slippery distinction between sub-caste and caste, the time it would take to reach a consensus on the questions to be asked in the survey, and the delay this would cause in the conduct of the population census, the further delay in processing the data yielded by the enumeration, and the implication this has for postponing the controversial delimitation exercise beyond the term of the current Parliament are all weighty matters, each meriting focused discussion.

Here, let us focus on the implications for politics of the caste census, beyond the sleight of hand that has deftly transferred to the governing party the only political plank the Rahul Gandhi-led Congress has come up with during its prolonged exile from govt. There are two kinds of political implications, apart from the predictable demands for quota revisions based on caste strength revealed by the census.

One relates to the assumptions of relative numerical strength of castes in a given region. Leaders have become leaders based on how large their presumed caste followings are, and how good they are at accommodating other community leaders in their power coalitions.

Data could well show, as the leaked data from Karnataka’s caste survey has, that while identification of a dominant caste might be accurate in terms of its social and economic sway, its actual numerical strength might turn out to be significantly lower than that of castes deemed to be marginal.

The last time a proper caste census was conducted was in 1931, by the colonial govt. The relative strengths of different communities would have changed dramatically. Sections with socio-economic advantage would not only have progressed and globalised in their locus of life and work far more than the underprivileged, they would also have experienced sharper declines in their total fertility rates, as compared to subaltern groups.

The result could be for census data to reveal presumed armies of caste supporters to be much smaller or much larger than leaders and followers had assumed these to be. This could lead to a scramble of realignment within and across parties.

The other, more significant political fallout of the caste census might be to tarnish the appeal of caste and religious politics, and restore to politics its original redemptive mandate, to be achieved through creative policy and effective governance.

Caste politics mattered, vitally, in the context of total disempowerment of subaltern groups. Lalu Yadav’s charismatic rise to the office of the chief minister of Bihar shattered the insularity of the police and the administration to the complaints and concerns of anyone outside incumbent elite groups. Mayawati’s chief ministership not only saw some genuine redistribution of land but also ended the state of affairs, in which Dalits could not even lodge a complaint with the police against an upper-caste offender.

In this sense, caste mobilisation and political office secured on such mobilisation served to bring about basic empowerment of subaltern groups. But caste politics could not deliver generalised economic well-being or cultural capital to the deprived.

In the process of dismantling upper-caste hegemony over the administrative machinery, Lalu Yadav’s politics dismantled governance itself. To use a chemistry metaphor, Lalu will go down in history as a catalyst, instead of as a principal reagent of change.

Mayawati had a better grip on the administration, but the perception of corruption engulfed her govt. She and her kin prospered, while the mass of her following remained as they were. The story is not very different with Mulayam Singh Yadav and his party as well.

If the caste census now reveals the insufficiency of electing caste chieftains for community uplift, in stark, sordid detail as to the material possessions, educational attainment and occupational profile of caste members outside the ruling family, that could open the path to a new kind of politics.

Data would also disprove the notion that mobilisation in the name of a religion brings deliverance. People would be able to see for themselves that power formed on the basis of such mobilisation does not materially alter the lives of the vast majority of the faithful who responded to the clarion call.

This, of course, cannot be taken for granted. A possibility is only a possibility unless political entrepreneurs take advantage of that opening. But let us note that the caste census could open up a possibility to radically change politics.