New Delhi: A delegation of 11 parties led by Nitish Kumar got a patient hearing from Prime Minister Narendra Modi on their demand for a caste census, especially among OBCs. A month ago, the Bihar chief minister had led a delegation of his own party MPs to Union home minister Amit Shah with a similar demand. Both Modi and Shah have kept their options open on the matter.
In 2018, the Union government had favoured a caste-based census—then home minister Rajnath Singh made a statement to this effect in Parliament. However, in July this year, the government informed the Lok Sabha that the 2021 census would not have a caste count. The 2021 census was delayed by the pandemic and will now be conducted next year, with the preliminary results expected in 2023-24.
What is the BJP’s position on a caste-based census? The late Gopinath Munde, an OBC leader, had in 2011 made a passionate pitch in Parliament in favour of such a headcount. Yet, ideologically, in the 1990s and later in the first decade of the 21st century, the party had opposed the move. The BJP has come a long way since the Mandal movement of the 1990s, wherein it built its electoral fortunes by championing the interests of the upper castes. Modi, who belongs to an OBC caste, has helped the BJP shed the image of being a party of Brahmins and Baniyas alone.
This change in the character of the party has given space to discuss the complex issues of a caste-based census. A big section in the BJP and the RSS supports the demand for a caste census. They believe the apprehension of this leading to class conflict is ill-founded. The Bihar assembly has passed a resolution in favour of a caste census twice, which was supported by the BJP.
A top BJP leader says a caste-based headcount may lead to sharp reactions among communities, rejigging of the quota system, and doing away with the 50 per cent cap on reservation put by the Supreme Court. The BJP has to take a call as to whether to tread this path. Union minister of education Dharmendra Pradhan, an OBC leader with an RSS background, said in the Rajya Sabha in the last session: “Caste-based census is a revolutionary process. It is not that caste census has not happened. Many states have considered it as the basis.”
The line toed by Pradhan, who is well connected to the BJP big league as well as the RSS, gives an indication about the government’s perspective on the issue. Pradhan was participating in a debate to seek amendments to the 102nd constitutional amendment done in 2018 to constitute the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC). The amendments clarified that states had the right to make their own list of OBCs. This opens up a window for the states to do their own survey rather than bank on the Centre. This will still require legislative empowerment of the state, but several leaders in the BJP and RSS believe this is the way out.
The last full caste census was done in 1931. Since Independence, India has only done a caste headcount through the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) in 2011. But the BJP government rejected the report in 2015. The full data of SECC was never made public. A top government official said the data had more than 3.5 million castes. “It was impractical to implement,” says the official. “For instance, there is a small community of salt collectors in Maharashtra, but you will not find them elsewhere in the country. Then there are complexities within the castes themselves. It is better if states do their headcounts themselves.” Scroll. In
