Implication of Caste Census
By Ashish Mohan Sharma
ME11B148
There were many
debates on this topic “should caste be included in census?” . People had
written many articles also on this issue. People talked about many
constitutional provisions for the one who are considered as backward classes.
According to all these, anyone will find himself in dilemma to answering to the
above question. If caste is included in census and enumerated properly without
any social conflict, then it could result in changes in social structure of society,
government welfare programs for people, educational institutions etc. There are
many consequences of this caste enumeration on future, many positive and many
negative.
Inclusion of
Caste enumeration in census is substantial for an overall socio-economic
development of India. If this enumeration happened without any intervention to
the data, then it will help us to include the new group of peoples to
backward classes whose socio-economic development is far behind then the
countries average development. And this will also help in exclusion of those backward groups of people who had achieved certain level of development.
Enumeration on
the basis of educational standard, economic development, demographic identity
and their service sector will definitely help to exclude those people who are
looking to change their identity for their development.
Asking each and
everyone in the population of one billion about their caste is not at all
convenient for enumeration. And there are more chances for people to change their
demographic identities for the sake of benefits from government policies like
reservation and this may result in useless data through census. J.H noted in
1931 census report that,
“a caste
which had applied in one province to be called Brahmin asked in other to be
called Rajput and there are several instances at this census of castes claiming
to be Brahman who claimed to be Rajputs ten years ago”
People are
still struggling with this problem. There is no doubt that caste enumeration
may lead to the intensification of caste identities and may also lead to mass
caste conflict and violence. This will be like repeated the same mistake that
British colonial government used as a part of “divide and rule” policy.
Intensification of caste identity has already increased a lot since
independence without any kind of enumeration on caste. There are many questions
to be answered like “How relevant is the census in a context where the media
and the political process continually highlight caste when reporting on public
personalities?”
There is no
doubt that we cannot do anything to factors like religion or language to
distinguish people but the fact is, caste was believed to be the status based
on social origin in the Hindu society, as Brahmins at the top, then Kshatriya’s,
Vaishya’s and Shudra’s at the bottom. They were supposed to do specific works
in the societies and had specific place in society to live. But in present era,
all these social structures have changed. Now Brahmins are doing the job of
Shudra’s or Vaishya’s and Shudra’s are doing the job of Brahmins. So all these
ancient social structure to identify a particular group has vanished, then why
are we still continuing with the word “CASTE”.
There are many
castes which are evolved in recent years, like Kamma and Reddy in
south India, for political reasons through coalescence of many sub-castes. Due
to the caste superiority, many lower caste people enrolled in higher castes in
order to raise their social status. Many questions are asked regarding the
quality of caste data that the census may provide. Which are also true, people
seeking gains will definitely affect the data and it will be of no use then.
The newly upcoming disadvantage of caste enumeration is political misuse for
the benefits of political parties.
REFLECTION vs
TRANSFORMATION
Social
scientist argued that census classification do not mirror classification,
classification is done depending upon the way of thinking. Another argument was
that state classification by caste predates the colonial census. In fact, the
caste system itself, specifically the varna classification of Brahmins,
Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras, with Brahmins on the top, was the result of
classification by Brahmins. The classification by varna took in several other
aspects of the world, such as time, space, flora, fauna etc. Economic
differentiation, migration and ecological differences all plays important role
in order give an opportunity to different groups to change their identity and
also to those who want to come together as a group in order to take advantages
of new opportunities. Caste ranking itself was not static and still it is not
sure that after including caste enumeration in census will decrease or increase
the static pace of casteism.
WHO
GAINS, WHO LOSES?
In recent
years, caste enumeration is seen as having advantages and disadvantages for
different groups of people. Similar to the past experience of mobilization, a
fresh enumeration would lead to fresh mobilization and a further hardening of
caste identities. And this will vitiate the quality of enumerated data. Already
the data on scheduled caste ad scheduled tribes, which the census collects, is
subject to political interference. Already there are many thousand castes
pending in courts filed by many communities in order get reservation like SCs
and STs. So still there are many chances of such mobilization of groups of
people from one caste community to another. The nation as whole will lose out
in terms of cost incurred, the rise in conflicts and the availability of
spurious data. One positive aspect of caste enumeration is that existing
backward caste, which are not in need of any kind of social as well as economic
help in the form of reservations will be get eliminated from quota and those
who are needy will be considered are backward classes. The present challenge
regarding caste enumeration is to ensure that data is not altered by any
regressive casteist party or used to ghettoize the polity.
Actually
implication of caste census depends on the nature of data received from census
enumeration. As
long as sociologist do not rely on census data and ignore historic and
ethnographic contextualization, the census may result in the development of a
new quantitatively competent sociology in India and yield some valuable
insights. One of the important issues is that including caste returns in the
census will drag a large number of sociologists back to a checklist study of
castes. One of its proofs comes from the people of India project
conducted by the Anthropological Survey of India, which aimed at providing a
brief ethnological profile of all 4635 communities in India. There are chances
that census enumeration would show up inequality and diminish the image of a
monolithic Hindu society.
In recent
census practices, usage of advanced technology has provided the easier ways for
census enumeration and these technical gadgets help the board committee of
census to receive data directly from the people, which reduced the chances of
intervention of people to make changes in that data for their greed. Political
power has also started using casteism as one of the tools for winning the
elections by giving false promises to help poor people and in broad view, they
had done nothing for those people. In this democratic country, everything is
under controls of those people who have powers in their hand.
Wordings of
Mahatma Gandhi in this context of casteism are that he used to call scheduled
caste people as Harijan which means people of god. In history,
these people belongs to lowest social rung of caste hierarchy , called as Shudra,
with whom dinning was not allowed and they were also restricted from entering
into the temples for worship. This is still followed in our present society
which is still inhibiting them to come out of modern destitution. Poverty is
not because of the fate of those people, we are responsible for it, who do not
help them to come in our society to live with us and share our sources of
living. According to the 2001 census, the number of landless poor labour poeple
are doubled in comparison to non scheduled caste population . Majority of
scheduled caste and scheduled tribes are still poor and do not have any land
for agriculture.There are more chances that people under poverty line will get
a new direction of living after the enumeration is done and policies are made
for their benefits.
There is great
need of analyzing the demographic distribution of society all over India, for
which the basis of enumeration should not be the caste, but the factors like
their employment, education, economic status etc. It will help enumerators to
decide policies for different people based on these factors and all the
backward classes should be merged into one. From the preview of political
powers, caste and religions are two different competing identities in the
political spheres. It is therefore observed that;
“If
caste comes as critical enumerative category for the Indian society, there is
no doubt that it will have such a huge potential that it will bring the vast
social transformation and political citizenship. Caste is neither tragedy nor
comedy, but history itself.”
sources:
- caste and the census: implications for society and social sciences (economic and political weekely) by Nandini Sundar and Satish Deshpande
- census and the caste enumeration by Ram . B. Bhagat
- caste enumeration in census: by Ravivarma Kumar
- The Hindu : Opinion/Editorial on caste census
- Caste as Census category : Implications of Sociology by Nandini Sundar
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