Shikha Mukerjee | Caste Census: Short-Term Gains, Long-Term Effects

The Narendra Modi government has chosen to go down a very perilous path, a road less travelled, in fact, avoided, by previous governments, including his most loathed ones led by the Congress, by announcing that there would be a universal head count of the castes of all Indians, along with the Census, whenever that happens. Or rather, as Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi have bluntly pointed out, whenever the Modi government coughs up the money.

Money, however, is not enough to throw at the problem that is finding a reasonably accurate methodology for enumerating the caste of about 1.4 billion Indians. The task of choosing the best methodology for the enumeration is Mr Modi’s job; the precedent was seriously imperfect. The Socio-Economic Caste Census of 2011 produced so many flaws that it could never be released in its entirety.

The Congress and the partners of the INDIA bloc have been gifted an arsenal of heavy-duty weapons to deploy against their common target: the Modi government and the BJP. The mystery is why did Mr Modi, the astute strategist that he is, pick on the caste census now? Since neither Mr Modi nor the BJP are leaking any clues on what was so urgent about the caste census in April 2025, there can only be speculation.

The caste census is a hornet’s nest. There may be short-term political advantages for the government that is brave enough to take on this difficult job, as in the forthcoming Bihar Assembly elections. If the announcement was timed to give the BJP’s campaign momentum in the messy and intensely competitive electoral politics of Bihar, it points to a certain desperation. If the purpose is of turning the caste census decision into a brave and bold step by the Modi-led BJP as the new “issue,” that could dominate the narrative and drown out other voices raising different issues, it is a gimmick and not a substantive commitment to the idea of inclusion.

Voters and politicians in Bihar are canny; the chances are they will get a handle on the intentions behind the announcement and draw their own conclusions. If there is a perception that the caste census announcement lacked honest purpose, it could turn out to be a risky political gamble for the BJP and Mr Modi. The announcement does steal some of Nitish Kumar’s thunder; in 2021, he called for a caste census; after Mr Modi said states could do it because the Centre would not, Bihar said it would get a Socio-Economic Survey of Castes done. The survey was completed in 2023; reservations went up to 65 per cent and there was a 10 per cent quota for Economically Weaker Sections. The Bihar caste survey also revealed that of the 17 per cent Muslims in the state, 73 per cent were poor and from the backward castes, otherwise known as “Pasmandas”.

Committing to a caste census may have been the BJP’s carefully considered move to trump Nitish Kumar in the caste-ridden politics of Bihar in the hope that it would yield large benefits in terms of the number of seats the party could capture from the Janata Dal (United). It may even have calculated there could be additional pickings from Tejashwi Yadav’s RJD as well as smaller and discomfort-causing caste formations like Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party and Hindustani Awam Morcha of Jitan Ram Manjhi. Perhaps that may work, if it is backed up by the government making a push to be transparent on how the caste census will be done.

The devil is, as always, in the detail. Like the proverbial stone chucked at the hornet’s nest, the caste census, with all its complexities, will chase Mr Modi for the rest of his third term. The announcement was the easy part; the rest is seriously challenging for a government that has a very cavalier style, being disdainful of the Opposition and dismissive of alternatives proposed from the other side.

The detail is the identification of castes and the listing. The 2011 SECC reportedly produced a list of a mind-boggling 46 lakh castes. The SECC adopted a self-reporting methodology, that is, individuals were listed as identified by themselves as members of their caste; the operative word being “identified themselves”. The result is a nightmare listing of sub-castes and confusing identifications.

It's for the Modi government to disclose the details, because that is one process where it cannot resort to its favoured routines of preferring opacity and non-disclosure to spilling it all out for everyone to see. The politics of caste is the politics of inclusion, of which reservation has been foregrounded, but it is not the only issue in a civilisation riddled with hierarchy, prejudices, privileges by birth, acute sensitivity about identities all of which have contributed to the structural inequality and associated deprivations that complicate the issue of representation and democratic participation.

One example will serve as an illustration. In its desperation to woo OBC and Dalit voters in the 2019 Lok Sabha election and the crucial 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, the Modi government and the BJP left nothing to chance. In one go, Mr Modi added 43 ministers of various ranks to his government in July 2021; of the people who joined, 27 were OBCs, 12 were from the Scheduled Castes and eight were from the Scheduled Tribes; of these 13 ministers were from Uttar Pradesh.

The selection of ministers was on the basis of under-representation of a specific sub-caste in the Modi government.

Appropriating Maharaja Suheldev, an icon of the Rajbhar OBC caste, and his incorporation as an 11 th century defender of the Hindu faith against invading Muslim armies is how the BJP weaponises caste in its ceaseless search for election dividends. The incorporation of specific sub-caste icons and the wooing of specific Dalit sub-castes has become part of BJP’s election playbook. Mr Amit Shah has been credited by experts and party leaders as the mastermind who can stitch election victories by micromanaging sub-caste identities.

It is ridiculous to imagine that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat meeting Mr Modi after the caste census announcement was to express serious disapproval. The RSS may in theory be ideologically disapproving of giving primacy to the fragmented reality of Hindu identity, but in practical terms, the Sangh knows exactly how the caste system operates and why it is politically necessary to leverage the divisions.

Now that the stone has been cast, it is for Mr Modi and the BJP to handle the hordes of hornets that will aggressively compete in the identity politics of the caste census.

Shikha Mukerjee is a senior journalist based in Kolkata