Great article. Excellently argued.

Today’s Hindu contains an article echoing your gvery thoughts. In fact you seem to be in very esteemed company with your point about caste being a moving flexible appellation.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/article627576.ece

Caste, Tribe or Race
The question on Caste, Tribe or Race was asked from each individual right from 1872, though the type of information collected was different in different censuses. In 1881, caste if Hindi; sect; if of othe religion, were recorded. In 1891 Main Caste and Sub-division of caste or race was recorded. In 1901 and 1911 censuses, the caste of Hindus and Jains; tribe or race of those of other religions were recorded. In 1921, 1931 and 1941 censuses, caste, tribe or race of all the individuals enumerated was recorded. In the 1931 Census, tabulation of figures for individual castes was limited to :

(i) Exterior castes;
(ii) Primitive castes; and
(iii) All other castes with the exception of:
(a) those whose members fell short of four per thousand of the total population; and
(b) those for which separate figures were deemed to be unnecessary by the local Government.

Pursuant of the policy of the Govt. Of India to discourage community distinction based on Caste, the 1951 Census marked a complete departure from the traditional recording of Race, Tribe or Caste and the only relevant question on caste or tribe incorporated in the Census Schedule was to enquire if the person enumerated was a member of any ‘Scheduled Caste’, or any ‘Scheduled Tribe’ or any other ‘Backward class’ or if he was an ‘Anglo Indian’.

In 1961 and 1971 Censuses the information was collected only for each Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe.

URL: http://censusindia.gov.in/Data_Products/Library/Indian_perceptive_link/Census_Terms_link/censusterms.html

The 1941 Census, the last to be conducted by the British, was constrained by the War-time economies, and did not tabulate any data except the basic population totals and community totals.

As “abandonment of caste enumeration seemed a step toward the deestablishment of caste” (Galanter 1984: 260), after India attained independence, enumeration of caste in censuses was dispensed with, as part of national policy, since 1951.
URL: http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1519/15191010.htm

I am pretty sure that I have read in a reputable publication that it was discontinued partly because of pressure from nationalist leaders. Secondly. if the second world war was the main reason for its discontinuation, then there’s no reason why it could not have been resumed in 1951 and subsequent decades.

r

@Anirudh: I believe, your point on impossibility of undertaking such an exercise is a weak argument, because you underestimate the capacity of the Office of the Registrar General of India. However, if you are arguing that a caste-based census, given such a short notice, is impossible to conduct, then I would share your views.

@Alok: I am not quite sure if you correct on the reasons for discontinuing the caste census. Correct me if I am wrong, but the caste census was also carried out in 1941. The financial pressures of the the second world war meant that the exercise was conducted in a half-hearted manner and therefore, the data was not reliable. (I don’t know what happened in 1951). Sorry, I can’t seem to find a reference on this right now.

Caste still remains an ascriptive category – however it has changed, in some measure, from being an other-ascriptive category to a self-ascriptive one. The description of caste as an other-ascriptive category is true in closed and static societies. This is challenged by changing practices and geographic dispersion amongst social groups. My point being – unlike race or colour which is observable and in that sense objective – caste is a result of what one makes of it. On may perhaps draw a parallel to one’s lingual identity; a person’s grandmother’s first language might be X – but through two generations’ of social/geographic mobility such person may now describe her first language as Y.

Dear Alok

The point about perverse incentives goes even further. Caste is now established as perhaps the most important identity for securing state benefits. Further amends to existing systems are very likely to be based on the data collected through the Census (and if not, then this dilutes the argument for carrying out this exercise in the first place). There is a perverse incentive for groups to en masse misreport their social and economic status in a way which would further their own interests. This is not mere conjecture alone – the article by Kenneth Jones (above) provides some interesting examples of such group behaviour (in the context of their religious identity) during the times of the British census.

I also think that the census creates perverse incentives for people to give wrong information since people can hide their real castes and give the names of castes which benefit from reservations. There’s already a thriving market for fake caste certificates and I think this census is a boon for those who wish to fraudulently claim caste based benefits.

The points are extremely well made especially in that there must be greater debate and discussion before this decision is taken. Two points- I agree with the difficulties of caste classification. But you say caste is a question of self-perception. This seems counter-intuitive and wrong to me unless I’m missing something. Granted that there is sanskritisation and movement amongst castes but that doesn’t take away from the general point that caste is an ascriptive category, unlike economic status. Try really hard and one cannot change it though a certain caste can become upwardly mobile consciously or because of state benefits. That doesn’t however change the caste itself.

Second, I think this opens up a wider debate of where we see caste in modern India. Caste was stressed as a marker by the Indian state in positive discrimination with the ultimate hope that it would cease to be relevant to society when the baggage associated with particular caste names would go as economic growth took place. We may argue that we still haven’t reached that end and we should keep trying or that we must try the more straightforward approach of getting caste out of the picture by de-emphasising it in a phased manner and moving to purely economic classifications. I strongly feel that the latter is the correct approach in the long run and ultimately that is where we should head; i.e. caste must cease to have relevance. The caste census, in my mind, is thus a step in the wrong direction.