Nitin Pai: A caste census is likely to perpetuate division and weaken our nationhood

Mint

2 days ago

I want to sound a warning: a caste census not only risks diverting India away from development but could also undermine our foundational constitutional values. Instead of reducing the salience of caste in Indian society, it will reinforce it.
In so doing, it goes against B.R. Ambedkar's warning on day-zero of the Indian Republic: 'The castes are anti-national. In the first place because they bring about separation in social life. They are anti-national also because they generate jealousy and antipathy between caste and caste. But we must overcome all these difficulties if we wish to become a nation in reality. For fraternity can be a fact only when there is a nation. Without fraternity, equality and liberty will be no deeper than coats of paint."
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Our politicians and liberal intellectuals are not being honest about the real reasons for India's caste census. Questioned at a forum last year, a prominent young leader of the opposition party blithely asked: 'What's the harm in just counting?" There is abundant evidence from psychology and sociology that counting is always and everywhere political. We know from our own history that when the British started counting a century ago, caste groups mobilized to show strength in numbers. In the post-Mandal era, there are open displays of caste identities on car bumper stickers.
Evidence from social science affirms Ambedkar's argument that jealousy and antipathy are inevitable. When students are arbitrarily assigned to different houses in school, the houses quickly become identities and spark competition. Now, if those identities are not arbitrary, but instead claim long traditions, notions of superiority and inferiority, and carry with them historical grievances and long memories, you can imagine how they will interact with each other. Fraternity and a national consciousness are the victims. It thus follows that an Indian nationalist cannot perpetuate caste consciousness.
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More honest politicians and intellectuals will respond that the caste census is necessary to promote social justice. By this they mean the system of reservations and quotas. Yet, it is hard to see how a caste census improves the prospects of the historically most oppressed communities.
On the contrary, the demand for reservations in most states is a tussle among socially powerful communities for more political power. If we are honest, we will accept that the real reason for the caste census is that it is expected to inform caste-based power sharing. This might have been acceptable were it not for the fact that identity-based power sharing hollows out any attempt to create a nation that transcends caste.
Some might argue that a sense of national identity is not important or that it co-exists with caste, ethnic and linguistic identities. That it is okay if we discover our Indianness only when competing with or fighting against other countries.
It sounds comforting until you realize that we have pending questions like delimitation, fiscal federalism and regional autonomy for which we cannot find amicable, mutually acceptable solutions unless there is a strong sense that all of us are in this together. For the people of India, nationalism is not merely a slogan. It is central to our unity, security and prosperity.
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Grand ideas apart, lack of fraternity manifests in our daily lives to such an extent that it's everywhere but we blind ourselves to it. What I have called a sense of 'us-lessness' underlies the poverty of our public lives. With little exaggeration, I could argue that there is no 'public' at all in our country. There is only 'me' and 'my extended caste community.' There is a very weak 'my civic community.' As I have explained in an earlier column, this is why our public toilets stink, roads are jammed, parks are encroached, officials are often corrupt and our public spaces are usually ugly, dirty and crumbling. Few care about the public because few feel part of the public.
The forthcoming caste census will supercharge caste consciousness. This will weaken our sense of fraternity, destroy social capital and result in poor public services. It will reduce our potential economic growth rate, limit what Indian society is capable of and reduce free citizens to being mere members of their identity groups.
The economy will still grow, but our quality of life will not be commensurate with our material prosperity. Those who can afford it might withdraw into private realms with private transport, security, water, electricity, schools, healthcare and so on. Those who cannot will have to make do with shabby public services, inefficiently provided by vote-bank governments and grudgingly financed by sullen taxpayers.
The Constitution enjoins us to work towards social justice and rid society of the animosities and discrimination that have held India down for centuries. But the train of social justice should not come to a final halt at the station of reservations and quotas.
To solve our age-old problems, we need better ideas and new thinking. The first step, however, is not to worsen matters. Discrimination based on caste cannot be eliminated by strengthening caste consciousness.
The author is co-founder and director of The Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy.