People's Democracy

WHEN the government announced the current Census of 2001 there were a lot of misgivings as political leaders and scholars debated the purpose and rationality of an exercise that would mention caste status. Earlier the same individuals had been very critical of the very positive and enlightening Anthropological Survey of India project on the grounds that it also enumerates the castes of India. Presumably by not mentioning caste we can wish caste away!

As it happens the new census enumerates only the Scheduled Castes and Tribes, and not other castes, thereby creating a great deal of imbalance and imperfections in the data collected, and a smokescreen around facts that constitute Indian reality. It was not entirely unexpected that a census conducted under the aegis of the BJP government, would be free of bias and perfidy, yet this government has shocked even those familiar with the politics of data manipulation by the state in the earlier censuses.

The designs of the government were first noted by members of the All India Christian Council, soon after the Manual for the census was first drafted and the core teams of trainers of trainers were being inducted. Some objections were raised, and the need for revisions was pointed out. The government decided to play deaf, and the proforma as it stands still contains the motivated agenda of the Sangh Parivar and the BJP government. It also falls short on other counts that have not been underlined by the Christian groups.

The Census has failed to record such necessary information as would,enable rational and relevant state policies, effective economic planning, and affirmative action in the direction of fulfilling the goals of the Constitution, particularly with reference to education and health. Instead it is geared to deliberately projecting a distorted picture to suit the needs/requirements of a government bent on privatization and cut in subsidies across the board.

The Census questionnaire is also violative of freedom of religion and conscience in the way it intimidates people into not declaring their real faith for fear of losing the benefits of the affirmative action they are entitled to as members of scheduled Castes and Tribes.

Designed to project a unified and positive view of Hindu society, the government has decided to be ‘modern’ in not recording any Hindu caste, but at the same time wants to derive the benefits of enumerating all Scheduled Castes and Tribes as Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs who could be defined as "part of larger Hinduism" for purpose of Hindutva politics.

It must be remembered that a census exercise does not simply describe how a State perceives the different sections of people; it is also an exercise that influences the way people perceive themselves and in doing so contributes to the construction of identities along a certain trajectory. We are all familiar with the British Censuses of the Indian population, which were designed to project Indians as backward, essentially innumerably divided and in perpetual conflict with each other, and also incapable of surmounting these handicaps of their "identity". The British used the Censuses as one of the main instruments of their "divide and rule" policies, and through them contributed to the creation of communal platforms. In fact, these censuses became major instruments for communal mobilizations in the 20^th century. But not only the British; for the Hindu communal elements, in particular, the census has always been the big platform to launch their insidious and hateful campaigns against the religious, linguistic and ethnic minorities. Census figures, real or fabricated, have been used to spread mistrust, bigotry and irrational fear.

For example, in the recent past ignoring that Punjabi was the language of both Hindus and Sikhs in Punjab, with Urdu also as a significant language. All Hindus were deliberately and falsely recorded as having Hindi as their mother tongue, thus creating a language-religion divide, later promoted through communal campaigns in Punjab. In fact the obsession with showing Hindi as the mother tongue of an overwhelming majority of the Indian people has resulted in the virtual obliteration from the census enumeration of other languages in the so-called Hindi belt.

The 2001 census can be justifiably characterized as "a Great Identity Theft whereby tens of millions of Dalits and Tribals are being forced into religious identities dictated neither by law nor by Statute, but purely by the bigotry of a partisan government and the cultural illiteracy of a pliant bureaucracy." At the heart of the matter are the contentious issues of caste and religion. According to the printed proforma and in keeping with the written instructions issued to the enumerators, a Scheduled Castes religious affiliation can be recorded only as Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist. No other religious affiliation is recognised i.e he/she cannot claim to be Muslim, Christian, animist, indigenous, agnostic, or no-faith categories. If any of the latter is chosen, then ipso facto he ceases to belong to a scheduled caste, and therefore is not entitled to any of the benefits of reservation granted to Scheduled Castes by the Constitution. To retain these benefits he must allow himself to be counted a Hindu even if not one. Two purposes are served here: inflating a "Hindu majority" and reducing the liability of the state of benefits to a section of society.

The Census exercise visibly intimidates the poorest population to convert to Hinduism, if Muslim or Christian, and holds a threat to those who may wish to exercise their individual freedom to convert to these religions. In cruder terms, a Muslim or a Christian Schedule Caste is being told in no unclear terms: your faith or your livelihood

Denying the Scheduled Castes the religion of their choice is of course, violating the constitutional provision of freedom of faith. Articles 14, 15, and 25 of the Constitution, denying the freedom of conscience, faith and equality among citizens. By a single stroke the Census deprives the Dalit Christians of their Scheduled Caste status. This is no accidental error, but is clearly specified on the questionnaire and from the written instructions given to the enumerators, general parameters for the recording of scheduled caste status.

ANTI-DALIT BIAS

Other ways have also been found to omit the recording of the caste of dalits, glaringly been when the President, belonging to a Dalit caste from Kerala, found that his caste was not mentioned on the census officials' list. Thus he had to be counted minus his caste status in independent India's first caste-based census.

This happened because the the Census Manual very clearly instructs that the citizen can be recorded as Scheduled Caste /Scheduled Tribe only if his caste has been includedin the list given to enumerators in each state.

There is therefore, a very real apprehension that thousands of people have not been able to register their correct caste status just because the state list does not recognize their community as part of the Dalit castes. This is again another way of denying their identity, and thus their claim to the benefits guranteed by the Constitution.

It is important to note that this issue was examined in the early 50s by the Law Ministry, and it was determined that a SC/ ST person did not lose the status conferred by the Constitution in case of his having to live elsewhere than the state in which the particular caste was listed. Since the 50s, with the spread of education, the green revolution and spread of industry, settlement patterns have changed, and a large number of these castes have migrated to areas other than where they were earlier located; e.g., a few hundred thousand tribal workers from Jharkhand work in Punjab, Haryana and western UP as agricultural labourers, thousands in the construction industry in Bombay and Delhi, and millions from Chattisgarh, UP and Rajasthan in industries in Maharashtra and Gujarat, from Bihar in Hydel projects and road building in Himachal Pradesh and other mountainous regions.

Hydel projects and dams have displaced millions from their home terrain, and the metropolises abound in migrant population, not to mention seasonal workers who may not have been in their home states during the Census. Already dispossessed, these millions will now lose all opportunities for access to government schemes meant for SC/STs.

Another spill-off is that SC/ ST reservations dependent on the percentage in the population will henceforth find them under-represented in jobs and governance, and in the absence of their social identity, a vast majority of them will be enumerated as Hindus, no matter what their belief.

While it is a caste-based census for the Dalits, however imperfect, it is not caste-based for other Hindus, i.e, citizens other than scheduled castes and tribes do not have their caste recorded.

Thus crucial link between caste and class, between caste and unequal distribution/control of resources, the unequal access to education and institutions of power and governance, etc, between different castes, remain undefined as far as the census goes, despite the elaborate questions regarding income, levels of education, etc. That the OBCs do have a justified political standpoint, even if one does not agree with the exclusive mobilization along caste lines by some of the political groups, will get glossed over in the absence of crucial data that misses out on caste inequalities and differential distribution of resources between them.

So despite two million enumerators visiting 650,000 villages, 5,500 towns and scores of cities to collect crucial demographic and socio-economic data concerning over a billion people, all the computerised sifting and analysing the data, will never record the reality that stares us in the face: that some 10 per cent of the upper caste population controls such a large percentage of the country’s assets, the highest paid jobs in the private sector, the highest positions in the bureaucracy and other institutions of governance, and in the universities.

The differential access to resources, income and facilities that accounts for the caste/community/tribal differences in access is crucial for the understanding of Indian society and polity, as also for any real planning that is people oriented. If the caste is not recorded with the other data one will never know the truth of caste oppression and inequality in Indian society. Such deliberate hiding of the real situation is particularly criminal at a time when the government is ostentatiously and ostensibly engaged in separating the poor (below the poverty line) from the non- poor (above the poverty line) for bestowing its favours of food subsidy.

With regard to the question of language too there is a curious and suspect instruction to the enumerators. It is said that if there are reasons to suspect that in any area due to any organised movement, the mother tongue is not being truthfully returned, they should record the mother tongue as actually returned by the respondent, but make a report to the supervisory officer for verification. Is this a reference to those who give their mother tongue as Urdu, or those seen as Bangldeshi refugees, or Hindu Punjabis once again?

This apart, a great many people have complained that the question on mother tongue/languages known, was not asked of them at all, which means it got filled up according to the dominant language in a particular region. In this manner minority languages in most states may well have got under- recorded and under-represented in all the states, willfully, or out of ignorance or carelessness. This is probably so in the case of Urdu all over the country, Sindhi, Marathi in Karnataka, Punjabi among the Hindu population and Urdu among the older generation in Punjab. Tribal languages too have got a short shrift; in Delhi almost everybody would have got listed as Hindi speaking, and in Maharashtra, particularly around Mumbai, Marathi, and so on.

Not surprisingly, a large number of varied protests have come up from the OBCs, Christians and the Scheduled Castes and Tribes, as well as other sections of the secular democratic intelligentsia not affiliated with caste or religious groups. Muslim leaders have felt that the Muslims have not been counted properly nor have their replies to questions been documented correctly. They have charged that the data was being written out in pencil, creating the suspicion that it could later be changed.

And, as John Dayal has pointed out in his write up on the Census, even those for whom religion does not count for much, but principles and civic freedoms do, have reason to worry when the Union Home minister makes a statement, even as the Census is underway, that he favours legislation providing incentives and disincentives to control the burgeoning population. People are not likely to give the details of the number of children, and in many sections of society their income correctly. Besides we will never know, in however small a number they may be, of the people who do not feel themselves as Hindus or Muslims or of some caste at all, but simply Indians to whom a religious identity is unimportant. In these days of whipping up religious frenzy, it would have been relevant to know this.

A gigantic census could have produced an authentic database for planning and welfare, and which voiced the people’s aspirations, which is what the government argued in the face of the detractors of the Census. In fact what other justification can there be for the government to possess all this data about individuals? But given its biases, and lack of training of enumerators, it will contain too many lacunae and imperfections than are justified in a complicated and huge exercise of this kind, and a great opportunity has been lost.