Daily Times

There was a time when a Sikh led India as its Prime Minister while a Muslim sat in the President House. Things were changed altogether when extremist Modi reached the Prime Minister House despite his hands being stained with the blood of innocent people of Gujarat. In today’s India, minorities are facing the worst kind of persecution as intolerance has become a basic hallmark of Modi’s regime. Muslims are beaten up in day’s light, Sikhs are protesting on the roads while Christians are also facing severe persecution. The Modi regime—knitted with the extremist ideology of Hindutva—is also doing injustice to the low-caste Hindus.

The whole of India is now demanding a caste-based census to capture the true picture of the society but Modi-led BJP isn’t paying any heed to its people; further pushing them to the wall.The last caste census was carried out in 1931 when India was under British rule. The same exercise was also carried out in 2011 but it was marred with inaccuracies. It is a matter of fact that Brahmans are ruling the country in spite of being only seven per cent of the country. Therefore, there is a strong demand for the caste-based census by the political parties and people of India. The regional and national political parties, including Janata Dal-United (JDU), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), are demanding a caste census while claiming that the so-called upper castes have occupied a disproportionate share in jobs and access to higher education.

Chief Minister of Bihar Nitish Kumar, who is a strong advocate of caste census, has said that the enumeration of the population of each caste group will be helpful for the government to formulate more accurate welfare programs.It is pertinent to mention here that the quotas for Scheduled Castes (SCs) also known as Dalits (15 percent) and the Scheduled Tribes (STs) 7.5 (per cent) are based on the caste and tribal identities. The highest reservation mandate for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) at 27 per cent is caste-based as BP Mandal Commission ascertained the backwardness of the class based on caste. While in the case of Dalits and STs, reservation for OBCs is not based on their share as per their population.

BJP fears that having an OBC census may dent their carefully constructed caste alliances.

The OBC quota was fixed at 27 per cent as per the available space to keep the reservation cap at 50 per cent. The Mandal Commission had estimated the OBC population at 52 per cent.

Therefore, the leaders like Samajwadi Party (SP) President Akhilesh Yadav demanded that “Jiski jitni ankhya bhari, uski utni hissedari” (every caste group should get representation proportionate to their share in population). The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has once categorically said in the Parliament that it won’t undertake a caste-based survey as a policy matter. It can therefore be said that the policies are being formulated based on the 1931 caste-based census while making projections.

There is a dire need to conduct a new census as concrete policies cannot be formulated in the absence of actual data.The lack of data deprives millions of families of getting their due share from the budget of the government. The state government of Madhya Pradesh only allocated Rs 400 crores for the tribal community out of 19,000 crores in the supplementary budget. There are 46 recognised Scheduled Tribes in Madhya Pradesh and it is sheer injustice to them. The leader of the opposition Kamal Nath stated that the BJP government is anti-tribal as it has allocated nothing for the tribal welfare in the supplementary budget. The BJP government spent hundreds of crores of rupees during elections to attract tribal votes but it failed to invest in them for their welfare.

The BJP government is reluctant to conduct the caste-based census because the upper-caste groups have been the primary beneficiaries of the education, economic, and development policies of the government. A caste-based census will expose this fact in a forceful manner that will become problematic for the Brahminical ruling class; threatening their hegemony. Moreover, the Hindutva ideology sees a caste-based census as a threat to their projection of “Hindu” unity as it will expose their Brahminical nature. In the Hindutva ideology, a caste-based census is described as a conspiracy to break “Hindu society.”

Almost all political parties of India are demanding the caste-based census to get the true picture. Recently, an all-party delegation from Bihar, including the BJP and JD (U), met the prime minister for the inclusion of an OBC census in the upcoming general census.

Previously, the assembly of Bihar has passed unanimous resolutions for caste-based census twice. Recently, a delegation led by Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister met the Prime Minister to push for counting OBCs in India.

The BJP government should go for the caste-based census with the same speed as it snatched away the statehood of Jammu and Kashmir. It seems that the BJP fears that having an OBC census may dent their carefully constructed caste alliances in several states under the dominance of the upper caste.Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav has also criticized the Indian government for failing to conduct the caste-based census. Former Bihar Chief Minister said that even birds and animals are counted in India but the caste-based census is still ignored.

He said that census can count various animals, birds, and other species but not people of backward castes.Things are already out of control of Modi and it will be disastrous for him if he keeps ignoring his own people. It has been isolated internationally; a good example of which comes from the Asian region itself. None of India’s immediate neighbours, whose presidents and prime ministers Modi once hugged in typical fashion as he made bold claims about the way forward, want to have anything to do with it anymore. Foreign capital, which salivated at the prospect of India’s huge consumer market for breakneck profits, is also very disappointed and on its way out of the country since well before the pandemic.

These things have led to Modi’s domestic support base shrinking considerably and now the only gallery left for him to sing to is the extreme right Hindutva brigade. The whole political philosophy of Modi revolves around Hindutva that is a distorted version of Hinduism which demands complete hegemony of Hindus in a “secular” India and Modi is doing the same. From his Gujarat days to recent times as India’s PM, Modi is only bringing shame to the world’s largest democracy that also claims to be a secular state.

The writer is an old Aitchisonian who believes in freedom of expression, a freelance columnist, entrepreneur and social activist.