Modi Govt's Caste Census U-Turn: Social Justice Move Or Tactical Politics?

In a major policy shift, the Narendra Modi government recently announced its decision to include caste enumeration in the next decennial census. The Union government’s decision to conduct a caste census, the first in independent India, came as a huge surprise for several reasons, including its timing, given the BJP’s long-standing ambiguity on caste-based enumeration, which it has, for long, resisted as “a matter of policy”.

From calling the demand for a caste census an “urban Naxal thought” and a plan to “divide India”, the government’s complete turnaround is as surprising as the Congress party’s altered course on social justice. Like the BJP, the idea of a caste census had never found favour with the grand old party until Rahul Gandhi reversed the party’s stand on the issue in recent years.

The BJP and its ideological parent, the RSS, have a long history of being reluctant to conduct a caste census. This is because the survey, in their view, comes with the possibility of assertive caste groups eroding the larger Hindu identity. Dubbing it a retrograde idea to consolidate electoral constituencies on caste lines, Modi had slammed a proposal by the Congress party for a caste census in its manifesto for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

In 2021, the Modi government had outrightly rejected any proposal for a caste census in Parliament. After the BJP’s victory in the three heartland states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh in December 2023, Modi had said, “For me there are only four castes—women, youth, farmers, and the poor.” But rhetoric cannot change the lived reality of rigid caste categories that govern every aspect of life.

However, the Congress and other INDIA bloc parties continued to press for a caste census with Congress-ruled Karnataka and Telangana being among the first states to conduct caste-based surveys after Bihar. So, the obvious question is: why has the BJP, which has long vacillated on the issue, now agreed to conduct a caste census? What political gain is it likely to derive from the decision, which is expected to empower the backward castes politically, socially, and economically? Another important question that arises is: how will the caste census impact the Congress and Mandal-era parties like the Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal?

The caste count move is a political decision and has been projected as a step towards social justice, though political compulsions behind the decision are all too obvious—the BJP has been forced to change course on its stated ideological position by a relentless Opposition. Rahul Gandhi has successfully steered electoral discourses around the caste census since 2023, when he raised the issue in Parliament.

The contestation around caste census needs to be understood from the points of view of its utility to address structural inequalities as well as electoral relevance. Till caste remains the mainstay of national, regional, state, and local politics, there is no escape from its expediency as a political tool for electioneering.

The Congress party’s demand for a caste census, a reversal of its historical position after several decades and generations of its leaders, is obviously a political strategy to woo back the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), a solid vote bank in the Hindi heartland, that moved away from it in the post-Mandal era.

The grand old party’s stand on the issue of caste census, caste-based reservations (proportional representation based on population) and the removal of the 50 per cent cap on reservation is part of its ideological strategy to counter the BJP’s Hindutva approach of diffusing caste divisions under the Hindu identity. It is quite likely that the Congress party’s back-to-back defeats in the 2014 and 2019 general elections may have compelled it to change its position on social justice to usher in a “new development paradigm”.

The BJP’s decision to walk on the caste lines may appear to be a deft move to neutralise the Opposition’s rising demand for “jitni abaadi, utna haq”, but the decision could also mark the beginning of a politically precarious journey. Since it is not just a data-gathering exercise, the caste census could catalyse a new wave of caste consciousness in the Hindi heartland, resulting in the revival of complex and contentious debates around identity, social justice, economic status, and representation.

Given the reawakened aspirations of backward communities for equity and representation, thanks largely to the Congress which has framed the census not just as a statistical exercise but as a vehicle for redistribution of power, the BJP could not have continued to dither on the demand. Any appearance of stalling could have sent a wrong message to the backward communities.

For more than a decade, the BJP’s model of social engineering to contain identity politics through welfare schemes, subaltern Hindutva, and the mobilisation of non-dominant OBCs and Scheduled Castes, coupled with its cultural narrative of Hindu pride overriding intra-caste divisions, has worked well for the saffron party.

The caste census, however, could disrupt this carefully calibrated equilibrium—its mere announcement has been hailed as a victory for social justice. After the caste-based data is made public, there would be demands to restructure the reservation structure. Even the Economically Weaker Sections quota for the upper castes could come under scrutiny.

So, what explains the Modi government’s caste census U-turn? The answer lies in the BJP’s diminished performance in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, in which many backward castes, alarmed by the Hindutva party’s alleged plans to change the Constitution, voted for the INDIA bloc parties.

The CSDS data confirmed this shift in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, forcing the BJP strategists to realise that the party’s social alliance, built over the past decade, was beginning to crack and combining Hindutva with Mandal politics was no longer optional but essential. The decision to allow caste enumeration is thus a calibrated political move that has come just months ahead of the Bihar assembly election later this year.

The writer is a senior independent Mumbai-based journalist. He tweets at @ali_chougule