Profiling a billion

Profiling a billion

The joke that statistics is like a bikini-clad person, who reveals the irrelevant and hides the significant is surely apt for the census operations in our country. Otherwise, why would thieves and commercial sex workers be jointly labelled as beggars? But these bubus apart, there is a larger philosophical problem in the way the census authorities classify the ordinary Indian during the head-count. Some of the symptoms of this deeper malaise have come to light during the elaborate counting exercise being carried out in the country. Imagine a castewise break-up, under the Schedule Caste (SC) category, that is not elaborate enough to list President K.R. Narayanan’s caste! He hails from the Parava community in Kerala, which is strangely unlisted in the SC list in New Delhi. Other than sheer lack of homework on the part of the concerned officials, this reflects inherent biases that afflict most of the establishment in this country. After 130 years of conducting this exercise, such lapses raise uncomfortablequestions about our attitude towards the institution of caste, an institution that is central to the Indic way of life.

Even worse is the dual standards being adopted on the issue of caste, depending on whether a person is an SC or a non-SC. So, for instance, while the census would like to know his exact caste status jati if he falls under the SC bracket, it would evince no such interest if he identifies himself as belonging to a non-Scheduled category. In other words, following the 1930 census format when the caste question was asked for the last time is perhaps impolite for the non-Scheduled category, but polite for the SCs. No one obviously cared to raise what the rationale behind such a dual standard was. Similarly, if a person is an SC, he can belong only to one of the three religions: Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism. What about a Dalit Christian or a Scheduled Caste Muslim? Although the official Anthropological Survey of India, especially the K.S. Singh-led "Peoples of India" project, has published tomes on the subject, the census officials choose to maintain silence on the issue. The silence, in this case, is surelynot stoic but based on ignorance and is reflective of strong prejudices.

When the first census began in 1870, the colonial state launched modern India’s most elaborate sociological and demographic profile. But what was inbuilt was an ‘orientalist’ bias in the way communities were enumerated in the census operations. For instance, the idea of separate electorates for Muslims and Hindus ended up fanning communal problems. That eventually led to Partition in 1947. Similarly, the enumeration of castes and tribes described some subaltern groups as "criminals". Unfortunately, the census enumerators of independent India have failed to make a break with the colonial framework. Other than simply doing away with castewise enumeration after 1930s, the later decadal counts lacked any political imagination. Census data continue to be viewed as the dull numbers, not as a base for building profiles of communities. Unless the census authorities make a conscious attempt to break out of such an ‘orientalist’ mindset, the largest multi-cultural project in the world will itself stand defeated.