In 1998 when the issue of including caste in the 2001 census was being debated, I wrote an article, “Can the Caste Census Be Reliable?” in Economic & Political Weekly. The issue has surfaced again in the planning of the 2011 census.

Many argue that since the colonial state conducted the caste census for eight decades, and the caste system has not yet changed, the post-Independence state should also do the same. While some think that caste is like sex and age, about which the census organisation can collect information easily. But caste does not really have the kind of certainty and rigidity frequently attributed to it. This is the burden of much of social science research that has developed during the last sixty years or so.

The demand for caste census assumes that every caste is a discrete unit with clear boundaries determined by the rule of endogamy. It is true that caste boundaries are clear in a village, which is a small community, but the census has to count the members of every caste as they are spread in every village and town in a state and often more than one state. The population of small castes may be counted easily, but most are not so small. The Kolis in Gujarat, the Marathas in Maharashtra, the Jats and Yadavas in north India, the Kammas and Reddis in Andhra, and the Okkaligas and Lingayats in Karnataka are huge castes, with unclear boundaries. The colonial census officials used to point out that they faced enormous difficulties in collating caste data provided by local enumerators.

... contd.