New Delhi: The Union government’s crucial announcement that it will carry out a caste census while conducting the long-delayed decadal census has come at a time when the Narendra Modi dispensation is feeling the heat over security lapses in Jammu and Kashmir following the deadly terror strike in Pahalgam.

The demand for a caste census has been a longstanding ask of opposition forces, although Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw took the opportunity to take a dig at the Congress, alleging that it only used the demand as a “political tool” while the BJP was serious about its politics of social justice.

Union home minister Amit Shah has also lauded the move as “historic” and as showing the government’s “strong commitment towards social equality and rights of every section”.

It is indeed “historic”, given the fact that a caste census will likely lay bare persisting social inequities like nothing else can.

But the larger question is what made the BJP change its mind, given that it has consistently opposed the idea in principle.

In fact, each time opposition forces have raised such a demand, BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Modi, have attacked them for attempting to divide society along caste lines.

Even when opposition parties argued that a caste census would help better channel the government’s welfare schemes, the BJP dispensation sought to dismiss it. Recall the multiple times Modi has publicly asserted, while mocking the opposition demand for a caste census, that the “four biggest castes” for him are the “poor, women, youth and farmers”, and that only their upliftment would lead to progress for the country.

In one instance, before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Modi went on to equate the opposition’s demand for a caste census as an “urban Naxal” thought.

The BJP has relied heavily on its strategy of consolidating Hindus across caste groups and has consistently opposed caste-based social justice politics.

So, why now?

There may be a range of factors that have led the BJP to take the decision.

In almost all elections, it depended heavily on organising OBCs, Dalits and its traditional “upper” caste groups as an electoral bloc to polarise voters along caste lines. In Haryana, it could consolidate a large section of non-Jat groups, while in Maharashtra and Gujarat it pitched itself as representing non-Maratha and non-Patel groups. In Uttar Pradesh, it could unite non-dominant OBCs and Dalits against the electorally-influential Yadav and Jatavs.

In fact, the Modi-led BJP’s recent successes can be attributed to its penetration among non-dominant communities that form the saffron party’s electoral backbone. It has sought to organise these communities along the lines of Hindutva to oppose regional parties that are perceived as single-caste, single-family parties.

After successive rounds of losses, many of these regional parties were looking to course-correct. The electoral call by the Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav to unite ‘PDA’ (pichhde or backward communities, Dalits, and alpasankhyaks or minorities) groups showed its mettle in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls when the party comprehensively pushed the dominant BJP into a corner.

Similarly, the INDIA bloc as a whole during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls could sidestep the dominant BJP, as the coalition of opposition parties was perceived as representing a larger number of castes and communities than what the saffron party could unite in its favour.

Although the opposition gave the demand for a caste census a concrete shape, the BJP has often hinted at governance measures that seek to address the craving for better social and electoral representation among non-dominant communities. But it could never take the final stride.

The Modi government appointed the Rohini Commission for the sub-categorisation of OBCs but never released its findings. Similarly, in Uttar Pradesh, the Adityanath government also set up the Raghavendra Kumar panel to see how the sub-categorisation of OBCs could be done, but even that report’s findings were not made public.

Its refusal to commit to the idea of sub-categorisation could be seen more firmly when it opposed the idea of the sub-categorisation of Dalits in the Supreme Court, even while pitching itself in favour of it in election rallies.

Meanwhile, opposition forces readily committed to the idea in principle and centred their Lok Sabha campaign on the idea of a caste census.

The Nitish Kumar government in Bihar, then a part of the opposition, took the first initiative to conduct a caste survey, which showed that 65% of the state’s population were OBCs.

Rahul Gandhi gave a call to break the 50% ceiling on reservations set by the Supreme Court and also carried out a national campaign to demand a caste census for a more democratic funneling of the state’s resources.

The BJP took a hit in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls as confusion regarding its support for a caste census among OBCs and Dalit groups prevailed, while the opposition moved in concrete ways to show that it was committed to the idea.

The Siddaramaiah government in Karnataka that had kept its 2015 caste survey under wraps for a long time made its findings public. The Revanth Reddy government in Telangana also conducted a caste survey, immediately released its findings and also factored them in to distribute public resources accordingly. Other opposition parties also put their weight behind the demand for a caste census.

In contrast, the BJP government in Haryana was forced to issue an order to implement the sub-categorisation of OBCs, but could never never implement it. The state unit of the party supported the caste survey in Bihar, but the party remained guarded about its support to the idea of a pan-India caste census.

With opposition forces espousing social justice politics in toto, the BJP’s polarising formula of pitching dominant and non-dominant communities against each other would not have worked anymore. That may have been the reason behind the Union government’s sudden announcement to conduct a caste census.

As its lapses stood exposed after the Pahalgam attack, this may have prodded the BJP to make the announcement, possibly as a deflectional move – something that the Modi government has frequently done for political gain.

With the BJP still the single-largest party, the announcement is also directed at OBCs and Dalits – who constitute a majority of India’s population – to pass on the message that it remains the only force that can fulfil their aspirations.

The Modi government also timed the announcement months ahead of assembly elections where a caste census is a burning issue.

The decision also shows that the current Modi government is a coalition and can’t separate itself from the political demands of parties like the Janata Dal (United), the Telugu Desam Party or the Lok Janshakti Party, for whom social justice issues are as significant as Hindutva is for the BJP.

The pinch that the Modi government has felt even in the last one year because of the compulsions of coalition politics could be seen in the two annual budgets made after the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The focus on Bihar and Andhra Pradesh in the last two budgets could not be missed even by a lay observer.

Yet, a big question emerges at the moment. When will the Union government conduct the decadal census? It was due in 2021 but was deferred because of the pandemic. Now that Vaishnaw has made the caste census dependent on the decadal census, the government has again kept itself away from setting a deadline.

The Modi government had similarly passed the women’s reservation Bill in the last Lok Sabha and tied it with the decadal census. Shah had assured the Lok Sabha that the decadal census would begin immediately after Modi returns to power, but the government hasn’t moved an inch on that front.

This means that the reservation for women in parliament can’t be implemented before 2030, assuming that the census exercise should take at least four years to file its final report.

The opposition may have scored a win here by forcing the Modi government to come out of its shell and unequivocally spell out its support for a caste census. However, it may now need to up its ante, get the Union government to make some tangible decisions soon and push the BJP dispensation to announce a plan to conduct a caste census, which continues to remain a mystery.

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