Census 2027 could help understand how caste hierarchy intersects with gender and religion: Sociologist Trina Vithayathil

In her book, Counting Caste: Census Politics, Bureaucratic Deflection, and Brahmanical Power in India, sociologist Trina Vithayathil traces the institutional sabotage of caste data and the systemic refusal to acknowledge caste privilege. Drawing on years of fieldwork and interviews, her analysis provides a critical lens to understand today’s developments. In an interview with indianexpress.com, she reflects on the meaning of caste enumeration, the myth of neutrality in data collection, and the deep-rooted power structures that shape India’s census politics. Edited excerpts:

1. You argue that the Indian state has institutionalised the concept of castelessness, framing caste as an issue primarily affecting the oppressed rather than the privileged. In this context, what significance does the upcoming caste census hold? Additionally, why was the notion of castelessness institutionalised in the first place?

Depending on the design and execution of caste-related questions in Census 2027, the census could provide a comprehensive understanding of how caste hierarchy intersects with gender, religion, education, literacy, occupation, household amenities, assets, and place of residence, among other socio-economic factors. The census could document the relational nature of caste, including how caste privilege and power operate for the first time since 1931.

With regards to the institutionalisation of castelessness, scholars such as Professor Satish Deshpande have traced how political leaders from dominant castes muted their caste identities to represent all of India in the 1930s and construct a Congress “majority”. They did so in response to Dr BR Ambedkar’s demand for separate electorates, and continued to oppose many of his recommendations in independent India (for example, to expand reservations to additional caste-oppressed groups and enact a Hindu Code Bill to challenge caste and patriarchy in social life), which strived to build institutional mechanisms to safeguard the interests of marginalised communities including the election of leaders and the entry of bureaucrats committed to annihilating caste, patriarchy, and related systems of domination. Instead, the systems that reproduce caste-based privilege and power became obscured and were allowed to take on new forms that often appear consistent with democratic values.

2. How did colonial-era census practices shape the postcolonial Indian state’s resistance to caste enumeration beyond Scheduled Castes and Tribes?

Census officials in independent India were eager to redirect time and energy away from the enumeration of caste, which they saw as an obsession of the colonial state but largely irrelevant in independent India. Caste, religion, and race were key social categories enumerated in colonial censuses, and census officials spent considerable time and resources creating caste lists and collecting, compiling, and publishing caste-wise data. Across colonial censuses, the state struggled to commensurate caste, that is, create a common metric or set of comparable categories within and across localised systems of caste hierarchy. Yet, marginalised groups also used these census data to make demands on the colonial state to address caste-based inequalities, including the under-representation of caste-oppressed groups and the restricted access to “public” resources and institutions. Census data helped to make visible gross caste-related inequalities and assisted in the development of policies to address caste-based discrimination and exclusion. In contrast, political leaders in independent India argued that if the state focused on economic development, then caste hierarchy would dismantle itself; this view justified the decision to restrict the enumeration of caste in the census and squarely aligned with the strengthening of an ideology of castelessness.

3. You trace the idea of “bureaucratic deflection” — how the state appears to comply with social justice demands but then quietly subverts them. Can you walk us through the key mechanisms that led to the 2011 caste count not being made public, despite political agreement at the highest levels?

Though political leaders publicly backed caste enumeration in Census 2011, officials in the Home Ministry and Office of the Registrar General, India (ORGI) resisted, arguing it would compromise the census’s accuracy. Framing the issue as technical rather than political, they sidelined advocates and shaped the decision-making process out of public view. This led to the exclusion of a caste-wise enumeration in the census on the grounds of protecting its “integrity.”

Political leaders obtained written support for a caste census from every political party but in the process secured operational latitude through a cleverly worded inquiry. Executive bureaucrats redirected the caste count to the National Population Register (NPR) but facing pressure proposed a separate caste census after the main Census 2011. This never materialized, and the caste count was instead folded into the Below Poverty Line (BPL) survey, later renamed the Socio-Economic Caste (SEC) Census. Years later, the resulting caste-wise data were deemed unusable and never published.

The caste-wise enumeration in the SEC survey was undermined by an ideology of “castelessness.” The first caste question lacked OBC and general category options required to classify approximately 77.5% of the population. The inclusion of “other” and “no caste/tribe” options further diluted a meaningful enumeration of caste. The second caste question failed to include a caste list for the catch-all “other” option from the first question, resulting in unstandardised, unprocessable answers. Little effort was made to enumerate caste among religious minorities excluded from SC classification, neglecting tens of millions from caste-oppressed backgrounds. Without external oversight, future efforts may face the same fate.

4. One striking theme in Counting Caste is the role of technocratic language — concerns about data quality, standardisation, and survey design — as a mask for ideological resistance. How should we understand the relationship between technocratic reasoning and Brahmanical power?

For more than 150 years, texts such as Jotirao Phule’s Slavery and BR Ambedkar’s States and Minorities have described the interwoven relationship between technocratic reasoning and Brahmanical power. Dr Ambedkar worried that if the executive bureaucracy remained in the hands of those dominated by Brahmanical ways of thinking, then social and political equality would not be possible — the state would fail to prioritise dismantling systems of caste- and gender-based discrimination and privilege in independent India. He foresaw how bureaucratic expertise and technocratic decision-making would reproduce existing hierarchies of power instead of correcting histories of exclusion.

Technocratic reasoning is often incorrectly seen as apolitical and therefore caste and-gender-free; this gives experts leeway to make decisions with limited external scrutiny and allows for the perpetuation of Brahmanical ways of thinking. In the case of Census 2011, executive bureaucrats used technocratic language to steer a public conversation and convince the political leadership not to enumerate caste in the census. Non-experts had difficulty challenging the premise that somehow enumerating caste in the census would ruin the decadal population count. Technocratic reasoning (for where there is a high bar for entry) replaced a conversation over the importance of collecting caste-wise data for the administration of affirmative action, broader policy and programmatic purposes, and social justice concerns. Similarly, research from other parts of the world traces how technocracies threaten the ability for historically marginalised groups to shape the creation, design, and monitoring of public policies and programmes.

5. Why did the state relocate the task of caste enumeration from the Census of India to the BPL/SEC survey, and what does this reveal about the politics of data invisibility?

The political leadership relocated the task of the caste enumeration from the Census of India after conceding to the ORGI’s position that it would be too difficult to collect the caste-wise data in the census and could ruin the integrity of the census. Timing-wise, the planning of the BPL survey was almost complete, and so political leaders eventually decided to combine both projects and provided additional resources for a combined caste-wise enumeration and BPL survey. The state published BPL data from the SEC survey in 2015 and 2016, but the caste-wise data have yet to be published. An expert committee chaired by Professor Arvind Panagariya was created in 2015 to analyse the caste-wise data, but it’s unclear who was on the committee, whether the committee met, and if the committee submitted a final report. The design of the caste-related questions and answer options in the SEC survey, the gaps in the enumerator training, and the burial of the collected data all highlight how the central government (across political administrations) has evaded the documentation of caste power and promoted the invisibility of caste-wise data.

6. What did the Bihar caste survey of 2023 reveal about the capacity of state-level politics to challenge the centralised casteless narrative?

The Bihar caste survey data builds upon a history of local and regional political movements challenging an ideology of castelessness in the census. It also contests the castelessness narrative by making visible how caste hierarchy structures socioeconomic life. At the same time, the central government has repeatedly decentralised the enumeration of caste to state-level agencies (whether state governments, Backward Classes Commissions, or other entities) from the 1950s to the present day as a strategy to avoid a nationwide enumeration of caste in the census.