Caste census in works since 2024 polls
The BJP started discussing the issue with the top brass of the party’s ideological fount, the RSS, after last year’s general elections, party leaders said
The Union government’s unexpected announcement of enumerating caste along with the upcoming decadal census may have caught the opposition unawares, but senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders on Thursday said that the work to lay the ground for the challenging exercise began months in advance.
The party had in the past seemed opposed to the idea of a caste census. Many of its leaders, including Union minister Nitin Gadkari, targeted opposition parties for making a demand that they viewed as having the potential to cleave the country, although Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan said the party has been dropping hints about a caste census for at least a year.
It isn’t clear when the party decided to back a caste census, but at least two senior party leaders added that the BJP started discussing the issue with the top brass of the party’s ideological fount, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), after last year’s general elections.
“The timing of the announcement was a well-guarded secret, but the process of getting feedback from the ground, from representatives across castes and communities was in the works for months and the RSS too was on board...,” said one of them, a senior party leader who asked not to be named.
On Wednesday, when the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs in Delhi gave its nod to conducting caste-based enumeration, in Varanasi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency, a mass wedding of couples from different castes was being presided over by Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief.
The event which saw 125 weddings being solemnised under the “Akshaya Kanyadaan Mahotsav”, was to bolster the BJP’s attempts to consolidate the Hindu votebank. The announcement about the survey came a day after the PM met Bhagwat at his official residence for over an hour.
“The Sangh and the BJP have been working to counter the opposition’s false narrative that we are against caste-based reservation. They (the opposition) ran a campaign during the Lok Sabha polls (that the BJP wanted to discontinue reservation) and it brought down the overall tally of the BJP (to 240 from the earlier 303)...it was then decided that the party and the Sangh would work in a coordinated manner to squash this narrative and the attempt to cleave Hindu society,” a RSS functionary said, asking not to be named.
To be sure, the RSS, which has been running Samajik Samarasta or social harmony projects, has previously cautioned against using a caste census as a “political tool”.
While the BJP and its allies are expected to make electoral gains from the announcement which comes ahead of the Bihar polls later this year, the opposition parties insist that it was their demand that forced the government’s hand.
Responding to the Opposition’s charge that the BJP was not in favour of the exercise, Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan said Union home minister Amit Shah had been dropping broad hints about the count. “The census was supposed to happen in 2021, but had to be put on hold due to the pandemic. Home Minister (Amit Shah) indicated this decision about a year earlier. This shows that the PM Modi-led NDA government is committed to give the rights to the backward sections of society,” he told reporters.
He insisted that it was the leaders of the Congress who were against reservation.
“Had BR Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi not been there, and had the Constituent Assembly not suggested so, there would have been no reservation... the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru was opposed to caste-based quotas and had written to chief ministers that merit would suffer if reservation is implemented,” Pradhan added.
The minister accused the Congress of burying several reports on reservation including those by the Kaka Kalekar committee and the Mandal commission, and said former PM and Congress leader Rajiv Gandhi opposed reservation for other backward classes, which was announced by the VP Singh government and backed by the BJP.
To buttress its argument that the Congress did not want a caste-count, the BJP also circulated a letter written by then Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj to the then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee in 2010, expressing her party’s support for a caste census.
BJP allies, the JDU and the Apna Dal too have attacked the Congress led UPA for conducting the socio-economic caste census (SECC) instead of the caste-census. Apna Dal’s Anupriya Patel said, “Instead of conducting a full-fledged census they carried out the SECC. There were methodical errors and flaws...They could not publish that data, so they tried to give the impression that caste census is not possible.”
In the coming weeks, the party cadre and the Sangh’s network of foot soldiers will amplify the message that the BJP was always for the caste census.
“From granting constitutional status to the OBC commission to giving representation to OBCs, SC and STs in the union cabinet, state cabinets and party positions, the BJP has proved that social justice is delivered,” said a senior party leader.
He said the Congress’ failure to carry out the caste-census is the “most compelling and powerful” proof of the party’s “double speak.”
“They are claiming credit for something that the Modi government has done.”
