A Caste Census Will Reveal India’s Worst-Kept Secret
The hierarchical identity system continues to divide society — nearly 100 years after calls for its abolition.
Portraits of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, who argued for the abolition of caste in India.
Photographer: Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP/Getty Images
For the first time in nearly 100 years, India will get 1.4 billion people to name their caste in a census.
Presenting the biggest obstacle to India’s embrace of modernity, the caste system divides Hindus into rigid categories that govern every aspect of life. The last successful exercise to record this ancient, hierarchical social identity, conducted by British colonial rulers in 1931, threw up more than 4,000 answers. (There was another attempt in 2011, but it didn’t quite work; an open-ended question generated 4.6 million replies. The government decided the caste data was worthless.)