Forty-nine years ago, when the Lok Sabha was discussing the Mandal Commission report recommending reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) on April 30, 1982, Ram Vilas Paswan, a young Dalit MP from the Lok Dal, gave a speech. Gave. Passionate speech in support of OBC quota, French political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot recalled in his book India’s silent revolution. Paswan claimed that the caste hierarchy was ‘internal’ to Hinduism, the essence of which was Manu Smriti. However, the claim was not sustained. The then Defense Minister R. Venkataraman stole Paswan’s thunder saying that Manu was not Smriti but the Bhagavad Gita, as told to Arjuna by Lord Krishna, a Yadava, was the essence of Hinduism.
Decades later, OBC reservations have extinguished the fire, the next demand on the agenda of social justice, a caste census, has put the cat among the pigeons. Demand created heat in the UPA days, a socio-economic caste census was launched, but no data has been released yet. Now the caste count in the 2021 census…
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