The debate on caste census must be saved from the urgency of electoral pragmatism and party obsession and resumed as a dialogue among citizens on the nature of nationalism and democracy that we want to pass on to the next generations. In this sense, the decadal census should be maintained as a cartographic exercise that dynamically reflects India’s vast cultural diversity and socio-economic inequality including caste. The post-colonial interruption of the colonial practice of counting caste in the census is contradictory. Mainly because the background assumption against the enumeration of ‘caste’ – that this caste perpetuates populism, competitive racism, social division, votebank politics, and so on – is severely undermined by the later retention of ‘religion’. becomes, a category that is vulnerable to similar repercussions. . In the imagination of the ruling elite, it seems, all socio-cultural divisions are equal, but some are more equal than others. The elitist suppression of caste enumeration – which is contained in GAIL…
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