In a major policy shift, the Narendra Modi government recently announced its decision to include caste enumeration in the next decennial census. The Union government’s decision to conduct a caste census, the first in independent India, came as a huge surprise for several reasons, including its timing, given the BJP’s long-standing ambiguity on caste-based enumeration, which it has, for long, resisted as “a matter of policy”.

From calling the demand for a caste census an “urban Naxal thought” and a plan to “divide India”, the government’s complete turnaround is as surprising as the Congress party’s altered course on social justice. Like the BJP, the idea of a caste census had never found favour with the grand old party until Rahul Gandhi reversed the party’s stand on the issue in recent years.

The BJP and its ideological parent, the RSS, have a long history of being reluctant to conduct a caste census. This is because the survey, in their view, comes with the possibility of assertive caste groups eroding the larger Hindu identity. Dubbing it a retrograde idea to consolidate electoral constituencies on caste lines, Modi had slammed a proposal by the Congress party for a caste census in its manifesto for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

In 2021, the Modi government had outrightly rejected any proposal for a caste census in Parliament. After the BJP’s victory in the three heartland states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh in December 2023, Modi had said, “For me there are only four castes—women, youth, farmers, and the........

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