Will independent India’s first full “caste census” fail the one group that needs it most — the Denotified Tribes, Nomadic Tribes and semi-nomadic communities (DNT/NT)?

So far, the signs are bad. The Registrar General of India, in charge of Census 2027, has sealed its lips. The government makes polite noises, but refuses to answer a pointed question about the inclusion of DNT/NT in the coming Census. Recently, the Supreme Court dismissed a petition by the leading activists from these communities, a last-ditch effort to get the government to include them in the caste census, that too with gratuitous and insensitive remarks. All the signals serve to confirm that when it comes to DNT/NT communities, the benign hostility of the Indian state is a continuation of the active cruelty of the British colonial state. In failing to take this historic opportunity to correct a historic injustice, the Indian state fails itself.

These communities are invisible to us. An educated Indian has begun to recognise “Dalits” with some unease and has a faint, if misplaced, idea of a forest-dwelling “tribal”, but he has simply no idea of what “Denotified Tribe” means or who nomadic communities are. Some of us in north India would have noticed Gadiya Lohars, traditional blacksmiths parked with their cart on roadsides. A few might even know the legend that these are descendants of Rana Pratap’s army who had resolved not to settle down till their king regained the throne, which he never did. In the west and the south, some of us would have noticed the Banjara community with their colourful clothes, living in their hamlet, or tanda. Or maybe we have frowned at a Gujjar blocking the road with a herd of hundreds of cows. But that is all we know. Our social universe........

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