Brahmin or Kshatriya, Sir?

The Indian government is in the process of conducting a census. Although it is officially census 2011, the work still goes on till date, in April 2012. The questions asked by the census officials are listed hereunder:

Number of family members

Head of family

Names of all family members

Status of ownership of occupied accommodation

Educational qualifications of all family members

Occupations of all family members

Religion

Caste

Of the 8 questions asked, the first 6 seem to me rational and important. It is important for a country to know its population, their educational, economic and professional status. The last 2 questions are a whole different story. It can satisfactorily be argued that it is important to know the religious make-up of the country and I can make my peace with that. The last question, however, seems too discriminatory for a rational mind. Casteism is an archaic system of social stratification, one which is extremely restrictive in its nature. Although mainly associated with Hinduism, Casteism has also been noted in some groups or Muslims, Buddhists and Christians. The Hindu caste system broadly divides the people into 4 castes- Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras. These broad castes are further divided into several sub-castes. These castes were arranged in an order of supremacy, with people from ‘higher castes’ enjoying several privileges and those from the ‘lower castes’ facing continuous discrimination in all aspects of daily life. One of the most widely acknowledged evils borne out of the caste system is the concept of untouchablilty. The untouchables were not allowed to touch or even otherwise interact with people of other castes. They were ostracized completely from society and shunned by everybody.

In the present day scenario, however, Casteism isn’t very prevalent in India’s urban centres. But, the Indian Government officially recognizes historically discriminated lower castes of the society and has taken many steps to improve the socio-economic status of these people. Noble sentiments by the government; and it can be understood that the government needs to know the percentage of population, but to what extent must the government go to ensure this? Questioning census respondents directly about their caste seems a bit too harsh. People may not be comfortable sharing this information openly to possibly judgemental strangers conducting the census, and worse, they may not be honest with it either. There is an extremely high possibility of people responding with false replies to that particular question.

The relevance of that particular question in a census is indeed debatable. Aren’t we encouraging Casteism by asking that, even though we preach equality on the other hand? While we strive to transform Delhi into a "world city", we insist on entertaining archaic restrictive concepts which do nothing but choke opportunism and slow us down. The need of the hour is to cast aside restrictive ideas so that we can move ahead and grow as a society, not to remind ourselves of the mistakes committed in the past and be bogged down by them forever more.

Only In Delhi.