The last time India counted caste, the protests were filed as proof it worked
India's census is counting caste again, for the first time since 1931. So I went back to the last state that actually ranked it.
In 1901 the colonial census did not just record caste. It ranked it: one table of social precedence for all of India, the order set by what Risley called "native public opinion" (who takes water from whom, who may use the well, who steps off the road).
The tell is the reaction. The Khatris, filed as Vaisyas, met at Bareilly, proved Kshatriya descent, and were moved up. The flood of protests? Risley cited it as "the best evidence of the general success of the experiment" (1901 report, para 837). The people he ranked wrongly became proof that ranking worked.
Beside the table sat a harder instrument. The Kallars of Madras were the royal caste in Pudukkottai, a dynasty on the throne. The same apparatus listed Kallars and Maravars as criminal castes; when the Criminal Tribes Act reached Madras in 1911, so were they. Royal in one district, criminal by birth in the next.
The crack: a count can be checked, but a rank has to be awarded, and awarding it creates a loser with standing to petition. Publish a rank and you create a market in rank. Risley's own chapter concedes "no scheme of classification can be framed for the whole of India," and the next census dropped the ranking to stop the petitions. The petitions did not stop. They moved into caste associations and, later, electoral politics.
Sources (all openable)
- Census of India 1901, Vol I, Report, paras 836-838 (Risley).
- Census of India 1911, Vol I, Report (Gait).
- Mullaly, Notes on Criminal Classes of the Madras Presidency, 1892.
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