THE POLITICS OF THE COUNT: Caste in Contemporary India By Trina Vithayathil B.A., Carleton College, 1998 M.P.P., Harvard University, 2002 M.A., Brown University, 2010 Thesis Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Sociology at Brown University PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND MAY 2014 @ COPYRIGHT Trina Vithayathil 2014 ii This dissertation by Trina Vithayathil is accepted in its present form by the Department of Sociology as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date__________________ __________________________________ Leah K. VanWey, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date__________________ __________________________________ Patrick Heller, Committee Member Date__________________ __________________________________ José Itzigsohn, Committee Member Date__________________ __________________________________ Paget Henry, Reader Date__________________ __________________________________ Gregory Elliott, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date__________________ __________________________________ Peter M. Weber, Dean of the Graduate School iii VITAE Trina Vithayathil, born in St. Louis, MO, attended parochial and public schools before completing her B.A. in Geology at Carleton College in 1998. After working for two years at the U.S. Geological Survey‘s National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, CO she completed an M.P.P. in political and economic development at Harvard University‘s Kennedy School of Government in 2002, where she was a Public Service Fellow. She then spent several years working in Bangalore, India at the Public Affairs Centre and in New York City, NY at the Program on Forced Migration and Health at Columbia University, among other places, during which time she taught as an adjunct lecturer in the Political Science Department at Hunter College. Based on her experiences teaching at Hunter, she decided to return to graduate school to complete a Ph.D. with the hopes of being able to continue doing research while teaching full time. During her doctoral studies in Sociology at Brown University, she was affiliated with the Population Studies and Training Center and the Graduate Program in Development. Her training and research was funded by the National Science Foundation‘s (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program, National Institutes of Health pre-doctoral demography traineeship, Fulbright Hays Program, NSF DDRIG, and several grants from Brown University. She also has had affiliations with the Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard University and the Institute for Social and Economic Change in Bangalore. She has published articles in Economic and Political Weekly, Rural Sociology and Asian Population Studies. Upon completing her Ph.D. in Sociology in 2014, she will join the faculty at Providence College and teach in the Department of Global Studies. She lives in Providence, RI with her husband and two sons. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A special thanks to my dissertation committee, readers, graduate professors, entering cohort in sociology, wider community of graduate students, and the staff in the Sociology Department, Population Studies and Training Center, and Watson Institute at Brown University for helping me in a variety of ways on my path to writing this dissertation. I am especially appreciative to Leah VanWey, Patrick Heller and José Itzigsohn for challenging me intellectually and supporting me personally throughout this project. A special thanks to my two readers, Paget Henry and Greg Elliot, and my friends and colleagues, Ellen Block, Erica Mullen, Gayatri Singh, Cedric de Leon, Michael Rodríguez Muñiz, Diana Graizbord and Aisalkyn Botoeva for their careful read and thoughtful feedback on the dissertation. I am also grateful for support on this project from Orly Clerge, Alissa Cordner, Mim Plavin-Masterman, Maya Mesola, Karida Brown, Peter Klein, Stephanie Savell, Bhawani Buswala, Poulomi Chakrabarti, Jamie McPike, Mujun Zhou, Sinem Adar, Ben Onyango, Kelley Smith, Marcelo Bohrt, Amy Teller, Yashas Vaidya and Tina Park. Program support from Joan Picard, Amanda Figgins, Sue Silvera, Priscilla Terry, Stephanie Abbot-Pandey, Tom Alarie, Ana Karina Wildman, Aliza Elkin, Kristin Soule, and Shane Martin has made the process of funding, conducting, and writing this research seamless. An extra special thanks to Gayatri, Ellen and Amanda for their extra support in the final stages of this project. Brown Sociology has been a wonderful intellectual community to conceive and execute this project. I am very grateful for funding support from the National Science Foundation, Fulbright Hays, National Institutes of Health, and several units within Brown, including the Sociology Department and Feinberg Family, PSTC, Graduate Program in Development, Graduate School, and Office of International Affairs. I have had research affiliations at the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC) in Bangalore and the Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard University while conducting my research. I am extremely appreciative for the opportunity to be exposed to new ideas and meet wonderful scholars and people in both communities. I am particularly indebted to Sheila Jasanoff (Harvard) and Siddharth Swaminathan (ISEC) for advising me during the respective fellowship periods. Thank you also to the numerous people—too many to name—who shared their time and knowledge with me when I was conducting my fieldwork. This project is possible because of your generosity. I am also extremely grateful for research assistance from Shalini Jamuna, Arasi Arivu and Devanshu Singh before and during my fieldwork. A special thanks to my Bangalore family, who made it possible for me to conduct this research with Markose as my travel companion: Sandhya and Sudhir Ramachandran, Rita, Seema and Bindu Jaisingh, Sr. Sharlene, Josephine Joseph, Arjun Pandalai, Sita Sekhar, and their respective families. I am most grateful to my family—the Vithayathils, Kynadis and Strnads—who gave me the time, encouragement, love, and steadfast support to complete this project and made life so enjoyable along the way. Lizzy and Francis Vithayathil have spent lengthy periods of time in Bangalore and Providence, so that I could focus on my research. Metty Vithayathil, Chris Miller, Vik, Lela and Arjay—are a constant reminder of how to create a home and community where the spirit, head, heart, and body are fully engaged. Chris, and our sons, Markose and Mathai, have been remarkably patient and enthusiastic companions and cheerleaders—they are also the best incentives imaginable to finish. v CONTENTS List of Abbreviations vii 1. Introduction 1 1.1. The Politics of the Count: Meera Jaati Hindustani 1.2. Censuses and the Production of Knowledge 1.3. Caste in Contemporary India 1.4. Methodology 1.5. Chapter Framework 2. Why Count Caste? 37 2.1. Counting Caste in Colonial India 2.2. Counting Caste in Post-Colonial India 2.3. The 2011 Decennial Census 2.4. Don‘t Pollute the Census with Caste 2.5. Implications on Production of Caste Data 3. A Local View of the Census 103 3.1 Caste and Politics in Karnataka 3.2. The SEC Census Timeline, Organization and Questionnaire 3.3. Census Publicity and the Media 3.4. Local Government Census Infrastructures 3.5. The Private Sector 3.6. Implications of these Local Trends 4. The Census Interview 160 4.1. Local Context of SEC Census 4.2. Overview to Census Interview 4.3. Processes of Simplification 4.4. Implications of Observed Simplifications 5. Conclusion 194 5.1. Synthesis of Findings 5.2. The Social Production of Caste Data 5.3. Caste as a Political Identity 5.4. Project‘s Relevance and Looking Ahead Appendix A 215 Appendix B 216 vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS APL: Above Poverty Line AHL: Abridged House Listing BCC: Backward Classes Commission BJP: Bharatiya Janata Party BPL: Below Poverty Line Congress: Indian National Congress Party DBA: Data Base Administrator DEO: Data Entry Operator GoM: Group of Ministers JD-U: Janata Dal United Party MLA: Member of Legislative Assembly [state government] MP: Member of Parliament NDA: National Democratic Alliance coalition government NPR: National Population Register NSS: National Sample Survey OBC: Other Backward Classes PMK: Pattali Makkal Katchi Party RGI: Registrar General of India RJD: Rashtriya Janata Dal Party RSS: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh SC: Scheduled Caste vii SECC: Socio-Economic Caste Census SP: Samajwadi Party ST: Scheduled Tribe UPA: United Progressive Alliance coalition government viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TODAY'S PAPER » NATIONAL » KARNATAKA Published: December 11, 2011 00:00 IST | Updated: December 11, 2011 04:44 IST WEAVERS WANT UNIFORM CASTE NAME IN CENSUS Special Correspondent The Federation of Weavers has appealed to all members of the community across Karnataka to register their caste name uniformly in the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC), which is being conducted to identify the prospective beneficiaries under various schemes and programs based on deprivations. Speaking to presspersons here on Saturday, federation president M.D. Lakshminarayan said that there were 26 sub-sects in the community and all of them had been appealed to prefix the word ―Nekara‖ to their sub-sect names. ―We have asked communities like Devanga, Padmashali, Togataveera and others to prefix ‗Nekara' to their caste names,‖ he said. Mr. Lakshminarayan said that the leaders of the community had done a door-to-door campaign to educate members of the community and would