Caste! caste! caste! and Counting Caste
India's next census, due in 2027, will for the first time in nearly a century count citizens by caste alongside religion, language, and other categories, with the first phase beginning in October 2026 in Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Ladakh. This article looks at the long history behind this decision, the genuine debate it reopens, and a broader question philosophers and statisticians have long wrestled with: whether the act of counting a social category changes the very thing being counted. Historicity: A Question India Has Argued About Since Colonial Times The British colonial government conducted India's last full caste census in 1931, producing detailed data that, decades later, still forms the statistical basis for many of India's reservation policies for Other Backward Classes. After independence, India's census continued counting Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, categories with direct constitutional significance, but stopped separate...