Late journalist Ved Pratap Vaidik and a clutch of eminent personalities formed Sabal Bharat (Strong India), a group under whose aegis they launched a movement, Meri Jati Hindustani (My Caste is Indian), in 2010. This was a response to the rising demand for counting caste in the 2011 Census, which, they believed, would violate the constitutional ideal of citizens transcending their community identities. Vaidik simplistically said that people needed a “new caste – Indian. It’s a caste not by birth but by choice.”

History shows the decision to count caste in the 2027 Census will, as in 2010, trigger mobilisations over whether individuals should identify their castes, or merely mark themselves “Indian.” Vaidik’s favoured nomenclature of “Indian” was essentially a flashy, nationalistic substitute for “caste nil,” a return or answer the 1931 Census first allowed people to provide. Then too, as in 2010, those who opted for “caste nil” claimed to neither believe in it nor observe its rules regulating daily life.

Will the number of Indians who reported “caste nil” in 1931 have grown over nearly a century? Will a high percentage of “caste nil” herald the withering of the caste system?