Counting Caste: Census Politics, Bureaucratic Deflection, and Brahmanical Power in India (South Asia in the Social Sciences)

Vithayathil, Trina

ISBN 10: 1009414119 / ISBN 13: 9781009414111

Published by Cambridge University Press, 2025

About this Item

Seller Inventory # I-9781009414111

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Counting Caste: Census Politics, Bureaucratic Deflection, and Brahmanical Power in India (South Asia in the Social Sciences)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1009414119
• ISBN 13: 9781009414111
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

States periodically agree to social justice reforms in response to organized demands for change. Counting Caste examines how and why governments make such concessions but then fail to implement them. Vithayathil unlocks the secrets of bureaucratic deflection―a process whereby political leaders and bureaucrats stall policy changes―through an in-depth examination of a caste survey in India. Political leaders conceded to collect caste-wise data in Census 2011 for the first time in India's post-independence history. Yet, in the year that followed, bureaucrats blocked a caste count in the census and rerouted it to an inexperienced part of the government. This book uncovers the plan to gather caste-wise data in an alternative project with a history of producing poor-quality data. The case of the failed caste count highlights how state institutions evade the documentation of caste power, the continued institutionalization of castelessness―which frames caste as a problem of the oppressed and hides caste privilege and power―and ongoing efforts at resisting caste hierarchy and Hindutva domination.

About the Author

Trina Vithayathil is a sociologist and associate professor of global studies and affiliated faculty in Asian studies and women's and gender studies at Providence College.