NEW DELHI: Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on Friday asked people of his poll-bound state to express gratitude towards Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who decided to hold a caste census along with population census in 2027.Addressing a rally in Siwan, which PM Modi also attended, Nitish Kumar said: “Ordering a caste census is a great thing that the Centre has done. I thank the Prime Minister for the same,” said Kumar, and addressing the people, “you all may please express your gratitude towards him”.A caste census involves systematically recording individuals’ caste identities during a national census. In India, where caste influences social, economic, and political life, such data can offer valuable insights into the distribution and socio-economic status of various caste groups.Caste enumeration was a regular feature of census exercises during British rule from 1881 to 1931. However, with the first census of independent India in 1951, the government chose to discontinue the practice, except for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs).Interestingly, under the Nitish Kumar-led Mahagathbandhan government, which included Lalu Yadav’s RJD and the Congress party, a caste census was conducted in Bihar between 2022 and 2023 to collect detailed data on the state’s caste composition.Later, in the second half of 2023, the Bihar government released its statistical data on the caste-based headcount. The data showed that the politically sensitive 113-caste group known as the extremely backward classes (EBCs) constitute the largest portion at 36 per cent, along with the other backward classes at 27 per cent, which amounts to 63 per cent of the total 13.07 crore population of the state; together they constitute the social hefty segment of backward classes. Muslims constitute 17.7 per cent of the state’s population, including EBC and “upper caste” Muslims. After the figures were out, CM Nitish Kumar and his then deputy Tejashwi Yadav, decided to call it a “caste-based headcount”, and not a “caste census”, to escape a legal tangle as Union junior home minister Nityanand Rai had told Lok Sabha in 2021 that it would not be legally tenable to hold a “caste census” as the law provides for only count of SC/ST groups.

The caste-wise breakup shows that the “upper caste” groups among Hindus, considered BJP’s mainstay, account for only 10.6 per cent, Brahmins 3.7 per cent, Rajputs (Thakurs) 3.4 per cent, Bhumihars 2.9 per cent and Kayasthas 0.6 per cent.The Bihar caste count appeared to have a little deviation in the caste-wise population of 2023 Bihar compared to the 1901 figures for the erstwhile combined region of Bihar and Jharkhand. Bihar, Jharkhand, and Odisha were carved out of Greater Bengal in 1912. As Stephen Henningham notes in his book Peasant Movements in Colonial India: North Bihar in 1901, the “higher” or upper castes in Bihar then accounted for 15.6 per cent of the population, middle castes such as Koeri, Kurmi, and Yadav made up 19.8 per cent, Muslims constituted 16.1 per cent, and lower middle castes along with Scheduled Castes formed 47.9 per cent. The total Hindu population in 1901 stood at 83.3 per cent, compared to 82 per cent in present-day Bihar as revealed by the 2023 caste survey.