Rahul Gandhi, the former chief of India’s main opposition Congress party, has called for a caste census ahead of the upcoming Karnataka state elections, eliciting support from allies Nitish Kumar and Tejashwi Yadav. The Congress had opposed a caste census for almost 60 years before eventually conducting one in 2011. Rahul Gandhi is now calling for the 2011 results to be made public. Supporters claim that a caste census would help to break the Hindu consolidation of voters and bring back the “Mandal politics” era by wooing castes back into their fold. The BJP, by contrast, has attempted to unite all castes under the umbrella of welfarism through various schemes and hindutva politics. Caste census data has been the subject of controversy, with technical flaws delaying the 2011 survey and the BJP government refusing to release the resulting data when it was ready in 2016.
