Counting castes, calculating votes: Inside India’s high-stakes gamble

The Indian government recently announced a caste census — a complete U-turn on a fundamental issue that has bedevilled India for centuries. The government, led by Narendra Modi, made the announcement at a time when an angry nation was awaiting action to punish the perpetrators of the Pahalgam terror attack, in which 26 men died barely 10 days ago.

Was the announcement — which the opposition, particularly Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, and Tejashwi Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), claimed as their victory because they had long demanded a caste census — timed to benefit ally Nitish Kumar just ahead of the forthcoming Bihar elections? Or was it an attempt to shift focus from the bellicose narrative in which the Modi government and its cheerleaders had entangled themselves — a narrative so muddled that even serious analysts struggled to decode it?