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A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Sidharth Bhatia and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK | Editor: Pratik Kanjilal

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Snapshot of the day

October 3, 2023

Pratik Kanjilal

Of the 13 crore people in Bihar, 27.13% are backward class, 36.01% are extremely backward and 15.52% are the general category, the state caste census released yesterday has revealed. This means that 63% of Biharis are OBC. Hindus make up 81.9% of the population and 17.7% are Muslim. The census followed the courts setting aside objections raised by the BJP and other parties. The state government had argued that a caste census is essential for delivering social justice. Prime Minister Modi, the BJP and its allies called it an “eye-wash” and a “divisive tactic”, while the INDIA coalition called it “historic” and demanded a national caste census. Chinmay Tumbe compares the data with the last caste census in Bihar, in 1931.

Modi, who advertised his own OBC status in 2014, is worried the OBC card may have been snatched away from him. “Congress started a new chant yesterday,” he said in Raipur today. “Their leader said rights should be proportional to population. I say, the biggest population is the poor…. former PM Manmohan Singh … used to say that the first right over India’s resources is of minorities, and that too Muslims. Now the Congress says that population will decide how much rights one has over resources. Does that mean they want to decrease the rights of minorities? Then whose rights will be first? Whose population is more? Congress must clarify this. Should Hindus take all rights? They want to divide Hindus and destroy our country.”

Across Delhi’s Gandhi memorial sites, Modi’s image is prominent ― too prominent. Newslaundry visited Gandhi Darshan Museum, Gandhi Vatika, Gandhi Smriti