CENSUS AND IDENTITY FORMATION

IN BRITISH INDIA AND THEREAFTER

HISTORY IIII YEAR

I TRIMESTER2009

Amlan Mohanty [1625]

Date of Submission: August 12, 2009

National Law School of India University

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................................1

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY......................................................................................2

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES....................................................................................................2

SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS..................................................................................................2

SOURCES......................................................................................................................2

MODE OF CITATION.........................................................................................................3

HYPOTHESIS..................................................................................................................3

RESEARCH QUESTIONS.....................................................................................................3

CHAPTER I: ......................................................................................................................4

History of the British India Census

CHAPTER II: ....................................................................................................................7

Census and Identity Formation

CHAPTER III: ..................................................................................................................14

The Politics of Census Data in pre and post-independence India

CONCLUSION...................................................................................................................17

BIBLIOGRAPHY...............................................................................................................19

INTRODUCTIONWith an outpouring of interest in the nature of collective identities and the process of

reification, objectification and perpetuation of these identities, the census as an institution that

implicitly or explicitly serves to induce this process, is worthy of attention. The colonial census is of

particular interest as it is an administrative instrument by which populations are divided into neat

categories, which flatten and enclose the people, marking distinct categories for them to identify with,

stimulating the process of identity formation.

This paper attempts to trace the background in which the colonial endeavour to accumulate

systematic information about the Indian people was set in motion, and the underlying motives for

such an expansive operation. By analysing the enumerative strategies of the British, it is hoped that a

deeper insight into the cultural processes involved in the formation of identities will be highlighted.

The peculiarities of the Indian social system were perhaps a source of concern for the British and the

changes that took place after the introduction of the census have been scrutinised, with particular

attention to the principal modes of social organisation employed by the British through the census.

Since caste and religion were considered the foundations of Indian society based on the

Orientalist perception, they formed the core for enumerative classifications and as a result, the impact

of the census on identity formation was greatest on the caste and religious identities of the people.

What is important to analyse is whether the Indian people were receptive to the invasive nature of the

census that sought to encroach upon their primaeval social identities, that existed in a primitive form,

prior to the coming of the British. It is doubtless that the nature of social organisation is such that it is

constantly changing and requires no external stimulus, but this paper seeks to analyse the role of the

census in such a process. The roots of an institution such as the census are enmeshed in political

considerations and the politics associated with the census have been given due consideration. It is

important to understand the role of the census, not merely as a passive administrative instrument

primarily involved in keeping a national headcount, but one that has been actively utilised to

complement political agendas, right from the divisive strategies of the British to the homogenising

strategies of today.

1

RESEARCH METHODOLOGYAIMS AND OBJECTIVES:

The researcher aims to study the overt and ulterior motives in British India colonial census

operations, the enumerative modalities and classificatory strategies employed and the responses of the

Indian people to such an institution.

The objective of this paper is to understand the effect of census operations on the identities of the

Indian people, to infer how and why the census impacts the collective consciousness of the people,

and to test the hypothesis of caste and religious based identities being hardened and perpetuated

through the enumeration of the people in British India, based on such classifications.

SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS

The scope of this paper extends, and is limited to a general study of census operations in India,

starting from the first census in 1872 to the 2001 census, with a focus on its impact on identity

formation and an emphasis on the British India census, that set in motion, this process.

Given the spacial constraints of this paper, the ramifications of census operations on identity have

been analysed only to a limited extent, without delving into the complexities of caste and communal

politics post-1947, although they were significant consequences. Rather, the processes involved in

identity generation and expression have been emphasised. Though the census has had a considerable

impact on other aspects of Indian society, only caste and religious identities have been scrutinised,

given that they were the focus of the colonial endeavour to understand India and Indians. Since caste

and religious classifications had their own distinct consequences, they have been studied separately.

SOURCES

The researcher has depended entirely on secondary sources such as books, journal articles, reports of

census commissioners and commentaries in response to such reports. The only primary sources that

have been looked at were the census tabulations of the 1901 census, to understand the demographic

transition that occurred during that period, and the census forms of the British India censuses to

interpret the nature of questions that were posed to the respondents, but neither have been utilised as

research material.

2

MODE OF CITATION

A uniform mode of citation has been employed throughout the paper.

Books have been cited as follows:

Author, Title of the Book, Page Number (Edition Number (if any), Place of Publishing: Publisher,

Year of Publication).

Eg. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies, 84 (New

Delhi, Permanent Black, 2002).

Articles have been cited as follows:

Author, “Title of the Article”, Volume Number(Issue Number) Name of Journal, Page Number

(Month of Publication, Year of Publication).

Eg. R. B. Bhagat, “Caste Census”, 42(21) Economic and Political Weekly, 1903, (May, 2007).

HYPOTHESIS:

The British India census served to perpetuate caste and religious identities through the enumeration of

these communities.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1) What prompted the British to conduct census operations in India and are there any discernible

factors that arose from the socio-political conditions in Britain and India that actuated it?

2) What are the processes involved in the creation and prolongation of collective identities as a

result of census operations and was such a phenomenon observed in the Indian context?

3) What were the changes in the functioning of community systems prior to the British census

and after? Was this a direct consequence of British enumerative strategies?

4) How did the census impact caste and religious identities and were these changes the result of

British calculations or a product of Indian responses to census classifications, or both?

5) Is there a need for caste and religious based enumeration in post-independence India, given

that such classifications emerged from colonial interests and impacted Indian identities

significantly?

6) Do political agendas and discourses dictate the nature of census data that is made available

and have caste and religious identities been affected by such political intent?

3

CHAPTER I: History of the British India Census

In tracing the history of the British India census to present day operations and their

implications on identity, it is perhaps prudent to first outline the essential questions that will be

encountered, and to eliminate extraneous enquiries that are tangential to our purpose of study. The

basis of any historical investigation is to locate the context in which certain events take place and it is

in this regard that the motives for British India census operations, their early attempts at such

enumeration and the prevailing socio-political conditions in Britain and in India must be studied, and

this chapter seeks to answer those questions.

MOTIVES OF THE BRITISH IN CONDUCTING THE CENSUSThe most fundamental question that deserves examination is the British motive for conducting

such a massive operation, which was certain to exhaust their administrative energies and hit the

British exchequer considerably.1 As Bernard Cohn rightly puts it, the history of the Indian census

must be seen in the total context of the efforts of the British colonial government to collect systematic

information about many aspects of society and economy.2 Such systematic collection of statistics in

detail and in specific categories, for the purpose of ruling seems to be intimately tied to modern ideas

of government,3 their aspiration for fairness and just administration, hallmarks of 'modern

governmentality', demonstrated through the interest of the colonial masters in understanding the

'problems of population', which Foucalt emphasises in his works on governmentality.4 As the

representatives of European Enlightenment, the British inherited and dispensed the ideas of

rationalism and scientific temper in the sphere of Indian society. Having brought with them the

intellectual baggage of eighteenth century Europe, its interest in 'political arithmetic and statistic' as

an instrument of governance, is not especially surprising.5 The increasing systematisation of these

1 Reginald Hooker, “Modes of Census-Taking in the British Dominions”, 57(2) Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Blackwell Publishing, 323 (June, 1894).

2 Bernard Cohn, “The Census and Objectification in South Asia”, sourced from An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays, 231 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987).

3 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies, 84 (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2002).

4 Michael Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 52 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980).5 Sumit Guha, “The Politics of Identity and Enumeration in India c. 1600-1990”, 45(1) Comparative Studies in Society

4

categories was also intimately connected with the development of photography in Europe at the time.

The search for 'scientific precision', the recording of 'exact images' by photography, logically

complemented and warranted the compiling of such statistical information.6

The official rationale for the taking of the census was based on administrative necessity, but to

gain perspective, one must recollect instances where 'administrative necessity' was the justification

for some of the most deplorable policy decisions of the British.7 It is also interesting to note that

support for this justification seems to be restricted to the writings of British census officials, who

adduce evidence with typical diplomatic sharpness. For instance, H. Beverley argued that without

such information, 'the basis is wanting on which to found accurate opinions on such important

matters as the growth and rate of increase of the population, sufficiency of food supplies, the

incidence of local and imperial taxes, the organisation of adequate judicial and police arrangements,

the spread of education and public health measures.'8 Similarly, H. Risley states that such information

would relate to 'almost every form of executive action'.9 It appears that there is some basis on which

their claims are footed, for there is no doubt that the census was related in fundamental ways to

imperial projects such as military recruitment, maintaining law and order, emigration and immigration

and even the control of prostitution, but a deeper analysis of the other theories surrounding their

motives must be looked at as well.

The initiation of the census operations soon after the Great Rebellion, cannot be dismissed as a

mere coincidence. The 1857 uprising made it clear that the British knew far too little about the

colonised populations of India and a detailed and systematic ethnographic study was of paramount

importance to them, and it was as if during these years after the rebellion, the centralisation and

control over knowledge was tantamount to centralisation and control over power itself.10 The relation

between knowledge and power cannot be understated and the census as an institution of power was of

particular interest to the British.11 The census project was part of an attempt by the British to and History, Cambridge University Press, 155 (January, 2003) .

6 Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, 117 (New Delhi: Foundation Books, 2002).7 The justification of 'administrative convenience' for the partition of Bengal in 1905 is one such instance.8 Henry Beverly, Report on the Census of Bengal, 1872, 1 (New Delhi: Gian Publishing, 1989).9 Stated in the first issue of Man magazine, in 1901.10 Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India, 198 (New Delhi: Permanent Black,

2002).11 Bendict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 21 (London: Verso,

1991).

5

enumerate their possessions. As part of the imperial settlement project after the repression of the

Indian uprising of 1857-1858, the Government of India carried out a series of censuses which they

hoped would provide a cross-sectional picture of the "progress" of their rule.12

Thus, the main objectives in detailed census taking were to understand the demographic and

social structure of the country, which was essential for strengthening the colonial grip over the

people, to understand the resource potential of the dominion and to have the power to dictate socio-

economic visibility of particular communities, especially the Christians. Perhaps the underlying

motives of the British is elucidated best by the contrast between pre and post-British census

operations. While the Mughal enumerative activities were tied to taxation, the British extended it to

group identities, sub-consciously aware of its ramifications on the identities of the Indian people, and

utilising it to their benefit in the course of their administration in India.13

12 Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and its forms of Knowledge: The British in India, 8 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

13 Arjun Appadurai.. "Number in the Colonial Imagination," as sourced from Orientalism and the Post-colonial Predicament, (eds., Peter van der Veer and Carol Breckenridge), 316 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993).

6

CHAPTER II: Census and Identity FormationThe intricate relationship between the census and identity formation is often clouded by the

impression of the census as a mere bureaucratic routine, a humdrum exercise in accounting that plays

no significant role in the conditioning and construction of social realities. On closer inspection, one

can identify the function it plays in systematising and perpetuating collective identities, to categorise

populations by creating definitive boundaries around shifting identities, to make society more

manageable, administrable and legible. The British too endeavoured to divide the people in their

dominions into mutually exclusive and exhaustive identity categories,14 and with the belief that caste

and religion were the sociological keys to understanding India, they were used as categories around,

and within which, the Indian people were categorised through the census.

THE IMPACT OF CENSUS ON IDENTITIESThe very idea of representation tied to notions of proportionality, stemming from enumeration,

carries with it the intrinsic burden of shaping identities and this is precisely what happened with the

colonial census. To assess the impact of the census on identity formation, we may draw upon the

theories constructed by sociologists, as the adoption of an inter-disciplinary approach in this context

enables us to understand a process that seemingly cuts across both, historical and sociological

disciplines. Ian Hacking's concept of 'dynamic nominalism' serves as a useful tool in understanding

the effect of the census on ethnic identities. The essence of his hypothesis is that people

spontaneously come to fit the categories that have been created for them, and in this specific case, we

may extend it to those fashioned for them by the colonial authorities. He explains how the

'classifications and the classes they aspire to accommodate, conspire to emerge, hand in hand, each

egging the other on.'15 It is not so much that certain communities or identities were recognised by

colonial bureaucrats and students of human nature, but rather that these identities came into being, at

the same time the kind itself, was being invented. The relevance of such a sociological phenomenon

14 David Kertzer and Dominique Arel, Census and Identity: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity and Language in National Censuses, 12 (Cambridge: University Press, 2002).

15 Ian Hacking, “Making Up People”, sourced from Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought, 228 (California: Stanford University Press, 1986).

7

in the Indian context can be explained by Inden's philosophy of 'essentialism', by which he means that

Indians were made aware of their core identities, thereby yoking them to unchanging and determinate

natures.16 The persistence of these imagined essences not only denied Indians the ability to act by

exerting power, and rendered them passive, but it also justified British interventions into India in

order to act for the Indian people. The idea that the enumeration of the Indian people helped in their

categorisation into water-tight compartments, incapable of convergence and intersections with other

identifiable categories is taken forward by Kaviraj, when he says that in pre-British India,

communities had 'fuzzy' boundaries, that do not admit of either-or divisions, but in British India,

through the census, they became 'enumerated', giving us discrete kinds of identities.17 The problem

with such identity generation is that it fails to concede on the point that the existence of vague

boundaries is normal, that boundaries need not necessarily coincide with British classifications and

that not all of us are fat or short, tall or thin, Brahman or Kshatriya, and in substance, prevents the

individual's exploration of his or her complex and intricately designed selfhood.

CASTE AND THE CENSUSPerhaps the most complex questions for the census takers arose over the question of caste. The

basic premise around which this paper is being written is that caste as it exists today is the product of

a historical encounter between India and the British colonial rule that has perpetuated its existence by

providing a single term capable of expressing, organising and above all systematising India's diverse

forms of social identity, community and organisation. As already explained earlier, the concern about

social order was foremost in the minds of the British and the political centrality of caste was first

expounded through the census, which installed caste as the fundamental unit of India's social

structure. However, the biggest problem with this was the fact that the British understanding of caste

was based on their reading of Oriental literature as well as their reliance on local scholars of

Hindu scriptures, presenting a Brahmanical ideal of social assembly and caste, primarily based on the

chaturvarna system.18 An implicit function of the census was that it took over the historical role

16 Norbert Peabody, “Cents, Sense, Census: Human Inventories in Late Precolonial and Early Colonial India” 43 (4), Comparative Studies in Society and History, Cambridge University Press, 820 (October, 2001).

17 Sudipta Kaviraj, ‘The Imaginary Institution of India’ sourced from Subaltern Studies VII, (eds.,Partha Chatterjee and G Pandey), 20 (New Delhi: Oxford Press, 1993).

18 R. B. Bhagat, “Caste Census”, 42(21) Economic and Political Weekly, 1903, (May, 2007).

8

which Indian rulers had played as final arbiters of the ranking of castes, including the ability to

promote as well as demote castes, and handed it over to the new colonial rulers.19 The role of the

dominant classes in the census classificatory strategies of the British, and thereby identity formation,

is significant in that there was substantial input from these relatively privileged, high-caste indigenous

groups in influencing the 'colonial knowledge', as it were.20

Perhaps the most influential policy decision on identity formation was H.H. Risley's attempt to

draw up a list of castes ordered on the basis of 'social precedence', trying to decipher a verifiable

correlation between caste and social status. But it appears almost impossible to think that the caste

system could be mapped and organised into a cleanly structured and hierarchically ordered grid, given

that nuances of rank would be so slight, despite customary social practices and unwritten social norms

dictating social status, that the position of every caste and sub-caste in the social ladder could be

distinguished and determined precisely. At the social level, many people thought the object of the

census was to fix the relative social position of the different social classes and to deal with

questions of social superiority. Since social and economic advantages accrued to some castes and not

to others in the traditional hierarchy, there was a surge in demands among many castes to organise

and represent their interests in terms of caste identities and as a result many lower caste people

represented themselves as higher castes in order to raise their social status. In the census, the

underprivileged found an opportunity to express their aspiration and if possible, to acquire new

identity through enumeration.21

The vast outpouring of claims to higher status came mostly from the middling castes, who

were previously content with their abidance within the 'fuzzy boundaries' of the pre-colonial society,

but aspired for greater social prestige and social benefits that were provided by membership to higher

castes, as listed in the British census forms and their determined attempts at social mobility was an

intrinsic factor in the formation of their identities. For example, the Mahtons, a a small group in

Punjab, wanted to be recorded in the 1901 census as Rajputs, stemming not only from considerations

of assumed social standing but also from the direct administrative benefits such a denomination

19 Id.20 Sumit Sarkar, Beyond Nationalist Frames: Relocating Postmodernism, Hindutva, History, 45 (New Delhi: Permanent

Black, 2002).21 Supra note 18.

9

would bring them, in the form of official posts.22 Petitions were organised by caste sabhas and

sometimes helped to prod the authorities into accepting caste names considered more respectable.23

The effect on the identities of people from such non-functional, impractical and rigid interpretations

of the caste system by the British, is also illustrated through the strong anti-Brahmin movements in

Madras, Mysore and Bombay, indicative of the 'substanstialisation' and politicisation of caste, a

direct consequence of the reinscribing of social precedence through the colonial enumerative

strategies.24 Also as a result of their attempt to locate precise boundaries around these fuzzy

communities, there were a lot of faulty classifications. For example, with the “Okkaliga” community,

the numerous subdivisions and complexities were brushed aside for convenience, resulting in public

perception of them being a single ‘caste’.25

The underlying proposition advanced by me in the above analysis is that the effect of census

on identity formation is of a tripartite nature, determined by: i) the kind of classification and questions

the British sought to introduce in the census, ii) the kind of aspirations expressed by the respondents

in their replies, and iii) the effect of the publication of the census figures on the personal and

collective identity of the people. To tie up up the threads expressed above, it is clear that through

traditional classificatory techniques based on the varna system, the British enumeration of castes did

serve the administrative interests of colonialism as caste was traditionally associated with specific

occupation and functions. Secondly, administrative benefits guaranteed to certain castes, urged lower

caste groups to aim for higher social status, leading to the reification of their identities and lastly, the

publication of statistical data demonstrating a Brahman monopoly of the civil service and securing a

dominant societal position for themselves, provided an anti-Brahman rhetoric which was carried

forward through political representations and creation of political parties. In essence, the gaps

between the higher and lower castes widened, and the dynamism and fluidity that existed prior to the

British coming to India, was dissolved, with caste consciousness being actively expressed through the

census. The above proposition can be extended to religious communities as well, as explained below.

22 Bernard Cohn, “The Census and Objectification in South Asia”, sourced from An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays, 249 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987).

23 Supra note 20, at 46.24 Deepa Reddy, “The Ethnicity of Caste”, 78(3) Anthropological Quarterly, 549 (June, 2005).25 James Manor, “The Evolution of Political Arenas and Units of Social Organisation: The Lingayats and Okkaligas of

Princely Mysore”, as sourced from Dimensions of Social Change in India, 174 (New Delhi: Oxford Publishing, 2000).

10

THE CENSUS AND ITS IMPACT ON RELIGIOUS IDENTITIESWhen it comes to the census and its role in the construction of communal identities and in

furthering the communal consciousness of the people in colonial India through the application of the

divide and rule policy, one must keep in mind that only with the coming of British rule, from the late

eighteenth century on, did the notion that there existed distinct 'Muslim' and 'Hindu' communities in

India, take on a fixed shape,26 and while these 'fuzzy communities' have existed since time

immemorial, their congealing into distinct, discrete and mutually antagonistic communities was

certainly aided to a great extent by the counting of heads.27

The foremost indicant of the census as an instrument of division is the divergent census policy

with regard to religion in the British colonies and that in Britain itself. In India, religion, like caste,

was used as a fundamental category in census tabulations and data without any restraint, from the

very first census in 1872. This is in stark contrast to the US and British census where religion has

been kept away deliberately from racial and ethnic classification and has consciously guarded the

nature of state being affected by religion.28

To test the proposition outlined in the previous chapter, I have adopted a similar three-pronged

approach by examining first, the creation of mutually exclusive religious communities by the British

through separative colonial census categorisation techniques, the responses tendered by the Indians as

a result of such classification and thirdly, how the publication of such statistical data has impacted the

religious identities of Indians.

The general division proposed early on for the purpose of census forms was that of, 'Hindoo',

'Mohomedan' and 'Others', but such a rudimentary classification was eventually abandoned and their

notions of religion, race and caste were intertwined in the eventual system evolved for tabulating the

26 Supra note 6, at 133.27 R. B. Bhagat, “Census and the Construction of Communalism in India”, 36(46) Economic and Political Weekly, 4352

(November, 2001).28 R. B. Bhagat, “Role of Census in Racial and Ethnic Construction: US, British and Indian Censuses”, 38(8) Economic

and Political Weekly, 690 (February, 2003).

11

results of the census29 The result of such enumerative modality was that it made people aware of the

need to identify themselves as belonging to a particular group and its effect on identity formation has

been accurately summarised by Jones when he says that 'the census provided a new conceptualization

of religion as a community, an aggregate of individuals united by a formal definition and given

characteristics based on qualified data. Religions became communities mapped, counted, and above

all compared with other religious communities.'30 In fact, it can be argued that it was the process of

being asked to identify one's religion based on narrow, discrete religious classifications that led to the

process of self-identification in such a way that people began to regard themselves as members of a

particular community in a way that excluded the possibility of practising aspects of multiple traditions

at the same time. Take for instance, the fact that many Sikhs and Jains also worshipped what may be

identified as Vaishnava gods and the constrictive nature of the census questionnaire that prompted

them to choose between being Hindus (no.1 in the form), Sikhs (no.33) or Jains (no.25). Their

preoccupation with Anglo-Indians is another example of the way in which the British in spite of

several difficulties, took great pains to classify the Indian population in terms of mutually

exclusive religious communities.31 to the point where Anglo-Indian/Eurasians who entered their

religion as anything other than Christian had their entries "corrected" to Christian.32 All of the above

examples, reek of Hacking's dynamic nominalism theory, where people were made to fit into the

categories that were created for them, all in the name of administrative necessity, but in truth, merely

the application of 'divide et impera', the principle on which the colonial rule was founded.

On the second point of census responses moulding identities, my assessment is that people

were pigeon-holed into religious types because in the process of self-identification and the census

enumerators trying to fit them into pre-determined religious denominations as specified in the forms,

many minor religious groups were probably excluded from tabulation. As a result, it is possible that

similar to the process in which individuals aspired for higher caste status through the census, they

may have also tailored their responses to fit what they saw as likely to reflect well on themselves, or

to be to their advantage in one way or another.

29 Peter Friedlander, “Religion, Race, Language and the Anglo-Indians: Eurasians in the Census of British India”, La Trobe University Journal, 3 (August 2002).

30 Kenneth Jones, "Religious Identity and the Indian Census," sourced from The Census in British India: New Perspectives (ed., Gerald Barrier), 84 (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 1981).

31 Supra note 27, at 4354.32 Supra note 29.

12

Finally, with regard to the publication of census data and the implications thereof, what is

most evident is that census data has been used historically, not just for enumeration, but also for

comparison.33 An example of the extent to which census data energises the religious consciousness

of people is the effect of the 1901 census data, after the publication of which, U.N. Mukherji, in a

pamphlet titled, 'Hindus: A Dying Race', drew attention towards the declining proportion of Hindus

in the total population34 and raised the phobia of Hindus. At the same time, Swami Shradhanand

began the work of reconversion of Hindus from Mohammedan and Christianity.35 The numerically

defined strength of the community, through the census, has historically been a significant component

of communal consciousness, helping in stabilising communal identities around new orientations, used

especially by Hindu communal forces.36 Thus, it becomes clear, that the census plays a primary role in

the hardening and perpetuation of religious identities through its enumeration.

33 Charu Gupta, “Censuses, Communalism, Gender and Identity” 39(39) Economic and Political Weekly, 4302 (October, 2004).

34 For figures, see Supra note 27, at 4355.35 Supra note 27, at 4355.36 Supra note 33.

13

CHAPTER III: The Politics of Census Data in pre and post-independence India

As indicated earlier, the term 'census' is suggestive of a tedious, apolitical exercise, but there is

more than meets the eye when it comes to the collection, tabulation and publication of census data as

deep-seated political considerations direct the nature of such data and has done so from the time of

the British India censuses. I attempt to analyse here, instances of such political manoeuvring with the

assistance of census data and its impact on the collective consciousness of the Indian people, a crucial

factor in the shaping of identities and communities in pre and post-independence India.

POLITICAL STRATEGIES AND THE CENSUSThere is sufficient evidence to indicate that the British were aware of the massive impact that

an institution like the census would have on the identities of people and utilised it as one of the many

instruments for the application of the divide and rule policy, the cornerstone of the British colonial

philosophy. It is certain that politics interfered with the taking of the census in the cities of

Ahmedabad, Broach, and Surat in the colonial censuses.37 The case of Anglo-Indians having their

responses 'corrected' to fit in with the British political agenda, is another instance. The colonialists left

no stone unturned to exploit situations that arose from the publication of census figures, so for

example, after the new demographic scenario that emerged from the 1901 census, H. H. Risley, in an

instigative address declared, “can the figures of the last census be regarded in any sense the

forerunner of an Islamic or Christian revival which will threaten the citadel of Hinduism, or will

Hinduism hold its own in the future...” Census data on religion was thus used to widen the rift

between religious communities particularly between Hindus and Muslims on numerous counts, by

sparking off debate on the size and growth of population of different religious communities. The

importance of numbers in the political sphere cannot be overstressed and it is of special importance to

religious communities owing to the fact that 'numbers count in history'.38

37 Findlay Shirras, “The Census of India, 1931”, 25(3) Geographical Review, American Geographical Society, 435 (July, 1935).

38 Edward Hallett Carr, What Is History?, 62 (New York: Random House, 1961).

14

As illustrated earlier, the religious consciousness of people is extremely sensitive to issues of

population growth, fertility rates, mortality rates etc., as the 1901 census discovered, which brings

one to realise that the nature of data on ethnic, religious and caste-based minority groups is

determined largely by the current political discourse of the country. Census data can, quite simply put,

widen or repair seams in society. If the discourse aims at accommodating differences along various

ethnic, religious and tribal lines, then the population data would also reflect such differentiation.

On the other hand, sometimes emergent political consideration may require expressing a largely

homogeneous picture of population, mitigating the antagonism that exists in society. For instance,

there was a need as well as a demand for including a question on OBCs in the 2001 Census, but since

it did not fit into the socio-political agenda of the BJP-led central government, it was not pursued.39

The British, at the time of the census, had no political compulsion, like that of the Indian state

now, to go in for a homogenising discourse and instead, were strongly motivated to paint India as a

land of conflict, incapable of reconciling their contravening interests, and it is clear that the census

made all efforts to reconstruct religious categories designed according to the notion of race and

religion of the colonialists, serving as the main clutch through which divide and rule was possible,

which was necessary for the sustenance of colonialism in India. Conversely, in post-

independence India, almost all the major national political parties, particularly the Congress and the

BJP aim at erasure of socio-cultural difference in the country.40 The simplest tool for such

homogenisation is the making and unmaking of sensitive census categories,which interestingly, is

done without any sort of academic or public debate.41 Another important political manoeuvre with

regard to the census is the lag between census enumeration and the publication of the data, at a

suitable time, which can only be attributed to political considerations.

Thus, it becomes clear that political overtones permeate into matters of census collection,

tabulation and publication, making the census a constructive tool in the hands of the government to

channelise collective identities in congruence with their political agendas.

39 Mehar Singh Gill, “Politics of Population Census Data in India”, 42(3) Economic and Political Weekly, 241 (January, 2007).

40 Ibid., at 243.41 For a detailed study of such political strategies, see Supra note 39.

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THE FUTURE OF THE INDIAN CENSUS: ENUMERATION OF CASTE AND RELIGIONThe most prominent question that emerges from the above discussion is whether caste and

religion based enumeration should in fact continue, given that it plays a significant role in identity

consciousness and is evolved from a colonial endeavour rooted in divisional strategies. It is important

to note that till 1931, castes of the people were also enumerated, but after India became independent,

this practise was given up, save for SC's and ST's.42 Caste enumeration, it is argued, will provide more

reliable results about the backwardness of castes and help in the improvement of their conditions, in

understanding social changes and realities in India and expose the dominance and monopoly of

certain castes,43 while those against it stress that is a device of colonial domination, designed to

undermine as well as to disprove Indian nationhood,44 which will intensify divisive caste identities,

and may lead to caste conflicts on a large scale and hence must be discontinued.45 On the point of

inclusion of categorisation on the basis of religion in the census, one must keep in mind that as the

constitution enjoins that no person professing a religion other than Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism

shall be deemed a member of scheduled caste, it is imperative on the part of the census to ask a

question on religion in order to determine the scheduled caste status of a person.46

While the importance of such data in the determination of social conditions in the country is

clear, I am more inclined to the view that it is bound to be subverted by petty caste and communal

sympathies, expressed through vote-bank and reservation politics, possibly leading to the inflation of

population figures and the distortion of vital information on employment, age, fertility, education etc.,

rendering such figures meaningless in assessing the social situation. What is required though, is to

move away from a mere headcount, to introduce fundamental changes in the questions, in order to

determine how people of India live, and not just, how many Indians there are and where they live.47

42 P. K. Misra, “Backward Castes Census: An Outmoded Idea”, 42(24) Economic and Political Weekly, 2245 (June, 2007).

43 Id.44 Asha Krishnakumar, “Caste and the Census”, 17(18) Frontline, 78 (September, 2000).45 Satish Deshpande and Nandini Sundar, “Caste and the Census: Implications for Society and the Social Sciences”,

33(32), Economic and Political Weekly, 2158 (August, 1998).46 Supra note 27, at 4356.47 Ashish Bose, “Beyond a Headcount “, 35(17) Economic and Political Weekly, 1434 (April, 2000).

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CONCLUSIONIt seems inconceivable that the census exercise, initiated by the colonial authorities, could

glide past the social landscape of India and abstain from the actuation of identity formation, given

that their Victorian encyclopedic quest for total knowledge was in fact an attempt to put into

translation, Indian social relations and conditions into a language comprehensible to them, with a

view towards fixing and officialising collective identities (such as caste and religion) in their narrow

understanding of modern governmental practices.

The preoccupation with numbers in the metropolis, served as the backdrop for the introduction

of the census in India, coming from an intellectual environment of the post-Enlightenment era, where

the colonial imagination was absorbed by an interest in statistics and measurements that went beyond

mere utilitarian enterprises. The advent of photography in Europe provided the logical footing for a

systematic accumulation of exact information, although the anthropological nature of such collection

is suspect and seems to me to betray the unspoken motives of the British. While claims of

administrative necessity cannot be dismissed as entirely frivolous, the timing of the census, soon after

the Great Revolt and prior to the partition of Bengal suggests a motive that is far removed from

bureaucratic concerns and is in fact closely associated with the colonial need to understand and

control the socio-cultural resources of the Indian society and to project cleavages within colonial

society, which was essential for sustaining and justifying a colonial rule that was intrusive in nature.

The relationship between the census and identity formation in the Indian context is

characterised by the shift from 'fuzzy' communities, that were relatively fluid, localised and modified

based on the social environment, to 'enumerated' communities that represented administratively

labelled categories of ethnicity. The enumerative modality involved the process of 'dynamic

nominalism' wherein the indeterminate nature of their identities were given shape by the creation of

categories that required a degree of self-identification based on colonial requirements, that

categorised them into basic units of social organisation. Identities were essentialised and the peaceful

co-existence that ensued as a result of not knowing how many of them there were in the world and the

possibilities of collective action, was soon eliminated.

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The principal proposition extended by me in this paper is that the effect of censuses on

identity is of a triangular nature – the three corners represented by the kinds of questions asked and

classifications utilised by the British, the responses of the people, and finally, the reaction of the

people to the census data. It appears that each of these three elements, by themselves, and more so

together, brought about a complete change of consciousness. In the case of caste-based

categorisations, the new classificatory trend in European intellectual tradition motivated them to

develop a taxonomy based on their perception of Indian societies primarily belonging to primordial

categories, so the Brahmanical ideal was privileged. Further, their classifications based on social

precedence encouraged respondents to represent themselves as belonging to a higher caste. With the

publication of census data, the Brahmanical domination was evident, and the underprivileged sought

new identities through enumeration. Similarly, in the case of religious identities, the census

classification was intricately tied to British notions of race, nationality and ethnicity, moulding

collective identities, by mandating the selection of either-or religious affiliations in the census forms.

Hindu and Muslim leaders were quoting census figures to each other to prove whether they had

received their legitimate share of benefits and relying on census figures to provoke a fear of the

'Other' and propagating a constant myth of a catastrophic decline in the population.

It is clear that the categorisation and publication of Indian census has been closely connected

with the political agendas of the country’s rulers during the British as well as post-British periods,

depending on the need to homogenise the population. Whereas the colonial census contributed to

locate precise boundaries between once indeterminate communities, the post-British censuses sought

to redraw and re-demarcate these boundaries and to reintroduce some 'fuzziness' in this connection.

Finally, to the question of caste and religious based enumeration in post-independence India, it must

be understood that the problem with all ascriptive categories like caste and religion is that their

recognition and enumeration implicitly tends to harden previously indigenous categories that

maintained sufficient fluidity, but overlooking them is not a viable solution.

In conclusion, it must be said that it was the act of questioning, the need for explanation to the

British and to themselves, in the process of self-identification, which allowed the British India

census to perpetuate caste and religious identities through the enumeration of the people based

on such classifications.

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BIBLIOGRAPHYBOOKS

1) Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and its forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

2) Bendict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, (London: Verso,1991).

3) Dipesh Chakrabarty, Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies (New Delhi, Permanent Black, 2002).

4) David Kertzer and Dominique Arel, Census and Identity: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity and Language in National Censuses (Cambridge: University Press, 2002).

5) Edward Hallett Carr, What Is History? (New York: Random House, 1961).

6) Henry Beverly, Report on the Census of Bengal, 1872 (New Delhi: Gian Publishing, 1989).

7) Michael Foucault, Power/Knowledge (New York:Pantheon Books, 1980).

8) Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (New Delhi, Permanent Black, 2002).

9) Sumit Sarkar, Beyond Nationalist Frames: Relocating Postmodernism, Hindutva, History (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2002).

10) Thomas Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (New Delhi: Foundation Books, 2002).

ARTICLES

1) Ashish Bose, “Beyond a Headcount “, 35(17) Economic and Political Weekly (April, 2000).

2) Arjun Appadurai, "Number in the Colonial Imagination", sourced from Orientalism and the Post-colonial Predicament (eds., Peter van der Veer and Carol Breckenridge) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993).

3) Asha Krishnakumar, “Caste and the Census”, 17(18) Frontline (September, 2000).

4) Bernard Cohn, “The Census and Objectification in South Asia”, sourced from An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987).

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5) Charu Gupta, “Censuses, Communalism, Gender and Identity” 39(39) Economic and Political Weekly (October, 2004).

6) Deepa Reddy, “The Ethnicity of Caste”, 78(3) Anthropological Quarterly (June, 2005).

7) Findlay Shirras, “The Census of India, 1931”, 25(3) Geographical Review, American Geographical Society (July, 1935).

8) Ian Hacking, “Making Up People”, sourced from Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought (California: Stanford University Press, 1986).

9) James Manor, “The Evolution of Political Arenas and Units of Social Organisation: The Lingayats and Okkaligas of Princely Mysore”, sourced from Dimensions of Social Change in India (New Delhi: Oxford Publishing, 2000).

10) Kenneth Jones, "Religious Identity and the Indian Census," sourced from The Census in British India: New Perspectives (ed., Gerald Barrier) (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 1981).

11) Mehar Singh Gill , “Politics of Population Census Data in India”, 42(3) Economic and Political Weekly (January, 2007).

12) Norbert Peabody, “Cents, Sense, Census: Human Inventories in Late Precolonial and Early Colonial India” 43 (4), Comparative Studies in Society and History, Cambridge University Press (October, 2001).

13) P. K. Misra , “Backward Castes Census: An Outmoded Idea”, 42(24) Economic and Political Weekly (June, 2007).

14) Peter Friedlander, “Religion, Race, Language and the Anglo-Indians: Eurasians in the Census of British India”, La Trobe University Journal (August 2002).

15) R. B. Bhagat, “Caste Census”, 42(21) Economic and Political Weekly (May, 2007).

16) R. B. Bhagat, “Census and the Construction of Communalism in India”, 36(46) Economic and Political Weekly (November, 2001).

17) R. B. Bhagat, “Role of Census in Racial and Ethnic Construction: US, British and Indian Censuses”, 38(8) Economic and Political Weekly, (February, 2003).

18) Reginald Hooker, “Modes of Census-Taking in the British Dominions”, 57(2) Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Blackwell Publishing, (June, 1894).

19) Satish Deshpande and Nandini Sundar, “Caste and the Census: Implications for Society and the Social Sciences”, 33(32) Economic and Political Weekly (August, 1998).

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20) Sudipta Kaviraj, ‘The Imaginary Institution of India’ sourced from Subaltern Studies VII, (eds., Partha Chatterjee and G Pandey) (New Delhi: Oxford Press, 1993).

21) Sumit Guha, “The Politics of Identity and Enumeration in India c. 1600-1990”, 45(1) Comparative Studies in Society and History, Cambridge University Press (January, 2003).

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