Census in British India refers to the census of India prior to independence which was conducted periodically … See more

The first modern census in the United Kingdom (of a much smaller population) had been in 1801, repeated every ten years thereafter, and this provided the pattern for the Indian process, although this threw up many differ… See more

Ram Bhagat points out that a demographic census is an exercise in the classification of a population and it is inherently constrained. For example, the questions required non-overlapping responses, and both the qu… See more

Caste and religion still form the most significant social constructs in India and the former, in particular, has been influenced by the Raj census efforts. Although there were certainly some enumerations of caste prior to the arriv… See more

The significance of religion, as well as caste, was considerable. Hutton said in his census report for 1931 that
It is not in its devotional aspect that the census is concerned with religion.... [S]ocial conduct is … See more

As with caste, recording age in the census amounted to a problematic attempt to impose Western values on the population. Most people in British India did not know their age anyway, and the few who did, mostly Bra… See more

The outcomes of the census exercise were sometimes startling. For example, the 1872 census in Bengal suggested that the population was considerably greater than had been believed. A supervisor there noted that i… See more