Census of India
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This is a collection of newspaper articles selected for the excellence of their content. |
1871: the first British census
SEPTEMBER 22 | 1871 COUNTING PEOPLE, LAYING TRACKS
Early Firsts | The train and the census were born out of an urgency to map and network this country’s diverse regions & people Locals feared ‘Kumpani’ taxes, arrests
The British carried out their first nation-wide survey of India in 1871, an exercise they began preparing for well in advance in 1869, as the Times of India reported on July 2 that year. [India’s own tradition of census dates back to several centuries before.]
The 1869 report says: “As the want of anything like even an approximate knowledge of the population was much felt, the government of India submitted a recommendation to Her Majesty’s government that arrangements should be made for undertaking a general census of the population of India in 1871.”
The secretary of state, reported TOI, appreciated the urgent need for such an exercise. “The government of India in a letter dated August 20, 1867, requested...that the...proposed census of 1871 might be taken into consideration and that the government of India might be furnished by January 1, 1870, with reports as to the best mode of effecting it.” The 1871 census would take place with the rest of the British Empire.
Another report mentioned how eight local governments had been instructed to “familiarize the minds of people with the idea of a census”. The statistical committee was asked to prepare “uniform tables” for the purpose. Despite the elaborate preparations and professed need to sensitize people to the exercise, enumerators ran into myriad problems, amplified in TOI’s columns. “How do you classify the street-side ear-wax cleaner?” A subsequent census threw up another gem. It ended up classifying “mendicants and ascetics with prostitutes since both were termed non-productive workers.”
TOI’s columns are replete with reports and letters-to-editors detailing how local officials and policemen misused the census and made it an exploitative tool. William Drew, a missionary wrote a letter to the editor of Calcutta Examiner, that was reproduced in TOI on September 22, 1871.
Drew wrote, “As the cost will be met from the exchequer, it is fair that all abuses connected should be published to the world.” He detailed his visit to a village Sulkea (see box) where he came across a policeman making a fast buck by misleading villagers. Telling them census details would be used to levy taxes, he offered to register incorrect details of a family for a price. “This way, partly by intimidation and partly by an unquestioned assumption of authority and superior knowledge, this worthy ... a rich harvest from Her Majesty’s hard-pressed and down-trodden subjects. Of what worth the census will be after passing through such processes, I leave it to the government and the public to judge,” concludes Drew.
An informal process of enumeration was on in India since 1849, when Gov-general Dalhousie asked the local presidencies to record revenue collection details. The first was in 1851-52, the second in 1856-57. The revenue collection details of 1871 were merged into the first official census in 1871 recorded during the tenure of Lord Mayo. TNN L E T T E R TO T H E E D I TO R Ihad occasion to visit the village of Sulkea (24-Parganas). People...began to interrogate me as to the real intention of the census, about which they had heard very diverse accounts. Towards end of the...week there arrived a police official from the local thana...authorizing him to take the census. After making the purport of his visit known, he let them into the secret of the real intentions of the government. He informed that the “Kumpani” had it in mind to levy a tax upon “families”; and that the incidence of it would be heaviest upon the largest (family). He made them to understand that he was not quite in agreement with the sircar, and was prepared for a small consideration (only a few pice) to make it easy by scaling down the number in each family to hide the truth. The Times of India
