Census of India prior to independence

The Census of India prior to independence was conducted periodically from 1865 onward to 1947. The censuses were primarily concerned with administration and faced numerous problems in their design and conduct ranging from absence of house numbering in hamlets to cultural objections on various grounds to dangers posed by wild animals to census personnel. The censuses were designed more for social engineering and to further the British agenda for governance rather than to uncover the underlying structure of the population. The sociologist Michael Mann says that the census exercise was "more telling of the administrative needs of the British than of the social reality for the people of British India." The difference of the nature of Indian society during the British Raj from the value system and the societies of the West were highlighted by the inclusion of "caste", "religion", "profession" and "age" in the data to be collected, as the collection and analysis of this information had a considerable impact on the structure and political overtones of Indian society.

There were historical attempts to enumerate the population in parts of the Indian subcontinent as well as to assess landholdings for revenue purposes, which was then a primary consideration. They are attested in the writings of Kautilya, Abul Fazl and Muhnot Nainsi. The East India Company, too, carried out quantitative exercises in various places and at various times prior to the Indian Rebellion of 1857, after which its authority to govern the country — often referred to as Company Rule — was replaced by the administrators operating under the auspices of the British Crown.

The 1865 census of the North-West Provinces is sometimes referred to as the first proper census in India. By 1872, the only administrative area of British India where there had not been an attempt to conduct a region-wide enumeration was Bengal Province. The various limited exercises conducted prior to 1869 have been described as "fragmentary, hardly systematic and lack[ing in] any uniformity". In 1872, the British Raj authorities concluded the first "all-India census." However, S. C. Srivastava says that it did not in fact cover all of the country and that it was asynchronous, being conducted between 1867 and 1872 after an initial 1856 decision to introduce decennial enumerations from 1861 was disrupted by the 1857 Rebellion. The first synchronous decennial census was conducted in 1881 and has continued thus since, although the 1941 exercise was severely curtailed and very little of its data was published due to World War II. The 1931 census is often considered be the last British-administered census. The report of the 1881 census comprised three volumes; that of 1931 comprised 28.

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