As India debates whether to query its people about caste in Census 2011, India Real Time blogged about how census authorities during the British Raj wrote about India and another sensitive topic — race — almost a century ago.
Continuing where that post left off, here are some more excerpts from then census commissioner J.H. Hutton’s remarks on the groups who came to India up to 1,500 B.C. from the chapter “Caste, Tribe and Race” of the 1931 Census report.”:
The first wave of the Mediterranean immigrants may have carried “a rudimentary knowledge of agriculture” and the later migrants from the Persian Gulf and Eastern Europe brought the knowledge of metals, excluding iron and maintained “a connection with the cities of Mesopotamia [which encompassed today's Iraq, and parts of Syria, Turkey and Iran],” according to Mr. Hutton.
The Indian government is still considering whether to quiz everyone on their caste in Census 2011, something that hasn’t been done since 1931 (although the once-a-decade survey takes stock of specific lower caste and tribal groups that are the focus of government affirmative action programs). The 1931 census, though, took a comprehensive look at India’s make-up, holding forth on complex and controversial aspects like caste, tribe and race.
It’s a tricky, sensitive matter to define people, especially when the prevailing wisdom of one time can become discredited and outmoded later. We went back to the 1931 census to look at how the officials of that time classified Indians by race. Many parts of that study might be met with a very cynical eye today, but it certainly makes for interesting reading on how the Raj authorities viewed British India and its 353 million people.
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