Asian Ethnicity, 2013

Vol. 14, No. 4, 434448, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14631369.2012.710079

Census enumeration, religious identity and communal polarization in

India
R.B. Bhagat*

Department of Migration and Urban Studies, International Institute for Population Sciences,
India

Census is considered to be a scientic exercise. However, it leaves a deep impact

on religious and ethnic identities. This is because through census enumeration not
only are boundaries of communities xed, but also actual size and growth are
known. This adds a new sense to the identities of the religious communities in the
sphere of democratic politics. In India, the census was started around 1872 during
the British rule, seven decades after the rst census was held in Great Britain in
1801. The question on religion was included right from the rst Indian census,
unlike the British census which only included it in 2001. This paper shows that the
inclusion of the question on religion, and the consequent publication of data on
size and growth of population by religion during British rule, invoked sharp
communal reactions. The demographic issues found a core place in the communal
discourse that continued in independent India. The paper argues that the
demographic data on religion was one of the important factors that raised
HinduMuslim consciousness and shaped the Hindu and Muslim relationship in
both colonial and postcolonial India. As a result, several demographic myths
have found a place in the communal discourse shaping the political imagination
of India.
Keywords: census; communalism; demography; Hindus; Muslims; identity

Introduction
The relationship between identity and enumeration is not simple as we generally
believe. It is true that identity must precede enumeration, as enumeration cannot
begin in a vacuum, but the classication adopted and the enumeration that follows
can have a deep impact on the nature and characteristics of identities. India is
considered a country with strong religious and caste identities. G.S. Ghurye was the
rst to point out that asking questions on caste in the census had heightened the
caste consciousness.1
Ghuryes work was followed by the seminal work of Bernard Cohn on census
and the objectication of communities in South Asia, and several other writings,
most importantly, by two of his students, namely Arjun Appadurai and Nicholas
Dirks.2 Most of the work has been done by anthropologists who were more
concerned about caste. In demographic literature, a few works on the impact of
census enumeration on caste and a commentary on religion also have appeared.3

*Email: rbbhagat@iips.net

2013 Taylor & Francis

 Asian Ethnicity 435

When we look at the history of the nations, we nd that census as a product of

modern nation states started in several countries of Europe during the eighteenth
century.4 In Great Britain, for example, the motivation to introduce some type of
census of the population was concern over the extent of poverty and the resultant
poor relief necessitated by it. The rst census was held in 1801 and a census was held
every 10 years thereafter. On the other hand, the Indian census was started almost
seven decades later during British rule, around 1872.5 It is worthwhile remembering
that, while economic issues were predominant in the commencement of the census in
Great Britain, the census-taking in India had a dierent purpose altogether. More
precisely, the reason behind the population census in India was the desire of the
British government to learn about Indian people in order to control and govern
them.6
Just a few years before the rst census, work had also started on gazetteers, which
culminated later in several volumes of the Imperial Gazetteers of India. Both
gazetteers and census reports covered a large number of subjects dealing with the
land and people of India. However, as these publications were initiated under a non-
representative government, neither public opinion nor the institutions existed to limit
the subjects investigated. It is worthwhile to note that the British parliament rejected
the rst proposal for a national census in 1753 which was nally passed in 1800.
Also, the census in Great Britain exhibited either disinterest in religion or extreme
reluctance to explore this eld.7
However, the British census introduced a few questions on ethnicity for the rst
time in the 1991 census and the question on religion was also included in the 2001
census. On the other hand, the question on religion has not been asked in the
American census to date.8
In contrast to the census practice in Great Britain and the United Sates, in India
the question on religion has been asked since the very beginning, and population
data were published by religious categories and associated characteristics. The
present work deals with the question on religion in the Indian census, the
classicatory scheme followed and the fall-out from the availability of demographic
data by religion in Indian politics. The paper argues that the demographic data on
religion has played an important role in raising HinduMuslim consciousness in a
new form and in shaping the Hindu and Muslim relationship in both colonial and
postcolonial India.
As a result, several demographic myths have found a place in the communal
discourse shaping the political imagination of India. This paper attempts to show the
impact of census enumeration on HinduMuslim identities and their relationship in
India.

Religious categories and census enumeration

A census is not only a passive exercise of counting people, but is actively engaged
in capturing reality through categories and their denitions. Categories are also the
outcome of the perception of census ocials, their earlier experience in dealing
with such categories, or a negotiated outcome with those confronted in the
counting.9 The categories and their denitions used in Indian censuses during
British rule were rooted in the British perception of Indian society, which was
looked upon as a pre-capitalist entity largely constituting primordial communities.
This had also happened elsewhere. For example, in colonial Southern Rhodesia,
436 R.B. Bhagat

the African community was dened in precisely the same way as the opposite of
capitalist social relations.10
India is a land of numerous communities. It consists of many castes, religions,
and other social groups. However, one of the remarkable features of Indian
communities until the beginning of colonial rule was that they had existed as fuzzy
communities since time immemorial. These fuzzy communities were indistinct
groups with neither internal cohesion nor well-known externalities and, as such, they
were without overt communication. Further, each fuzzy community did not know
how far it extended or what was its strength in numbers; therefore it had less
accurate and less aggressive self-awareness.11
Looked at this way, the fuzzy communities also did not require any developed
theory of otherness.12 Counting of them, which began in the late nineteenth
century, congealed them into distinct, discrete and mutually exclusive groups.13
Similar situations were also found in other colonial countries. For example, in
Malaysia, the Malays did not form a homogeneous ethnic group in spite of their
common orientation to Islam. There were clear dierences between the Malays in
Kelantan and Kedah in the northeast (who were closely linked to Aceh and Pattani),
the Buginese in Perak, the Minangkabau in Negri Sembilan, and the Malays in Johor
or Riau.14 Similarly, neither the Baba and Nonya Chinese who lived in Melaka for
centuries, or the Cantonese, nor the Hakka, Hokkeien or Teochew Chinese in
Malaysia saw themselves as one ethnic group or as belonging together.15
However, the colonial perception that communities belonged to either one or
other ethnic group was applied through administrative practices. The administrative
dierentiations, resulting from the perception of the foreign government that the
ethnic groups followed dierent cultures, were also applied in practices of special
rights and obligations.
With the integration of these practices into everyday life, the colonial perception
of ethnic dierences in the form of mutually exclusive groups became a reality and,
through census categories, the colonial power designated ethnic groups as Chinese,
Indian and Malay: groups which were homogeneous and mutually exclusive.16
According to Anderson, census is one of the institutions of power along with map
and museum invented before the mid-nineteenth century, and one that turned out to
be a very powerful instrument of domination during colonial rule.17 The colonial
census was entirely dierent in terms of its purpose and coverage from the earlier
attempts of enumerations in the medieval period. Guha found that the enumeration
of landholding gentry classied by their ethnic status was undertaken during the
Moghul rule. The horsemen and infantry were also enumerated for scal or
administrative reasons.18
However, the pre-British enumeration was for limited purposes and did not
classify the entire population in neatly mutually exclusive categories. By contrast, the
census initiated during colonial rule provided clear denitions and boundaries of
religious and caste communities.19 As a result the so-called fuzzy communities
dissolved into the enumerated communities and further into political communities
a new source of political mobilization in British as well as in independent India. In
the census tables and reports of British India, religion was classied as Hindu,
Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, Parsi, Jewish, and Animist. The category of
Animism was employed for the various forms of beliefs of the aboriginal tribes who
had not yet come under the inuence of either Hinduism or any other major religions
of India. Even the sects within each religion, such as Hindu Brahmanic, Arya and
 Asian Ethnicity 437

Brahmo among Hindus, Shia, Sunnis, Wahabbis among Muslims, Aglican, Baptist,
Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian and Roman Catholics, etc. were enumerated
among Christians. Religion was not only presented in a separate table but also used
to cross-classify various attributes of social structure such as education, occupation
and caste, tribe or race in numerous tables.20
It seems that, of the census commissioners during British rule, several were
trained anthropologists, and were interested in understanding as many social and
cultural variations as possible in order to pin down the core religious beliefs and
practices.
However, census ocials faced enormous diculties and took great pains to
classify the Indian population into homogeneous and mutually exclusive religious
communities. The census reports of each province, as well as all-India reports,
mentioned a plethora of instances when the scheme of census classication could not
be applied due to the interwoven nature of social structure. There were problems in
dening the term Hindu as Hindu communities usually dened themselves with
reference to their specic modes of worship, such as Shaivites (worshippers of Shiva)
or Shakts (worshippers of the Mother Goddess) or Vaishnavas (worshippers of
various incarnations Ram, Krishna, etc. of Vishnu) and so on. In fact, the
essentials of Hindu beliefs and practices are found in a large number of philosophical
or sacredotal texts. The range of Hindu beliefs and practices are so far and wide that
they defy categorization by any scholar.21 On the other hand, it is believed that the
Indian Muslims, in contrast to the Hindus, constitute an Ummah (global
community), held together in close bonds of allegiance to the doctrine set out in
the Koran. However, the actual structure of Muslim society in India displays a fairly
complex hierarchy which can best be understood through a historical survey of the
spread of Islam in the Indian subcontinent.22
Notwithstanding the complex nature of Indian society, eorts have been made to
dene a Hindu as

a native of India who is not of European, Armenian, Moghul, Persian or other foreign
descent, who is a member of a recognised caste, who acknowledges the spiritual
authority of Brahmans (priestly caste), who venerates or at least refuses to kill or harm
kine, and does not profess any creed or religion which the Brahman forbids him to
profess.23

Further, Hindus had been dened in relation to Muslims. The census superintendent
of the United Province of Agra and Oudh, quoting George Grierson, mentions that
Hindi means any native of India, whilst Hindu means a non-Musalman native of
India.24
The 1911 census had further tried to segregate non-genuine from the genuine
Hindus25 on the basis of following criteria:

(1) Deny the supremacy of the Brahmans (priestly caste)

(2) Do not receive the mantra (sacred words and phrases having mystical
eects) from a Brahmans or other recognised Hindu Guru (religious teacher)
(3) Deny the authority of the Vedas (ancient Hindu religious texts)
(4) Do not worship the great Hindu Gods
(5) Are not served by good Brahmans as family priests
(6) Have no Brahman priests at all
(7) Are denied access to the interior of ordinary Hindu temples
438 R.B. Bhagat

(8) Cause pollution (a) by touch, (b) within certain distance

(9) Bury their dead
(10) Eat beef and do not revere the cow.

The above criteria were not fully applied in the 1911 census as they were opposed by
many Indians and the criteria were later dropped from the census.
While enumerating and classifying the various religious communities, the
census commissioners had found that the boundary lines between Hindus on the
one hand and Sikhs and Jains on the other were indeterminate. They also
observed that, among several Hindus and Muslim groups located in dierent
parts of the country, the social and cultural practices with regard to marriage,
festivals, food, and burial were similar. As a result, one of the census
commissioners had remarked, religions of India as we have already seen are by
no means mutually exclusive.26 Because of the interwoven nature of religious
groups, there were practical diculties in identifying religious categories. The
census ocials in their own way solved this problem. The enumerators were asked
to record all persons who said they were Hindus, Musalman or Christians, etc.,
and those who did not profess to belong to any recognized religion were entered
under the name of their caste or tribe. In the course of tabulation all such persons
were treated as Hindu if they belonged to a recognized Hindu caste, however low
it might be.27
It was also observed by the census commissioners that the line of cleavage in
India was more social than religious. For example, the remarks of the census
commissioner of the 1911 census are very pertinent to quote:

In India the line of cleavage is social rather than religious, and tendency of the people
themselves is to classify their neighbours, not according to their beliefs, but according to
their social status and manner of living. No one is interested in what his neighbor
believes, but he is very much interested in knowing whether he can eat with or take
water from his hands.28

Demographic issues and HinduMuslim polarisation in colonial India

The categorization of religious and ethnic communities and their enumeration have
deep social and political impacts in India. We nd that the very syndrome of
majority and minority in religious terms was not known, but was made through the
consciousness of population numeracy in the event of census exercises that began in
the late nineteenth century.29 After the census, numbers became a political tool as
Hindus came to know that they constituted a majority.
The beginning of the census also coincided with the electoral process rst started
in municipal bodies and later in legislative assemblies during British rule. This raised
the importance of the gures of religion in seeking representation for the various
religious communities in the emerging political institutions.30 The colonial census
data also sparked o communal debates on the size and growth of population
belonging to dierent religious communities.
Table 1 presents the decadal growth rates among Hindus and Muslims for the
period 1881 to 1941. The Hindu population had a substantially low growth rate
between 1891 and 1901, and even declined between 1911 and 1921. The low growth
rate or decline in the Hindu population created turbulence in the relationship
between Hindus and Muslims. In 1909, U.N. Mukherji of Calcutta published a series
 Asian Ethnicity 439

Table 1. Total population of Hindus and Muslims and their growth rates in British India

Hindu-
Decadal Decadal Muslim
Census Total Hindus Muslim growth growth rate growth
Year (in million) (in million) (in million) rate % Hindus % Muslim dierentials
1881 250.2 187.8 49.9
1891 279.6 207.5 57.1 10.50 14.20 3.70
1901 283.9 208.8 62.1 0.62 8.90 8.28
1911 303.0 217.2 67.8 4.00 9.20 5.20
1921 305.7 216.2 71.0 0.46 4.70 5.16
1931 337.8 238.6 79.3 10.40 11.60 1.20
1941 388.9 270.2 94.4 13.20 19.00 5.80

Source: Davis, The Population of India and Pakistan, 1789.

of articles in Bengalee, which was later published in a pamphlet entitled, Hindus: A

Dying Race.31
On the basis of gures from the 1901 census, Mukherji drew attention towards
the declining proportion of Hindus in the total population. He also stirred up fears
of Hindus being swallowed up in the next 420 years and convinced Swami
Shradhanand, a prominent Hindu leader, to take up the work of reconversion from
Mohammedan and Christianity to Hinduism. Swami Shradhanand, alarmed by the
growth of Muslim population, also wrote an inuential book entitled Hindu
Sangsthan: Saviour of Dying Race in 1926.32 Thus, the idea of demographic decline
became a core feature of Hindu communalism in later years.
This idea was further entrenched by a spectre of fear raised by some colonial
rulers. For example, H.H. Risley, one of the powerful British ocials asked

can the gures of the last census [1901] 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 as it has done through the long ages of the past?33

These assertions were made in spite of the fact that they could arouse tremendous
communal antagonisms and point to the colonial responsibility of census in India.
Along with size of population by religion, the distribution of population of
religious communities also acquired new signicance in colonial governance. Based
on the geographical distribution of the Muslim population, the division of Bengal
was attempted in 1905 (see Figure 1). A new province of East Bengal and Assam was
created with a predominance of Muslims, fomenting antagonism between Hindus
and Muslims, and was revoked later due to wide protest.
The political implications of religious division of a territory became obvious
when the then Viceroy, Lord Curzon, oered in Dacca the East Bengal Muslims the
prospect of a unity which they had not enjoyed since the days of the old Musalman
Viceroys and Kings.34 Therefore, the census exercise during colonial rule instilled a
geographical and demographic consciousness among religious communities an
awareness of their geographical concentration as well as their demographic strength.
The demographic basis of communal consciousness was further consolidated
through the political instrument of separate electorates wherein religious minorities
were given separate seats in the legislative bodies according to the proportion of their
440 R.B. Bhagat

Figure 1. Division of the Province of Bengal during British Rule.

Source: J.E. Schwartzberg, A Historical Atlas of South Asia.

population in the provinces. It is believed by some Indian historians that the roots of
communal competition can be traced to the Morley-Minto Reforms (1909), which
extended communal electorate to the urban local bodies. Even the seats in Govt.
medical college Lahore were distributed in the ratio of 40:40:20 amongst Hindus,
Muslims and Sikhs in Punjab.35 As a result HinduMuslim division was sharpened
and a spirit of political exclusiveness was fostered. The impact was particularly
marked on Muslims who saw the advantage of pressing for special safeguards and
concessions in accordance with numerical strength, social status, local inuence and
the social requirements of their community.36
The census ocials of the colonial period were aware of the implications of the
census for religion and also the criticism of it by the Indian people. However, the
census ocials defended the inclusion of the question of religion in successive
censuses.
The census commissioner of the 1931 census wrote the following:

India is the most religious country in the world, and must be regarded as the justication
for the importance attached to religion in census of India as compared for example with
that of US of Americas where culture is comparatively independent of religion.37

The census commissioner of the 1931 census further defended the census on religion
as follows:
it has been argued that the census statistics of religion tend to perpetuate communal
divisions: the census cannot, however, hide its head in the sand like the proverbial
ostrich but must record as accurately as possible facts as they exist and there is no
question of the existence of communal dierences which are reected at present in
political constituencies.38
 Asian Ethnicity 441

Census enumeration of religious identity in independent India

India has adopted a constitution based on the principles of secularism and
democracy. Apparently it seems paradoxical to ask about the religion of its citizens.
However, the question on religion in the census of independent India was asked in
the spirit of the constitution. The census was advised to record any persons caste,
religion or race to the extent necessary for providing information relating to certain
disadvantaged groups referred to in the constitution, such as the scheduled castes
and the scheduled tribes.39
As the constitution enjoins that no persons professing a religion other than
Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism shall be deemed to be a member of a scheduled
caste, it was imperative on the part of the census to ask a question on religion in
order to determine the scheduled caste status of a person. As such, the census of
India has a pretext and justication for including a question on religion in the name
of social justice. Thus, the Indian republic considers the religious and caste identities
important in the process of nation building at the same time as professing to be a
secular state. The secular versus non-secular character of the state has been an issue
of intense debate in recent decades.40
While the census in independent India continued the question on religion it
discontinued the question on caste after the 1951 census except for the scheduled
castes and scheduled tribes. With respect to religion also, only demographic data like
size of religious groups by sex and rural and urban areas were published and socio-
economic data like literacy and education and occupation were discontinued until
the 2001 census. The demographic data by religious groups found a prominent place
in census tables and have even expanded to include the question of fertility since the
1971 census. The lack of publication of data on education and occupation exclusively
focused attention on the demographic dierentials in growth of population by
religion in several decades in independent India. Further the publication of data on
smaller religious groups like Parsis and Jews and other smaller groups was also
discontinued after the 1961 census.41
India was projected through census tabulations and publications to be a country
of six major religious groups: Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jains and
Buddhists. In addition, two more groups, namely other and religion not stated,
were added in the religious classication.42 In contrast to the actual tabulation of
religious data into six religious groups, the 2001 census reported that there were as
many as 1,700 religion names that had appeared in the recent censuses. However, the
codication of as many as 1,700 religious groups into six major religions nullies the
very purpose of census, as declared by the census commissioner of 2001:

The sensitivity attached to the response for the question on religion is in a way the
attempts of the people of India, particularly very small groups, to express their keen
desire of maintaining their unique identity in social order. Census of India provided
once again the opportunity to the people India to exercise their right and get into the
ocial records. This also served as an opportunity for the government to know ocially
of the new cults/faiths, which are emerging or being adopted by the people in small or
big numbers.43

Although the proportions of other are too low to matter demographically, they
are still important to understand the diversity of religions and faiths in India. On the
other hand, the numerical dominance of religious groups is so strong that India is
ultimately projected as a country of two main religious groups, namely Hindus as
442 R.B. Bhagat

majority (828 million comprising of 81% of the total as per 2001 census) and
Muslims as the largest minority (138 million constituting 12% of the total).
Amartya Sen argues that the statistical majority of Indias Hindu population is
based on membership of the community, and does not reect the level of actual
religious belief or faith.44 A Hindu can be an agnostic or even an atheist and it may
be true for members of other religious groups as well. Thus, the notion of Hindu
majority or Muslim minority is a statistical artifact based on the principle of
classication applied in the census.

Demographic anxiety: myth and reality

The demographic anxiety about Hindus being outnumbered continued in
independent India. Such anxiety is expressed more in view of the nature of electoral
politics in the country.45 A recent book published by Joshi, Bajaj and Srinivasan
made this point, and tried to estimate the proportion of Muslim and Christian
population (foreign religion) vis-a-vis Indian religionists, raising fears about Hindus
turning into a minority in South Asia by the mid twenty-rst century, in spite of the
fact that several demographers have refuted such assertions.46 Based on a study of
population growth dierentials between Hindus and Muslims from 1951 to 1971,
Visaria observed that, even if the dierentials in the rate of growth of Hindus and
Muslims persist, India will not become a Muslim-majority nation for centuries to
come. Further, the dierentials observed so far most unlikely to continue in
future.47 In another study, Bhatia concluded that there is no sound reason to believe
that Muslims will become the majority community in India.48
Further, based on the dierentials of HinduMuslim growth rates, the highest
ever recorded between 1981 and 1991, Kulkarni estimated that if the observed
dierentials in HinduMuslim growth rates continue in the future, it would take
about 250 years for the Muslim population to catch up with the Hindu population
numerically, let alone become a majority.49 Bhat believes that the Muslim
population can at the most reach up to 20% of the total before it stabilizes by the
end of this century. Thus the fear of that Muslims would outnumber Hindus in
India, as a whole is totally unwarranted.50 However, in certain parts of Northeast
India, Muslim population growth is substantially higher, not because of high fertility
but due to cross border migration both of refugees and economic migrants.51
Even the Muslim societies across the world do not show stable levels of fertility.
The fertility level of Indonesia is lower than that of India. The recent spectacular
fertility decline in Bangladesh and Iran is also missed in the discourse on Hindu
Muslim fertility dierentials in India.52
Census reports of the British period mentioned several reasons for higher
population growth among Muslims. These included nourishing dietary practices,
fewer marriage restrictions, widow remarriage and uncommon early marriages.
Muslims had a slightly lower literacy level than Hindus. The literacy rate was about
4% among Muslims in the ages 10 compared to 7% among Hindus at the beginning
of twentieth century. The latest data available, from the 2001 Census, showed that
literacy rate was 59% among Muslims compared to 65% among Hindus. In many
districts where Muslims constitute a substantial population (30% and more), the gap in
literacy level between Hindus and Muslims was as high as 30% and more compared to
less than 10% at the national level.53 In the meantime, the socio-economic
backwardness of Muslims got fresh impetus with the recommendations of the Sacher
 Asian Ethnicity 443

Committee (Prime Ministers High Level Committee), which lead to wider recognition
of and pressure to improve the socio-economic conditions of Muslims, and also a
debate on the reservation of jobs for Muslims in government services.54 This has also
led to comparing Muslims with the scheduled castes on the planks of social justice.
Muslims are now increasingly viewed as a deprived group a fundamental change in
their identity delinking them from the sectarian and communal roots of the past. But
how far it will be sustained depends upon Indian politics which leaves no stone
unturned to exploit the caste and religious identities.
The practice of polygyny among Muslims (i.e. a husband having more than one
wife) is raised time and again, attributing to it their relatively higher fertility.
However, the popular perception of polygyny leading to high fertility is
demographically incorrect. In fact, polygyny leads to lower fertility.55 Moreover, it
is also not true that in actual practice a Muslim man has more wives than a Hindu. It
was reported in the 1911 census that a Mohammedan may have four wives but in
practice he was generally monogamous.56 A study on polygynous marriages by the
census also shows that the incidence of polygyny was slightly lower (5 to 6%) among
Muslims compared to Hindus.57 In addition, polygyny has been practised among the
wealthier sections of both Hindus and Muslims and has little association with
religion.58 Similarly, there is little truth in the assertion that Islam is a barrier to
family planning.59 In a situation of communal antagonism these facts are glossed over.
For example, the National Family Health Survey2 (NFHS-2) shows that only 2% of
women oppose the use of family planning on the ground of religion.60 The more recent
NFHS-3 report also reiterates the fact that there is a high unmet need of family planning
among currently married Muslim women (19%) compared to Hindus (12%).61
The unmet need for both spacing methods (like condom, IUD and pill) and
terminal methods (sterilisation) is higher among Muslims than Hindus. It is therefore
evident that the demand for family planning among Muslims is less satised. Also,
more Muslims than Hindus get family planning services from private sources.62
Furthermore, the increase in the use of modern family planning methods among
Muslims was faster compared to Hindus during the three rounds of NFHS surveys
during 19921993 and 20052006.
More importantly, the dierential between Hindus and Muslim fertility is not
very large. The NFHS-2 shows that on average Muslim women gave birth to one
child more than Hindus during 19981999, a rate which narrowed down to half a
child during 20052006 as reported by NFHS-3. Further, it is important to note that
between the three rounds of NFHS surveys the fertility decline among Muslims was
faster than the decline among Hindus. The total fertility rate among Hindus
declined from 3.3 to 2.8 during 199293 to 199899, and further to 2.6 in 200506,
compared to the decline from 4.4 to 3.6 and to 3.1 during the respective period
among Muslims.
The faster increase in the acceptance of family planning and also the faster
fertility decline among Muslims are generally glossed over in the debate of Hindu
Muslim population growth and fertility dierentials that takes place after almost
every census. Eorts are also made by some quarters now and then to inject
demographic issues into the communal discourse and even violence.63
Thus, HinduMuslims dierentials in population growth and fertility have been
a core feature of communalism since the colonial census and have continued in
recent years. This is sometimes also perpetuated by academic scholars who believe in
the particularized role of religion inuencing higher fertility among Muslims. Such
444 R.B. Bhagat

biases are harmful to communal harmony and anathema to the spread of family
planning among Muslims.

Conclusion
India is a country of immense religious and ethnic diversity. There are six major
religious groups, namely Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, and Jains.
On the other hand there are large numbers of small religious groups who could not be
classied in any of the six categories and are kept under the rubric of other. It is
important to remember that each religious group in India consists of numerous sects
and caste groups. The application of the principles of census, i.e. categorization and
enumeration of religious groups in numerical terms, induced them to view themselves
dierently in the nascent democratic set-up, and made them conscious of the numbers
of other religious groups as well. The purpose of the census was not to incite rivalry
among the religious communities, but to understand them: for governance in colonial
India, or for identifying the disadvantaged groups among the religious communities, in
order to eradicate discriminatory practices in independent India. Nevertheless, the fall-
out from enumeration in the democratic politics remained signicant.
Higher population growth and higher fertility among Muslims have always
formed a part of the political ideology and issues like poverty and education by and
large have been evaded in communal discourse. However, in recent years there have
been several eorts to highlight the social and economic conditions of religious
groups. This has led agencies like the Census and National Sample Survey
Organization (NSSO) to publish data on education and employment by religion,
which is potentially helpful in building an alternative discourse, reecting
educational backwardness and unemployment across the religious communities in
general and across Hindus and Muslims in particular. It is up to the political process
to use or abuse the census.

Notes on contributor
Ram B. Bhagat PhD is currently working as Professor and Head, Department of Migration
and Urban Studies, International Institute for Population Sciences (Deemed to be University),
Mumbai. His research interest include demography and ethnicity; migration and urbanization;
population, health and environment. He was a member on the IUSSP panel on Demography of
Armed Conict, 200609 and the Co-ordinator of ENVIS Centre on Population and
Environment at the International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, funded by the
Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India from 200712.
Authors postal address: Department of Migration and Urban Studies, International Institute
for Population Sciences, Mumbai-400088, India.

Notes
1. Ghurye, Caste and Race in India, 279.
2. See Cohn, The Census, Social Structure and Objectication; Appadurai, Number in
the Colonial Imagination; Dirks, Castes of Mind, 302.
3. See Bhagat, Census and Construction of Communalism, 43526; Census and Caste
Enumeration, 11934.
4. In Europe, a modern census was taken in Iceland in 1703, followed by Sweden in 1750,
Great Britain in 1801, Austria in 1818, Greece in 1826, and Italy in 1861. In Norway, the
rst modern census was taken in 1801, but there was also a census in 1769, which was not
so good (personal communication from Helge Brunborg, Statistics Norway). The rst
 Asian Ethnicity 445

census in United States was however held earlier, in 1790. See also Encyclopedia
Americana, American Corporation, New York, 1829.
5. It was decided by the British government as early as 1856 to hold a census in 1861 in
India. But the census could not be held due to the uprising of 1857. In 1865, the
government of India and the home government again agreed that a general population
census would be taken in 1871. But the years 186772 were actually spent in census
taking. This series of censuses was in fact known as census of 1872, which was neither a
synchronous census nor covered the entire territory controlled by the British. See
Srivastava, Indian Census in Perspective, 9.
6. Jones, Religious Identity and Indian Census, 78.
7. Ibid., 76. See also Peach, Social Geography, 284.
8. Peach, Discovering White Ethnicity, 623. Bhagat, Role of Census, 68691.
9. Jones, Religious Identity and Indian Census, 85.
10. Ranger, Power, Religion and Community, 22140.
11. Das, India Invented, 201.
12. Kaviraj, The Imaginary Institution, 20.
13. Das, India Invented, 20102.
14. Kor, Globalisation and Communal Identities, 274.
15. Shamsul, From Urban to Rural, 391.
16. Kor, Globalisation and Communal Identities, 274.
17. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 163.
18. Guha, The Politics of Identity and Enumeration, 14867.
19. Bhagat, Census and Caste Enumeration, 11934.
20. Census of India 1911, Vol. 1, India, Report; Census of India 1931. Vol. I, India, Report.
21. Kumar, Secularism in a Multi Religious Society, 22.
22. Ibid., 26. The largest religious group after Hindus, Muslims are divided into Asrafs and
Ajlafs. Asrafs are the noble sections that trace their origin from foreign immigrants and
consist of Sayyad, Shaik, Moghul and Pathan. The Ajlaf groups are mainly the converts
and constitute several occupation groups like Julaha (weaver), Darzi (tailor) Quassab
(butcher), Nai or Hajjam (barber) Mirasi (musician) and Bhangi (sweeper), etc. See Ansari,
Muslim Castes in Uttar Pradesh; Ahmad, Caste and Social Stratication.
23. Census of India 1911, Vol XV, United Province of Agra and Oudh, Report, 119.
24. Census of India 1911, Vol. XV, United Province of Agra and Oudh, Report, 280.
25. Census of India 1911, Vol. X. Central Provinces and Berar, Part 1, Report, 116.
26. Ibid., 129.
27. Census of India 1911, Vol. 1, India, Part II, Tables, 37.
28. Census of India 1911, Vol. 1, India, Report.
29. Das, India Invented, 201.
30. Census of India 1931, Vol. XVII, Punjab, Part I: Report, 290.
31. Mukherji, Hindus: A Dying Race. Also see Datta, Dying Hindus, 130519.
32. Shradhranand, Hindu Sangsthan.
33. Datta, Dying Hindus, 130519.
34. Sarkar, Modern India 18851947, 106.
35. Hasan, Communalisation in the Provinces, 19226, 13951407.
36. Ibid.
37. Census of India 1931, Vol. I, India, Report, 379.
38. Ibid., 379.
39. Mahatme, Concepts and Procedures.
40. Sen, The Argumentative Indian, 294316.
41. Kanitkar, Minority Religious Communities in India.
42. Census of India 2001, The First Report on Religion.
43. Ibid., xiv.
44. Sen, The Argumentative Indian, 308309.
45. Prakash, They Count their Gains; Panandiker and Umashankere, Fertility Control, 89
104.
46. Joshi, Srinivas, and Bajaj, Religious Demography of India.
47. Visaria, Religious Dierentials in Fertility, 372.
48. Bhatia, Population Growth, 1219.
446 R.B. Bhagat

49. Kulkarni, Dierentials in the Population Growth.

50. Bhat, Religion in Demographic Transition, 59137.
51. Bose, Beyond HinduMuslim Growth Rates, 37074.
52. United Nations, Demographic Year Book; Das Gupta and Narayana, Bangladeshs
Fertility Decline, 10128; Abbasi-Shavazi, The Fertility Revolution in Iran, 373.
53. Bose, Beyond HinduMuslim Growth Rates, 37074.
54. Sacher Committee, Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community.
55. Basu, The Politicization of Fertility, 518; Muhsam, Fertility of Polygamous
Marriages, 316; Bongaarts, Frank, and Lesthaeghe, The Proximate Determinants of
Fertility, 51137.
56. Census of India 1911, Vol. 1, India, Report, 246.
57. Census of India, Polygynous Marriages.
58. Jeery and Jeery, Population, Gender and Politics, 222.
59. Khan, Birth Control. Furthermore, some past and recent jurists (Faqihs) have mentioned
some of the reasons that permit married couples to plan their families. These include
keeping away from illegal income, protecting the health of the wife and providing children
with all material and spiritual needs. There is a Hadith that says that it is better to leave
your children rich than leave them poor like beggars. See Tantawai, Birth Planning.
60. International Institute for Population Sciences and Macro, India National Family
Health Survey, 199899 (NFHS-2), 159.
61. International Institute for Population Sciences and Macro, India National Family
Health Survey (NFHS-3), 200506, 158.
62. Mishra, Muslim/Non-Muslim Dierentials.
63. Sengupta, Kumar, and Gandevia, Communal Riots in Gujarat 2002, 74.

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