The Census of 1931

Indian Express

05-06-2025

The Centre on Wednesday announced that the much delayed Census 2021 will be held in two phases beginning October 1, 2026 and March 1, 2027.
This will be the first Census since 1931 to capture granular caste data, beyond the broader classifications of Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) that have been enumerated in every post-Independence Census.
Some of the debates that took place around the exercise in 1931 continue to be relevant even today. As are questions of methodology, which were discussed in detail in the 518-page report compiled by Census Commissioner John Henry Hutton. Here's a brief history.
Context of the Census
In 1931, British-ruled India stretched from Baluchistan (Balochistan) in the west to Burma (Myanmar) in the east. Hutton, an ICS officer and an anthropologist by training, wrote about the logistical challenges in his report:
'The taking of the decennial census in India involves the cooperation of more than one-sixth of the world's population over an area of nearly two million square miles [around 50 lakh sq km]… Enumerators' duties were often as onerous physically… [For instance] in Baluchistan the average enumerator had a block of 836 square miles [2,165 sq km]…'.
The Raj also faced political challenges. The 1931 Census and preparations for it took place as civil disobedience swept across much of the country. '… [This] census like that of 1921 had the misfortune to coincide with a wave of non-cooperation, and the march of Mr Gandhi and his contrabandistas to invest the salt-pans of Dharasana synchronized with the opening of census operations,' Hutton complained.
The Gandhi-Irwin Pact of March 5, 1931, which effectively ended the Civil Disobedience Movement, was signed a week after the date of enumeration on February 27.
The Congress boycotted the Census, observing January 11, 1931 as 'Census Boycott Sunday'. Hutton's report, however, claimed that the boycott 'was not taken up with any real enthusiasm' on the ground except for in some cities in Gujarat like 'Ahmadabad (Ahmedabad), Broach (Bharuch) and Surat ' and a few Mumbai suburbs like 'Ghatkopar and and Villaparle (Vile Parle)'. The Congress' boycott, Hutton wrote, 'had very little ultimate effect on the taking of the census'.
What did have an effect, however, was the Great Depression and the economic distress it brought. 'It was another of the misfortunes of the 1931 census that it coincided with a fall in revenue and a period of economic depression which…left me no choice but to cut expenditure as fine as possible and to goad my Census Superintendents unremittingly in an attempt to finish sooner and spend less,' Hutton wrote.
The 1931 Census cost the exchequer Rs 48.76 lakh compared to roughly Rs 40 lakh spent on the Census a decade previously. Even in absolute terms — not taking inflation into account — the 1931 Census was cheaper per capita than a decade earlier, costing Rs 12.8 per thousand population compared to Rs 14 per thousand population in 1921.
One way in which the Census depressed costs was by not paying the nearly 20 lakh enumerators who collected the data. These enumerators, often teachers or low-level government servants, had to collect and collate Census data in addition to other quotidian tasks.
Hutton also mentioned other challenges such as the Bhils refusing to have their houses numbered on 'superstitious grounds', and of enumerators in 'less law-abiding places' getting beaten up by locals.
At places, enumerators were attacked by wild animals. 'Here and there wild beasts interfered instead of wild men, and the Administrator of Bastar State when inspecting census work on the night itself, was attacked by a tiger, which sprang onto the bonnet of his car, but finding the pace and the radiator too hot for him failed to make an end either of the inspector or his inspection,' Hutton wrote.
Key findings of Census
The 1931 Census captured crucial demographic data about (undivided) India and its people.
🔴 It found the total population of British India (including Burma and various princely states) to be 35.05 crore, up from 31.89 crores a decade ago. This equated to a decadal population growth rate of 10.6%, much higher than in the last three cycles. (It was 2.2% in 1891-1901, 7.4% in 1901-11, and 1.2% in 1911-21.)
Hutton cited significant improvements in public health (particularly a reduction of deaths from the bubonic plague, cholera, and smallpox), an absence of major epidemics and, interestingly, the 'universality of marriage' as the reason for the population growth.
'… [It] is enough to point out that in India the birth rate is much higher than in Europe, largely on account of the universality of marriage, the Parsis being perhaps the only Indian community in which late marriage and small families are the rule instead of the exception,' the report noted.
🔴 The distribution of this population, however, was far from uniform. While the overall population density was 85 persons/sq km, Chagai, Baluchistan, had a density of less than 1 person/sq km, the lowest in India. All of Baluchistan had a population density of only 2.5 persons/sq km.
On the other hand, Cochin State on the southwestern coast had a population density of 800 persons/sq km, the highest in the country. One particular village in the princely state had a population density 1,635 persons/sq km.
Also populous was the Dhaka Division of the province of Bengal, with a population density of 375 persons/sq km.
'[The] variation of density of population in India depends not on industry, as in the United Kingdom, but on agriculture, and is greatest of course in the most fertile areas,' Hutton's report said. However, 'the actual rate of increase in population [was] the greatest in the less populated and less fertile areas', it noted.
This, Hutton reasoned, was due to dynamics of internal migration. 'Where, therefore, there is a population already dense, there is a clearly perceptible spread towards the less profitable land,' the report said.
🔴 Calcutta (now Kolkata), with a population of 14.85 lakh, was the most populous city in British India, followed by Bombay (Mumbai) with 11.61 lakh, Madras (Chennai) with 6.47 lakh, Hyderabad (4.66 lakh) and Delhi (4.47 lakh).
Besides these, Lahore, now in Pakistan, and Rangoon (Yangon) in Burma, were the only other cities that had a population of more than 4 lakh at the time.
The enumeration of castes
Like in earlier censuses, the 1931 Census enumerated individual castes among the Hindu population. This exercise faced strong opposition in Punjab; even in the previous Census of 1921, a total of 20,993 Hindus — about half of them from Bahawalpur State — had declared their caste as 'unspecified' due to the influence of Arya Samaj.
Hutton wrote in his report: '[It is] difficult to see why the record of a fact that actually exists should tend to stabilize that existence. It is just as easy to argue and with at least as much truth, that it is impossible to get rid of any institution by ignoring its existence like the proverbial ostrich, and indeed facts themselves demonstrate that in spite of the recognition of caste in previous decades the in institution is of itself undergoing considerable modification. Indeed the treatment of caste at the 1931 census may claim to make a definite, if minute, contribution to Indian unity.'
The 1931 Census put 18 questions to respondents, the eighth of which was on 'Race, Tribe or Caste'. This question had appeared in every Census from 1872 — when the first Census was conducted — onward.
Thus, in the questionnaire of 1872, the fifth of 17 questions was on 'Caste or Class'; in 1882, the last of 13 questions asked for 'Caste, if Hindu, sect, if of other religion'; in 1891, the fourth of 14 questions was on 'Caste or race-Main caste', and the fifth was on 'Sub-division of caste or race'.
In the 20th century, the 1901 and 1911 censuses (16 questions each) had a question on 'Caste of Hindus & Jains, Tribe, or race of others'. In 1921, the eighth of 16 questions was 'Caste, Tribe or Race'.
In the 1931 Census, 18.83 lakh people, including 60,715 Hindus, gave the response 'caste nil'; 98% of them were from Bengal. The report said that no return of caste was insisted on from Arya or Brahmo Hindus.
Given challenges such as the use of different surnames for the same caste, the Census report noted 'the difficulty of getting a correct return of caste and likewise the difficulty of interpreting it for census purposes'.
The Census Superintendent for Madras wrote: 'Had caste terminology the stability of religious returns, caste sorting might be worthwhile. With the fluidity of present appellations it is certainly not… Individual fancy apparently has some part in caste nomenclature.'