All India Census (1931)

This was an activity that I adapted from Choices. I began the class by asking students who they thought were the majority and minority(ies) in their neighborhood. It resulting in a fascinating discussion about the literal meaning of these word and the implied meaning. Many of my students were confused between describing groups with power as "majority" even though, population wise it was a different group that made up the "majority". It was a perfect transition into the thinking behind how the British utilized the census numbers to partition the region on Bengal based on religion. Its a fairly complicated idea and I think this activity, that asks students to color in a map, is very useful in helping them visualize what actually went on. 

Religion in the Provence of Bengal 

Activity 1: 

1. Have students fill in the key on the map by shading the boxes with different colors 

2. They should also shade in the following districts on the maps according to the colors on your key: 

Muslim Majority: Malda, Dijanpur, Rangpur, Rajshahi, Bogra, Mymensingh, Murshidabad, Pabna, Dacca, Nadia, Jessore, Faridpur, Tippera, Bakarganj, Noakhali, Chittagong 

Hindu Majority: Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Cooch Behar, Birbhum, Burdwan, Bankura,Midnapore, Hooghly, Howrah, 24-Parganas, Khulna, Tripura State 

Buddhist Majority: Chittagong Hill Tracts 

3. What observations about religion in Bengal can you make based on the information in the map? (Are Muslim majority districts clustered together or are they in difference parts of the province? What about Hindu Majority districts? 

Activity 2: 

The table below provides a sample of the 1931 All-India Census Data, and includes data on four of the 29 districts in Bengal. Listed below are the numbers of Hindu’s and Muslims per 10,000 in the total population of each district. 

Religious Distribution within Districts of Bengal 

4. In the table below, calculate the percentage of the district populations that are Hindu and Muslim. (Divide each value by 100 and round to the nearest tenth.) The remaining percentage represents other religious groups. 

5. Calculate the percentage of each district’s population that identifies with other religions. (Add the percent of Hindus and the percent of Muslims and then subtract the value from 100) Your answers should be written in the Percent Other Column. 

6. On your map, locate the four districts from the chart. Label each district on the ma with the percentages of Hindu and Muslim residents. 

Which of the four districts have a population that is….. 

a. Roughly split between Hindus and Muslims? ____________

b. Largely Hindu? _____________________________

c. Largely Muslim? _____________________________

7. Which of the four districts has the largest percentage of its population that is neither Hindu nor Muslim? What percentage of this districts population represents other religious groups? 

District: _____________________________

Percentage of other religious groups: _____________________ 

8. Does labeling districts by their majority religion paint a complete picture of that districts population? Explain. 

9. What additional information would be useful to gain a better understanding of religion in the province? 

10. Do you think it would be difficult to partition Bengal? Why or why not? 

11. Why might using words like majority and minority to describe regions be 

problematic? 

Activity 3: 

Mapping Religion in Bengal 

I typed up the interview response from Professor Zamindar and Gilmartin. While it was great to have the videos of the them explaining the text, many of my students had to returned to their words to further analyze what they were explaining. There are many other videos like these on a range of topics. They are short and to the point. Its a nice alternative for providing students secondary sources.  

Instructions: As you listen to these two scholars talk, follow along with the transcript and then respond to the question in complete and thoughtful sentences using evidence from the interviews. 

Vazira Zamindar, Brown University (video link)

When the British came to the Indian subcontinent, they saw India in terms of religion. They saw India as made up by particular religious communities, and in particular Hindus and Muslims. They saw Hindus and Muslims as particularly in opposition to each other. Now this has been called the Divide and Rule policy. The divide and rule perspective of British Colonial rule. By seeing India in those terms and governing India by religion they certainly exacerbated the differences and exacerbated conflicts in the region based on religion. This religious divide then would become the basis for the Partition of 1947 and the creation of India and Pakistan. 

What does Dr. Zamindar say about how religion has influenced the history of India and Pakistan? 

David Gilmartin, North Carolina State University (video link)

I mean the census is really interesting precisely because it is one of these institutions that does two contradictory things at exactly the same time. On the one hand, it creates an image of India as a whole. Here is the “Census of India”; it’s a kind of snap short of India as if this is a society which we can define and describe as a single unit. On the other hand, the census is all about marking out all the distinction and all the differences in India. The British went out of their way in the census to emphasize the primacy of these, what they saw as, traditional types of identity. So that caste identities and religious identity are recorded in the census. Plenty of other things are as well, but these are given pride of place - linguistics division as well. And all of this formalizes a view of India as a unit but composed all of these very traditional divided parts. And this came to be the British view of what India was. It was unified but it could never be a nation, because its culture was fundamentally fragmented. 

What effect did the All-India Census have on Indian identities? 

Activity 4:

Explaining the Census: Population Density and Movement

Read the following excerpt from the description from the All India Census of 1931 and answer the question (I often offer this last task as extra credit). 

Question: 

What does this excerpt from the census suggest about the British understanding of religious groups and their movement trends? 

Population density and movement

The density in British Bengal is now 646 persons per sq. mile per sq. mile… excluding Calcutta the density of Bengal varies from 2,105 in Howrah district to 43 in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, but by far the greater part of the province has a density is found in many places, Dacca Divisions having a mean density of 935, Munshiganj Sub-divisions of 2,413 and Lohajang thana of 3,228 per sq. mile. The rate of increase of population has been 7.3 % since 1921 and that of Sikkim 34.4%. Cooch Bihar State is one of the few in India that shows a decrease since 1921. This decrease, 0.27 % is entirely Hindu (--4.76%) and is attributed to the expansion of settled cultivation by Muslims which has the effect of driving the Hinduised tribes, Koch, Mech, Poliya, etc., into the foothills or eastwards into Assam a process observed likewise in the adjoining Bengal Districts. It is also suggested that this decrease is partly due to changes in social custom, such as the abandonment of widow remarriage as part of a campaign of social elevation and to changes in the environment unfavorable to pre existing adaptations.