Between local tax and global statistic: The Census as local record

The enumeration of caste and religion by the all-India Census was emblematic of a particular kind of imperial rule. Might a different procedure of compilation and record on an alternative epistemological basis have developed? Censuses had provided governments in India with statistical information at least from the 1820s, and been used for local taxa-tion from much earlier. The possibility of a continually updated civil registry had been mooted from time to time but not put into effect. Another alternative, in which a census register formed part of the village record similar to the land registers, existed for a brief period in the 1850s in the Panjab. But this ’rule by record ’ was itself based on a theory of positive legislation and the preservation of social difference, pannomian if not panoptic. A different kind of census could only have belonged to another kind of imperial rule. Centralization and averages are two of the greatest afflictions of India; and underneath these averages, what a mass of misery and suffering lies concealed. A Government which has usurped the place of landlord, has no business with averages. Minute investigation and local control are then its most sacred duties (Anon. 1852: 3l3).