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How Did the Census Shape British India? - Caste, Religion, and the Colonial Census | Sleepy Facts About History
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We tend to think of a census as a simple mirror held up to society, a neutral counting exercise that discovers groups already waiting to be counted. But the colonial census of British India reveals a much more complicated reality. This episode explores how the modern census functioned not as a mirror, but as a mold that helped create and harden social identities. From the late nineteenth century through the final colonial enumeration in 1931, British administrators translated complex…
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