Census of India, 1931 : Volume XII : Central Provinces & Berar

Contents: Part I : Report: Introduction. 1. Distribution and movement of the population. 2. The population of cities, towns and villages. 3. Birth-place. 4. Age. 5. Sex. 6. Civil condition. 7. Infirmities. 8. Occupation. 9. Literacy. 10. Language. 11. Religion. 12. Race, tribe or caste. Appendices: Appendix I--Distribution of principal communities in Central Provinces and Berar (as illustrated by the social map). Appendix II--The depressed classes of the Central Provinces and Berar. Appendix III--The aboriginal tribes of the Central Provinces. (A)--The effect on the tribes of contacts with civilization. (B)--Notes on fifteen tribes. Appendix IV--Industrial development of Central Provinces and Berar by R.N. Banerjee, M.A., I.C.S., Director of Industries, Central Provinces.

Part II : Tables: 1. Area, houses and population. 2. Variation in population since 1881. 3. Towns and villages classified by population. 4. Towns classified by population with variations since 1881. 5. Towns arranged territorially with population by religion. 6. Birth-place. 7. Age, sex and civil condition. 8. Civil condition by age for selected castes. 9. Infirmities. 10. Occupation or means of livelihood. 11. Occupation by caste, tribe or race. 12. Literate unemployment, printed in Part I of the Report. 13. Literacy by religion and age. 14. Literacy by selected castes. 15. Language. 16. Religion. 17. Race, tribe or caste. 18. Variation of population of selected tribes. 19. European and allied races and Anglo-Indians by race and age. 20. Summary figures for districts and States. Provincial Tables: I. Area and population of tahsils, cities and large towns. II. Population of districts, tahsils, cities and large towns by religion and literacy.

"The publication of decennial census reports was initiated by the British Government during the middle of the nineteenth century and has been continued after independence. Questions of reliability and bias in the compilation of information as well as motivations which informed the publication of these reports have been raised and are relevant to every user of census reports. Even so, the censuses were often conducted with painstaking efforts and have preserved for us extremely wide-ranging information on the social, economic and political aspects of Indian life.

They contain information on the distribution and age structure of the population; castes and communities, patterns of occupation, patterns of land-holding and tenancy, health, migration, language, and education, etc., to name just a few aspects of the panorama of Indian society. For researchers interested in understanding Indian life, the reports of the decennial censes compiled by British officers remain, despite the problems of bias, misunderstanding or conscious distortion, an invaluable source of information.

The census reports consisted of two parts: a general social and economic profile and statistical material. The general profile contains an account of the census operations, the geographical and physical features of the area, the ethnography of caste and communities and changes in age-structure, health, education, employment, landholding pattern and tenancy, etc. The statistical part contains data on geography, rainfall, temperature, distribution of population according to different demographic criteria, caste and communities, health, education, employment and migration and landholding and tenancy.

Census reports have, as a rule, been used by demographers, economists and economic historians, and a great deal of this use has been limited to the statistical data contained in them. Sociologists, social historians and political scientists have made very little use of these reports. These reports provide, particularly in the volumes entitled 'General Reports' which were published separately for each state as well as for India as a whole, ethnographic information on castes and tribes describing their internal organization, social changes taking place in them, and the emerging problems of interaction among the different castes and communities. Social movements and trends towards social mobility among the castes and communities are also often discussed. Even from the viewpoint of the sociologists and social historians, therefore, the census reports are invaluable sources of information and can provide useful material on how the different sections of Indian society were responding to the processes set in motion by British rule.

The census reports are today a body of rare documents available in only a few select libraries and even these libraries do not always have all the available volumes which in an average census year extended to more than a hundred for the whole of India. This reprint of Part II of Tables of Census of India 1931 for Assam is published in the hope that it will be welcomed by individual researchers as well as libraries." (jacket)