Title: The strength of numbers: Enumerating communities in India's princely states
Abstract:importance of numbers and figures has crept into our study of history.I am not referring to the so-called quantitative history which only feels free to make statements about the past if sufficiently b...importance of numbers and figures has crept into our study of history.I am not referring to the so-called quantitative history which only feels free to make statements about the past if sufficiently buttressed with countable facts and data.What I mean is that historians have begun to realise that modern government methods of measuring and counting have affected the formation of new subjective identities.Bernard Cohn 1 has already drawn attention to the way colonial officials in India developed numerical classifications of castes and communities for reasons of administrative convenience.More recently Dipesh Chakrabarty argued that people adapted themselves to these bureaucratic classifications, as they realised that the numerical strength of their community had become an important political asset. 2 In this short essay I will investigate how the collection of official and quantitative data affected group solidarities and inspired people from different castes and religions to compete for what they thought to be a 'fair number' of appointments in an ever-growing state bureaucracy.The focus will be on three Indian princely states -Travancore, Baroda and Hyderabadand a related question will be whether the development of communal I acknowledge in gratitude the valuable comments on an earlier draft received from James Chiriyankandath (London), Ghanshyam Shah (Surat) and Frank de Zwart (Leiden).1Read More