“A Not Unworthy Record”?: Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam's 1901 Census of Ceylon and the Transforming of Dynamic Nominalism

Abstract

Drawing inspiration from Ian Hacking's claim that new modes of description generate new possibilities for action, this essay explores the impact of changes to the mode of description through the 1901 Census in Ceylon. It begins by exploring the modes of description used in the censuses prior to 1901 to demonstrate that in Ceylon, the census was yet to emerge as the critical tool of colonial governance claimed by dominant scholarship around colonial census taking. This leads to an exploration of how the changes that Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam, the first Ceylonese Census superintendent, made to the Census Ordinance, Census Manual, and Census Report impacted the function of the census as a mode of description. It then explores the possibilities for action generated by these changes in the mode of description, paying particular attention to the ways in which the census shaped elite, indigenous activism leading to the first major reforms of the colonial governance structure in Ceylon, including the introduction of limited franchise. Thus, Ceylon's 1901 Census affords a unique opportunity to examine the impact that shifts in modes of description have on possibilities for action.

Introduction

The colonial census is often considered a fertile ground for considering the relationship between classification and identification. Until recently, the dominant scholarly view of colonial censuses has emphasised the ways in which European interventions transformed relationships between classification and identification.¹ Similar attempts in this direction have also been undertaken in relation to the function of the census in Colonial Ceylon as well.² However, more recent work has sought to trouble this dominant view of colonial census taking. Peabody, for example, has recently noted that “colonial transformations often had a more hybridized ontological status than generally recognized” and then goes on to opine that this also mean that the idea of what constitutes “‘the colonial’ becomes somewhat less fully European in constitution and more the product of an encounter (however asymmetrical) between British and Indian societies.”³ Following the work of C. A. Bayly,⁴ more attention has been paid recently to exploring the co-constitutive role that British colonial administrators and the indigenous actors who functioned at the level of the village played in shaping India's first census in 1872.⁵ Yet, in much of this research the agency of indigenous participants is exercised at the lower levels of operation of colonial census taking. There is much less exploration of the ways that indigenous actors shaped the policies, practices, approaches, and implementation of colonial census taking at the upper levels of colonial administration. An exploration of this nature would help to explore new dimensions about the ways in which indigenous agency was exercised under colonial conditions and help to open new pathways for considering the function of indigenous agency in shaping the relationship between classification and identification that played out in the process of colonial census taking. With this aim in mind, this paper takes as its focus the work of Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam, the superintendent of Ceylon's 1901 Census and likely the first indigenous person in the South Asian region to be in charge of a national census under British rule.

Such an effort is particularly important because the case of the census in Ceylon provides many reasons to revisit dominant perspectives on the role that colonial censuses played in “the making up of people” (to use Ian Hacking's term).⁶ For one, the first “modern” census of Ceylon was conducted in 1871, even though racial representation had been hardwired into political representation in the Colony's Legislative Council since 1833. More importantly for the concerns of this paper, the methods of conducting the census between 1871 and 1901 do not appear to have had a major impact on the existing tenor of colonial governance. As I hope to demonstrate, the 1901 Census marks a critical shift in the function of the census as a “mode of description.” Thus, this paper pays closer attention to the 1901 Census to examine the ways in which it sought to shift the descriptive possibilities of a census.⁷

The work of Ian Hacking provides one concrete pathway for exploring the complex relationship between classification and identification. The idea of dynamic nominalism or the looping effect is used by Ian Hacking to refer to the mutually constitutive relationship between the naming and enumeration of categories and the emergence of identification with those categories themselves. Hacking's framework appears to provide an elegant resolution to the perennial question of whether identifications produce categories or vice versa. However, an often-overlooked aspect of Hacking's idea is his suggestion that looping effects can be changed. In his essay “Making Up People,” Hacking argues that “if new modes of description come into being, new possibilities for action come into being in consequence.”⁸ But how does a “new mode of description” come into being? What are the political and epistemological stakes of this transition? And what possibilities of action does this new mode of being enable? My paper raises these questions in relation to the Census of Ceylon of 1901 to explore how the intervention of a census superintendent, Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam, a member of Ceylon's local elite, lays the epistemological foundation for new possibilities for action to emerge at the turn of the twentieth century in Ceylon/ Sri Lanka.

Two notes of caution before proceeding further, however. First, Arunachalam's appointment as census superintendent is unique, given that it was so rare for someone who was not from the metropole to have played such a major role in the taking of a colonial census. However, while I am appreciative of the steps Arunachalam takes to implement the census, I want to emphasize that this intervention should not be misread as an early moment of resistance to a colonial episteme. Although I will not discuss it at length in this paper, I want to emphasize that at an epistemological and political level, Arunachalam's intervention is very colonial and, in fact, serves to solidify what Mamdani has termed the colonial compulsion to define and rule.⁹ Thus, while his intervention is certainly important, I try to avoid claiming that this intervention should be read as a moment of resistance. Finally, in this paper, I am far more interested in the process of transforming the looping effect between classification and identification than I am in the final outcomes of these changes. I do, however, provide some discussion of these impacts, but do not explore them at great depth here.

Prelude to the 1901 Census

Ceylon's first “modern” census was taken in 1871. Sarkar opines that, prior to this, the first attempt at a census was undertaken by the Dutch governor Willem Jacob van de Graaf in 1789.¹⁰ This census primarily enumerated the population under Dutch rule on the basis of their caste.¹¹ Following the ceding of the colony to the British by the Dutch in 1796, the next census was taken in 1814 and, like the previous Dutch census, sought to record the castes (rather than races) of the colonial subjects living in the coastal areas of the island. The annexation of the Kandyan kingdom in 1815 brought the entire island under the aegis of the British Empire, and after this event an island-wide census was attempted again in 1824. The 1824 census also continued the practice of recording castes of the population.¹² However, beyond these early attempts at census taking, no systematic attempt at census taking happened until 1871.

The Census of 1871 mirrored similar attempts that were undertaken in India at the same time.¹³ It recorded information on conjugal condition, sex, age, profession/occupation, place of birth (nationality), race, religious denomination, and disabilities (if deaf, dumb, blind, crippled, or insane).¹⁴ The taking of the census was beset with a number of difficulties and challenges. The work was new to all the officials involved. Furthermore, the Census Report from 1871 makes clear that the population viewed the census operation with suspicion, and there was particular concern that enumeration was for taxation purposes.¹⁵ In addition, a series of rumours including that unmarried young men were to be forcibly recruited for wars in Europe also circulated.¹⁶ The government agent for the Northern Province noted that “it was absurd, in my opinion, to expect that accurate returns of the population could be obtained from this first attempt of the kind made to number people.”¹⁷

An analysis of the situation with regards to the category of nationality/race/ethnicity¹⁸ serves to illustrate some of these difficulties. As noted already, caste was not explicitly enumerated in this census. Scholars have commented that one of the most interesting findings of the 1871 Census was its enumeration of a total of seventy-eight nationalities and twenty-four races in Ceylon.¹⁹ The differentiation between nationalities and races was rather incoherent because “Sinhalese” and “Tamil,” for instance, were recorded both as nationality and race. An examination of the groups recorded under nationality suggest that the origin of the person enumerated also appears to have been a factor in rationalizing the division between races and nationalities. However, even place of birth does not appear to be an adequate basis for rationalization since even groups such as “Irish” and “Scotch” are recorded as both a race as well as a nationality. One of the major reasons for this lack of rationalization in the 1871 census was the fact that the respondents were allowed to classify themselves. This process of data collection unsurprisingly produced what was seen as “chaotic statistics.”²⁰ It is also worth pointing out here, that the superintendent of the next census in 1881 attributes these difficulties to the suspicions among the population about the uses of the information that was collected, along with “sinister rumours which tended to unsettle the people and to arouse a spirit of objection.”²¹ As a result, Lee notes that “the conditions (…) under which the Census of 1871 was taken were calculated to diminish the chances of its accuracy.”²² Thus, though the census of 1871 is generally considered the first systematic census of the island, it is clear that there were doubts about its accuracy and validity even at the time.

The situation with regards to the census appears to have improved to some degree with the Censuses of 1881 and 1891. Lionel Lee was the superintendent for both censuses and attributed this improvement to the relative familiarity with the work in the civil service as well as the fact that the population “viewed the undertaking with indifference.”²³ Attempts were made to systematize the census-taking process. The entire system of census taking relied on the role played by the village headmen. In both 1881 and 1891, the census-taking process began with headmen preparing two forms: the preliminary form and the house list. The preliminary form provided an overview of the village, whereas the house list was more focused on the individual households within the village. This information was used to determine the number of enumerators required as well as the resources required for census taking at the village level. The headmen who prepared the lists were also to function as enumerators. An enumerator was to cover around one hundred houses, and this was considered the enumerator's block.

Another important process implemented by Lee was the adoption of a new Census Ordinance (Ordinance No 09 of 1880). Under this ordinance, the householder was required to provide information about “the name, sex, age, profession or occupation, relation to head of family, nationality, and religion of every person who abode in every house at the time appointed for the taking of the census, and also whether any were able to read or write or both, and whether any were blind, deaf, dumb, or insane.”²⁴ Thus, a gradual strengthening of the process of census taking was instituted under the stewardship of Lee for the Censuses of 1881 and 1891.

But a closer analysis of certain categories indicates that there was still a great deal of flux in these arrangements. The 1881 Census (like the one before it) recorded the different nationalities of those who were present in the country when the census was taken, and the returns indicate a total of seventy-one nationalities present in the country at the time of census taking.²⁵ Despite this, however, Lee only used seven nationalities— “Europeans,” “Sinhalese,” “Tamils,” “Moors,” “Malays,” “Veddas” and “Other”—for the purpose of analysing the population in his report.²⁶ By the Census of 1891 the long list of nationalities that were present in the country at the time of the census was omitted from the final report.²⁷ Another point of interest is the enumeration of education. Education was enumerated for the first time in the 1881 Census, and this practice continued in 1891 as well. The educational returns in both censuses also included information on the number of children receiving instruction and statistics on the types of schools in the island. However, the enumeration focused specifically on the ability to read and write, and there is no clarity on which language the respondents could read or write. Thus, even though the system of census taking was improved after 1871, there was still some degree of negotiation and change taking place prior to the 1901 census.

In this section, I have attempted to demonstrate that prior to 1901, the census still did not play a significant role in changing the modes of description that already existed. For example, the system of communal representation that was introduced in 1833 continued and was, in fact, further reinforced in 1889 with the introduction of more seats for members of the Moor and Kandyan Sinhalese minorities. However, in spite of these changes, the Census of 1891 did not make provisions for the enumeration of Kandyan Sinhalese in the Island. Furthermore, although the category of Moor was enumerated in the 1881 Census, it appears that a great deal of discussion about the need for representation on the Legislative Council took place in arenas other than the census.²⁸ In other words, the process of defining needed for the function of communal representation appeared to be moving much faster than the process of enumeration taking place in the census of Ceylon. Thus, it could be said that while census taking had certainly become more systematized since its beginnings in 1871, it did not play the kind of directly constitutive role in governance that scholars often assume colonial censuses play in producing and reiterating social categorizations in a colony.

Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam: Civil Servant and Census Superintendent

It is against this backdrop that Arunachalam's intervention through the Census of 1901 should be considered. Arunachalam's career in the civil service of Ceylon stands out as pathbreaking in many ways. Born in Colombo in 1853 into one of the leading, upper-class Tamil families in the country, he was a star pupil at the Colombo Academy (now known as the Royal College). Arunachalam won the English University Scholarship in 1870 and proceeded to Christ's College, Cambridge, for his tertiary education. On the insistence of his uncle, he sat for the Ceylon civil service examination and was the first Ceylonese to enter colonial Ceylon's civil service through open competition. In the Ceylon civil service, he had served in the Government Agent's Office in Colombo, as police magistrate and commissioner of requests in a number of districts in the country as well as district judge all over the island prior to his appointment as registrar-general. His appointment to the post of registrar-general in 1887 while still in the Fourth Class of the civil service caused nearly half of the members of the Ceylonese civil service to protest to the colonial secretary.²⁹ Throughout his career in the civil service, Arunachalam was recognized as a radical figure, often embarrassing the government by the stances he took on key issues.³⁰ It is hardly surprising then that Arunachalam would introduce a series of radical changes to the way in which the census was conducted in Ceylon.

I consistently attribute a fairly important place to Arunachalam in the Census of 1901. Apart from the fact that he was superintendent as well as author of the Census Report, it is also clear that Arunachalam played no small part in his own appointment as census superintendent. On 6 January 1900, Arunachalam, then the registrar-general of Ceylon, wrote to the colonial secretary for Ceylon, bringing to his attention the need to appoint a superintendent for the 1901 Census “without delay.”³¹ This letter led to the circulation of an Executive Council Paper in which the treasurer and auditor-general both indicated that Arunachalam as registrar-general would be best placed to serve as the census superintendent for the fourth decennial census in British Ceylon.³² On 31 January, less than a month after Arunachalam's letter raised the concern, Arunachalam was informed of his appointment to the post of superintendent for the 1901 Census of Ceylon.³³ In responding to his appointment, Arunachalam notes that when he had first written to the colonial secretary regarding the need for the early appointment of a census superintendent, he “did not anticipate that I would be charged with the work.”³⁴ Thus, it could be said that Arunachalam also shaped his own appointment to the post, thereby furthering my claim about his central role in this census.

Laying Down the Law: The Census Ordinance of 1900

Following his appointment as census superintendent, Arunachalam took immediate steps to improve the census-taking process. One such area of improvement was with regards to the Census Ordinance, the law through which the census was operationalized. In his report, Arunachalam makes the claim that he drafted this new ordinance himself along the lines of the Indian Census Act.³⁵ He explains the need for a new ordinance on the grounds that the previous one “was defective in not giving Census officers the powers which experience both here and elsewhere had proved to be necessary, and in prescribing methods which had become antiquated.”³⁶

Arunachalam specifically identifies the degree of specificity that had been included in Lee's Census Ordinance of 1880 which made it difficult to adapt census taking to the changes taking shape in the island. In contrast, the Ordinance of 1900 takes pains to ensure as much flexibility as possible for the officials involved in the census operation. The reference to “particulars” in the 1900 census ordinance is deliberately vague about the information that census takers can obtain; as it holds that “the Governor may for the carrying out of the purposes of this ordinance from time to time, with the advice of the Executive Council, make rules consistent with the provisions of this Ordinance, and with the like advice rescind, revoke, amend, alter, or add to such rules.”³⁷ It goes on to note that “the rules may prescribe (…) the particulars regarding which, the persons from whom, and the mode in which, information shall he obtained for the purposes of the census.”³⁸ Apart from this statement, the ordinance does not attempt to specify which particulars should be obtained. By somewhat counterintuitively expanding rather than limiting the flexibility of the ordinance, Arunachalam makes a significant shift in the process through which knowledge about the citizens of the country is collected and ordered.

The significance of Arunachalam's change to the census ordinance was made clear more than a century later when a retired official of the census department, in his memoir of his four-decade-long career in the department, describes the Arunachalam census ordinance as a skilful blend “of legislative experience with the practical information background.”³⁹ He goes on to say that this 1900 Ordinance “substantially remained the basis for census taking in Sri Lanka throughout the years with minor amendments in No. 6 of 1945, No. 22 of 1955, No. 16 of 1981, No. 55 of 2000 and No. 26 of 2011.”⁴⁰ In Hacking's terms, the changes Arunachalam introduced to the ordinance makes the process of naming far more open, thereby setting the groundwork for establishing a far more dynamic mode of description through the census.

Disciplining Processes: Arunachalam's Census Manual

Having set the foundation with his Census Ordinance, Arunachalam then pays specific attention to the way in which the census is carried out. Towards this end, Arunachalam develops a manual for census taking. This manual is vital because it is the first significant attempt to systematize and give concrete shape to the process of conducting censuses in the Island. Arunachalam himself makes this clear in his introduction to the report when he notes that the manual “should considerably lighten the preparatory work of the Superintendent of the next Census. I should have been saved much labour and thought if I had inherited such a handbook from my predecessors.”⁴¹ The importance of this manual is attested to by E. B. Denham, the superintendent of the Census of 1911, who notes that “the preliminary arrangements for the census were considerably simplified by the excellent Census Manual prepared by Mr. Arunachalam for the Census of 1901, which formed the basis for the Manual issued for the 1911 Census.”⁴² A manual of this nature is particularly important to the process of census taking given that the ability to replicate processes decennially is necessary to compare developments and changes from the previous census. As a result, more than a century later, Arunachalam's influence continued to shape the process of census taking in Sri Lanka. As de Alwis Goonatilleke points out in his detailed explication of the process of census taking, “the procedure and methods introduced in the 1901 census have been found to be so satisfactory that it was adopted by all subsequent censuses up to 2001.”⁴³ Thus, the Census Manual developed by Arunachalam deserves much closer scrutiny.

In contrast to the far more haphazard system of enumeration that was in place for the 1891 census (discussed above), the 1901 Census Manual establishes a hierarchy as well as spatial relationships between four layers of census officials. For example, in Chapter III, Arunachalam sets up the roles and responsibilities of each grade of census official. Under the system set up by Arunachalam, an enumerator would oversee a block (“the local jurisdiction of an enumerator”⁴⁴) and would be answerable to a supervisor. The supervisor would oversee a circle, which consists of a number of enumerator blocks. The supervisor in turn would report to the chief headman of a division (District Mudaliyar, Ratemahatmaya, Vanniya, or Maniagar) who in turn functioned under the authority of the commissioner of the census in that province or district. The government agent, assistant government agent of a province or district, or the chairman of the municipality of local board would function as commissioners of the census for their respective jurisdictions. These commissioners of the census were to function as deputies to the superintendent of the census.⁴⁵ What is particularly significant about the Arunachalam Census Manual is the way in which he approaches the process of knowledge production as a martial exercise with expanding layers of responsibility and expanding areas of spatial control. Thus, the Census Manual set up a very clear and easily replicable system for census taking in Ceylon/Sri Lanka that has continued for more than a century.

The importance of martial discipline to the process of knowledge production is also underscored by Arunachalam's institution of a census drill. Arunachalam explains the importance of the drill to the process of knowledge production in his main report by saying:

But rules, however carefully prepared and illustrated by model schedules, &c., are but imperfectly understood by the average village enumerator, and it is essential that instruction should be for the most part imparted to them orally. I therefore required each supervisor to put his enumerators through a practical course of training by making them visit a number of houses and fill in schedules for the residents of such houses. These trial forms were examined by the supervisor, and mistakes in them were pointed out to, and corrected by, the enumerators.⁴⁶

He goes on to note that “the drilling of enumerators in Census detail in this manner is a point to which too much importance cannot be attached.”⁴⁷ As these lines demonstrate, the process of knowledge production is set up along the lines of a military exercise with the junior cadets (the enumerators) drilled by their officers (the supervisors). Significantly, in the Census Manual the responsibility for drilling the enumerators is placed in the hands of the commissioners of census, who in effect function as Arunachalam's deputies in the field. Arunachalam's comment here is arguably grounded in his desire to ensure that the operation of the census is smooth, particularly with his awareness of the “chaotic statistics” that were produced due to the ad-hoc process adopted in some of the previous censuses in the country. In short, the manual enables the disciplining of the process of knowledge production through the census. And by extension, this would make the census a far more significant tool for colonial governance.

Another important aspect of the manual that requires some comment is the preparation of instructions to enumerators that were prepared by Arunachalam. In his report, Arunachalam notes that these instructions were translated into Sinhala and Tamil as well.⁴⁸ The instructions are extremely detailed and provide the enumerator with instructions on the conduct of the census, how the forms are to be filled out, as well as other instructions such as how to handle a person providing clearly false information to the enumerator. I should also note that Arunachalam also took an additional step of having the Instructions to Enumerators gazetted so that they would be available more publicly four months before the census was taken. In fact, the Extraordinary Gazette which carries this makes specific mention of the fact that these instructions were published for “general information.”⁴⁹ They were also included as a component of the Census Manual which was published as an Annexe to the Census Report of 1901. Further, there is evidence that newspapers provided information to the general public about how the census was to be conducted, prior to the census.⁵⁰ Interestingly, the Department of Census and Statistics continues to produce instructions of this nature each time the census is taken, and there are now separate books providing instructions to enumerators as well as supervisors.

Therefore, if the aim of his census ordinance was to open the legal parameters of the census, Arunachalam's Census Manual seeks to discipline the process through which colonial knowledge is produced. This intervention is particularly important given that the previous European census superintendents had found it difficult to stabilize the process for collecting statistics about the colony. While it is certainly true that census taking is an enormous undertaking, three censuses had been conducted prior to 1901. Furthermore, two of them were conducted by the same superintendent, and so it would not be unreasonable to assume that at least by the 1891 Census a more systematic mechanism for census taking would be in place. However, as the discussion in this section shows, it was really in the 1901 Census that census taking was disciplined and made more systematic. To return to Hacking, the manual gave structure to dynamism between category and enumeration, setting up the patterns of repetition that would enable the census to function as a more concrete tool for colonial governance.

Dreaming Big: Arunachalam's Vision of a Census Report

The Census Ordinance and the Census Manual laid the foundation for the work that Arunachalam would do in his Census Report. The Census Report of the 1901 Census stands out from all its predecessors in significant ways. For example, whereas the general report of the 1891 Census is 63 pages long, Arunachalam's general report is 251 pages. But length alone would not provide the reader a sense of the extent to which Arunachalam transformed the scope of what was possible through a Census Report.

Arunachalam articulates an ambitious vision for what a Census Report should include. This vision is worth quoting in full:

It has been said that half the circle of sciences and all the circle of human interests are open to a Census reviewer, and that the perfect Census report can be written only by that rare and fortunate individual who is at once a facile and elegant writer, a good mathematician, an authority on vital statistics, well versed in economic problems and linguistic science, and thoroughly acquainted with history, the religions, the literatures, the customs and superstitions of the people enumerated, and the intricacies of their caste and tribal divisions.⁵¹

Arunachalam does go on to say that he “cannot lay claim to such qualifications.”⁵² In spite of this, however, the kind of intervention he believes constitutes an “ideal of a census report”⁵³ encompasses the disciplines of mathematics, demography (vital statistics), economics, linguistics, history, literature, and anthropology. The desire to amalgamate these disciplines in a Census Report suggests that Arunachalam was aware that the census was not merely a document that allowed the colonial state to “systematic[ally] quantif[y]” bodies.⁵⁴

Given the breadth of this vision, it is hardly surprising that the Census Report provides the reader a tremendous account of the island from the view of almost all the disciplines listed by him above. For example, the first chapter contains information about the island's climate, temperature, rainfall, flora, fauna, health, economic crops, geology (including soil and coral formations around the Island), precious minerals and metals, and animals.

The second chapter provides a concise history of the island, starting with brief highlights of its history in religious texts such as the Ramayana, and then on to information about the arrival of Prince Vijaya on the island. He then discusses the development of an economic system and social structure built around agriculture under the ancient kings as well as the arrival of Buddhism to the island. Arunachalam also highlights the historical claims of Tamils like Elara who had ruled the country or various parts of the country for some time. The chapter also includes a discussion on some of the great “Sinhalese” monarchs like Dutugemunu and Parakrama Bahu and draws attention to the constant shifting of the island's capital from time to time. He also does not fail to briefly mention the arrival of Europeans to the island and comments on the rule of all three European colonizers in Ceylon. With regards to British rule, a paragraph is devoted to some of the more important British governors who had served in Ceylon: Banes (1824–31), Ward (1855–60), Robinson (1865–71), Gregory (1872–7), Longden (1878–83), Gordon (1883–90), Havelock (1890–5), and Ridgeway (1896–“time of writing”).⁵⁵ Arunachalam also includes comments on key events such as the visit of the Prince of Wales in 1875 and the Jubilee celebrations for Queen Victoria in 1897.

The third chapter of the report provides a detailed overview of the civil administration of the island, ranging from its form of government to its judicial system, laws, and educational systems. The chapter also includes information on various government divisions such as the Public Works Department and the Survey Department. Finally, information on the structure and state of the colony's economy is also included. This brief summary of the contents of three chapters is provided so that the reader may have a sense of the breadth of information covered by Arunachalam in his Census Report. It is hardly surprising, then, that at the time of his death in 1924, the 1901 Census Report was feted by the Times of London as “the standard authority on the island ethnography.”⁵⁶

The information provided may create the impression that Arunachalam's report is one with a breadth of information but without much depth or substance. However, a closer analysis indicates that there is also a great deal of important information that is provided by Arunachalam as well. This is particularly visible when certain enumerative categories are brought into focus. Arunachalam introduced a number of new categories into the census. These include information on the denomination the Christians in the country belonged to, the introduction of a question on marital status, the establishment of the distinction between earner and dependent as well as principal and subsidiary occupation that was critical to understanding labour practices and relationships in the country, and, finally, a question relating to English literacy. It is also worth emphasizing here that information on whether a person was classified as Low-Country or Kandyan Sinhalese by nationality was enumerated for the first time in the 1901 Census even though these groups were represented separately on the Legislative Council since 1889.⁵⁷

A closer examination of Arunachalam's chapter on education may serve to illustrate the contrast between the information available in the 1891 and the 1901 censuses. The chapter begins with a definition of what education is before moving to discuss the shortcomings in educational provision and the education of lower-caste communities like the Rodi. It then also briefly discusses the English medium education that was required for at minimum, recruitment to a government job. The chapter also includes a lengthy discussion on the need for a Ceylonese scheme for higher education rather than spending extravagantly on scholarships to study in the United Kingdom or on the cheaper yet still challenging alternative of travelling to India for their higher studies.⁵⁸ Apart from this, the chapter includes a discussion on literacy as well as information on the education in Buddhist monasteries. There is also a discussion on the differences between education in the East and the West as well as a discussion of the deficiencies of education in England and the deficiencies of education in Ceylon at the time. The chapter also includes a discussion on women's education. In some cases, the discussion is buttressed by the disaggregation of census data by race, religion, or gender. Thus, there is both a quantitative and qualitative difference between the 1891 Census Report and Arunachalam's 1901 Census Report.

In this section I have attempted to demonstrate how different Arunachalam's Census Report was from those that had preceded the 1901 Census. The report brings the changes introduced through the Census Ordinance and the Census Manual to fruition. To frame what I have done so far in Ian Hacking's terms, if the ordinance and the manual demonstrate how a mode of description can be changed, the Census Report is a clear example of what a changed mode of description subsequently looks like.

Implementing the 1901 Census

It is possible to question the impact that this raft of changes in census taking had on the actual implementation of the Census in 1901. In this section I discuss the reports submitted by government agents and assistant government agents who functioned as commissioners of the census in the various districts around the island. The inclusion of these reports as an appendix in the Census Report was a direct result of provisions made in the Census Manual. Their reports provide insights into how the changes instituted by Arunachalam impacted the process of census taking around the island.

These changes do not appear to have a major impact on the general population. After three previous all-island censuses, people were generally indifferent or receptive rather than hostile to census taking efforts. For example, H. O. Fox, the assistant government agent for the Kalutara district, reported that the attitude of the people was one of “indifference and acquiescence.”⁵⁹ There were, however, reports of hesitation among the population. In Jaffna, for example, Government Agent R. W. Ievers noted that whereas the “educated classes” were more receptive to the census taking exercise, the “lower and ignorant classes were at first disposed to think that the census was taken for purposes of conscription.”⁶⁰ These concerns echoed the rumours that accompanied the first census taking exercise in 1871 where census taking was hampered by fears of conscription.⁶¹ In Mannar, there were initial fears among administrators that rumours about conscription would hamper census taking. However, far more reticence emanated from fears of an outbreak of cholera, as there had been such an outbreak soon after the 1891 census.⁶²

Other barriers to census taking included the high levels of movement among the population which impacted Arunachalam's plans for census taking. For example, in Mannar the time period for census taking coincided with the busiest times for cultivation and fisheries as well as heavy monsoonal rains. B. Constantine, the assistant government agent in Mannar, noted that rains also meant an increase in elephant movement, and an elephant attack the previous year had meant that travel was limited to a few hours at midday and that too with company.⁶³ In Ratnapura, the Government Agent, E. M. Byrde, reported that census taking coincided with the peak of the Adam's Peak pilgrimage season, and there was a lot of movement in the night which made census taking difficult for enumerators who were assigned to the roads.⁶⁴ Byrde also reported that some difficulty was faced because the general population had gone to bed on the night of the census (1 March) and had not been readily available when the enumerators had knocked.⁶⁵

The more complicated impact of these changes was for the administrators of the census on the ground. Many of the government agents and assistant government agents appreciated the institution of a Census Manual and rarely suggested any changes. However, complications arose with regards to the processes themselves. One challenge was to recruit the large number of competent enumerators necessary for the complex census-taking process. In Nuwara Eliya, for example, the assistant government agent, E. M. De C. Short, lamented that “some of the men selected for these appointments were not very intelligent persons, and were taught their duties with some difficulty.”⁶⁶ In Badulla, G. A. Baumgartner, the government agent and census commissioner, noted that securing educated enumerators who were able to navigate the complexities entailed in the documentation process was a challenge given the lack of educational facilities in the district.⁶⁷

Language was also at times a barrier in filling out the necessary schedules. Thus, for example, the assistant government agent of Trincomalee, C. M. Lushington, reported that he had to check and correct all the schedules from the Sinhalese villages himself due to the lack of clerks who could read and write in Sinhala in the district.⁶⁸ In Kalutara, Mr. Fox faced difficulties because it was a challenge to recruit a full set of enumerators who could fill in schedules in English.⁶⁹

There were also concerns about the tight timelines that were necessary for census taking which often did not take into account factors such as delays in transit. For example, in Mullaitivu, the forms for census taking which were despatched from Colombo in December were only received in February, a delay that meant that the forms were received after the completion of the Preliminary Census.⁷⁰ In Galle, George M. Fowler, the chairman of the Galle Municipal Council and the census commissioner for the area, noted that “the time allowed for examination of the schedules by the supervisors and framing of circle abstracts was insufficient.”⁷¹ In Kurunegala, C. A. Murray, the government agent and census commissioner, reported the need for more time between the taking of the census and the checking for accuracy prior to transmission to Colombo.⁷²

The inadequacy of renumeration for enumerators was the most constant complaint among the district census commissioners. This is hardly surprising given that the quotient of workers that was expected of enumerators had changed significantly from previous censuses. The rate paid for enumeration at the 1901 Census was fixed at Rs. 10 for headmen and Rs. 5 for others, but many district census commissioners highlighted the inadequacy of this payment. For example, A. S. Pagden, the chairman of the Colombo Municipal Council, noted that renumeration “cannot be considered satisfactory in view of the fact that enumerators had to attend drills at Census Office and make a preliminary enumeration, in addition to the final enumeration on the census night. There was a general complaint that the remuneration was inadequate.”⁷³ Mr. Murray from Kurunegala also noted that while he was able to find an adequate number of enumerators to carry out the census, the “renumeration was hardly so.”⁷⁴ This was particularly a challenge in Kurunegala because enumerators were required for the plumbago mines and had to be paid additionally for this work. In Jaffna, Mr. Ievers noted that “it is my opinion that the remuneration given to the men engaged in the census work was not adequate to the quality of work done by them, and I fear that in future censuses it may not be possible to engage intelligent men to do so elaborate a work at so poor a pay.”⁷⁵ He went on to recommend a rate of Rs. 15 be paid to headmen and Rs. 10 to all other enumerators.⁷⁶

The complexity of the rules set up by Arunachalam was also mentioned by at least two of the district census commissioners. For example, Mr. Bertram Hill, the assistant government agent in Kegalle, noted that “the rules were somewhat too elaborate for the comprehension of the uneducated village enumerators.”⁷⁷ In Badulla too, Mr. C. D. Vigors, the government agent, noted that “the general tenor of the rules is sound, but they are too complicated.”⁷⁸ He also made a number of suggestions for improving the process of enumeration, including that the enumeration of government departments be carried out independently of the government agent and be sent directly to the superintendent of the census.

The tensions highlighted in this section speak to the challenges of instituting such a massive change in procedure at ground level. Based on the reports from these officials, it seems clear that the average citizen was not very heavily impacted by these changes. However, the information provided by the district census commissioners highlights the impact that these changes had on the process of census taking itself. Thus, they speak to the complexities entailed in institutionalizing a change in the mode of description.

The Politics of a Census Report: Politics and Epistemology after the 1901 Census

Hacking reminds us that the conditions of possibility also change even as the modes of description change. In this section, I explore some of the new epistemological and political possibilities that come into being due to the changes introduced by Arunachalam. I briefly touch on the Census of 1911 by E. B. Denham, which is widely cited by many historians as an authority on Ceylon at the turn of the twentieth century. I then go on to explore how Arunachalam's Census Report was used in the demands for political reforms that emanated from Ceylon's local elite at the turn of the twentieth century. Through these explorations I examine the new possibilities for action that emerged after the Census of 1901.

A number of epistemological possibilities were opened up by the 1901 Census Report. Given what has been said about the report, it is hardly surprising then that Denham's 1911 Report which follows on the heels of these interventions makes a far more concerted attempt to expand Ceylon as a category of knowledge. Denham's Census Report of 1911 includes detailed district histories,⁷⁹ a chapter on “how the East has been outwardly affected by Western civilization,” as well as a chapter euphemistically termed “Nomenclature” in which Denham discusses caste in Sinhala society as well as the practices of naming in Ceylonese society, in spite of the fact that the census itself did not collect any information on caste groups in the country.

These changes are important because Denham's Census Report is often used by Sri Lankan writers as an authoritative primary source for the analysis of social relationships at the turn of the century. For example, Kumari Jayawardena's Nobodies to Somebodies (2007), quotes heavily from Denham but tends to use Arunachalam as a statistical source.⁸⁰ Apart from this, her work that discusses race/nationality explicitly, The Erasure of the Eurasians, does mention Arunachalam's definition of who a Burgher is but apart from that does not refer to his Census Report.⁸¹ John D. Rogers's research on caste⁸² as well as Sri Lankan historiography after British colonization⁸³ quotes two other works by Arunachalam but does not refer to his Census Report. However, Denham is an important source of information in both these essays. In contrast, it is only relatively recently that academics have shown an interest in studying the influence of Arunachalam's Census Report in shaping ethnic identities in the country.⁸⁴ The point to be made, however, is that the expansion of the categories covered in the census and the extensive descriptions that make Denham's report so useful to scholars today are made possible by Arunachalam's vision for a census report.

Arunachalam's report was also used in significant ways by members of the local elite to press for reform to the existing structure of colonial governance in Ceylon. The demands made by this group of people emerged in the decade after the publication of Arunachalam's census. The reform process was initiated after a meeting between the Earl of Crewe, the secretary of state for the colonies, and Sir James Peiris in December 1908. Following this meeting, Peiris also sent a memorial to Crewe sketching out the need for reform. In this memorial, Peiris highlighted a number of reasons for the need to change the structure of the colonial state that had been in operation since 1833 in Ceylon. Two of them deserve special attention.

The first is his argument that the system of communal representation that had been in place since 1833 was an inadequate basis for representing the needs of the population. To provide evidence for this argument, Peiris drew on the statistics from the 1901 Census highlighting the disparities between the size of the population and the strength of the population's representation on the Legislative Council. Peiris drew special attention to the fact that there were three representatives for the 9,000-strong European community, whereas there was only one member for the 872,000 Kandyan Sinhalese, and one for the 1,458,000 Low-Country Sinhalese.⁸⁵ As noted previously, the separate statistics on the Kandyan and Low-Country Sinhalese communities were only available to Peiris because Arunachalam's census had enumerated these populations separately for the first time. The Crewe-McCallum Reforms of 1910, which was the major outcome of this press for reform, eventually reduced the number of European representatives from three to two, a step that caused a great deal of indignation among the European community in the island.⁸⁶ Thus, we see that Arunachalam's intervention through the census had specific political implications for the structure of colonial governance in Ceylon.

Peiris also makes specific mention of the 1901 Census in highlighting the need for reform of the existing structure of the colonial state in Ceylon. He draws specifically on the data on the number of English-literate individuals in Ceylon to argue that the current system was outdated: “From the Census Report of 1901 it appears that in that year there were 76,496 persons able to read and write English. It is no exaggeration to say that for every person who had a good knowledge of English in 1833 there are a hundred now.”⁸⁷ This argument is presented as the second major reason (after the growth of population since 1833) for the need to revise the constitutional arrangements set up by the Colebrooke-Cameron Reforms. It is worth remembering here that it is Arunachalam who introduces a question on English literacy into the 1901 Census. Thus, the information obtained by Arunachalam can be directly linked to these demands for reforms.

The reforms that emerged from these demands gave Ceylon its first experience of representative democracy. As Wilson points out, the 1912 Reforms are “the first stage in the regeneration of modern Ceylon,”⁸⁸ marking a shift “from an era of a Government of well-discussed laws” to a “period of Government by co-operation.”⁸⁹ Thus, Arunachalam's intervention in the census not only changed the mode of description but also provided a basis for the political advocacy that took shape over the next decade. It is also worth mentioning that Denham's 1911 Census took place in the thick of these political developments and, as Michael Roberts points out, sought to augment Governor McCallum's thesis that “the Ceylonese ‘middle classes’ were cut off from the masses” due to their “educational background.”⁹⁰ Thus, it could be argued that after Arunachalam's intervention, the census in Ceylon came to be directly tied to political practice in a way that it had not been prior to 1901.

Conclusion: New Possibilities, Old Limits

I conclude by cautioning against assuming that the possibilities for action that emerge as a result of a shift in the mode of description are necessarily radical. The demands for the introduction of the elective principle went hand in hand with the affirmation that the franchise should be limited to educated and wealthy segments of the population and should not be universally available. As a result, the Crewe-McCallum Reforms introduced a special seat to represent the educated Ceylonese community while retaining the principle of communal representation on the grounds that the colony was not (in the words of the Earl of Crewe) “yet ripe for so radical a reform.”⁹¹ Thus, the emergence of new possibilities for action following a shift in the mode of description need not necessarily mean that the old conditions are discarded.

The situation with Arunachalam's census also provides a useful insight into the tensions between colonial epistemologies and colonial politics. Politically, the changes to the mode of description opened up a number of new possibilities for political action, buttressing a growing clamour from local communities for changes to the status quo of colonial governance. Epistemologically, however, Arunachalam's intervention imbricates the census more centrally within a colonial episteme, working towards producing knowledge about a local population in order to make the task of colonial governance easier. While it is true that imbrication was appropriated by the local elite to challenge the direction of colonial governance, it is also true that their demands were elitist and exclusive. Sadly, the actors who sought to utilize Arunachalam's challenge to colonial epistemologies through the census were limited in their own political imagination, and often did not share the breadth and depth of the political vision that drove Arunachalam.⁹² Thus, the 1901 census reports attests to both the limits and the possibilities that are available when a mode of description is shifted. Therefore, Arunachalam's 1901 Census Report provides a useful site for examining the possibilities and limits of Hacking's ideas about the relationship between naming and enumeration and their attendant political and epistemological possibilities.