HIST 1059 Lecture Notes - In Essence
22 Jan 2014
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Document Summary
According to the excerpt, religious identity and the indian census by kenneth. Jones, the census indicates that modern religious identity is not natural but rather constructed. The census was created to provide data for a foreign government, but it served as a document of statistics that are important to political power. It developed into a source of political power because of the realization that the census officials had pertaining to the importance of religion. As the inclusion of religion in the census progressed, religious conflicts and competition expanded within the census. Many religious sectors did not want to characterize themselves with the broader term for their faith. For instance, in the year 1890 and 1891 arya samaj newspapers instructed their followers to write arya" in place of hindu" in the religion column of the 1891 census questionnaires. At the same time, they pressured the census officials to accept and record this change in religion.
