Between local tax and global statistic: The Census as local record

The enumeration of caste and religion by the all-India Census was emblemati c of a particular kind of imperial rule. Might a different procedures of co mpilation and record on an alternative epistemological basis have developed ? Censuses had provided governments in India with statistical information a t least from the 1820's and been used for the local taxation from much earl ier. The possibility of a continually updates civil registry had been moote d from time to tome but not put into effect. Another alternative, in which a census register formed part of the village record similar to the land reg isters, existed for a brief period in the 1850s in the Panjab. But this 'ru le by record' was itself based on a theory of positive legislation and the preservation of social difference, pannomain if not panoptic. A different k ind of census could only have belonged to another kind of imperial rule.