Measuring Tribal ‘Otherness’

The chapter examines the role of enumerative data in defining identity and ethnicity during the late colonial period. Focussing on two surveys of the CHT from 1876 and 1909 by W.W. Hunter and R.H. Sneyd Hutchinson respectively, it investigates how the census created standardized labels, relating to religion, tribe, and caste, which often undermined the region’s porous border-crossing, interethnic, and interreligious history. It reveals the inherent contradictions, vagueness of definitions, and, at times, gross inaccuracies within official bureaucratic documentation. Further, it notes how colonial demographic categories would influence later nationalist determinations of cultural and religious identity based on population numbers.