The 1891 Census of India was conducted by the

British Raj The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent; * * it is also called Crown rule in India, * * * * or Direct rule in India, * Quote: "Mill, who was himsel ...

and covered the lands now part of

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

and

Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

. The Census Commissioner was

Jervoise Athelstane Baines Sir Jervoise Athelstane Baines (17 October 1847 – 26 November 1925) was an administrator in the Indian Civil Service during the period of the British Raj. Early life Baines was the son of Edward Baines, the vicar of Yalding in Kent, and his ...

, who was later knighted for his work in India. Baines changed the classification from that which had been used in the 1881 census. His obituary in the Journal of the

Royal Statistical Society The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is an established statistical society. It has three main roles: a British learned society for statistics, a professional body for statisticians and a charity which promotes statistics for the public good. ...

describes the changes as being "first the separation of caste from religion and, secondly, the substitution of the population ''subsisting'' by an occupation for that ''exercising'' it." He wrote the resultant 300-page General Report, which had "a literary flavour and wide scholarship" rather than a mere analysis of the data. The total population reported was about 287,000,000.

References

{{Census of India Census Of India, 1891 Censuses in India Censuses in Myanmar Censuses in Pakistan