Arrange the following statements in an order that reflects the development of caste as an important administrative category.
(A) The Government of India Act gave legal recognition to the Schedules of Castes and Tribes.
(B) Herbert Risley conducted Census to collect information on the social hierarchy of caste.
(C) The Census became a regular ten-yearly exercise conducted by the British Indian Government.
(D) The Indian Government assumed that if it operated in the caste blind manner, it would lead to the eventual abolition of the institution.
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → (C), (B), (A), (D)
(C) The Census became a regular ten-yearly exercise conducted by the British Indian Government. — first begun in the 1860s, the census became a regular ten-yearly exercise from 1881.
(B) Herbert Risley conducted Census to collect information on the social hierarchy of caste. — the 1901 Census under Herbert Risley sought information on the rank order of castes in each region.
(A) The Government of India Act gave legal recognition to the Schedules of Castes and Tribes. — the Government of India Act of 1935 gave legal recognition to the lists or ‘schedules’ of castes and tribes marked out for special treatment.
(D) The Indian Government assumed that if it operated in the caste blind manner, it would lead to the eventual abolition of the institution. — this was the approach of the post-Independence Indian state.
NCERT (2025-26): “3.1 Caste and the Caste System … But by far the most important official effort to collect information on caste was through the census. First begun in the 1860s, the census became a regular ten-yearly exercise conducted by the British Indian government from 1881 onwards. The 1901 Census under the direction of Herbert Risley was particularly important as it sought to collect information on the social hierarchy of caste – i.e., the social order of precedence in particular regions, as to the position of each caste in the rank order.…” “The administration also took an interest in the welfare of downtrodden castes, referred to as the ‘depressed classes’ at that time. It was as part of these efforts that the Government of India Act of 1935 was passed which gave legal recognition to the lists or ‘schedules’ of castes and tribes marked out for special treatment by the state. This is how the terms ‘Scheduled Tribes’ and the ‘Scheduled Castes’ came into being.…” “…The post-Independence Indian state inherited and reflected these contradictions. On the one hand, the state was committed to the abolition of caste and explicitly wrote this into the Constitution. On the other hand, the state was both unable and unwilling to push through radical reforms which would have undermined the economic basis for caste inequality. At yet another level, the state assumed that if it operated in a caste-blind manner, this would automatically lead to the undermining of caste based privileges and the eventual abolition of the institution.…” |