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References

1. Ghosh et al. (1999)
2. Gottschalk (2012), pp. 185–189
3. Bates (1995)
4. Gottschalk (2012), p. 191
5. William Wilson Hunter had commenced work on what became the Statistical Account of Bengal around 1869 but it was not completed until a few years after the first all-India census;[6] Francis Buchanan-Hamilton was among those who had conducted earlier limited surveys in areas of India.[2]
6. Bhagat (2006)
7. Vemuri (1997), p. 111
8. Rajan (1997), p. 1
9. Mitra (1997), p. 16
10. Alborn (1999)
11. Perfect synchronicity was not achievable because of issues such as terrain and climate. For example, the 1931 census in Burma took place two days before the exercise was carried out in much of the rest of the country.[12]
12. Shirras (1935)
13. Baines (1900)
14. Yang (1987)
15. Gottschalk (2012), p. 183
16. Clerical labour was cheap in India anyway, but the relatively-low costs of physically visiting and enumerating the population, relative to other countries and to the costs of tabulating the results, may have been in part from vanity. Writing in 1900, Baines stared that outside the major cities, enumerators were happy to be rewarded with a certificate acknowledging their good work and that the village officials "whose services are fortunately made available for three days or so by the simple expedient of decreeing a public holiday for the census, and turning every official thus set at liberty on to a block as near as possible to his ordinary residence. There is thus comparatively little need of outside agents, and such as are wanted can be got, on payment of out-of-pocket expenses, for the distinction of flourishing round with pen and ink and two or three torch bearers and attendants".[13]
17. Cohn (1987)
18. Guha (2003)
19. Ibbetson (1916), p. v
20. Naithani (2006), p. 6
21. Metcalf (1997), p. 119
22. Risley (1915), p. 278
23. Dirks (2001), p. 227
24. Peabody (2001)
25. Gupta (2004), pp. x–xi
26. Literacy rates were poor. Despite improvements in education by 1931, it was calculated then that 9.5 percent of the population could read and write a postcard.[12] Jervoise Athelstane Baines, the 1891 Census Commissioner, thought that only 2 percent of the population could fill out a census form.[13]
27. Robb (1997)
28. Basu (2009), pp. 50–55
29. The Patidars gained recognition as a distinct caste in the 1931 census.[27]
30. Conlon (1974)
31. Reddy (2005)
32. Jassal (2001)
33. The caste system in southern India, such as that found in Kerala, is very different from that of northern India, the origin of Vedic Brahmanism and thus the varna concept. The four-tier varna system also excludes people who practise Hinduism but are considered to be Untouchable (outcastes). The 1931 census recorded 50 million such people as "depressed classes", representing 14 percent of the population recorded.[12]
34. The oft-criticised The People of India project that began in the 1990s and relied heavily on Raj ethnographies, recorded 4635 castes.[7]
35. "REPORT ON THE CENSUS OF BRITISH INDIA TAKEN ON THE 17th February 1881 VOL I". https://censusindia.gov.in/DigitalLibrary/data/Census_1881/Publication/India/1A-Census%20of%20British%20India%20(Vol%20I).pdf. 
36. "CENSUS OF INDIA 1891 A General Report". https://censusindia.gov.in/DigitalLibrary/data/Census_1891/Publication/India/31444_1891_%20REP.pdf. 
37. Baines noted in 1900 that in some "high class" households, "domestic privacy is a matter of social honour". He also noted that some suspicion regarding age recording existed in some European countries, where it was felt that the detail might be used for the purpose of determining military service.[13]
38. In one recorded instance, native census enumerators used figures varying between 16 and 60 when they were asked to estimate the age of a specific person.[11]
39. Mitra (1997), p. 61
40. The officials employed to make sense of the raw age data were in fact actuaries, whose more usual work took place on behalf of life assurance companies. Among the many statistical oddities was the population's liking for certain numbers; in 1911, 56 percent of respondents were found to have ages ending in 0, 2 or 5. The correlation of registration records to census data also revealed improbabilities, with discrepancies suggesting that 60 percent or more of life events were going unrecorded, causing one actuary in 1911 to remark that system was "practically useless". The 1911 census in Bombay Presidency suggested that the population had risen by 1.1 million, but the birth and death records indicated a fall of 217,469. The difference could not be attributed to migration.[upper-alpha 1] In 1931, there was an inexplicable difference of 4.6 million births between census and registration records.[11]
41. In Madras Presidency, between the censuses of 1871 and that of 1921, detailed caste-based occupation data were mentioned to estimate the impact of famines on lower castes.[34]
42. Anon (Journal of the Statistical Society of London) (1876)
43. The Sarda Act imposed penalties for marriage of girls under the age of 14 and boys under the age of 18. It led to incorrect data being supplied regarding age and marriage status in areas such as Baroda and Kashmir.[12]