DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION IN GROUPS OF TOWNS ACCORD- Cities. Statistical information for the 33 largest cities of India which have 100,000 or more inhabitants is given in the statement below : In these statistics the population of Calcutta | the number of Indians in the colonies, irres is taken as embracing the suburbs, and this method is apparently adopted in dealing with Calcutta only. It is not, for instance, adopted in dealing with the considerable suburbs of Bombay just outside the limits of the Island. The actual population of Calcutta within the Municipal area is 885,815. Migration. Of the population of the Indian Empire only 603,526 were enumerated as born in other parts of the world. Of these about fourfifths came from other Asiatic countries, such as Nepal, Afghanistan, China, Siam, Ceylon, and Arabia and the remainder mostly from Great Britain and other countries of Europe. The emigration from India is approximately 1.7 :nil. lion, so the numbers who move between India and other countries is about two millions. Of the total immigrant population of 707,000 in Burma 573,000 are Indians, 102,000 Chinese, representing 80 and 15 per cent. respectively of the whole number. Of the Provinces which contribute most largely to the streams of migrants the most conspicuous are Bihar and Orissa, about 1 million, the United Provinces about 1 million, Madras th of a million, Rajputana 3-5th of a million and Hyderabad 1-6th of a million. The number of persons resident in India who were born outside the Indian Empire is 603,526 and of these 274,000 were born in Nepal, 116,000 in the British Isles, 108,000 in China and 48,000 in Afghanistan. The statistics of emigration outside India are far from complete. The number of Indians belonging to regiments and labour-corps outside India at the time of the census was about 125,000. Of these the majority were probably in Mesopotamia and Palestine. According to the returns pective of birth-place, amounts to 1,662,000, of whom 1,028,000 or about two-thirds are males. More than four-fifths are Hindus and about half of the remainder are Musalmans. The colonies which attract an appreciable number of emigrants are shown below. About one-ninth of the emigrants failed to specify their province of birth, and of the remainder no less than 841,000 or 80 per cent. were from Madras, 24,000 from Bombay, 18,000 from the Punjab, 17,000 from the North-West Frontier Province and 11,000 from Bengal. The majority of the emigrants work as agricultural labourers on rubber, tea, coffee and other plantations. Under the Defence of India Rules indentured labour emigration was stopped in March 1917, but there had been a considerable outflow of labourers to the colonies in the previous years and more than 2.4 millions of natives of India passed through the ports of Madras and Calcutta as indentured labourers for the various colonies during the decade. Of the labourers 33,000 went from Calcutta, but the bulk were from the Madras Presidency and their destination was Ceylon and the Straits Settlements. There is very little emigration from the ports of Bombay and Karachi. Altogether about two million labourers returned to India from the colonies during the decade. Indian emigrants to certain Colonies. Ceylon RELIGIONS. .. In thousands. 461 401 47 37 33 17 17 The subject of religion is severely contro-tian and one a Sikh. Of the remaining 2 one is versial in India, where often it is coloured by politics and racialism. As the Year Book aims at being impartial, all disputed inferences are excluded. Speaking broadly, of every hundred persons in the Indian Empire 68 are Hindus, 22 Mahomedans, 3 Buddhists, 3 follow the religion of their tribes, one is a Chris Religion. equally likely to be a Buddhist or a Christian, and the other most probably a Jain, much less probably a Parsi and just as possibly either a Jew, a Brahmo, or a holder of indefinite beliefs. The enumerated totals of the Indian religions are set out in the following table: The Hindus largely predominate in the centre, the larger numbers being returned in the Punjab, and south of India, and in the Madras Presidency they are no less than 89 per cent. of the population. Hindus are in the majority in Assam, Bihar and Orissa, the United Provinces, the Central India tracts, Rajputana and Bombay. Muhammadans monopolize the North-West Frontier Province, Baluchistan and Kashmir and are considerably in excess in the Punjab and Eastern Bengal and Sind. They form about 28 per cent. of the population of Assam, 14 per cent. in the United Provinces and 10 per cent. in Hyderabad. The Buddhists are almost entirely confined to Burma where they are 85 per cent. of the population. The Sikhs are localized in the Punjab and the Jains in Rajputana, Ajmer-Merwara and the neighbouring States. Those who were classed as following Tribal Religions are chiefly found in Bihar and Orissa, the Central Provinces and Assam, but Bengal, Burma, Madras, Rajputana, Central India and Hyderabad also returned a considerable number under this head. More than three-fifths of the total number of Christians reside in Sonth the United Provinces, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, Burma, Bombay and Assam. The Parsis and Jews are chiefly residents of the Bombay Presidency. Christians. - The Christian community now numbers just 44 millions of persons in India or 11 per cent. of the population. Fifty-nine per cent. of Christians are returned from the Madras Presidency and its States, and the community can claim 32 persons in every 1,000 of the population of the British districts of Madras and as large a proportion as 27 per cent. in Cochin and 29 per cent. in Travancore, where the increase during the decade was about 30 per cent. Elsewhere the Christians are scattered over the larger Provinces and States of India, the Punjab and Bihar and Orissa each having over 300 thousands, Bombay, Burma and the United Provinces between 200 and 300 thousands and Bengal and Assam between 100 and 150 thous ands. Divided racially Europeans (and allied races) number 176 thousands, Anglo-Indians, 113 thousands and Indians nearly 41 millions, India including the Hyderabad State. The so that out of every 100 Christians 93 are Indians, remainder are scattered over the continent, 4 are Europeans and 3 are Anglo-Indians. AGE AND SEX. 634 631 50-55 55-60 In the whole of British India the infant deathrate amounts to about one-fifth of the total death-rate for all ages and about one-fifth of the children die before the age of one year. The ratios of deaths vary in different provinces the birth-rate being an important factor. Thus they are specially high in the United Provinces and Central Provinces where the birth-rate is high and low in Madras which has a lower general birth-rate. The recorded rates in some of the cities are phenomenally high but may, owing to the defective reporting of births, be somewhat exaggerated. Special causes contribute to the high mortality of infants in India. Owing to the custom of early marriage co-habitation and child-birth commonly take place before the woman is physically mature and this, combined with the primitive and insanitary methods of midwifery, seriously affects the health and vitality of the mother and through her of the child. Available statistics show that over 40 per cent. of the deaths of intants occur in the first week after birth and over 60 per cent. in the first month. If the child survives the pre-natal and natal chances of congenital debility and the risks of child-birth, it is exposed to the dangers of death in the early months of life from diarrhwa or dysentery. Infant mortality in Cities. Sex Ratio.- In the whole of India there is an excees of males over females, the figures being 945 females per thousand males. These results being opposed to experience in most other countries of the world have been challenged and attributed to errors in the Indian census. This reasoning is rejected by the Census authorities, who insist that the disparity between the sexes is due to special conditions in the Indian Empire. The sex ratio has fallen in the last twenty years throughout India. The statistics of birth suggest that the proportion of females born to males born has, if anything, declined during this period, and in any case there has been marked decline in the last five years of the last decade in most provinces. The decline in the proportion of women however is chietly due to (a) the absence of famine mortality which selects adversely to males and (b) the heavy mortality from plague and influenza which has selected adversely to females. a Marriage. The subject of polygamy has been discussed fully in the report of 1911. Both Hindus and Muhammadans are allowed more wives than one, Muhammadans being nominally restricted to four. As a matter of practice polygamy is comparatively rare owing to domestic and economic reasons and has little effect on the statistics. The table shows the number of married women per 1,000 married men in conclusions however can be drawn from these India and the main provinces. No definite figures because (1) they probably contain a certain prostitutes who have wrongly returned as marnumber of widows, divorces and ried and (2) it is impossible accurately to gauge the effect of migration on the figures of the married in any area. The custom of polyandry is recognized as a regular institution among some of the tribes of the Himalayas and in parts of south India. It is also practised among many of the lower castes and aboriginal tribes. Its effect is reflected in the statistics of a few small communities such as the Buddhists of Kashmir where the proportion of married women to the custom is of sociological rather than of sta married men is exceptionally low, but otherwise tistical interest. Number of married females per Bombay Calcutta Rangoon Madras Karachi Delhi Widows. The proportion of widowers in the populations, viz., 6.4 per cent., does not differ widely from the figure for Europear countries, but the number of widowe is strikingly SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. Literacy. The number of persons in India Literate in the sense of being able to write a letter and read the reply is 22.6 millions, amounting, if children under five years of age are excluded, to 82 in every thousand of the population. Of males 139 in every thousand at age five and above are eliterate, the corresponding proportion in the case of females being 21. The Hindus have one literate person in every thirteen; for males the ratio is one in eight and for females one in sixty-three. The proportion of Sikh males who are literate is less than that of Hindus. One Mahomedan male in 11 and one female in 116 can read and write. The low position of Musalmans is partly due to the fact that in Bengal, the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province and Sind, where they predominate, they are mostly agricultural. Where they are In Madras, Assam and Burma the proportion is in a minority, as in the Central Provinces, United; while in Madras more than a quarter of a Provinces and Madras, they are usually town-the Tamil Brahmans can claim this dwellers and have a considerably higher propor tion of literates. The Hindu community embraces every stratum of society and the proportion of literacy is seriously affected by the inclusion of the vast mass of the lower rural classes. Some of the higher Hindu castes have more literate males than the Parsis whilst others are on a level with or even below the aboriginal tribes. English. In the whole of India 2.5 million persons or 160 males and 18 females in every ten thousand persons of each sex aged five and over can read and write English. One in thirty males in Bengal and one in forty-three in Bombay are literate in English. ac complishment. Of the Jain in Kathiawar Languages. In the whole Indian Empire 222 languages were returned at the census, dialects, as has been previously explained, not having been separately considered. The |