26 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Gait found himself directing the Imperial Government's census operations in India in 1911. Prior to the actual enumeration. Gait issued a circular to all provincial census supervisors 'to report as to the criteria which might be taken to determine whether or not a man is a genuine Hindu in the popular acceptation of the term*. The responses he received covered 'an extraordinary diversity of opinion', which convinced him of 'the extreme complexity of the question and the indefiniteness of the word's connotations'.61 The criteria that Gait listed covered a range of beliefs and ritual practices that were considered integral parts of Hinduism. But in the different provinces, he found that no single criteria was fully satisfied, and the extent to which the others were satisfied varied greatly. In the Central Provinces and Berar, he reported, 'a quarter of the persons classed as Hindus deny the supremacy of the Brahmans and the authority of the Vedas, more than half do not receive the mantra from a recognised Hindu guru, a quarter do not worship the great Hindu gods, and are not served by good Brahman priests, a third are denied access to temples, a quarter cause pollution by touch, a seventh always bury their dead, while a half do not regard cremation as obligatory, and two-fifths eat beef. The picture from other provinces was equally diverse and variegated. The situation was rich in ironies. Under political pressure from the Hindu nationalists. Gait was forced to drop his controversial method of enumeration. But he did observe that the category of Hindus included several who were denied entry into Hindu places of worship, and also various low castes, whom many Hindu census enumerators in Northern India 'hesitated' to describe as such. There were also several who did not consider themselves as Hindus, but nevertheless came into the fold under the census enumeration, and many who actually 'objected to being so classed'.62 The resistance to a change in classifications being high, the Imperial Government abandoned the effort. But for a while, the Gait circular caused enormous consternation within Hindu nationalist ranks. In a history of the Arya Samaj written in 1915, Lajpat Rai noted: 'One fine morning the learned pandits of Kashi rose to learn that their orthodoxy stood the chance of losing the allegiance of six crores of human beings who, the Government and its advisors were told, were not Hindus, in so far as other Hindus would not acknowledge them as such, and would not even touch them'. But the end result in the Lala's estimation, was a happy one: 'The Gait circular had a quite unexpected effect and galvanised the dying body of orthodox Hinduism into sympathy with its untouchable population, because that was so necessary to avert its downfall'.63