Sources

Censuses

Ceylon (1946), (1953), (1963); India (1872), (1901), (1911), (1921), (1931), (1951), (1961); Nepal (1952–54), (1961); Pakistan (1951), (1961).

General References

Ceylon, Registrar-General's Department (1873); The Ceylon year book . . . (various years); Goa, Daman and Diu . . . (1965).

Government Document

Ceylon, Superintendent of Documents (1912).

X.B.5. Growth of Higher Education, 1857–1971

Since 1857, when India's first universities were established, at Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras, higher education in South Asia has undergone phenomenal growth and diversification. Most of this growth, by far, has occurred during the post- independence period. Today, well over one hundred universi- ties and specialized institutions providing comparable levels of instruction are to be found in that region, with a total of well over three million students. These universities and specialized institutions are plotted on plate X.B.5, along with their dates of founding and, for those established by 1961, their enroll- ments as of 1901, 1931, 1947, and 1961. (Because of an ad- ministrative reorganization in Bihar, data for that state are as of 1962.) In India five so-called central universities, adminis- tered directly by the Union government, as opposed to the sev- eral states, are singled out. It is to be noted that in both India and Pakistan (and also Nepal as of 1971) a large number of universities are designated as "affiliating," which is to say they comprise a number of college campuses, normally distributed over a fairly broad area (possibly an entire state). The map representation of enrollment, however, shows the total for all colleges as if they were concentrated at a single site. As of 1971, there were probably close to seven thousand affiliated colleges, more than six thousand in India alone, with about a dozen Indian universities accounting for more than one hun- dred each. Calcutta University, with more than two hundred colleges and nearly 245,000 students in that year, probably constituted the largest university system in the entire world. Madras, (Indian) Panjab, and Kerala Universities, in descend- ing order of enrollment, each had more than 100,000 in its total student body.

The table in the lower right corner of plate X.B.5 provides comparative data, by countries, for various dates from 1901 to 1971. As may be seen, Pakistan, Nepal, and Afghanistan lag well behind India in higher education, if one considers en- rollment data on a pro-rata basis. The same appears to be true for Ceylon. Attention must be paid, however, to the footnote reporting a downward bias in the reporting of data for those countries that lacked the system of university-affiliated col- leges, characteristic of both India and Pakistan, whereby vir- tually all college students are counted among the university population. In the case of Ceylon the magnitude of the bias created by the exclusion of college students in the data on uni- versity enrollment is surely great. We cannot, however, say with certainty whether Ceylon would lead or lag behind India if comparable data for the two countries were available.

Although the first duly recognized universities began in In- dia only in 1857, a number of historically important colleges, centers of higher religious instruction, and nationalist institu- tions of higher learning did have their origins earlier (e.g., the Muslim madrassa in Calcutta, the Sanskrit college in Benares, and Fort William College in Calcutta, founded in 1781, 1791, and 1800 respectively). These and later institutions of histori- cal significance are noted in part in the end pocket "Chronol- ogy of South Asia" (column 2) and in part on the maps of "Religious Revival and Reform Movements" (VIII.C.1) and "Political Events of the Nationalist Period" (VIII.C.2). For a thorough general history of education in India to 1951 see the work by Syed Nurullah and J. P. Naik.

Sources

(Citations followed by "GD" and "GR" are listed under "Government Documents" and "General References" respectively)

Commonwealth universities yearbook (various years); Great Britain, Parliament, House of Commons (1909) GD; India, a reference annual (various years) GR; India (Republic), Uni- versity Grants Commission (1964) GD; S. Nurullah and J. P. Naik (1951); Times of India directory . . . (various years) GR; U.S. Educational Foundation in India (1963); World of learning (various years) GR.

X.B.6. The Growth of Newspapers and the Cinema Industry

Newspapers, historically the most influential of the "mass" media in South Asia, and the cinema, currently the most pop- ular, form the principal subjects of atlas plate X.B.6. Inciden- tal details relating also to the development of radio and tele- vision are provided in the chronology accompanying the maps.

The presentation in map (a) is limited to those daily news- papers with circulations above 10,000 as of 1931, 1961, or 1967. That figure, though modest by modern Western stan- dards, has often been sufficient in the South Asian context, especially in the pre-independence period, to have a significant impact on political developments in the area of circulation. The circulation data, where available, are presumed to be rea- sonably accurate on the whole, though some bias in reporting on the part of individual newspapers is to be expected. (Fig- ures for several newspapers have been estimated, while for others they are lacking for a given year of reference.) Circu- lations above 100,000 are rather rare among South Asian dai- lies and probably no more than fifty or so newspapers had achieved a circulation as high as 50,000 at any time before 1967. Over much of South Asia one is impressed by the re- markable degree to which a single cultural center dominates the pattern of newspaper distribution of given linguistic or cultural regions or even of a country as a whole. Witness, for example, Calcutta's unrivaled position in West Bengal (in all of Bengal before partition); Dacca's position, since indepen- dence, in East Pakistan; Patna's in Bihar; Colombo's in Cey- lon, and so forth. By contrast, one notes the relatively large number of cities in South India, especially in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, in which "major" dailies are published.

The language of publication is a matter of considerable in- terest. English is easily the most widespread and is in an espe- cially strong position among those dailies with circulations over 50,000, accounting for roughly a third of the 1961 total. One must, of course, bear in mind that the large circulation figures for English dailies in Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras reflect an all-India readership. Important though it remains, the English-language press has suffered a substantial relative decline since independence, as one may ascertain by inspect- ing the chronologically arranged map data relating to the pe- riods of newspaper founding, which reveal the recent prolif- eration of the vernacular press. Major Urdu newspapers are widespread in northern India and clearly dominate the field in West Pakistan; their total absence among the major dailies of East Pakistan, however, even as late as 1967, is revealing, be- ing symptomatic of the profound cultural cleavage in Pakistan that lay at the root of the secession of Bangladesh. By way of comparison, Hindi, as the medium of the popular Indian press, does extend beyond the regions in which it is a majority lan- guage; but among major dailies it is not to be found in the four states of the Dravidian South, in Gujarat, or in the far northeastern region of the country. The linguistic cosmopoli- tanism of the press in most of the larger cities of South Asia, especially in those with population over a million, is striking. Bombay is particularly noteworthy in this regard as the home of major dailies in six different languages.

The pattern of map (b), which deals with all dailies, irre- spective of circulation, reinforces several of the above general- izations; specifically with respect to the patterns of regional dominance of certain centers of publication (Calcutta, etc.); the varying regional importance of English, Urdu, and Hindi; and the recent rapid expansion of the newspaper industry. From 1931 to 1961 the number of daily newspapers published in South Asia increased from roughly 150 to nearly 700, most of the increase, not unexpectedly, being registered by the ver- nacular press. Of particular note is the almost total absence in the former year of daily newspapers over most of interior In- dia exclusive of the Indo-Gangetic Plain; for example, the present areas of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh did not have a single daily at that time.

Map (c) and the accompanying graphs on the cinema in- dustry require little comment, but attention may be called to the growing diversity in the language of production, closely reflecting the popular demand of South Asia's population and the larger size of the potential market of specific linguistic re- gions. The almost total absence of English-language films (sub- sumed under the category "Others") is also noteworthy.

Sources

(Citations followed by "GD" and "GR" are listed under Government Documents and General References respectively; all others are listed in the general section of the main bibliography)

Statistics on the Press

The Ceylon year book (1961), (1962), (1968) GR; Editor and publisher . . . (1932), (1962), (1968) GR; Handbuch der Auslandspresse (1960) GR; Handbuch der Weltpresse (1934) GR; India (Republic), Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (1962), (1968) GD; Indian year book (1931) GR; INFA . . . (1962); Pakistan, Press Information Depart- ment (1958) GD; Worldmark Encyclopedia . . . (1963) GR.

Works relating to the History of the Press

M. Barns (1940); H. D. Jansz (1968); N. K. Murthy (1966); S. Natarajan (1962b); Twenty years . . . (1967) GR; S. P. Sen (1967); D. N. Wilber (1962).

Works on Cinema, Radio, and Television

E. Barnouw and S. Krishnaswamy (1963); India (Republic), Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (1965b) GD; R. D. Jain (1960); Pakistan, Film Fact Finding Committee (1962) GD; United Nations, Statistical Office, Statistical yearbook (1964) GR.

Acknowledgments

The assistance of Mr. Edwin Hirschmann in preparing the chronology is gratefully acknowledged. Statistics for Pakistani newspapers were compiled in final form with the assistance of S. N. Qutb, press attaché, Embassy of Pakistan.

General

Membership in a particular caste, tribe, or comparable eth- nic group is among the most important determinants of behav- ior for the great mass of the population of South Asia. Pre- cisely what constitutes a caste, a tribe, or a comparable group (for example, among Muslims to whom social organization along caste lines is theoretically anathema) is a semantic con- troversy into which we shall not venture; but over much of the greater part of the subcontinent, the concept of jati, referring to an endogamous group into which one is born (jati = birth) may be taken as a generally comprehended referent for the social categories we are here considering. Each jati, in a given region and at a given period of time, has its characteristic ethos, its place within a regional social hierarchy, and its ways of relating to other jatis putatively higher than, roughly equal to, or inferior to itself in social status. These generalizations apply in varying degrees, not only to the Hindu population (including most of the partially Hinduized aboriginal peo- ples), but also to the bulk of the Muslim population, Buddhists in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and the Himalayas, Christian converts from specific Hindu castes, and even, one might argue, Anglo- Indians. With regard to the specifically hierarchical connota- tions of jati, however, the generalizations are largely invalid for the Muslim population of Afghanistan and the adjacent frontier regions of Pakistan, as well as for those aboriginal groups whose contacts with the caste-based Hindu social order have been minimal.

Within any cultural region of South Asia the ethnic mix, in terms of specific jatis represented and their respective numeri- cal strength, political and economic power, and ritual ascend- ancy provides an essential key to understanding history and contemporary social dynamics. To date, however, there has been no adequate systematic attempt to characterize the vary- ing regional mixes for the whole of the subcontinent. Atlas plates X.C.1–3 depict much of the basic data for deriving such characterizations. Plate X.D.1, which follows, synthesizes these data in combination with comparable data on religion and language in a map of culture realms, regions, and subregions.

Regrettably, for our purposes, the tabulation of caste, tribe, and other comparable groups, which was a characteristic fea- ture of all Indian censuses from 1881 to 1931, has not persisted in subsequent enumerations. While the question on caste and so forth was in fact also asked in the 1941 census, the published data were drastically curtailed because of the exigencies of World War II. In the post-independence period the question was largely suppressed because of concern that it might be- come socially divisive. An exception was made, however, with respect to the necessary recording of membership in disadvan- taged groups, designated as "scheduled castes" and "scheduled tribes," on whom the Indian constitution conferred special protection and benefits. The Pakistani census also took note of membership in "scheduled castes" among the Hindu popu- lation, without going so far as to enumerate specific groups under that general heading. (For maps of aggregate member- ship in scheduled castes and tribes see plates X.A.7 and 8.)

Given, then, the inadequacies, if not quite total absence, of caste enumeration in recent censuses, the distributions por- trayed in plates X.C.1–3 have been derived primarily from the data of the census of 1931, the latest for which reasonably complete returns are available. The specific table utilized, en- titled "Race [sic], Tribe, or Caste" is to be found in the all- India volume and in each provincial or state volume of that census, as is a valuable supplementary report interpreting the table and pointing out its shortcomings. A few of the more salient deficiencies of the 1931 enumeration are worth noting here. Opposition to the recording of caste on the part of many