Changing Racial and Ethnic Classification: A Comparative Study of U.S., British and Indian Censuses

Ram B. Bhagat, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

There is a resurgence of racial and ethnic questions in the censuses of western world. Race is no longer a group defined on the basis of physical characteristics only but socially and politically constructed. The modern secular state justifies the inclusion of question on race and ethnicity on the basis of protecting minority rights. The shifting boundary of race and ethnicity is not easy to be operationalised in the censuses. The white-black bio-polarity is the first and foremost concern in the racial and ethnic classification followed by the concerns of linguistic and national origins. Religion has been kept a side from the scheme of classification in the U.S. and British censuses in contrast to India. The present study examines the question and categories of races and ethnicity in the censuses of US, Britain and India. It suggests to restrict the census to the minority racial and ethnic groups only rather than rigidly categorizing the whole population.