India – |||

Colonial data recorded by the census officials are more like violence, where Indians are continuously finding troubles and combusting into violence and the British officials tirelessly working on to keep peace. But in return, the census is mostly replete of the references to shared sacred spaces, mixed congregation, common goods and a general laxity and catholicity of religion. (The Historian and Indian Census , p. 63)

For instance, in the reading of ‘The Shepard’ by Ashfaq Ahmad set back the story during the 1930s and 1940s , where  towards the end it describes about the communal riots as the independence for the country drew nearer. People during those time were not acceptable of the other religious identities especially when it comes to Hindus and Muslims. Instead of accepting people belonging to the other religious identity, they only tried to show off their identities over one another, which ended up creating communal violence.

So, in conclusion, the categorization of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh were all an outcome of Census, in which the British officials made religion as a fundamental category to be mapped. The Census which was conceptualized and institutionalized in India, became clear while studying the census of Punjab between 1858 and 1921. (The Historian and Indian Census , p. 45)

Hinduism was seen as a native religion of India and Islam as a foreign religion. This made the British officials to see them to be fundamentally opposite to each other and later conducted the census marking the religion as a fundamental category further leading it into the communal riots which we can see in the short story of ‘The Shepard’ in the nineteenth century.

Therefore, it was the religious identity that played a pivotal part in creating the political identities as a result of the census.So, in a way religious identity are interconnected with political character taking outline of our chief Narendra Modi starting late we can see how the religious identity expectscritical part in impacting the political character influencing the Hindu majority share portion of resident to transform into the political figure.