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Hokitika Guardian, 17 January 1933, Page 4

An official summary of the 1931 census of the Indian Empire—comprising 1,898,000 '.so l vi re miles, including Burma—shows that the decennial growth ol : population was no less than 10. G per cent., as compared with 1.2 per cent, in the prev : o is 10 years, bringing the total population to close upon 353,000,000. The mean density per square mile b;.ts risen to 195. It is as high ns 646 in Bengal and as low as nine in British Baluchistan. ;The {depressed classes, or “exterior castes,” as they a re. t ermed in the oenlsus, are shown to number in British India 40,254,000 out of a. total Hindu popidition el’ the provinces of 177.728,070. Another important factor in the

constitutional issues now under consideration is that of the continued proportionate advance in the Moslem population. During the deceimium, while the Hindu percentage of increase in actual number was 10.4, the Moslem inoreno® was 13 per cent. The effect is to reduce the .proportion of Hindus per 1009 of the population in the 10 years from 684 to 682 and to increase the Mohammedan proportion from 217 to 222. Half a century ago the Moslem ratio was only 197, while the Hindu was 743. The process will bring the Moslems within a few years to onefourth of the population and will be accelerated by the probable separation of Burma in the near future. No fewer than '225 languages, exclusive of dialects, are spoken in the Indian Empire, about 150 of which are confined to Assam and Burma, The Hindustani languages, are spoken by over 121,090,000 people. The number of persons ordinarily using English as a mother tongue is only 319,000. Europeans number 168.000 and there ar e 138,C00 Anglo-Indians.