Burma: Census of India 1901 Vol. I - Khamkoo

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4 REPORT ON THE CENSUS OF BURMA.
the rainy season at a period of the year far too early for the requirements of the
Census- There are obvious advantages in being able to kill two birds with one
stone, but this economy in missiles is profitless if (to pursue the. metaphor) one of
the birds goes bad before it can be brought to table. On this and on other grounds
(one of which was the expediency of dissociating the Census as far as possible
in the minds of the people from revenue collection) the Local Government resolved
to keep the two operations separate. Mr. Hildebrand, the Superintendent,
abandoned his idea with reluctance, but when once it was clear that the orders
on this point could not be reconsidered, he prepared and submitted a carefullythought
out scheme for carrying the work on the lines suggested by the Local Government,
showing, as Messrs. Drury and Fowler had shown at Falam, that he was
determined, whatever his personal views were, to carry the policy adopted by the
Local Government loyally through. In the end it was decided that the greater
portion of the Northern and Southern Shan States and the whole of the Chin Hills,
except the portion adjoining the Pakokku district which is administered by a separate
Assistant Superintendent, should be treated as non-synchronous tracts and
be enumerated on the standard form of schedule during the cold weather of
icjbo-oi. The areas to be "estimated" were Karenni in the Southern Shan
States, the Pakokku Chin Hills, and what are known as the Kachin districts of the
Northern Shan States. Only a portion of the above areas had come within the
scope of the previous Census. The Chin Hills had on the last occasion been
wholly untouched, and in the Shan States all that had been attempted was a rough
count which, though fuller than that obtained by the 190 "
1 estimating " system,
was not by many degrees as ample as the non-synchronous Census on the standard
schedule. This very substantial extension of the area in which it was deemed possible
to carry out a detailed enumeration is in itself significant proof of the progress
made during the past decade in re-assuring and elevating the more timid and
ignorant of His Majesty's subjects in the Province. The only wholly " omitted "
areas were the trans-Salween States of the Northern Shan States and West Mang
Lon, which is a cis-Salween State, but more than ordinarily backward and rugged.*
7. The matter of the non-synchronous enumeration of the less civilized portions
of Burma proper was not finally settled till some
Non-synchronous arrangements
tim after the arrangements for the Shan States and
for the districts of Burma proper. o
, ,
the Chin Hills had been finally completed, the only
district the whole of which was thus specially dealt with was Northern Arakan.
In 1891 this charge was non-synchronously censused, and, on discussing the matter
with the Deputy Commissioner, Paletwa, in October 1900, I found that, though
it might be possible to apply the final check throughout the district rapidly, the
operation would not be sufficiently rapid to allow its being compressed into the few
hours required by the Code. I accordingly recommended that it should again be
treated as a non-synchronous area. Of the following districts, portions only came
within the non-synchronous category :
Akyab. Amherst. Mergui.
Kyaukpyu. Thaton. Bhamo.
Pegu. Tavoy. Myitkyina.
Katha.
Ruby Mines.
Upper Chindwin.
In Akyab, Kyaukpyu, Pegu and Thaton the non-synchronous areas were
insignificant in extent. In Tavoy and Amherst, too, the non-synchronous area was
a small proportion only of the total area of the district. In Mergui it was proportionately
rather larger. On the occasion of the 1891 Census the whole of what
is now the Amherst district was dealt with synchronously and in Mergui the
non-synchronous area was shown as smaller than at the recent Census. It appears,
however, that, as a matter of fact, the enumeration in parts of the so-called synchronous
areas of these two districts was synchronous in name only, and it was
accordingly decided, rather than run the risk of having unreliable figures through
trying to do too much, to take what would at first sight appear to be a retrograde
step and classify as non-synchronous portions of the wilder tracts of Amherst and
Mergui inhabited by Karens and Siamese which in 1 891 had figured as synchronous.
* At page 308 of Volume I of the first part of the Upper Burma Gazetteer, West Mang Lon is described
as being, in 1891, the only State west of the Salween which had not accepted British authority.