Burma: Census of India 1901 Vol. I - Khamkoo

REPORT ON THE CENSUS OF BURMA. 6 7
volume, it is probable that the figures for Karen do not give a real indication
of the extent to which this language is read and written in Burma. The literates in
English were 32, 165 males and 6,622 females, as compared with 15,554 males and
3,479 females returned as literate in English in 1891. This means that six males
and one female in every thousand of each sex in Burma can now read and write
English. The figures for males are, it will be seen, more than double what they were
ten years ago, those for females are nearly double. Subsidiary Tables Nos. V-A,
V-B and V-C give a general idea of the manner in which this knowledge of
English is distributed over the population. Of religions, Christianity naturally
claims the highest proportion of those literate in English, 139 out of every thousand
Christians knowing how to read and write the language. Among Hindus,
14 in every thousand have English qualifications ; the rates for Musalmans
is only half that of the Hindus (7), while that of Buddhists and Animists is only
The figures for " Other Religions "—71 per thousand for males
one per thousand.
and 94 per thousand for females—are peculiar, but the totals on which they are
based are too small to be of any great statistical value. The returns showing
literacy in English by age-periods contain nothing particularly suggestive. The
proportion of English scholars in the earliest age period o— 10 is, according to Table
V-A, one per thousand in the case of each sex. Imperial Table No. VIII tells us
that the actual figures are 1,383 boys and 794
girls, and that the bulk of these
youthful literates (who of course have, strictly speaking, barely earned the title)
are Christians. By the time the age of fifteen has been reached the ratio has
risen to five per thousand in the case of males and the close of five years more sees
the men's figure at 9 per thousand. After that there is naturally enough a decline.
95. A special attempt was made on the occasion of the 1891 enumeration to
contrast the returns of literacy obtained by the Census
Abstraction office with the figures relating to educa-
•
r\ 1-1
tion recorded by the Education Department. 1 neo-
No comparison of census with
departmental figures. .
11111-1
retically the idea was excellent, but in practice it was found that but little profit
accrued from the comparison, even when the " learners " were classified apart from
the literate and the illiterate. Now that the above distinction is no longer drawn
the whole raison d'etre of the contrast disappears, and it has therefore been
decided not to undertake it in connection with the 1901 figures.