Social Science Spectrum Vol. 1, No. 1, March 2015, pp. 1-7 Census Categories and Gender Construction: Reflections on Indian Censuses R.B. Bhagat * Abstract Gender construction is not only confined to the category of male and female, but also found among the categories like workers and non-workers, rural and urban, migrant and non-migrant and married and unmarried as well. Even in the dichotomous male and female category, the transgender remains a problem in the classification. The transgender category in India is traditionally known as hijras (eunuchs) are not only a biological category but has been an important cultural group with recognized role in birth and marriage ceremonies. The census of India used to classify them as male until 2011 Census when the category of ‘Other’ was introduced. Census provides a wider canvas to look into the process of gender construction that is socially and politico- economically constituted. It is one of the processes through which sex categories are concealed into gender categories. Census tables do not simply present the demographic matrix, but deeply reflect, constitute and sustain gender construction. The paper unravels the underlying basis of gender construction through census categories giving examples from Indian censuses. Key words: Census, Gender, Gender construction, Eunuchs, Migrant I. Introduction It has been argued that census in the process of enumerating the caste and religious identities in colonial India was involved in the process of construction of these very identities, while defining, categorizing, enumerating and tabulating them. In independent India also, census continued to be implicated in the construction of social identities, but in the different context of governance (Cohn, 1987; Kaviraj, 1993; Appadurai, 1993; Dirk, 2001; Bhagat, 2001; Guha, 2003). However, there is hardly any attempt made to look into the gender construction 1 implicated in census categories and the role of census in upholding gender construction. Census categorizes population before counting. Categories must be non-overlapping and mutually exclusive because in the counting everybody has a definite place. Some of the important categories employed in the census are- male and female, worker and non-worker, rural and urban, married and unmarried, migrant and non-migrant, etc. These categorizations in the census and consequently their counting are not gender neutral, but reflect and constitute the social process of construction of gender. The paper presents how each of the census categories mentioned above constitutes and constructs gender in the Indian censuses during the last one century. * R.B. Bhagat, Professor and Head, Department of Migration and Urban Studies, International Institute for Population Sciences, Govandi Station Road, Deonar, Mumbai 400 088. Email: rbbhagat@iips.net 1 The ethnographic studies initiated by census produced more knowledge about the upper caste models of womanhood and ritual behaviour. This has led to the resurgence of the Brahmanical gender codes. The net loser were the women belonging to the middle peasants and trading castes and some of the better off dalits groups, as they had to bear the burden of reproducing purity and guarding the honour of their respective communities (Bandyopadhyay 2004:145; 190). This paper on the other hand addresses the issue of gender construction from the point of the view of census categories and their definitions as grounded in the gendered relations of society.