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Competition Success Review
Competition Success Review published this article page no 38 many british administrative officials were also amateur ethnologists and took great interest in pursuing such surveys and studies. but by far the most important official effort to collect information on caste was through the census. first begun in the 1860s the census became a regular ten-yearly exercise conducted by the british indian government from 1881 onwards. the 1901 census under the direction of herbert risley was particularly important as it sought to collect information on the social hierarchy of caste – i.e. the social order of precedence in particular regions as to the position of each caste in the rank order. this effort had a huge impact on social perceptions of caste and hundreds of petitions were addressed to the census commissioner by representatives of different castes claiming a higher position in the social scale and offering historical and scriptural evidence for their claims competition success review gk today.