Seeking the ‘Truth’ from ‘Enumerating’ Numbers: Leprosy in Census and Public Health Reports of Colonial Bengal: 1890s–1940s

Figures are required to execute the policies in a way in which the state prepares the statistics of ‘progresses’. This is a form of ‘truth’ that is unquestionable and absolute to the administration. But often, the numbers are constructed, exaggerated and even invented, hiding the grim reality for the sake of upholding the achievements of a welfare state. Census has been one of the ‘scientific tools’ since the nineteenth century, by which the state retains its supervision over the population and preserves the information for future reference. Such process of institutionalising ‘truism’ would be considered as an ultimate solution of the problems that the enumerators encounter with the ‘infirm’. This article seeks to explore how far the enumerations had paved the way for resolving the issues regarding the ‘lepers’ and ‘deformity’ in colonial Bengal since 1891 when the decennial census was taken immediately after the death of Father Damien. The article also intends to problematise the notion on ‘diseased bodies’, that is, ‘lepers’ that the Raj tried to marginalise through census figures to protect the healthy populace from probable degeneration. Thus, it studies the leprosy and ‘lepers’ both by analysing the census and public health reports within the context of Empire and colonial Bengal.