English: Ethnic religious affiliation in Jharkhand, 1901–2011

This bar chart illustrates the proportion of the population classified as Ethnic religion (primarily religious beliefs of tribals)^#, Scheduled Tribe, ORPs (Other Religions and Persuasions), and Sarna in the Santal Parganas and Chota Nagpur divisions (including Saraikela–Kharsawan from 1911), covering census years from 1901 to 2011 in the region corresponding to present-day Jharkhand.

Comparability Note: Inter-temporal comparisons are subject to changes in census definitions and methodologies between the pre- and post-independence periods.

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# Note

"During the colonial period from 1871 to 1891 there was a separate column named 'aboriginals' in census records; and from 1901 to 1921, there was the column named 'animist' and Tribal religion in 1931, Tribes in 1941 and Others in 1951 to categorise tribal population."^α

"Though [tribal religion] is recognised as 'the oldest of the religions recorded in the Census', its nomenclature in general and specific to a tribe was a problematic. It was coined as animism despite 'heterogeneous and uncomfortable superstitions'. The problem was to name the religion of a tribe. This problem had two dimensions. First was, as it is mentioned in the respective Census reports, that several tribes did not have the name for their faith and beliefs, except that they did not identify themselves as Hindus, Muslims, or Christians. The other problem, more challenging, was to make an objective assessment of differences between animism prevalent among the Hindus and the tribes."^β

Ethnographically, "In the 1901 Census, Sir Herbert Hope Risley classified them as 'Animists'. In 1911 E. A. Gait further classified them as 'Tribal Animists' or people following 'Tribal Religion'. J. H. Hutton (1931) categorised them as 'Hill and Forest Tribes', and again in the 1941 Census the heading 'Tribal Religion' was changed to 'Tribes' only."^β However, religiously "Up to 1921, the tribal population (with a tag 'primitive') was classified as 'animist', but in 1931, they were known as 'tribal'. In 1941, the designation changed to 'tribes', while in 1951 it finally stood as Scheduled Tribes."^β

Crucially, terminological changes in census were not solely a reordering of statistical categories—these ostensibly descriptive labels carried performative power, actively shaping self-identification and social recognition. For instance, in Chota Nagpur, the transition from the racial label "aboriginals" to the religious label "animists" corresponded with the consolidation of aboriginals into the localized racial identity "Adivasi", which had assumed organized form by 1938 with the formation of the Adivasi Mahasabha. Similarly, the reclassification from the religious label "animists" to the sociological label "tribal religion" contributed to the development of the religious identity "Sarna", which gained formal expression through the 1932-34 Sarna Conferences. Throughout the colonial period, it was difficult to accommodate tribals within the rigid social and statistical classifications, yet in due process these very classifications facilitated the ethnogenesis of tribal communities in India.