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[Dr Ambedkar (1891–1956),... after studying the voluminous Nasal Index — Herbert Hope Risley

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"[Dr Ambedkar (1891–1956),... after studying the voluminous Nasal Index data of various castes across India that had been published by anthropologists, he came to a striking conclusion using Riselys own data to disprove his thesis: ] The measurements establish that the Brahmin and the Untouchables belong to the same race. From this it follows that if the Brahmins are Aryans, the Untouchables are also Aryans. If the Brahmins are Dravidians the Untouchables are also Dravidians. If the Brahmins are Nagas, the Untouchables are also Nagas. Such being the facts, the theory . . . must be said to be based on a false foundation. 33"
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Herbert Hope Risley
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Herbert Hope Risley
Herbert Hope Risley
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Sir Herbert Hope Risley was a British ethnographer and colonial administrator, a member of the Indian Civil Service who conducted extensive studies on the tribes and castes of the Bengal Presidency. He is notable for the formal identification of the centuries old established caste system of the entire Hindu population of British India in the 1901 census, of which he was in charge. As an exponent o

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"When he [Sir Herbert Risley] became Commissioner for the 1901 Census of India, he was determined to carry out within its framework a grand experiment in classifying and ranking castes in the sub-continent as a whole. … Census-taking had often suffered … from the difficulty even of identifying discrete castes and foundered in some census regions over the impossibility of finding any meaningful way of classifying them that did not release a hornets’ nest of contention, as the Commissioner for the 1871 Madras Census put it. Commissioners in their reports often retreated from any greater ambition than providing a list of castes in English alphabetical order. It was clear … uniformity of classification across the country could not be hoped for. Risley’s scheme, therefore, was to send to every Census Commissioner, in each province, presidency, princely state, … a standard scheme, inviting them to set up committees of ‘native gentlemen’ to consider its local applicability and to propose modifications as required."
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Herbert Hope Risley