Sir Edward Blunt, K.C.I.E., O.B.E

Abstract

SIR EDWARD BLUNT, whose death occurred on May 29, was born in 1877, educated at Marlborough and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and entered the Indian Civil Service in 1901. He was superintendent of Census Operations in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh for the census of 1911. It was in that capacity, when Sir Edward Gait was census commissioner for India, that Blunt undertook the study of caste and the social structure of Hinduism, the results of which appeared in his census report published in 1912. It contains a critical examination of Hinduism as observed by him in the United Provinces, and the subject of caste, though treated there in a separate chapter, is primarily approached from its aspect as an essential element of Hinduism, which “depends a great deal more on whom one marries and what one eats and drinks, than on what one believes”. The tenets of Hindu sects are also examined, and it is interesting to observe that the Arya Samaj is treated as a different religious unit from Hinduism proper. In 1891 the Arya Samaj had demanded separate classification, but the position had so far changed by 1911 that to meet various objections Blunt then classified them as Hindu Arya, though as an entity independent of Hindu Brahmanic. This arrangement had to be altered in subsequent censuses, which included the Arya Samaj as a mere subhead of the Hindu total.