ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Visualizing Data, Envisioning the Other

• In Event: Data Visualization and the History of Statistics 2

English Abstract

In 20th century British India, Indian intellectuals began developing modern statistics as
an anticolonial project. By developing demographics, race science, analytical statistics, economics
and agricultural science, these intellectuals attempted to present themselves as global as well as
anticolonial scientific experts. How was statistical objectivity squared with the politics of
anticolonialism? One of the major methods of navigating this purported tension was the extensive
reliance on visual aids in presenting statistical research. In this paper, I discuss the multiple forms
in which statistics was forged and demonstrated as a visual mode of reasoning and the
implications of using tables, maps and graphs to depict communal relations, hierarchies, racial
histories, economic status and demographics. Indian demographers, economists, social reformers
and statisticians often presented their data in the form of tables which reduced the multi-layered
histories, social relations, religious conversion narratives into easily, visually comparable indices
of growth or decline of communities. Other forms of visual representations included maps and
graphs depicting the racial interrelations between the nation’s communities. Such representations
recast the nuanced histories and relations of communities into linear, physical distance on a two-
dimensional space. Analyzing these visual representations in academic and public writings, I
show how on the one hand, the visual simplicity of statistics helped intellectuals obfuscate the
politics of statistical epistemology; and on the other, the visual immediacy enabled the
envisioning of the nation and mobilization of public sentiments such as fear of the other
community’s growth and the sense of nationalist belonging.

Author

• Sayori Ghoshal, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science