The rise of quantification has entrenched the interchangeability of modern rationality with enumerative thinking, yet this form of reasoning has also produced and intensified communal sensibilities of anxiety, fear, and competitiveness. This project maps the historical development of the statistical sciences, including race science, demography, and applied statistics in colonial and postcolonial India, and how that impacted anti-colonial sentiments, sectarian fears about uneven demographic growth of communities, and anxiety over non-local racial origin of certain communities. Calculations gained public legitimacy because of their capacity to produce a new language for mobilizing communal affects such as trust or suspicion towards other communities. At the same time, affective categories served as a significant site for using empirical data to formulate generalized statistical methods.
The history of calculative reasoning as an anti-colonial and postcolonial method shows the imbrications of the enumerative rationality with the racial and political economy of colonialism as well as the religious and caste biases of elite nationalism. Bringing together archival sources from discourses in scientific disciplines, political debates, and public writings, this project shows how statistical reasoning derived its legitimacy as a tool by helping challenge colonial rule, develop models for the national economy, and distribute political representation, while also naturalizing religious, racial, and caste prejudices of elite intellectuals. As a critical engagement with the history of the emergence and entrenchment of data-culture, this project reflects on the hegemony of data as well as the adverse implications of data deficiency given this hegemony, especially for minority communities.