Thread by @shrikanth_krish

One is often asked -

"Hey I belong to Community X. How many people belong to my community in India?"

This might be a straightforward question in most parts of the world. But not in India.

As modern Indian census exercises do not report caste. Not since 1931 at least

But I just stumbled upon this book

"Tamil Brahmans - The Making of a Middle Class Caste" - which has some estimations, as well as "subcaste" info gleaned from 1891 census

I thought I should put it together

So at least for my community, one doesn't have to speculate

The book has this table detailing the # Tamil Brahmans in different locations as of 2011 - but these are mostly guesstimates in my view. The methodology is not crystal clear to me...

As per the authors, the worldwide Tamil Brahman population as of 2011 is 1.85 million

And here's the break-up...Interestingly as per the authors 1.39 MM out of 1.85MM still live in Tamil Nadu..

That is much higher than I thought.

Interestingly 200K are in Bangalore / Delhi / Mumbai (mostly Blore I presume) and about 400K in Chennai, and 100K abroad.

Here it is

So these 4 metros in India + the population abroad accounts for 700K, out of the 1.9MM - a pretty high proportion

But in my view, these guesstimates are by no means iron-clad, and moreover I don't have full visibility into the methodology used.

So let us look at the 1891 census, and extrapolate from there...

The 1891 census is particularly fascinating, as it has subcaste information

Here are the 1891 numbers -

As per this table, in that year, the Tamil Brahmin population in Madras Presidecy was 291K, of which 198K were Smarthas (Iyers) and 94K Sri-Vaishnavas (Iyengars)

A 2:1 ratio

Vadamas were the dominant subcaste, accounting for 110K out of the 198K Smarthas.

While among Sri-Vaishnavas, Vadakalais numbered 54K and Tengalais 40K

However these numbers are for Madras Presidency alone

There was a huge Sri-Vaishnava community in Mysore, even back in 1891 which would not have been in this table

So I suspect the Sri-Vaishnava (Iyengar) population of 94K in 1891 is an under-estimation - I'd put it at 110-120K

Now how do we extrapolate this 292K population to our times...

130 years have elapsed since.

Indian population in 1891 was around 200MM, and today it is 1.35B - a ratio of 6.8

However Tamil Brahmins have had extremely low Fertility rates at least in the past 30 years or so, though the fertility rates were very high and arguably on par with that of rest of India till 70s (my hunch)

So let's take the ratio to be 5 for this demographic as opposed to 6.8

That puts the population today at - 292K X 5 = 1.5 MM

Which is significantly lower than the 1.9MM estimated by the authors of this book.

So let's settle at the mean of the two - 1.7MM

Of which I'd expect some 1.1 MM to be Smarthas, 600K to be Iyengars (based on the 1891 relative proportons) - as I dont see TFR patterns being too different for the two groups

I found this exercise interesting, as it puts the demographic to which I belong in proper perspective...

The worldwide population of Tamil Brahmins is actually about the same as the population of Gurgaon today, or maybe the population of 3-4 large suburbs in Delhi / Bangalore

Wish this is done for more communities...

We need greater demographic clarity on the different Indian communities

Many groups today nurse an exaggerated sense of self-importance - as they don't quite realize how tiny they are in relation to the rest of the country