# Modern Hyderabad (Deccan)/Chapter 7

CHAPTER VII.
The People.
Ordinary persons in British India often express surprise when they hear that His Highness's subjects are nearly all Hindus and that the Mahomedans in Hyderabad State (given the area) scarcely exceed in number the English people in British India.
"But I thought that Hyderabad was a Mahomedan State!" such people say.
The total population of Hyderabad State was, in 1911 A.D., 13,374,676 people, and the distribution of the population as regards religion was then as follows : —
Hindus . . . . 11,626,146
Mahomedans . . . . 1,380,990
Animists . . . . 285,722
Christians . . . . 54,296
Jains . . . . . . 21,026
The Census says that during the last decade there has been a twenty per cent, increase of the total population, but the Hindu rate of increase has not kept pace with that of the population as a whole. It points ​out that the Christian missionaries have made many converts among the depressed classes during the past ten years, and estimates the Christian converts at 26,700 persons for that period. The missionaries would, no doubt, place the figures much higher, for they claim to make 7,000 converts each year in the Hyderabad State at the present time.
"No one, of course, returned himself as an animist," says the Census, "but all those who did not say that they professed any other religion, if they belonged to the Andh, Bhil, Erkula, Gond, and Lambada castes, have been classed in the Census of 1911 as animists"; and it goes on to explain that animism consists in the worship of inanimate objects, but the objects thus worshipped must not represent a higher power, because if so the worshippers could rightly be classed as Hindus. And as Hindus, no doubt, many of these so-called animists were entered in the Census of 1901.
Musalmans constitute the largest section of the population next to Hindus, and during the last ten years their numbers have slightly decreased in the districts, but have increased in Hyderabad city, where there are now exactly 100 more Musalmans in ​every 10,000 of the population than there were thirty years ago.
The new Census contains much interesting information concerning the birth rate. There is no excess, it says, of male births but more male than female infants die during the first year of their lives. After the fifth year is passed, the male population is in excess of the female, and women then remain in a position of numerical inferiority until the end. That the women do not live as long as the men in Hyderabad State is proved by the statistics ; but it is difficult to obtain the correct ages of the women. "Every woman," says the Census, "who can possibly do so seems to have a fancy for returning herself as between twenty and twenty-five years of age." Early marriages are given as one cause of the higher mortality of females than males, and the fact that there are at the present time in the State 24,006 married females and 6,792 widows under ten years of age, and 27,913 married and 1,258 widows under five years of age, gives support to this statement, although, no doubt, in most cases the marriages are mere betrothals.
The hard manual labour done by Hindu women of the lower classes has probably ​much to do with the high rate of female mortality, also the unskilled midwifery, which the Victoria Zenana Hospital in Hyderabad is now trying to do away with. The proportion of female to male children has, however, increased during the last decade, for while in 1901 the male and female populations under ten years of age numbered 1,414,320 and 1,393,700, in 1911 they numbered 1,788,219 males and 1,830,461 females.
There are fewer females in Telingana than in Marathwara, although the proportion of early married women is highest in the latter division. And in Hyderabad city, owing to the large immigrant population, there are only 660 females per 1,000 males.
Mahomedan women marry later than their Hindu sisters and they appear to live longer, owing, no doubt, to the fact that the members of the ruling community are physically and materially better off than those of the subject races. Also Mahomedan women are very strictly secluded and are seldom, if ever, allowed to become "beasts of burden." Travel the State from end to end, and you will not find a Mahomedan woman showing her face, much less working in the fields and carrying on her back a load ​that would make a mule stagger and cause a pack-horse to show impatience.
The four principal languages of the State are Urdu — which is the official language— Telegu, Marathi and Canarese; and the people who talk these languages — 96 per cent, of the population — are as follows :—
Telegu .. .. 6,367,578
Marathi . . . . 3,498,758
Canarese . . . . 1,680,005
Urdu .. .. 1,341,622
The number of people in the State who speak Urdu is much the same (according to the area) as of those who talk English in British India. There are many minor vernaculars, including the gypsy dialects. English is spoken by 8,843 persons, of whom 7,000 live in the capital and its suburbs. About 5,600 persons speak Arabic, and 256 talk and write Persian.
Agriculture supports 54 per cent, of the workers and their dependants, and 45 per cent, of the people are supported by the various industries of the State, such as the extraction of metals, cotton spinning and weaving, wood, food and building industries, and industries connected with trade and transport. ​ Only 28,377 persons — independent of rent receivers — live on their income, and no less than 22,852 persons of this class are in Hyderabad city and its suburbs. Outside the city area there is no leisured class, and in the city, owing to a reduction in the number of State pensioners, this class has largely decreased, for in the Census of 1901 they were entered as 51,757 persons.
The active part taken by women in the work of the State is shewn in the new Census. No less than 130,857 are rice pounders, huskers, etc. Women cultivate the land, breed animals, and help to make roads and bridges. They sell milk, butter, eggs, fowls, hay, grass, sweetmeats, betel leaf and cardamoms. They make tobacco, perfumery, toys, kites, baskets and pottery. They act as midwives, vaccinators, and dealers in precious stones, and (privately) they do a good deal of money-lending. A large number are entered in the Census as "ministers and priests," and no doubt the Christian missionaries help to swell this list, for, finding that their male converts lapse into heathenism unless they are married to Christian girls, the missionaries have now entered the matrimonial market, and educate large numbers ​of girls as Bible women and marry such girls to their male converts.
The Census says that the women of the State have a keen commercial instinct, and show a marked aptitude for business of all sorts. In the cotton mills and ginning and pressing factories women have found a new employment, and it is not uncommon now to see father, mother, and children all working in the same cotton factory, while the baby sleeps in a basket among the cotton fluff. And in the coal mines, at Singareni, women are employed, going down the shaft with the men miners and taking the same risks. And such women are always decently dressed, in fact some of the female miners go down the shaft with all their jewelry on them, including bracelets and anklets that must greatly hamper their movements.