Portraits of Population - Archive of Census of India graphics

[Aman Bhargava]

Hello all, 
We recently published a new story about the 'Portrait of Population' documents produced by the Government of India for the 1971 and 1981 censuses. These are fascinating because it seems to be the first time there was conscious effort to make the usual mountains of data accessible for the average reader. You can read the story of how they came to be, with some historical context, here: https://diagramchasing.fun/2026/portraits-of-population 

At the end of the page, you'll find our explorer. We extracted nearly 700 of the hand-drawn charts and graphics within these documents and catalogued them for an indexed, searchable archive. Individual filters, views, and figures can be linked to and shared. If you're interested in just the explorer, you can find it here: https://diagramchasing.fun/2026/portraits-of-population/explore

Not only this, but each figure is also linked to the exact page in its source document, which you can go to from the explorer. Or, you can access our Internet Archive collection in its entirety.

Hope this is interesting! We publish more such stories and tools through our publication Diagram Chasing.

Aman