Reginald Edward Enthoven (1869– 21 May 1952) was an administrator in the
Indian Civil Service
The Indian Civil Service (ICS), officially known as the Imperial Civil Service, was the higher civil service of the British Empire in India during British rule in the period between 1858 and 1947.
Its members ruled over more than 300 million ...
of the
British Raj
The British Raj (; from Hindi language, Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British The Crown, Crown on the Indian subcontinent;
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* it is also called Crown rule in India,
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or Direct rule in India,
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and an author of publications related to India, including the three volumes entitled ''The Tribes and Castes of Bombay'' that formed a part of the Ethnographic Survey of India.
Reginald Enthoven was born in
Hastings, Sussex
Hastings () is a large seaside town and borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England,
east to the county town of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to the north-west at ...
, England, on 23 November 1869, the fifth son of James and Miriam Enthoven.
[Oxford Men (1893), p. 193.] He attended
Wellington College and then, using his family connections as a great-nephew of
James Joseph Sylvester
James Joseph Sylvester (3 September 1814 – 15 March 1897) was an English mathematician. He made fundamental contributions to matrix theory, invariant theory, number theory, partition theory, and combinatorics. He played a leadership ...
, he was able to secure a place at
New College, Oxford
New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1379 by William of Wykeham in conjunction with Winchester College as its feeder school, New College is one of the oldest colleges at ...
reserved for students intending to pursue a career in the Indian Civil Service. In 1887, the same year that he
matriculated
Matriculation is the formal process of entering a university, or of becoming eligible to enter by fulfilling certain academic requirements such as a matriculation examination.
Australia
In Australia, the term "matriculation" is seldom used now. ...
at New College,
he was appointed to the Indian Civil Service (ICS) upon passing the
competitive examination
An examination (exam or evaluation) or test is an educational assessment intended to measure a test-taker's knowledge, skill, aptitude, physical fitness, or classification in many other topics (e.g., beliefs). A test may be administered ...
. He arrived in India on 1 December 1889.
[India List, p. 488.]
Initially appointed in
Bombay
Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the '' de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the sec ...
as an Assistant
District collector
A District Collector-cum-District Magistrate (also known as Deputy Commissioner in some states) is an All India Service officer of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) cadre who is responsible for ''land revenue collection'', ''canal revenu ...
and Assistant Magistrate, as well as an Inspector of Factories, by June 1896 Enthoven was promoted to Second Assistant. From 1900 until 1902 he served as First Assistant and Under-Secretary, being a Provincial Superintendent in Bombay for the 1901 census of India. Thereafter he was appointed to superintend the revision of the ''Imperial Gazetteer'' and was Director-General of Statistics. He was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Statistical Society
The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is an established statistical society. It has three main roles: a British learned society for statistics, a professional body for statisticians and a charity which promotes statistics for the public good. ...
in 1904.
Enthoven was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire on 1 January 1910, at which time he was Secretary to the Government of Bombay, General, Educational, Marine, and Ecclesiastical Departments.
Enthoven had contributed the General Index to the 34 volumes of the ''Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency'' that had been compiled by Sir James M. Campbell. In his later ''Tribes and Castes of Bombay'', Enthoven placed much reliance on the work of Campbell, which Crispin Bates has described as being "compendious but unsystematic ethnographic researches".
Kumar Suresh Singh has noted that the survey, conducted between 1901 and 1909, suffered from a shortage of funding, relied on amateur data collectors and used content from Campbell's ''Gazetteer'' without acknowledgement, thus leading to claims of plagiarism.
In retirement and living at Vale House,
Wootton, Berkshire by 1935, Enthoven was an Ordinary Member of the Council of the
Royal Asiatic Society
The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, commonly known as the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS), was established, according to its royal charter of 11 August 1824, to further "the investigation of subjects connected with and for the en ...
and also one of its Honorary Auditors. He had been a member of the Society since 1907.
[JRAS (1935), pp. 2, 3, 10.]
Publications
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* – three volumes, published between 1920–1922
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References
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External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Enthoven, Reginald Edward
1869 births
1952 deaths
British Indologists
Indian Civil Service (British India) officers
Alumni of New College, Oxford
Fellows of the Royal Statistical Society
People educated at Wellington College, Berkshire
British demographers
Companions of the Order of the Indian Empire
English anthropologists
People from Hastings
English folklorists