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MODERN HYDERABAD.
69

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