No More Learning

Among other changes proposed by the
president of the Board of Control, Sir Charles Wood, was the intro-
duction of open competition, “a great experiment which would
justify itself by securing intellectual superiority while affording as
good a chance as then existed of obtaining in successful candidates
those qualities which no examination can test". 1 Wood was warmly
supported by Macaulay, who urged in the House of Commons 2 that
even the character of the governor-general was less important than
the character and spirit of the servants by whom the administration
of India was carried on; and parliament resolved that admission to
Haileybury and to the covenanted civil service should be open to all
natural-born subjects of Her Majesty, whether European, Indian, or
men of mixed race, who could establish their claim by success in
competitive examinations held in England under regulations framed
by the Board of Control. That body, advised by a distinguished com-
mittee presided over by Macaulay, decided that endeavours should
be made to secure candidates between eighteen and twenty-three
years of age who had received the best and most liberal education
obtainable in this country. Successful candidates were to pass through
a period of probation before appointment. The first batch went to
Haileybury; but this fine college was soon considered to have served
its purpose and was closed by an act of 1855 with effect from
31 January, 1858, when the Mutiny was in full swing. By section 32
of the Government of India Act of 1858 the power of regulating
appointments to the Indian Civil Service was made over to the secre-
tary of state in council who would act with the advice and assistance
of Her Majesty's civil service commissioners. The competitive prin-
ciple was reaffirmed. In 1859 the maximum age for admission was
lowered to twenty-two and a year's probation in England was pre-
scribed for selected candidates. 3
On 6 June, 1861, Wood, now secretary of state for India, introduced
a measure which became law under the title of the Indian Civil
Service Act of 1861 (24 & 25 Vic. c. 54). Its object was to legalise
certain appointments to civil posts which had in the past been made
in contravention of the act of 1793. Annexations of territories, growth
in population, increasing resort to the law courts, had compelled the
appointment of military officers, domiciled Europeans, Eurasians and
Indians, to posts which, under the statute of 1793, should have been
· Hansard, 3 June, 1853, CXXVII, 1158. · Idem, 24 June, 1853, CXXVIII, 745.
• See p. 13, Selection and Training of Candidates for the Indian Civil Service (H. M. Stationery
Office), 1876.


## p. 359 (#397) ############################################

THE ACT OF 1861
359
held by covenanted civil servants. Such appointments must now be
legalised and should be legally permissible in future. Lord Stanley,
Wood's predecessor in office, supported this proposal but emphasiseu
the importance of not diminishing the value of appointments to the
civil service to such an extent as to deter men of intelligence and
ability from joining it and thus raising men less intelligent and able
"to a position in life to which they were not equal”. Neither must
there be openings for jobbery. Parliament decided that the bill should
include a schedule of offices reserved exclusively for civil servants
except in cases where the governor-general in council, for special
reasons, desired to appoint other persons who must have resided in
India for at least seven years. These exceptional appointments would
require confirmation by the secretary of state and a majority of his
council called together to consider each case. Parliament, at the same
time, declared its adherence to the principle laid down by the Charter
Act of 1833, and reiterated in Queen Victoria's proclamation of 1858,
that "no native of India by reason only of religion, place of birth,
descent, colour, or any of them, would be disabled from holding any
office or employment under the Company”.
The appointments entered in the schedule of the statute of 1861 as
exclusively reserved for covenanted civil servants were almost en-
tirely posts in the older or regulation provinces; but later orders,
passed in 1876 by the secretary of state in council, directed that the
privileges conferred by statute in regulation provinces should be
extended mutatis mutandis to non-regulation provinces also. 8
At first no fee was charged for admission to competitions for the
Indian Civil Service. British competitors gradually increased. From
1866 the maximum age for admission was lowered to twenty-one, and
probationers passed through a special two-years' course at an approved
university. The total number of competitors rose from 154 for eighty
vacancies in 1860 to 284 for fifty-two vacancies in 1865, and 325 for
forty vacancies in 1870. In that year there were seven Indian com-
petitors, of whom one was successful. In 1869 three Indians had been
successful, all Bengalis. Indian aspirants had in those days to brave
serious social obstacles in their own country. The late Sir Surendranath
Banerjee, who competed in 1869, observes in his memoirs:
I started for England on March 3, 1868 with Romesh Chandar Dutt and Bihari
Lal Gupta. We were all young, in our teens, and a visit to England was a more
serious affair then than it is now. It not only meant absence from home and those
near and dear to one for a number of years, but there was the grim prospect of
social ostracism, which for all practical purposes has now happily passed away.
We all thrce had to make our arrangements in secret, as if we were engaged in some
nefarious plot of which the world should know nothing. “
In such circumstances Indians were naturally very slow to come
forward. The pioneers were Hindus and belonged to the "English-
1 Hansard, clxm, 652-9.
Idem, CLXI, 665-6.
Cf. pp. 76-7, supra.
• Banerjee, À Nation in the Making, p. 10.


## p. 360 (#398) ############################################

360 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858–1918
>
educated" class in the presidency provinces which contained the
great seaports. The paucity of candidates caused searchings of heart
among the members of John Lawrence's government, which estab-
lished nine scholarships in 1868, each of the annual value of £200,
tenable in Great Britain, with a view to encourage natives of India
"to resort more freely to England for the purpose of perfecting their
'
education, and of studying for the various learned professions or for
the civil and other services in India”. The scholarships were to be
awarded partly on the results of competition and partly on nomina-
tion of duly qualified persons. This somewhat paltry expedient did
not commend itself to the Duke of Argyll who was then secretary of
state.
He was, however, seriously concerned at the failure of the existing
system to make good the pledges of 1833 and 1858, and stated in
parliament on 11 March, 1869, that he had always felt that the com-
petitive system, as by law established, rendered nugatory the promises
of 1833. 1 Lord Houghton observed that the declaration, which stated
that the government of India would be conducted without reference
to differences of race, was magnificent but had hitherto been futile;'
and the duke replied that while the queen's proclamation of 1858
contained declarations of principle which had been found exceedingly
inconvenient in practice and had been quoted against us in cases to
which they were not meant to apply, the pledges of 1833 must be
honoured as far as possible. Eventually it was provided by section 6
of the Government of India Act of 1870 (33 Vic. c. 3) that nothing in
any act of parliament or other law now in force in India
should restrain the authorities'. . . by whom appointments were made to offices,
places and employments in the covenanted civil service, from appointing a native
of India to any such place, office or employment although such native should not
have been admitted to the civil service in the manner already prescribed by law.
Appointments of this kind would, however, be subject to such rules
as might be from time to time prescribed by the governor-general
in council and sanctioned by the secretary of state in council with
the concurrence of a majority of members present. For the purpose
of this act the words “natives of India” would include any person
born or domiciled within Her Majesty's dominions in India and not
established there for temporary purposes only; and "the governor-
general in council would define and limit from time to time the
qualifications of natives of India thus expressed”.
Some years elapsed before agreement was reached between the
Indian and the home authorities as to the rules which were requisite
to give effect to this section. The former desired to prescribe a term
of government service in the higher ranks of subordinate employ as
the main qualification of such appointments; the latter wished to
1 Hansard, cxcrv, 106.
; Idem, cxCIV, 1079.


## p. 361 (#399) ############################################

THE UNCOVENANTED SERVICE
361
interpret the statute in a broader sense. In 1875 revised rules were
drawn up by Lord Northbrook's government and were sanctioned in
London as a tentative measure. But these proved unsatisfactory and
gave place to other rules framed by Lord Lytton's government, which
ordained that a proportion not exceeding one-sixth of the total number
of covenanted civil servants appointed in any year by the secretary of
state should be natives selected in India by the local governments
subject to the approval of the governor-general in council. Selected
candidates should, save in exceptional circumstances, be on probation
for two years. In a resolution, dated 24 December, 1879, the Govern-
ment of India stated that appointments under the rules would generally
be confined to
young men of good family and social position possessed of fair abilities and educa-
tion, to whom the offices which were open to them in the uncovenanted service
had not proved sufficient inducement to come forward for employment.
The nominees were called "statutory civil servants". Sixty-nine were
nominated in after years, but, generally speaking, did not possess
sufficient educational qualifications and were often found unequal to
their responsibilities.
Below the covenanted was a large "uncovenanted” çivil service.
This term was purely technical. It excluded military officers in civil
employ and embraced the very large number of public servants
recruited in India, who filled executive and judicial charges not
occupied by military officers or reserved for members of the covenanted
civil service. The service came so far down in the administrative scale
that the term "uncovenanted” was often employed in a derogatory
sense. Its members in the regulation provinces were almost entirely
debarred from admission to posts usually held by members of the
Indian Civil Service. But in the non-regulation provinces some un-
covenanted officers of British descent were, like military officers,
employed alongside of covenanted civil servants. They were selected
either because the tracts in question were in a disturbed state and
unfit for methods of long-established administration, or on account
of their peculiar knowledge and experience. Except in matters of
pension they were treated practically on an equality with their
covenanted colleagues, but were debarred by the operation of the
statute of 1861 from holding the posts of secretary and junior secretary
to the local government and were in practice very seldom appointed
to the highest judicial offices. As the country became more and more
settled, the practice of appointing military and uncovenanted officers
to higher posts ordinarily held by covenanted civil servants fell into
disuse; and in 1876 it was definitely abandoned in the case of Oudh,
the Central Provinces, non-regulation areas in Bengal, and the North-
Western Provinces. It was abolished in Sind in 1885, in the Panjab
in 1903, and in Assam in 1907.


## p. 362 (#400) ############################################

362 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
A small minority of the large number of uncovenanted civil servants
held superior posts. The majority consisted of natives of India re-
cruited in the various provinces by the local governments under a
system of nomination, tempered in some cases by qualifying examina-
tions and probationary periods. Candidates for executive appoint-
ments had to possess minimum educational qualifications attested by
certificates of success in examinations conducted by universities or the
educational departments. Candidates for the judicial line had to be
either bachelors of law of some university or accredited pleaders or
advocates.
In 1853 it had been stated in the House of Commons that the
universal rule and practice in Indian administration was “native
agency and European superintendence". 1 This was still the practice
between 1858 and 1886; but all the time Western education was
spreading, and with its expansion was teaching Indians to feel their
way toward higher spheres and to complain because the ways of
approach were narrow.
An illuminating account of the early history of the police is con-
tained in the report of the commission appointed by Lord Curzon's
government in 1902. The organisation of the force in the various
provinces within our period was the result of a comprehensive
enquiry made in 1860 by a committee appointed by the Government
of India which embodied its recommendations, where approved, in
various acts of the governor-general's legislative council. The force
was to receive a semi-military training from its officers and was to be
subject to general control by the district magistrates and the local
governments. It was charged with the maintenance of law and order
and the detection of crimc. Its chief officers in each province would
be inspector-generals assisted by two or more deputics, and their
subordinates would be district superintendents and assistant super-
intendents. The force was soon established; the district superintendents
were invariably British, and in the more important charges were given
British assistant superintendents. For some years the higher grades
of the force were mainly recruited from the commissioned ranks of
the army; but this practice was repugnant to the military authorities,
and gradually gave place to recruitment in India by nomination. But
from the year 1893 the superior ranks were recruited mainly in
England by competitive examination for which Europeans alone were
eligible, and in a minor degree by appointments in India under a
combined system of nomination and examination which included
Indians. The age of admission in England was seventeen to nineteen.
Up to the year 1870 engineers for the public works department had
been furnished from the corps of the Royal Engineers, from civil
engineers appointed in England? after competitive examination or
1 Sir J. W. Hogg, Hansard, 3 June, 1853, CXXVIII, 1270.
2 Cf. Imperial Gazetteer of India, iv, 319.


## p. 363 (#401) ############################################

PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT
363
special selection, and from qualified students of Indian engineering
colleges. The Thomason College at Rurki, opened in 1848, began to
furnish engineers to the department in 1850. The Poona Civil En-
gineering College, established in 1854 for the education of subordinates
for the Bombay public works department, developed in 1865 into a
college of science at Poona affiliated to the Bombay. University and
educating candidates for an engineering degree. The Madras Civil
Engineering College, affiliated to the Madras University in 1877, also
prepared students for engineering degrees. In England the Royal
Engineering College at Cooper's Hill was established in 1871 for the
education of civil engineers for service in the Indian public works
department. The age of admission was seventeen to twenty-one, and
the course lasted three years. As students began to pass out of
Cooper's Hill in sufficient numbers, the recruitment of civil engineers
from other sources gradually ceased in England. In 1876 Lord
Salisbury, then secretary of state, wrote that, as the European portion
of the superior public works establishments was provided through
Cooper's Hill, the Indian engineering colleges might be regarded as
particularly intended for natives of India. Eventually it was decided
that of thirty recruits appointed in 1885, 1886 and 1887, nine were to
be taken from Indian colleges, fifteen from Cooper's Hill, and six from
the Royal Engineers.
The work of the public works department was distributed among
three branches: (a) “General” which was subdivided into “Roads
and Buildings" and "Irrigation”,(6) State Railways and (c) Accounts.
Each branch included an upper and a lower subordinate establishment.
The finance department was directly controlled by the Government
of India. Officers of its superior staff were liable for employment in
any province. The functions of the department were to bring to
account and audit the expenditure of all branches of the civil ad-
ministration and to deal with questions relating to paper currency,
loan operations and coinage. The nine accountants-general of pro-
vinces were treasurers of charitable endowments and responsible for
the proper check by officers of their department of the accounts of
such local bodies as district and municipal boards. They further
supervised the movements of funds from one district treasury to
another; and were themselves subordinate to a comptroller and
auditor-general. The whole superior staff of the department num-
bered 172. Below this staff were chief superintendents and chief
accountants. Up to the year 1899, while the higher posts were
generally filled by trained members of the Indian Civil Service, the
remainder were filled wholly in India. Then it was found that the
local supply of suitably qualified Europeans and Eurasians was in-
sufficient, and it was decided that at least four out of nine vacancies
should be filled by recruitment in England. In 1909 it was arranged
that half the vacancies should be reserved for natives of India.


## p. 364 (#402) ############################################

364 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858–1918
1
In 1847 Dr Gibson was appointed conservator of forests in Bombay,
and in 1856 Dr Cleghorn received a similar appointment in Madras;
but although both these officers impressed on their governments the
physical value of the forests and the necessity of carefully preventing
denudation of the hills in the interest of the water supply of the
country, forest conservancy was for some time regarded mainly as a
direct source of revenue to the state. After the annexation of Pegu,
however, Lord Dalhousie, seeing that fine forests stood in danger of
reckless spoliation by private individuals, inaugurated a preventive
policy. In 1856 Dietrich Brandis was summoned from Germany to
be superintendent of forests in Pegu and remained there till 1862,
organising forest management. He was then placed on special duty
to do the same in India, and in 1864 was appointed inspector-general
of forests to the central government. To him and to his successors and
pupils, Schlich and Ribbentrop, is due primarily the credit of or-
ganising the forest department, and the introduction of methods of
management adopted from the best European schools.
In 1865 the first Indian Forest Act was planned to provide for the
protection and efficient management of the government forests. In
1866 Brandis proceeded to England to arrange for the recruitment of
forest officers who were to be trained in the schools of France and
Germany, where scientific forestry was far more advanced than it was
in England. From 1885 to 1905 forest probationers studied at Cooper's
Hill, supplementing their courses by continental tours. Up to 1905
they were selected by competitive examination; but from 1905 on-
ward, candidates for examination failing, appointments were made
by a selection committee appointed by the India Office. The forest
department was controlled by conservators (chief officers of provinces
or parts of provinces), deputy-conservators in charge of forest divisions,
and assistant conservators of two grades in charge of forest subdivisions.
All these officers were British and under them was an Indian executive
staff consisting of sub-assistant conscrvators, rangers, foresters and
forest guards. The management of forests was committed to the local
governments, but the head of the department was the inspector-
general for the Government of India.
The growth of the department of public instruction has already
been traced. The control of other departments (jail, postal, tele-
graphs, survey, salt, excise, opium, meteorological, registration,
archaeological, customs, mint, geological survey, agricultural) rested
in British hands. Generally speaking these departments were recruited
in India; but they were often presided over by an officer selected from
one of the services recruited in England. We must pass on to that
distinguished service which has been truly called the pivot of all the
others. 3
1 Imp. Gaz. 11, 107-8.
2 P. 336, supra.
3 Speech by Mr Montagu to the British Medical Association.


## p. 365 (#403) ############################################

INDIAN MEDICAL SERVICE
365
>
The Indian Medical Service was primarily military, but lent a large
proportion of its officers to the civil administration. In times of
emergency these officers could be recalled to military duty; and
during the war few were left in civil employ. Medical officers in civil
employ were responsible for the administration and inspection of the
hospitals and dispensaries established in every district, for medico-
legal work connected with the administration of justice, for attendance
on government servants and for examination of candidates for public
employment. They were also responsible for jails and the care of the
public health. Each province possessed its inspector-general of civil
hospitals or surgeon-general, and its inspector-general of jails, who
were always selected officers of the Indian Medical Service. These
provincial chiefs worked under the local governments, subject to the
supervision of a director-general who was posted to the headquarters
of the central government. Under the inspectors-general of civil
hospitals and surgeons-general were the “civil surgeons”, one of
whom in each district presided over a staff of assistant and sub-assistant
surgeons. Working mainly through these civil surgeons, the Indian
Medical Service not only gallantly combated many a devastating
epidemic, but educated India in the preservation of public health and
in the theory and practice of Western medicine. Its officers have
prevented immeasurable suffering and saved countless lives. “No less
than 34 have gained the blue ribbon of the scientific world, the
fellowship of the Royal Society. "1
The statutory civil service had proved a failure as a means of
admitting Indians to the higher services. It seemed probable that as
years went on and contact between India and England increased,
more Indians would enter the civil service through the door of the
competitive examination in London. As regards British personnel,
the competitive system had proved a conspicuous success. The average
yearly number of candidates had fallen decidedly after 1870, partly
perhaps in consequence of the legislation of that year already men-
tioned, but principally because from 1871 onwards an examination
fee of £5 was demanded of every candidate. Up to that year no fee
had been claimed. In their seventeenth annual report the civil service
commissioners stated that the diminution was "not so much in the
class of competitors as in the number, previously considerable, of
those who presented themselves without sufficient preparation to
warrant any hope of success”. In 1878 the maximum limit of age for
admission was reduced to nineteen, and the probationary period was
fixed at two years to be spent in some university or college approved
by the secretary of state. The object of the change was to bring selected
candidates earlier to their life's work. All along the question was how
to attract the best men possible and how best to fit them for active
duties. It was, however, soon apparent that the lower age limits
Report of the Committee on the reorganisation of the Indian Medical Services, 1919, p. 19.
1


## p. 366 (#404) ############################################

366 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858–1918
1
2
0
10
2
20
1
pressed hardly on Indian candidates, and the age was raised to 21-23
from 1892 to 1905, and to 22–24 from 1906 onwards. When the last
change was made the examination was amalgamated with that for
the home civil service, successful candidates being allowed to state
their preference for either. Throughout the period 1871 to 1914 the
total number of competitors remained fairly constant while the Indian
contingent increased very slowly, as is evident from the following
figures:
Indian Successful
Year
Vacancies Candidates candidates Indians
1870
40
332
7.
1880
27
182
1890
47
205
5
1900
52
213
17
1910
60
184
1914
53
183
26
7
The highest number of candidates in any year between 1871 and 1914
was 237 for 68 vacancies in 1897. 1
In December, 1885, the first Indian National Congress met at
Bombay and demanded that simultaneous examinations should be
established in India and in England for admission to the covenanted
civil service. The demand arose from the Hindu and Parsi pro-
fessional and literary classes. The Muhammadans, as a community,
were for years strongly opposed to it. Conscious of their inferiority
to the Hindus in numbers, wealth and education, they regarded the
congress as aiming in fact at the establishment of a Hindu monopoly
of posts and power. Sayyid Ahmad, their leader, expressed his views
in trenchant language:
If government want to give over the internal rule of the country from its own
hands into those of the people of India, then we will present a petition that, before
doing so, she pass a law of competitive examination, namely that that nation which
passes first in this competition be given the rule of the country; but that in this
competition we be given the pen of our ancestors which is in fact the true pen for
writing the decrees of sovereignty. 2
In order to find a solution for the problem Lord Dufferin's govern-
ment in 1886 appointed a public services commission under Sir Charles
Aitchison, lieutenant-governor of the Panjab. The fifteen members
included four Hindu and two Muhammadan gentlemen of high status.
Of the British members five belonged to the covenanted civil service,
one to the uncovenanted civil service, two were British non-officials,
and one had been chief justice of the Madras High Court of Judica-
ture. Broadly speaking, the object of this commission was to devise
a scheme which might reasonably be "hoped to possess the necessary
elements of finality and to do full justice to the claims of natives of
1 I am indebted to the civil service commissioners for this information.
Speeches and letters of Sir Saiyid Ahmad, Pioneer Press, Allahabad, 1888; Mahmud,
British Education in India, chap. xxx.


## p. 367 (#405) ############################################

THE PUBLIC SERVICES COMMISSION 367
India to higher and more extensive employment in the public service”.
The commission rejected the idea of altering the system of admission
to the covenanted civil service. It had been understood that the
entrance examination was to bear a distinctly English character, and
to constitute a test of English qualifications. The most natural ar-
rangement, therefore, was that this examination should be held in
England, the centre of the educational system on which it was based.
The commission advised abolition of the system of filling appoint-
ments by means of the statutory civil service which had failed to fulfil
the expectations anticipated from it and was "condemned for suffi-
ciently good reasons not only by particular sections of the native
community but also by the very large majority of officials, both
European and native, who had enjoyed practical experience of its
workings”. The attempt to confine the selection to young men of rank
and to attract to the service men combining high social position with
the requisite educational and intellectual qualifications had failed.
A similar result would almost necessarily follow upon any attempt
"to engraft on a superior and imported service recruited in such a
manner as to secure the highest possible English qualifications a
system based on other principles and designed to meet a wholly
different object”. The commission proposed to reduce the list of
scheduled posts reserved by the act of 1861 for members of the
covenanted civil service and to transfer a certain number of these
posts to a local service which would be called "the provincial civil
service” and would be separately recruited in every province.
Appointments to the transferred judicial posts would be on account
of merit and ability proved either in the public service or in practice
at the Indian bar; appointments to executive offices would be on
account of exceptional merit and ability already shown in the public
service. The services would no longer be termed covenanted and
uncovenanted but imperial and provincial. Below the provincial
service would be a “subordinate civil service" from which it would
be partly recruited.
But its executive branch would also be recruited
by competitive examination, wherever not inexpedient, and its
judicial branch would be largely filled by selected barristers, advocates
or pleaders. The salaries of members of the provincial civil service
would be fixed on independent grounds, and would have no relation
to those attached to appointments in the imperial civil service. The
commission suggested the formation, where possible, of a provincial
branch in each department of the public service, public works, police,
forests and the rest. Substantial effect was given to this scheme, the
secretary of state directing that the covenanted civil service should be
known in future as "the Civil Service of India" and that each branch
of the provincial civil service should be called by the name of the
particular province to which it belonged. A certain proportion of
· Dispatch, 12 September, 1889.


## p. 368 (#406) ############################################

368 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858–1918
public offices reserved for the civil service of India and afterwards
termed “listed posts”, would in each province be entered on a list as
open to the new provincial service. Rules must be framed and issued,
under sanction of the secretary of state, which would empower local
governments to bestow any listed post upon a native of India. All this
was done; and the local governments were ordered to fill one-sixth
of the offices hitherto reserved for the Indian Civil Service with
provincial servants when the claims of existing statutory civil servants
had been satisfied. The number of civil servants recruited in England
had already been reduced so as not to fill more than five-sixths of the
reserved appointments. After consulting the local governments the
Government of India decided to list ninety-three posts, this figure being
considered suitable for meeting reasonable requirements. It would
be worked up to after satisfying the claims of officers already in the
service and would be liable to expansion.
Thirty years later another public services commission stated that
the reforms recommended by their predecessors in 1886, while failing
to satisfy Indian aspirations for employment of the higher type, "had
undoubtedly resulted in a great improvement in the standard of every
service”. Generally speaking, officers promoted from the provincial
civil services to hold Indian Civil Service posts had done efficient
work. But
the inferiority of status and social position which had always been attached to the
provincial services, aggravated to some extent by subsequent changes, had been
felt by the Indian public as a real grievance, particularly in the case of the more
important services such as the civil, educational and public works.
The Government of India had just completed reorganisation of the
public services in accordance with the orders finally passed on the
recommendations of the commission of 1886–7, when on 22 June,
1893, they were requested by Lord Kimberley, then secretary of state,
to consider a resolution passed by the House of Commons on the 2nd
of that month in favour of the establishment of simultaneous examina-
tions in England and India for admission to the Indian Civil Service,
all competitors “to be finally classed in one list according to merit”.
In transmitting the resolution to India, Lord Kimberley pointed out
the necessity of always retaining an adequate number of Europeans
in the service. Lord Lansdowne's government replied on the ist of
the following November, after consulting the provincial administra-
tions. Their letter, which was laid before parliament, dealt fully and
frankly with the important issues involved. Quoting the opinions of
notable administrators, they maintained that material reduction of
the European staff then employed was incompatible with the safety
of British rule.
1 Parl. Papers, 1894, Accounts (10), 1x, 1-110.


## p. 369 (#407) ############################################

SIMULTANEOUS EXAMINATIONS
369
Sir Charles Crosthwaite, lieutenant-governor of the North-Western
Provinces, had observed:
It is a great mistake to suppose that British India has arrived at a stage where
nothing but smooth progress need be anticipated, or to think that the principles of
law and order have penetrated the minds of the people so deeply that the English
element in the civil government may be safely diminished. We know little of what
is below the surface; but we know enough, even without the teaching of recent
events here, in Bombay, and in Rangoon,
to be sure that this is not a true estimate
of the situation. It is instructive to observe that during the late riots in Bombay
native papers like the Hindu Patriot, while demanding in one column a larger share
of administrative appointments for their fellow-countrymen, were calling out in
another column of the same issue against the government for not having more
European police officers in Bombay. What is desired by them is that the British
Government should hold the country, while they administer it. "
The writer laid stress on the existence of strong Muhammadan
opposition to any such arrangement. Sir Dennis Fitzpatrick,
lieutenant-governor of the Panjab, had said:
British rule brought this country out of a state of chaos, the horrors of which it
would be difficult for a stay-at-home resident of Europe in the nineteenth century
adequately to realise, and if the grasp of the British power were relaxed even for
a brief moment over any part of the country, chaos with all its horrors would come
again. Englishmen, even Englishmen who spend their lives in India, are not given
to reflecting much on this; and I doubt whether many natives of the country
nowadays think of it though it was a good deal present to the minds of the people
of the Punjab when I first came to India. The fact is that we have now had 35 years
of internal peace unbroken except by petty local disturbances, and we have begun
to flatter ourselves into the belief that our position in this country is absolutely
unassailable; but as a matter of fact it is not so. It is, and always will be, liable to
disastrous shocks from which it might take a long time to recover; and although
this is not a p. easant subject of reflection to us, with our national vanity and our
tendency to optimism, the more completely we realise it the better.
The writer pointed out that apart from the danger of religious riots
there were always to be found in many parts of India predatory classes
ready to break out whenever British administration might be tem-
porarily relaxed or British control disorganised. He observed that it
was a mistake to suppose that the substitution of Indian for British
administrators would be popular with the masses; its popularity
would be limited to the advanced Indians, a small fraction of the
population.
Lord Lansdowne's government reported that the government of
Madras alone advocated the principle of the resolution, observing that
in special emergencies, local disturbances and the like, Indians en-
tering the civil service might possibly be found wanting, but the mis-
chief thus arising could in present circumstances quickly be repaired.
“This”, said the Government of India, “might represent the state of
things in the tranquil province of Madras, but the conditions of other
parts of India were far different. " They went on to urge that a
i Parl. Papers, 1894, Accounts (10), LX, 39.
2 Idem, pp. 42-55. Cf. Mahmud, History of English Education in India, pp. 182–7.
24
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370 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858–1918
system of unrestricted competition in examination would not only
dangerously weaken the British element in the civil service but would
also practically exclude from the service Muhammadans, Sikhs and
other races accustomed to rule by tradition and possessed of excep-
tional strength of character, but deficient in literary education. The
natives, moreover, of one part of India would from their dispositions,
ways and habits, be ill-fitted to discharge the duties of civil officers in
another part. As far as Indians generally were concerned, probation
by actual employment formed a competitive examination of the best
kind. Much misapprehension apparently prevailed as to the extent
to which natives of India were already employed in responsible
executive and judicial offices. Taking the years 1870, 1881 and 1893
as convenient points from which the progress of the scheme for the
more liberal employment of Indians could be reviewed, the first
because it was thc year when recruitment for the Indian Civil Service
was reduced by one-sixth, the following figures were significant:
1870
890
1881
900
221
1893
898
331
216
The Covenanted Civil Service
(1) Covenanted Civilians
(2) Military, Uncovenanted and Statutory Civilians
Total
The Provincial Service
(1) Executive Branch
(2) Judicial Branch
I 221
I121
1114
.
::
: :
576
583
726
679
. . .
Total
1030
797
1827
1908
1159
1405
1368
The Subordinate Service
962
. . .
It must be remembered that between 1881 and 1893 the annexation
of Upper Burma had entailed a considerable demand for covenanted
officers, and that the inevitable increase of public business which had
occurred in twenty-three years had called for reinforcements in almost
every branch of the administration; yet the whole strength of the
covenanted service (including military and uncovenanted and
"statutory” civilians, holding covenanted posts) was now seven less
than in the former year and 107 less than in 1870. The number of
covenanted civil servants would have been further reduced but for
a process, which had been going on since 1870, of substituting, in
the interests of greater efficiency, covenanted for military and un-
covenanted officers in the non-regulation provinces. The European
service was now at its minimum strength, and no further reduction
would be practicable for some years to come. In the event, however,
of experience showing that in any province, at any time, the number
of high Indian officers might safely be increased, the best course would
be to proceed under the statute of 1870 and on the lines of the changes
recently accomplished. Seventy-four of the 898 covenanted civil
il. c. Imperial.


## p. 371 (#409) ############################################

EXCHANGE COMPENSATION
371
servants were employed in special departments not concerned with
the general judicial and executive administration of the country;
ninety-three covenanted posts had just been assigned to the provincial
service; thus the cadre of posts at present reserved for Indian civil
servants and military officers was only 731. In the frontier provinces,
the Panjab, Burma and Assam, one-fourth of the covenanted posts
were reserved for military officers of special experience. On the
quality of this small number of men depended the quiet and orderly
government of 217} millions of people, inhabiting 943,000 square
miles of territory. Upon these men, and not immediately on military
force, British rule rested. 1
The views expressed in this dispatch prevailed with Her Majesty's
government. The secretary of state, Mr H. H. Fowler, decided that
by far the best way of meeting the legitimate claims and aspirations
of Indians was to bestow such of the higher posts as could be made
available for them “on those who distinguish themselves by their
capacity and trustworthiness in the performance of subordinate
duties". There were insuperable objections to the establishment of a
system of simultaneous examinations. 2
Early in the ’nineties an increasing fall in the exchange value of the
rupee necessitated the consideration of measures for the reform of the
currency and inflicted considerable hardship upon European officers
in the imperial services. In 1893 the government of Lord Lansdowne,
with the consent of the secretary of state, deciding that a remedy must
be applied, ordered that exchange compensation allowance should
be paid to every European and Anglo-Indian officer of the govern-
ment, not being a statutory native of India, to be calculated on the
difference between the gold value of half his salary at the market rate
of exchange and its value at a privileged rate, which for the time was
fixed at is. 6d. per rupee, and was limited to a sum not exceeding in
any quarter the amount of rupees by which £250 converted at the
privileged rate fell short of the equivalent of £250 converted at a
market rate. In time the exchange value of the rupee settled down to
IS. 4d. approximately, so the concession represented an addition of
6} per cent. to all salaries of Rs. 2222 a month and under. To salaries
in excess of this amount a fixed monthly addition of Rs. 138. 14. 3
was made. The whole arrangement went some way, but only some
way, to relieve the growing difficulties which a falling rupee and rising
prices were bringing to those numerous servants of the government
who were under the necessity of making regular remittances to England
for the maintenance of their families.
In the period 1894-1905 the work of the services became increasingly
complex and arduous. The population of India was fast rising; trade
and commerce were growing; education was extending; contact with
England was increasing; political agitation was beginning to produce
i Parl. Papers, 1894, Accounts (10), LX, 5-6. : Public Dispatch, 19 April, 1894.
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## p. 372 (#410) ############################################

372 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858–1918
unrest. India was visited with devastating plague epidemics and
attacked by three famines, one resulting from a drought of an extent
and intensity unknown for two centuries. The services responded
keenly to the needs of difficult occasions and to the quickening in-
fluence of Lord Curzon's ardent spirit.
He regarded police reform as one of the most urgent needs of
Indian administration". 1 With the approval of the secretary of state,
his government on 9 July, 1902, appointed a commission which was
presided over by the late Sir Andrew Fraser and reported on 30 May,
1903, that throughout India the police-force was in a most unsatis-
factory condition and that abuses were common everywhere, in-
volving injury to the people and discredit to the government. Radical
reforms were urgently necessary and would be costly because the
department had hitherto been starved.
The commissioners unanimously recommended that the pay of all
ranks should be raised. It was impossible to expect honest and faithful
service from low-paid inspectors and constables subject to great
temptations. It was equally futile to attract high-class recruits from
England for the higher grades, by the offer of meagre salaries and
prospects. After considering this and other beneficial suggestions, the
Government of India decreed on 21 March, 1905, that in future the
force should consist of an imperial branch recruited in Europe and
provincial branches recruited in India. The former would be known
as the "Indian Police Service". It was intended for supervision and
would contain only so many officers as were required to fill the
superintendentships of the districts and posts of equivalent or higher
standing, and to supply a leave and training reserve of assistant super-
intendents. Provincial services of deputy-superintendents would be
recruited to carry on the less important duties of administration.
Promotion from them to superintendentships in the Indian Police
Service would
only be given as a reward for special merit to selected
individuals. The ordinary method of recruitment for the Indian
Police Service would be by competitive examination in London.
Candidates must be above nineteen and under twenty-one years of
age. Every candidate must be a British subject of European descent,
and at the time of his birth his father must have been a British subject
either natural-born or naturalised in the United Kingdom. In ex-
ceptional cases, on the special recommendation of a local government,
the governor-general in council could make direct appointments to
the police service from amongst Europeans domiciled in India, in-
cluding those of mixed descent, subject to the condition that the
candidate put forward had attained an adequate standard of educa-
tional qualifications. This power, however, was seldom exercised.
Candidates successful in the competitive examination in England
would leave that country at once for India where they would undergo
1 Fourth Budget Speech, Raleigh, Curzon in India, p. 104.


## p. 373 (#411) ############################################

POLICE REFORM
373
O
two years of probation and training. After successfully passing through
this ordeal they would be posted to district work.
The police-force and its armed reserves were increased, in order to
render them more capable of preserving internal peace if the country
were at war. A “Department of Criminal Intelligence” was created
which was charged with the duty of investigating special forms of
crime, including political offences, and took the place of the obsolete
“Thagi and Dacoity Department”. When speaking on his last budget,
Lord Curzon summed up his ideas and answered his critics in these
words:
There is entered in the budget the sum of 50 lakhs for police reform. That is only
an instalment and a beginning. We accept with slight modifications the full recom-
mendation of the committee and we intend to carry out their programme. We
want a police force which is free from the temptation to corruption and iniquity,
and whích must therefore be reasonably well paid, which must be intelligent, and
orderly and efficient, and which will make its motto protection instead of oppression.
I confess that my heart breaks within me when I see long diatribes upon how many
natives are getting employment under the new system and how many Europeans.
The police force in India must be an overwhelmingly native force; and I would
make it representative of the best elements in native character and native life.
Equally must it have a European supervising element, and let this also be of the
best. But do not let us proceed to reckon one against the other, and contend as to
who loses and who gains. The sole object of all of us ought to be the good of the
country and the protection of the people.
Seven years later the police were again the subject of special
enquiry. The verdict of another public services commission, whose
report was published in 1917, was that the police reforms of 1905 had
been “on the whole successful, but that hardly sufficient time had
elapsed thoroughly to test their cfficiency". Within these seven years,
however, in various provinces, the police of all ranks had been called
to deal with subterranean revolutionary conspiracy and had acquitted
themselves remarkably well.
Early in his viceroyalty Lord Curzon took charge of the public
works department in order to obtain a grasp of the business. He then
decided to set up a Railway Board “as the indispensable condition of
business-like management and quick and intelligent control”. The
board was established in 1905, and the railway branch of the public
works department was abolished; but public works and railway
engineers were still recruited through the same agency. In the public
works department there were henceforth two main sections, onc con-
cerned with schemes of irrigation and the other with the construction,
repair and maintenance of roads, buildings and bridges. Public
works and railways included an imperial and a provincial service,
both of which were in times of pressure assisted by temporary en-
gineers recruited for the most part in India. In 1906 the residential
engineering college which had been established at Cooper's Hill in
1873 was abolished, as an unnecessary expense, for it appeared that
! Raleigh, op. cit. p. 160.


## p. 374 (#412) ############################################

374 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
recruits might be obtained from the other engineering institutions of
Great Britain. From that time appointments to the superior en-
gineering establishments of the public works and railway department
were made on the nomination of the secretary of state, with the advice
of a specially constituted selection committee. Candidates were
between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-four, and must produce
evidence of superior qualifications. "
The separate organisation for the accounts work of the public works
department was in 1910 amalgamated with the civil accounts branch
of the Indian finance department.
Lord Curzon's interest in the services was by no means confined to
the police and the public works department. By his indomitable
energy, by his personal example, by his thorough-going sympathy, he
did far more for the services generally than any other viceroy had
ever done. His special care was for the political department which
contained separate cadres for military and civil officers, and is the
direct successor of “the diplomatic line"? in which Mountstuart
Elphinstone and other servants of the East India Company, civil and
military, won their spurs. In Lord Curzon's words:
“There is no more varied or responsible service in the world. At one moment
the political may be grinding in the Foreign Office, at anothur he may be required
to stiffen the adıninistration of a backward native state, at a third he may be
presiding over a jirga of unruly tribesmen on the frontier, at a fourth he may be
demarcating a boundary amid the wilds of Tibet or the sands of Seistan. ” “I hope”,
he added, " that the time may never come when the political department will cease
to draw to itself the best abilities and the finest characters that the services in India
can produce. ”
But all the services, imperial, provincial and subordinate, received
his constant attention, for he believed that by raising their standard
and tone "the contentment of the governed could be promoted”. In
this way only could the people be "affected in their homes”. He was
deeply concerned at “the interminable writing” which had grown up
in the administration and threatened “to extinguish all personality,
or initiative or dispatch, under mountains of manuscript and print” 3
It synchronised, he said, with the great development of communica-
tions, and more especially of the telegraph; in other words, it was the
product of modern centralisation. He claimed to have reduced the
total number of obligatory reports to government from nearly 1300
to a little over 1000 and the pages of letter-press and statistics from
35,400 to 20,000, "an immense saving of work to overburdened men
and no sacrifice of value in the reports themselves”. 4 First among
viceroys he tried to roll back this evei •advancing deluge, fully realising
that too much writing means too little reflection and far too little
1 The Report of the Public Service Commission, 1917, p. 330.
Colebrooke, Mountstuart Elphinstone, I, 22.
3 Raleigh, op. cit. p. 78; Ronaldshay, Curzon, 11, 62.
• Raleigh, op. cit. pp. 116–17.
> 3


## p. 375 (#413) ############################################

MILITARY OFFICERS IN BURMA
375
a
intercourse with the people. But in fact another incubus was bearing
heavily upon the judges, the district officers, and their assistants. The
multiplication of lawyers, the mounting files of cases, the prolonged
trials, were tying them to their desks. In Bengal especially, they
were in a grip which Lord Curzon did not shake, the grip of a
devouring machine. While, too, he was fully aware of the pernicious
effects of over-centralisation, his temperament, his close attention to
detail, his anxiety to strengthen every branch of the administration
to meet the onset of new forces, made him a centraliser. 3 One of his
most important administrative achievements was the reorganisation
of the agricultural department which he set on the path of fruitful
advance. The breadth of his sympathies is attested by a farewell
address from the clerks of the secretariat of the Government of India,
expressing warm gratitude because, while absorbed in the momentous
problems of state policy, he had never “lost an opportunity of
ameliorating the condition of the very large body of public servants
known by the general name of the uncovenanted service”.
His successor's government endeavoured to put an end to the
recruitment of military officers for civil posts in Burma. Such
recruitment had already ceased in other provinces, and was now
regarded as an anachronism at headquarters. This idea, however,
was vigorously disputed by the Government of Burma, which wrote
on 17 October, 1906:
The restriction of recruitment to members of the Indian Civil Service would no
doubt raise the level of academic qualifications. The lieutenant-governor is not
prepared to assent to the proposition that it would raise the intellectual level.
Officers of the Indian Army are gentlemen of education and selected officers of
that army are probably not deficient intellectually. Moreover pure intellect is not
the sole qualification required of administrators. Resource, force of character,
knowledge of and sympathy with the people, are also elements of value. In these
respects officers of the Indian Army have attained and are likely to attain a high
position. Sir Herbert White does not regard uniformity in itself as an object of
desire. On the contrary, he considers that diversity of gifts is an advantage. In
such a province as Burma, the work is o'' very varied nature and officers of diverse
qualifications can be utilised. An officer may be of exceptional value in a revenue
or judicial appointment, and yet be less well adapted thai: others for service in
Shan States or frontier districts. Similarly an officer may be capable of rendering
invaluable service in frontier tracts and yet be less suited than his comrades for
employment in settled districts. Even if uniformity were desirable, it had not been
found by experience that it is secured in the Indian Civil Service. . . . The limited
recruitment of military officers allowed by the present system has given to the
commission many officers of exceptional capacity and merít, and may be expected
in do so in future.
The soundness of these contentions was practically admitted by the
Government of India, which dropped the proposal.
From 1905 onwards circumstances gradually developed which
combined to lower the popularity of the Indian Civil Services among
1 Cf. Report of the Sedilion (Rowlatl) Committee, paragraph 172.
* Raleigh, op. cit. p. 487. See also p.