British
competitors
gradually increased.
Cambridge History of India - v4 - Indian Empire
As regards moral teaching for the young generally,
books could do something but teachers could do more. Competent
teachers, selected for character and ability, able to maintain discipline
and devoted to their work, were the main essential. Religious in-
struction must be carried on in private institutions only, Christian,
Hindu or Muhammadan, which could all be assisted by state grants.
The various provincial governments had in respect of education
become "a sort of heptarchy in the land”. They needed inspiration
by a common principle and direction to a common aim. A measure
of the inadequate consideration which had been given to education
at headquarters was the fact that it was merely a sub-heading of the
work of the home department. Expert advice was needed to prevent
1 Cf. Ronaldshay, op. cit. chap. iii, and Times Literary Supplement, 11 February, 1932.
## p. 351 (#389) ############################################
THE UNIVERSITIES ACT OF 1904
351
the central government from “drifting about like a deserted hulk on
chopping seas”. He besought his hearers to realise that they were
“handling the life-blood of future generations”.
Action followed quickly on speech. The central government de-
clared that education must be a leading charge on the public funds,
and began a series of liberal grants to local governments on its behalf.
Private generosity and enterprise, the efforts of directors, inspectors
and teachers, were strongly stimulated. An inspector-general of
education was brought out from England and posted to headquarters.
A Universities Commission was appointed; and after much enquiry
and deliberation a Universities Bill was framed which became law in
1904 after acute controversy. It was a cautious measure, introducing
no radical change, but converting senates and syndicates into more
business-like bodies which contained majorities of educational experts,
leaving the training of undergraduate students mainly to the colleges,
but providing that the universities should themselves conduct post-
graduate courses of study. The senates were to tighten up conditions
for affiliation of colleges. They were to be responsible for courses,
textbooks and standards of examination. They were to propose to the
government regulations for the recognition of high schools and were
to pay attention to the conditions under which students and school-
boys were working. Vice-chancellors would be appointed by the
government; senates were to include directors of public instruction;
and in Calcutta the director would be a permanent member of the
syndicate. All affiliations and disaffiliations of colleges were to be
finally determined by the government; all professors, readers and
lecturers must be approved by it; and many details of university
policy were made subject to its supervision.
The commission was anxious that minimum fee rates should be
fixed for all colleges. This would have done something to restrict the
cut-throat competition which was going on in Bengal among managers
of private institutions with results disastrous to the youths concerned.
But the proposal excited so much clamour that (after Lord Curzon's
departure) it was dropped. The commission noted that the universities
possessed no machinery for inspecting high schools, and that at
Calcutta the syndicate had sometimes insisted on recognising new
venture schools "without due regard to the interests of sound
education and discipline”. It urged that the university should
recognise only schools recommended by the department of public
instruction, and this advice was in principle adopted in all provinces
but Bengal, where it was rejected, after Lord Curzon's departure,
because the managers of a large number of unaided schools declined
to admit departmental inspectors.
The commission regarded with apprehension the growing neglect
of the vernaculars and of Oriental classical languages, for a moral
danger was involved. It announced the rather tardy discovery that
## p. 352 (#390) ############################################
352
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
1
I
.
the literature of the West had its roots in a past in which Oriental
students had no part and was based upon beliefs and ideas which were
meaningless to them. It was desirable to promote diversified types of
secondary education corresponding with the varying needs of after-
life. The government considered that this object would best be attained
by instituting a school-leaving certificate based on class-work as well
as on a final examination, which would be alternative to the entrance
and would be recognised not only by private employers, who were
increasingly discounting the value of an entrance pass, but by the
government and the universities. It should afford evidence of char-
acter and of the general and practical capacity of a candidate.
Lord Curzon did much to broaden the whole basis of higher educa-
tion, and to initiate technical, industrial and commercial courses.
With the assistance of a donation of £30,000 from Mr H. Phipps, an
American gentleman, he established an agricultural college at Pusa,
in Bihar, which became the parent of similar institutions in other
provinces. He improved the chiefs' colleges; he inspired the depart-
ments of public instruction with fresh vitality and stimulated private
benevolence. But with all his splendid energy, he came twenty years
too lateus In the 'eighties he would have exercised a far more fruitful
and permanent influence on the subsequent course of education. As
things were, his very zeal inspired a belief that his real purpose was
to curb the increase of the restless English-educated. The cry went
forth that reaction was intended. Vested interests in private schools
and colleges bitterly protested. The partition of Bengal inflamed the
angry suspicion with which his university legislation was viewed in
that province and elsewhere.
He left India in November, 1905; and then followed years of
political and racial agitation due to various causes. The effect of the
Russo-Japanese War on Indian political thought, the gathering-in of
some of the harvest of the study of English history and literature, in-
creasing contact with an increasingly democratic Britain, combined
with the congested state of the bar, with rising prices which pressed
hardly on clerical and professional incomes, with a n st-growing
disproportion between applicants for and openings in government
service, with ill-disciplined schools and boycott propaganda, to
produce in Bengal an unprecedented ferment, which in a minor
degree affected the educated classes all over India. Senates, syndi-
cates, colleges, high schools, felt the contagion. Revolutionary litera-
ture and teaching were introduced into many of the far-flung, ill-
controlled colleges and schools of Bengal with marked effect; racial
animosity was constantly preached by press and platform. But while
the tide of impatience of British rule was rising among the English-
educated, the appetite for Western knowledge rapidly intensified.
There was a loud call for more expenditure not only on higher,
but also on technical and vocational education. To this demand
## p. 353 (#391) ############################################
LATER TROUBLES
353
a
.
the government made strenuous endeavours to respond. In 1910
education was transferred from the supervision of the home depart-
ment of the central government to a new and separate department.
In 1913 Sir Harcourt Butler, the first education member of the
governor-general's council, published a resolution laying down care-
fully considered lines for advance and expansion. Money was to be
freely forthcoming; and although the war intervened, expenditure in
1916–17 from imperial, provincial and local funds rose to 614·10 lakhs,
more than double the figure of 1906–7. Private enterprise on the part
of missionary and other societies, of school and college committees,
and of benevolent individuals, swelled the total outlay of 1916–17 to
1128-83 lakhs. Numerical progress was marked in many directions. .
Sir Henry Sharp's quinquennial review for 1912–17 brings out in no
uncertain fashion the persevering efforts of the government to guide
and stimulate genuine advance, to broaden the whole basis of public
instruction by establishing agricultural colleges, engineering, com-
mercial, weaving, mining, carpentry and leather-work schools. The
obstacles, however, were real. Sir Henry Sharp insists strongly on the
fact that quality in industrial education must depend upon quality
in school-work. 1 And here it is that all the old difficulties were and
still are rampant.
Nowhere have these been more clearly or authoritatively defined
than in the Interim (Education) Report of the Statutory Commission recently
published. As the commission points out, it is comparatively easy to
vote money and to secure plausible figures of numerical progress in
attendance at primary classes. But to spend that money to solid
practical advantage in pursuance of a well-directed policy carried out
by efficient agencies is not so easy. And to secure that a large increase
in numbers of pupils attending primary schools produces a com-
mensurate increase in literacy is harder still, for at present compara-
tively few of these pupils stay long enough at school to reach a stage
in which the attainment of literacy may be expected.
Under present conditions of rural life, and with the lack of suitable vernacular
literature, a child has very little chance of attaining literacy after leaving school;
and indeed, evca for the literate, there are many chances of relapse into illiteracy:
The wastage in the case of girls is even more serious than in the case of boys. ?
The whole system of secondary education, although in some respects
improved, is still dominated by the ideal that every boy who enters a
secondary school should prepare himself for the university; "and the
immense numbers of failures at matriculation and in the university
examinations indicate a great waste of effort”. After noticing im-
provements in the universities, the commission observes :
But the theory that a university exists mainly, if not solely, to pass students
through examinations still finds too large acceptance in India; and we wish that
there were more signs that the universities regarded the training of broad-minded,
1 Sharp, Review, p. 155.
· Interim Report, p. 345. Cf. also pp. 150–83.
23
CHIVI
## p. 354 (#392) ############################################
354
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
tolerant and self-reliant citizens as one of their primary functions. They have been
hampered in their work by being over-crowded with students who are not fitted
by capacity for university education and of whom many would be far more likely
to succeed in other careers.
These words were written ten years after the close of our period.
Since January, 1921, education has been entrusted to the charge of
ministers in the major provinces. The central government has stood
aside. But the old problems are as formidable as ever. As regards
financial obstacles, there is no reason to suppose that any parlia-
mentary government in India, government in which one group would
compete for popularity with another group, would care to raise money
by fresh taxation. But the difficulties are not only financial. On
28 January, 1926, a debate took place in the Legislative Assembly at
Delhi on a resolution moved by a private member requesting the
central government to investigate unemployment among the middle
classes and suggest remedies. The government was told that its duty
was “to remove the causes of this discontent and grapple with this
evil”; but the most notable contribution to the discussion was the
speech of Mr Bipin Chandra Pal, a Bengal nationalist leader, who
frankly said that the mentality of the middle classes was very largely
the cause of middle-class unemployment. “We must change our social
system, we must change our system of education, and we must induce
our young men not to avoid, even if they do detest, manual labour.
That is the real difficulty. ” Truer words were never spoken; but the
assimilation of such ideas must be a slow and arduous process. The
solution of such problems rests with Indians themselves.
A feature of our own times has been the considerable growth in the
number of Indian students who finish their education abroad and
particularly in Britain. It is improbable that in any year before 1880
there were more than 100 in Europe. In 1894 there were 308; in 1907
there were 780; in 1921 there were 1450; in 1929-30 there were in Great
Britain 1761, of whom 583 were entered on the books of the various
Innsof Court. The experience of such men, who are able to observe and
examine educational and economic problems common to all nations,
should be useful to their country. There is plenty of idealism in India.
There is the enthusiasm for national or communal advance which in
the field of education has led to the foundation of Hindu and Muslim
universities. There have been notable and strenuous enterprises such
as Dr Rabindranath Tagore's School at Bolpur and Mrs Besant's
Central Hindu College at Benares. There is the Christian idealism of
the missionaries; and what this can achieve on emergencies is shown
by an incident of the war period.
All the staffs and schools of the Punjab University and its colleges sent fewer men
to fight than a single middle school of the Belgian Franciscan fathers at Dalwal in
the Salt Range, from which nine teachers and 95 boys, practically all who were of
age and fit, were enlisted. 1
Sir Michael O'Dwyer, India as I knew it, p. 228.
## p. 355 (#393) ############################################
GENERAL REVIEW
355
a
a
If a considerable portion of Indian idealism could be perseveringly
devoted to village uplift, what might not be achieved? Enthusiasm
has often welled up here and there. But it has frequently been spas-
modic, impatient of careful deliberation, prone to hurry on rather
than to make sure, to accept the show rather than the substance. 1
“We have now, as it were before us, in that vast congeries of peoples
we call India, a long, slow march in uneven stages, through all the
centuries from the fifth to the twentieth. ” As Mr Mayhew writes, a
the educational system established among these peoples by the British
Government is not a natural or free expression of national life. It is
a rambling and unfinished house, showing signs everywhere of change
of plans during construction, but, with all its defects, habitable and
capable at any time of modification and expansion. It has stimulated
vitality of all kinds, religious, commercial, social and political. This
vitality has brought unrest due, in the words of a Western-educated
Hindu,“to the deep-seated reason that people are throbbing with new
sensations and groping their way from darkness to light”. 4 The
writer added that in the darkness Indians could not distinguish friend
from foe, but that the day would come when there would be clearer
vision. 5
The system initiated in 1854 has produced a long line of excellent
public servants, of writers and public men acquainted not only with
the English language but with English ideals and English methods;
it has gone far to combat social evils and to develop the industrial and
commercial resources of India. In combination with the devoted
efforts of the missionaries it has raised the hopes and enlarged the
interests of sections of the people formerly sunk in social degradation;
it has strongly stimulated the education of women and has opened the
way to progressive self-government. On the other hand, it cannot
alter the physical facts of India, the blazing sun, the enervating rains,
the climate which depresses physical energy, and, in the case of the
vast peasant majority, activity of mind. It has failed to spread know-
ledge far among the masses; and among that comparatively small
minority who take readily to education, it has produced numbers of
men who, disgusted with meagre rewards for years of laborious study,
expect far too much from a government that has always been strug-
gling with a great variety of needs and calls, and has shrunk, as any
government of India must always shrink, from imposing fresh taxa-
tion. From the first, well-meant efforts produced mixed results, and
expenditure was hampered by inadequate resources. Psychological
questions of extreme difficulty arose, remained, and have for years
· Cf. Interim Report of Statutory Commission, chap. xvii.
: Education of India, p. 101.
: Cf. Bevan, Thoughts on Indian Discontents, p. 54.
• Gobinda Das, Hinduism and India.
6 Cf. Report of the Royal Commission on Agriculture in India, chap. xv; Darlıng, Rusticus
loquitur, pp. 9–11, 25, 66, 180, 203.
23-2
## p. 356 (#394) ############################################
356
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
been greatly aggravated by political influences. In the background
all along has been "the eternal mystery of the East”, the segregating
religious and social traditions of ages. A tendency to revive and
multiply the old patshalas and maktabs, separate schools on a com-
munal basis, is marked in certain provinces to-day. Well might Lord
Curzon say: “What the future of Indian education may be neither
you nor I can tell. It is the future of the Indian race, in itself the most
hazardous though absorbing of speculations”. But to that great
cause not only high-souled pioneers but numbers of our countrymen,
“by the cause which they served unknown”, have devoted years of
unobtrusive and impersonal activity. “Tantus labor ne sit cassus! ”
1 Cf. Bevan, op. cit. pp. 106, 144.
2 Interim Report of Statutory Commission, pp. 199–201.
>
## p. 357 (#395) ############################################
CHAPTER XX
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES
1858–1918
“AFTER all they are our servants. They are the servants of this
government, engaged by this government ihrough the secretary of
state to administer British dependencies. "1 These words were spoken
of the Indian Civil Service but apply also to the higher ranks of the
other public services which throughout the period 1858–1918 con-
stituted the frame of the Indian Government. The present chapter
will describe their organisation, trace their history, and describe the
circumstances which eventually overshadowed their prospects.
The Indian Civil Service was formerly known as the covenanted
civil service because its members entered into covenants originally
with the East India Company and afterwards with the secretary of
state in council. It provides officers who fill those posts of general
supervision which are commonly known as “superior”, both in the
general executive administration of British India, and in the adminis-
tration of justice. Its members also fill the higher posts in the govern-
ment secretariats, in the political or diplomatic service (along with
officers of the Indian Army), and in other departments. Some are
nominated to serve on the various legislative councils. All first learn
their work in lower administrative posts.
The service derives its constitution from various acts of parliament.
Developed originally out of the establishment of junior and senior
merchants, factors and writers employed for purposes of trade by the
East India Company, it first received statutory recognition in the East
India Company Charter Act of 1793 which provided that “all
vacancies happening in any of the offices, places or employments in
the civil line of the Company's service in India should, subject to
certain specified restrictions, be filled from among the Company's
civil servants". At first recruits underwent no period of probation or
training; then in 1800 Wellesley founded a college at Calcutta where
young civil servants were to be instructed in literature, science and
Oriental languages. By his famous minute of 10 July, 1800, this great
governor-general put an end to“ the loosc and irregular system” which
he found in existence and marked out a fresh course to the great
benefit of posterity. Finally in 1806 the Company established an “East
India College” at Haileybury for the training for two years of youths
who had received nominations. 2 Admission lay with the directors who,
1 Speech by Mr Acland in the House of Commons, Hansard, 15 June, 1922, p. 624.
? Memorials of Haileybury College, p. 17.
2
## p. 358 (#396) ############################################
358 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
as a matter of courtesy, made over a proportion of nominations to the
Board of Control. Wellesley's Calcutta college survived till 1854 as a
language school for Bengal civil servants. În 1853, when the maxi-
mum age for admission to Haileybury was twenty-one, the question
of the renewal of the East India Company's charter came before
parliament for the last time. 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.
books could do something but teachers could do more. Competent
teachers, selected for character and ability, able to maintain discipline
and devoted to their work, were the main essential. Religious in-
struction must be carried on in private institutions only, Christian,
Hindu or Muhammadan, which could all be assisted by state grants.
The various provincial governments had in respect of education
become "a sort of heptarchy in the land”. They needed inspiration
by a common principle and direction to a common aim. A measure
of the inadequate consideration which had been given to education
at headquarters was the fact that it was merely a sub-heading of the
work of the home department. Expert advice was needed to prevent
1 Cf. Ronaldshay, op. cit. chap. iii, and Times Literary Supplement, 11 February, 1932.
## p. 351 (#389) ############################################
THE UNIVERSITIES ACT OF 1904
351
the central government from “drifting about like a deserted hulk on
chopping seas”. He besought his hearers to realise that they were
“handling the life-blood of future generations”.
Action followed quickly on speech. The central government de-
clared that education must be a leading charge on the public funds,
and began a series of liberal grants to local governments on its behalf.
Private generosity and enterprise, the efforts of directors, inspectors
and teachers, were strongly stimulated. An inspector-general of
education was brought out from England and posted to headquarters.
A Universities Commission was appointed; and after much enquiry
and deliberation a Universities Bill was framed which became law in
1904 after acute controversy. It was a cautious measure, introducing
no radical change, but converting senates and syndicates into more
business-like bodies which contained majorities of educational experts,
leaving the training of undergraduate students mainly to the colleges,
but providing that the universities should themselves conduct post-
graduate courses of study. The senates were to tighten up conditions
for affiliation of colleges. They were to be responsible for courses,
textbooks and standards of examination. They were to propose to the
government regulations for the recognition of high schools and were
to pay attention to the conditions under which students and school-
boys were working. Vice-chancellors would be appointed by the
government; senates were to include directors of public instruction;
and in Calcutta the director would be a permanent member of the
syndicate. All affiliations and disaffiliations of colleges were to be
finally determined by the government; all professors, readers and
lecturers must be approved by it; and many details of university
policy were made subject to its supervision.
The commission was anxious that minimum fee rates should be
fixed for all colleges. This would have done something to restrict the
cut-throat competition which was going on in Bengal among managers
of private institutions with results disastrous to the youths concerned.
But the proposal excited so much clamour that (after Lord Curzon's
departure) it was dropped. The commission noted that the universities
possessed no machinery for inspecting high schools, and that at
Calcutta the syndicate had sometimes insisted on recognising new
venture schools "without due regard to the interests of sound
education and discipline”. It urged that the university should
recognise only schools recommended by the department of public
instruction, and this advice was in principle adopted in all provinces
but Bengal, where it was rejected, after Lord Curzon's departure,
because the managers of a large number of unaided schools declined
to admit departmental inspectors.
The commission regarded with apprehension the growing neglect
of the vernaculars and of Oriental classical languages, for a moral
danger was involved. It announced the rather tardy discovery that
## p. 352 (#390) ############################################
352
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
1
I
.
the literature of the West had its roots in a past in which Oriental
students had no part and was based upon beliefs and ideas which were
meaningless to them. It was desirable to promote diversified types of
secondary education corresponding with the varying needs of after-
life. The government considered that this object would best be attained
by instituting a school-leaving certificate based on class-work as well
as on a final examination, which would be alternative to the entrance
and would be recognised not only by private employers, who were
increasingly discounting the value of an entrance pass, but by the
government and the universities. It should afford evidence of char-
acter and of the general and practical capacity of a candidate.
Lord Curzon did much to broaden the whole basis of higher educa-
tion, and to initiate technical, industrial and commercial courses.
With the assistance of a donation of £30,000 from Mr H. Phipps, an
American gentleman, he established an agricultural college at Pusa,
in Bihar, which became the parent of similar institutions in other
provinces. He improved the chiefs' colleges; he inspired the depart-
ments of public instruction with fresh vitality and stimulated private
benevolence. But with all his splendid energy, he came twenty years
too lateus In the 'eighties he would have exercised a far more fruitful
and permanent influence on the subsequent course of education. As
things were, his very zeal inspired a belief that his real purpose was
to curb the increase of the restless English-educated. The cry went
forth that reaction was intended. Vested interests in private schools
and colleges bitterly protested. The partition of Bengal inflamed the
angry suspicion with which his university legislation was viewed in
that province and elsewhere.
He left India in November, 1905; and then followed years of
political and racial agitation due to various causes. The effect of the
Russo-Japanese War on Indian political thought, the gathering-in of
some of the harvest of the study of English history and literature, in-
creasing contact with an increasingly democratic Britain, combined
with the congested state of the bar, with rising prices which pressed
hardly on clerical and professional incomes, with a n st-growing
disproportion between applicants for and openings in government
service, with ill-disciplined schools and boycott propaganda, to
produce in Bengal an unprecedented ferment, which in a minor
degree affected the educated classes all over India. Senates, syndi-
cates, colleges, high schools, felt the contagion. Revolutionary litera-
ture and teaching were introduced into many of the far-flung, ill-
controlled colleges and schools of Bengal with marked effect; racial
animosity was constantly preached by press and platform. But while
the tide of impatience of British rule was rising among the English-
educated, the appetite for Western knowledge rapidly intensified.
There was a loud call for more expenditure not only on higher,
but also on technical and vocational education. To this demand
## p. 353 (#391) ############################################
LATER TROUBLES
353
a
.
the government made strenuous endeavours to respond. In 1910
education was transferred from the supervision of the home depart-
ment of the central government to a new and separate department.
In 1913 Sir Harcourt Butler, the first education member of the
governor-general's council, published a resolution laying down care-
fully considered lines for advance and expansion. Money was to be
freely forthcoming; and although the war intervened, expenditure in
1916–17 from imperial, provincial and local funds rose to 614·10 lakhs,
more than double the figure of 1906–7. Private enterprise on the part
of missionary and other societies, of school and college committees,
and of benevolent individuals, swelled the total outlay of 1916–17 to
1128-83 lakhs. Numerical progress was marked in many directions. .
Sir Henry Sharp's quinquennial review for 1912–17 brings out in no
uncertain fashion the persevering efforts of the government to guide
and stimulate genuine advance, to broaden the whole basis of public
instruction by establishing agricultural colleges, engineering, com-
mercial, weaving, mining, carpentry and leather-work schools. The
obstacles, however, were real. Sir Henry Sharp insists strongly on the
fact that quality in industrial education must depend upon quality
in school-work. 1 And here it is that all the old difficulties were and
still are rampant.
Nowhere have these been more clearly or authoritatively defined
than in the Interim (Education) Report of the Statutory Commission recently
published. As the commission points out, it is comparatively easy to
vote money and to secure plausible figures of numerical progress in
attendance at primary classes. But to spend that money to solid
practical advantage in pursuance of a well-directed policy carried out
by efficient agencies is not so easy. And to secure that a large increase
in numbers of pupils attending primary schools produces a com-
mensurate increase in literacy is harder still, for at present compara-
tively few of these pupils stay long enough at school to reach a stage
in which the attainment of literacy may be expected.
Under present conditions of rural life, and with the lack of suitable vernacular
literature, a child has very little chance of attaining literacy after leaving school;
and indeed, evca for the literate, there are many chances of relapse into illiteracy:
The wastage in the case of girls is even more serious than in the case of boys. ?
The whole system of secondary education, although in some respects
improved, is still dominated by the ideal that every boy who enters a
secondary school should prepare himself for the university; "and the
immense numbers of failures at matriculation and in the university
examinations indicate a great waste of effort”. After noticing im-
provements in the universities, the commission observes :
But the theory that a university exists mainly, if not solely, to pass students
through examinations still finds too large acceptance in India; and we wish that
there were more signs that the universities regarded the training of broad-minded,
1 Sharp, Review, p. 155.
· Interim Report, p. 345. Cf. also pp. 150–83.
23
CHIVI
## p. 354 (#392) ############################################
354
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
tolerant and self-reliant citizens as one of their primary functions. They have been
hampered in their work by being over-crowded with students who are not fitted
by capacity for university education and of whom many would be far more likely
to succeed in other careers.
These words were written ten years after the close of our period.
Since January, 1921, education has been entrusted to the charge of
ministers in the major provinces. The central government has stood
aside. But the old problems are as formidable as ever. As regards
financial obstacles, there is no reason to suppose that any parlia-
mentary government in India, government in which one group would
compete for popularity with another group, would care to raise money
by fresh taxation. But the difficulties are not only financial. On
28 January, 1926, a debate took place in the Legislative Assembly at
Delhi on a resolution moved by a private member requesting the
central government to investigate unemployment among the middle
classes and suggest remedies. The government was told that its duty
was “to remove the causes of this discontent and grapple with this
evil”; but the most notable contribution to the discussion was the
speech of Mr Bipin Chandra Pal, a Bengal nationalist leader, who
frankly said that the mentality of the middle classes was very largely
the cause of middle-class unemployment. “We must change our social
system, we must change our system of education, and we must induce
our young men not to avoid, even if they do detest, manual labour.
That is the real difficulty. ” Truer words were never spoken; but the
assimilation of such ideas must be a slow and arduous process. The
solution of such problems rests with Indians themselves.
A feature of our own times has been the considerable growth in the
number of Indian students who finish their education abroad and
particularly in Britain. It is improbable that in any year before 1880
there were more than 100 in Europe. In 1894 there were 308; in 1907
there were 780; in 1921 there were 1450; in 1929-30 there were in Great
Britain 1761, of whom 583 were entered on the books of the various
Innsof Court. The experience of such men, who are able to observe and
examine educational and economic problems common to all nations,
should be useful to their country. There is plenty of idealism in India.
There is the enthusiasm for national or communal advance which in
the field of education has led to the foundation of Hindu and Muslim
universities. There have been notable and strenuous enterprises such
as Dr Rabindranath Tagore's School at Bolpur and Mrs Besant's
Central Hindu College at Benares. There is the Christian idealism of
the missionaries; and what this can achieve on emergencies is shown
by an incident of the war period.
All the staffs and schools of the Punjab University and its colleges sent fewer men
to fight than a single middle school of the Belgian Franciscan fathers at Dalwal in
the Salt Range, from which nine teachers and 95 boys, practically all who were of
age and fit, were enlisted. 1
Sir Michael O'Dwyer, India as I knew it, p. 228.
## p. 355 (#393) ############################################
GENERAL REVIEW
355
a
a
If a considerable portion of Indian idealism could be perseveringly
devoted to village uplift, what might not be achieved? Enthusiasm
has often welled up here and there. But it has frequently been spas-
modic, impatient of careful deliberation, prone to hurry on rather
than to make sure, to accept the show rather than the substance. 1
“We have now, as it were before us, in that vast congeries of peoples
we call India, a long, slow march in uneven stages, through all the
centuries from the fifth to the twentieth. ” As Mr Mayhew writes, a
the educational system established among these peoples by the British
Government is not a natural or free expression of national life. It is
a rambling and unfinished house, showing signs everywhere of change
of plans during construction, but, with all its defects, habitable and
capable at any time of modification and expansion. It has stimulated
vitality of all kinds, religious, commercial, social and political. This
vitality has brought unrest due, in the words of a Western-educated
Hindu,“to the deep-seated reason that people are throbbing with new
sensations and groping their way from darkness to light”. 4 The
writer added that in the darkness Indians could not distinguish friend
from foe, but that the day would come when there would be clearer
vision. 5
The system initiated in 1854 has produced a long line of excellent
public servants, of writers and public men acquainted not only with
the English language but with English ideals and English methods;
it has gone far to combat social evils and to develop the industrial and
commercial resources of India. In combination with the devoted
efforts of the missionaries it has raised the hopes and enlarged the
interests of sections of the people formerly sunk in social degradation;
it has strongly stimulated the education of women and has opened the
way to progressive self-government. On the other hand, it cannot
alter the physical facts of India, the blazing sun, the enervating rains,
the climate which depresses physical energy, and, in the case of the
vast peasant majority, activity of mind. It has failed to spread know-
ledge far among the masses; and among that comparatively small
minority who take readily to education, it has produced numbers of
men who, disgusted with meagre rewards for years of laborious study,
expect far too much from a government that has always been strug-
gling with a great variety of needs and calls, and has shrunk, as any
government of India must always shrink, from imposing fresh taxa-
tion. From the first, well-meant efforts produced mixed results, and
expenditure was hampered by inadequate resources. Psychological
questions of extreme difficulty arose, remained, and have for years
· Cf. Interim Report of Statutory Commission, chap. xvii.
: Education of India, p. 101.
: Cf. Bevan, Thoughts on Indian Discontents, p. 54.
• Gobinda Das, Hinduism and India.
6 Cf. Report of the Royal Commission on Agriculture in India, chap. xv; Darlıng, Rusticus
loquitur, pp. 9–11, 25, 66, 180, 203.
23-2
## p. 356 (#394) ############################################
356
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
been greatly aggravated by political influences. In the background
all along has been "the eternal mystery of the East”, the segregating
religious and social traditions of ages. A tendency to revive and
multiply the old patshalas and maktabs, separate schools on a com-
munal basis, is marked in certain provinces to-day. Well might Lord
Curzon say: “What the future of Indian education may be neither
you nor I can tell. It is the future of the Indian race, in itself the most
hazardous though absorbing of speculations”. But to that great
cause not only high-souled pioneers but numbers of our countrymen,
“by the cause which they served unknown”, have devoted years of
unobtrusive and impersonal activity. “Tantus labor ne sit cassus! ”
1 Cf. Bevan, op. cit. pp. 106, 144.
2 Interim Report of Statutory Commission, pp. 199–201.
>
## p. 357 (#395) ############################################
CHAPTER XX
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES
1858–1918
“AFTER all they are our servants. They are the servants of this
government, engaged by this government ihrough the secretary of
state to administer British dependencies. "1 These words were spoken
of the Indian Civil Service but apply also to the higher ranks of the
other public services which throughout the period 1858–1918 con-
stituted the frame of the Indian Government. The present chapter
will describe their organisation, trace their history, and describe the
circumstances which eventually overshadowed their prospects.
The Indian Civil Service was formerly known as the covenanted
civil service because its members entered into covenants originally
with the East India Company and afterwards with the secretary of
state in council. It provides officers who fill those posts of general
supervision which are commonly known as “superior”, both in the
general executive administration of British India, and in the adminis-
tration of justice. Its members also fill the higher posts in the govern-
ment secretariats, in the political or diplomatic service (along with
officers of the Indian Army), and in other departments. Some are
nominated to serve on the various legislative councils. All first learn
their work in lower administrative posts.
The service derives its constitution from various acts of parliament.
Developed originally out of the establishment of junior and senior
merchants, factors and writers employed for purposes of trade by the
East India Company, it first received statutory recognition in the East
India Company Charter Act of 1793 which provided that “all
vacancies happening in any of the offices, places or employments in
the civil line of the Company's service in India should, subject to
certain specified restrictions, be filled from among the Company's
civil servants". At first recruits underwent no period of probation or
training; then in 1800 Wellesley founded a college at Calcutta where
young civil servants were to be instructed in literature, science and
Oriental languages. By his famous minute of 10 July, 1800, this great
governor-general put an end to“ the loosc and irregular system” which
he found in existence and marked out a fresh course to the great
benefit of posterity. Finally in 1806 the Company established an “East
India College” at Haileybury for the training for two years of youths
who had received nominations. 2 Admission lay with the directors who,
1 Speech by Mr Acland in the House of Commons, Hansard, 15 June, 1922, p. 624.
? Memorials of Haileybury College, p. 17.
2
## p. 358 (#396) ############################################
358 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
as a matter of courtesy, made over a proportion of nominations to the
Board of Control. Wellesley's Calcutta college survived till 1854 as a
language school for Bengal civil servants. În 1853, when the maxi-
mum age for admission to Haileybury was twenty-one, the question
of the renewal of the East India Company's charter came before
parliament for the last time. 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.
