In time the
exchange
value of the rupee settled down to
IS.
IS.
Cambridge History of India - v4 - Indian Empire
But in the non-regulation provinces some un-
covenanted officers of British descent were, like military officers,
employed alongside of covenanted civil servants. They were selected
either because the tracts in question were in a disturbed state and
unfit for methods of long-established administration, or on account
of their peculiar knowledge and experience. Except in matters of
pension they were treated practically on an equality with their
covenanted colleagues, but were debarred by the operation of the
statute of 1861 from holding the posts of secretary and junior secretary
to the local government and were in practice very seldom appointed
to the highest judicial offices. As the country became more and more
settled, the practice of appointing military and uncovenanted officers
to higher posts ordinarily held by covenanted civil servants fell into
disuse; and in 1876 it was definitely abandoned in the case of Oudh,
the Central Provinces, non-regulation areas in Bengal, and the North-
Western Provinces. It was abolished in Sind in 1885, in the Panjab
in 1903, and in Assam in 1907.
## p. 362 (#400) ############################################
362 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
A small minority of the large number of uncovenanted civil servants
held superior posts. The majority consisted of natives of India re-
cruited in the various provinces by the local governments under a
system of nomination, tempered in some cases by qualifying examina-
tions and probationary periods. Candidates for executive appoint-
ments had to possess minimum educational qualifications attested by
certificates of success in examinations conducted by universities or the
educational departments. Candidates for the judicial line had to be
either bachelors of law of some university or accredited pleaders or
advocates.
In 1853 it had been stated in the House of Commons that the
universal rule and practice in Indian administration was “native
agency and European superintendence". 1 This was still the practice
between 1858 and 1886; but all the time Western education was
spreading, and with its expansion was teaching Indians to feel their
way toward higher spheres and to complain because the ways of
approach were narrow.
An illuminating account of the early history of the police is con-
tained in the report of the commission appointed by Lord Curzon's
government in 1902. The organisation of the force in the various
provinces within our period was the result of a comprehensive
enquiry made in 1860 by a committee appointed by the Government
of India which embodied its recommendations, where approved, in
various acts of the governor-general's legislative council. The force
was to receive a semi-military training from its officers and was to be
subject to general control by the district magistrates and the local
governments. It was charged with the maintenance of law and order
and the detection of crimc. Its chief officers in each province would
be inspector-generals assisted by two or more deputics, and their
subordinates would be district superintendents and assistant super-
intendents. The force was soon established; the district superintendents
were invariably British, and in the more important charges were given
British assistant superintendents. For some years the higher grades
of the force were mainly recruited from the commissioned ranks of
the army; but this practice was repugnant to the military authorities,
and gradually gave place to recruitment in India by nomination. But
from the year 1893 the superior ranks were recruited mainly in
England by competitive examination for which Europeans alone were
eligible, and in a minor degree by appointments in India under a
combined system of nomination and examination which included
Indians. The age of admission in England was seventeen to nineteen.
Up to the year 1870 engineers for the public works department had
been furnished from the corps of the Royal Engineers, from civil
engineers appointed in England? after competitive examination or
1 Sir J. W. Hogg, Hansard, 3 June, 1853, CXXVIII, 1270.
2 Cf. Imperial Gazetteer of India, iv, 319.
## p. 363 (#401) ############################################
PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT
363
special selection, and from qualified students of Indian engineering
colleges. The Thomason College at Rurki, opened in 1848, began to
furnish engineers to the department in 1850. The Poona Civil En-
gineering College, established in 1854 for the education of subordinates
for the Bombay public works department, developed in 1865 into a
college of science at Poona affiliated to the Bombay. University and
educating candidates for an engineering degree. The Madras Civil
Engineering College, affiliated to the Madras University in 1877, also
prepared students for engineering degrees. In England the Royal
Engineering College at Cooper's Hill was established in 1871 for the
education of civil engineers for service in the Indian public works
department. The age of admission was seventeen to twenty-one, and
the course lasted three years. As students began to pass out of
Cooper's Hill in sufficient numbers, the recruitment of civil engineers
from other sources gradually ceased in England. In 1876 Lord
Salisbury, then secretary of state, wrote that, as the European portion
of the superior public works establishments was provided through
Cooper's Hill, the Indian engineering colleges might be regarded as
particularly intended for natives of India. Eventually it was decided
that of thirty recruits appointed in 1885, 1886 and 1887, nine were to
be taken from Indian colleges, fifteen from Cooper's Hill, and six from
the Royal Engineers.
The work of the public works department was distributed among
three branches: (a) “General” which was subdivided into “Roads
and Buildings" and "Irrigation”,(6) State Railways and (c) Accounts.
Each branch included an upper and a lower subordinate establishment.
The finance department was directly controlled by the Government
of India. Officers of its superior staff were liable for employment in
any province. The functions of the department were to bring to
account and audit the expenditure of all branches of the civil ad-
ministration and to deal with questions relating to paper currency,
loan operations and coinage. The nine accountants-general of pro-
vinces were treasurers of charitable endowments and responsible for
the proper check by officers of their department of the accounts of
such local bodies as district and municipal boards. They further
supervised the movements of funds from one district treasury to
another; and were themselves subordinate to a comptroller and
auditor-general. The whole superior staff of the department num-
bered 172. Below this staff were chief superintendents and chief
accountants. Up to the year 1899, while the higher posts were
generally filled by trained members of the Indian Civil Service, the
remainder were filled wholly in India. Then it was found that the
local supply of suitably qualified Europeans and Eurasians was in-
sufficient, and it was decided that at least four out of nine vacancies
should be filled by recruitment in England. In 1909 it was arranged
that half the vacancies should be reserved for natives of India.
## p. 364 (#402) ############################################
364 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858–1918
1
In 1847 Dr Gibson was appointed conservator of forests in Bombay,
and in 1856 Dr Cleghorn received a similar appointment in Madras;
but although both these officers impressed on their governments the
physical value of the forests and the necessity of carefully preventing
denudation of the hills in the interest of the water supply of the
country, forest conservancy was for some time regarded mainly as a
direct source of revenue to the state. After the annexation of Pegu,
however, Lord Dalhousie, seeing that fine forests stood in danger of
reckless spoliation by private individuals, inaugurated a preventive
policy. In 1856 Dietrich Brandis was summoned from Germany to
be superintendent of forests in Pegu and remained there till 1862,
organising forest management. He was then placed on special duty
to do the same in India, and in 1864 was appointed inspector-general
of forests to the central government. To him and to his successors and
pupils, Schlich and Ribbentrop, is due primarily the credit of or-
ganising the forest department, and the introduction of methods of
management adopted from the best European schools.
In 1865 the first Indian Forest Act was planned to provide for the
protection and efficient management of the government forests. In
1866 Brandis proceeded to England to arrange for the recruitment of
forest officers who were to be trained in the schools of France and
Germany, where scientific forestry was far more advanced than it was
in England. From 1885 to 1905 forest probationers studied at Cooper's
Hill, supplementing their courses by continental tours. Up to 1905
they were selected by competitive examination; but from 1905 on-
ward, candidates for examination failing, appointments were made
by a selection committee appointed by the India Office. The forest
department was controlled by conservators (chief officers of provinces
or parts of provinces), deputy-conservators in charge of forest divisions,
and assistant conservators of two grades in charge of forest subdivisions.
All these officers were British and under them was an Indian executive
staff consisting of sub-assistant conscrvators, rangers, foresters and
forest guards. The management of forests was committed to the local
governments, but the head of the department was the inspector-
general for the Government of India.
The growth of the department of public instruction has already
been traced. The control of other departments (jail, postal, tele-
graphs, survey, salt, excise, opium, meteorological, registration,
archaeological, customs, mint, geological survey, agricultural) rested
in British hands. Generally speaking these departments were recruited
in India; but they were often presided over by an officer selected from
one of the services recruited in England. We must pass on to that
distinguished service which has been truly called the pivot of all the
others. 3
1 Imp. Gaz. 11, 107-8.
2 P. 336, supra.
3 Speech by Mr Montagu to the British Medical Association.
## p. 365 (#403) ############################################
INDIAN MEDICAL SERVICE
365
>
The Indian Medical Service was primarily military, but lent a large
proportion of its officers to the civil administration. In times of
emergency these officers could be recalled to military duty; and
during the war few were left in civil employ. Medical officers in civil
employ were responsible for the administration and inspection of the
hospitals and dispensaries established in every district, for medico-
legal work connected with the administration of justice, for attendance
on government servants and for examination of candidates for public
employment. They were also responsible for jails and the care of the
public health. Each province possessed its inspector-general of civil
hospitals or surgeon-general, and its inspector-general of jails, who
were always selected officers of the Indian Medical Service. These
provincial chiefs worked under the local governments, subject to the
supervision of a director-general who was posted to the headquarters
of the central government. Under the inspectors-general of civil
hospitals and surgeons-general were the “civil surgeons”, one of
whom in each district presided over a staff of assistant and sub-assistant
surgeons. Working mainly through these civil surgeons, the Indian
Medical Service not only gallantly combated many a devastating
epidemic, but educated India in the preservation of public health and
in the theory and practice of Western medicine. Its officers have
prevented immeasurable suffering and saved countless lives. “No less
than 34 have gained the blue ribbon of the scientific world, the
fellowship of the Royal Society. "1
The statutory civil service had proved a failure as a means of
admitting Indians to the higher services. It seemed probable that as
years went on and contact between India and England increased,
more Indians would enter the civil service through the door of the
competitive examination in London. As regards British personnel,
the competitive system had proved a conspicuous success. The average
yearly number of candidates had fallen decidedly after 1870, partly
perhaps in consequence of the legislation of that year already men-
tioned, but principally because from 1871 onwards an examination
fee of £5 was demanded of every candidate. Up to that year no fee
had been claimed. In their seventeenth annual report the civil service
commissioners stated that the diminution was "not so much in the
class of competitors as in the number, previously considerable, of
those who presented themselves without sufficient preparation to
warrant any hope of success”. In 1878 the maximum limit of age for
admission was reduced to nineteen, and the probationary period was
fixed at two years to be spent in some university or college approved
by the secretary of state. The object of the change was to bring selected
candidates earlier to their life's work. All along the question was how
to attract the best men possible and how best to fit them for active
duties. It was, however, soon apparent that the lower age limits
Report of the Committee on the reorganisation of the Indian Medical Services, 1919, p. 19.
1
## p. 366 (#404) ############################################
366 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858–1918
1
2
0
10
2
20
1
pressed hardly on Indian candidates, and the age was raised to 21-23
from 1892 to 1905, and to 22–24 from 1906 onwards. When the last
change was made the examination was amalgamated with that for
the home civil service, successful candidates being allowed to state
their preference for either. Throughout the period 1871 to 1914 the
total number of competitors remained fairly constant while the Indian
contingent increased very slowly, as is evident from the following
figures:
Indian Successful
Year
Vacancies Candidates candidates Indians
1870
40
332
7.
1880
27
182
1890
47
205
5
1900
52
213
17
1910
60
184
1914
53
183
26
7
The highest number of candidates in any year between 1871 and 1914
was 237 for 68 vacancies in 1897. 1
In December, 1885, the first Indian National Congress met at
Bombay and demanded that simultaneous examinations should be
established in India and in England for admission to the covenanted
civil service. The demand arose from the Hindu and Parsi pro-
fessional and literary classes. The Muhammadans, as a community,
were for years strongly opposed to it. Conscious of their inferiority
to the Hindus in numbers, wealth and education, they regarded the
congress as aiming in fact at the establishment of a Hindu monopoly
of posts and power. Sayyid Ahmad, their leader, expressed his views
in trenchant language:
If government want to give over the internal rule of the country from its own
hands into those of the people of India, then we will present a petition that, before
doing so, she pass a law of competitive examination, namely that that nation which
passes first in this competition be given the rule of the country; but that in this
competition we be given the pen of our ancestors which is in fact the true pen for
writing the decrees of sovereignty. 2
In order to find a solution for the problem Lord Dufferin's govern-
ment in 1886 appointed a public services commission under Sir Charles
Aitchison, lieutenant-governor of the Panjab. The fifteen members
included four Hindu and two Muhammadan gentlemen of high status.
Of the British members five belonged to the covenanted civil service,
one to the uncovenanted civil service, two were British non-officials,
and one had been chief justice of the Madras High Court of Judica-
ture. Broadly speaking, the object of this commission was to devise
a scheme which might reasonably be "hoped to possess the necessary
elements of finality and to do full justice to the claims of natives of
1 I am indebted to the civil service commissioners for this information.
Speeches and letters of Sir Saiyid Ahmad, Pioneer Press, Allahabad, 1888; Mahmud,
British Education in India, chap. xxx.
## p. 367 (#405) ############################################
THE PUBLIC SERVICES COMMISSION 367
India to higher and more extensive employment in the public service”.
The commission rejected the idea of altering the system of admission
to the covenanted civil service. It had been understood that the
entrance examination was to bear a distinctly English character, and
to constitute a test of English qualifications. The most natural ar-
rangement, therefore, was that this examination should be held in
England, the centre of the educational system on which it was based.
The commission advised abolition of the system of filling appoint-
ments by means of the statutory civil service which had failed to fulfil
the expectations anticipated from it and was "condemned for suffi-
ciently good reasons not only by particular sections of the native
community but also by the very large majority of officials, both
European and native, who had enjoyed practical experience of its
workings”. The attempt to confine the selection to young men of rank
and to attract to the service men combining high social position with
the requisite educational and intellectual qualifications had failed.
A similar result would almost necessarily follow upon any attempt
"to engraft on a superior and imported service recruited in such a
manner as to secure the highest possible English qualifications a
system based on other principles and designed to meet a wholly
different object”. The commission proposed to reduce the list of
scheduled posts reserved by the act of 1861 for members of the
covenanted civil service and to transfer a certain number of these
posts to a local service which would be called "the provincial civil
service” and would be separately recruited in every province.
Appointments to the transferred judicial posts would be on account
of merit and ability proved either in the public service or in practice
at the Indian bar; appointments to executive offices would be on
account of exceptional merit and ability already shown in the public
service. The services would no longer be termed covenanted and
uncovenanted but imperial and provincial. Below the provincial
service would be a “subordinate civil service" from which it would
be partly recruited. But its executive branch would also be recruited
by competitive examination, wherever not inexpedient, and its
judicial branch would be largely filled by selected barristers, advocates
or pleaders. The salaries of members of the provincial civil service
would be fixed on independent grounds, and would have no relation
to those attached to appointments in the imperial civil service. The
commission suggested the formation, where possible, of a provincial
branch in each department of the public service, public works, police,
forests and the rest. Substantial effect was given to this scheme, the
secretary of state directing that the covenanted civil service should be
known in future as "the Civil Service of India" and that each branch
of the provincial civil service should be called by the name of the
particular province to which it belonged. A certain proportion of
· Dispatch, 12 September, 1889.
## p. 368 (#406) ############################################
368 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858–1918
public offices reserved for the civil service of India and afterwards
termed “listed posts”, would in each province be entered on a list as
open to the new provincial service. Rules must be framed and issued,
under sanction of the secretary of state, which would empower local
governments to bestow any listed post upon a native of India. All this
was done; and the local governments were ordered to fill one-sixth
of the offices hitherto reserved for the Indian Civil Service with
provincial servants when the claims of existing statutory civil servants
had been satisfied. The number of civil servants recruited in England
had already been reduced so as not to fill more than five-sixths of the
reserved appointments. After consulting the local governments the
Government of India decided to list ninety-three posts, this figure being
considered suitable for meeting reasonable requirements. It would
be worked up to after satisfying the claims of officers already in the
service and would be liable to expansion.
Thirty years later another public services commission stated that
the reforms recommended by their predecessors in 1886, while failing
to satisfy Indian aspirations for employment of the higher type, "had
undoubtedly resulted in a great improvement in the standard of every
service”. Generally speaking, officers promoted from the provincial
civil services to hold Indian Civil Service posts had done efficient
work. But
the inferiority of status and social position which had always been attached to the
provincial services, aggravated to some extent by subsequent changes, had been
felt by the Indian public as a real grievance, particularly in the case of the more
important services such as the civil, educational and public works.
The Government of India had just completed reorganisation of the
public services in accordance with the orders finally passed on the
recommendations of the commission of 1886–7, when on 22 June,
1893, they were requested by Lord Kimberley, then secretary of state,
to consider a resolution passed by the House of Commons on the 2nd
of that month in favour of the establishment of simultaneous examina-
tions in England and India for admission to the Indian Civil Service,
all competitors “to be finally classed in one list according to merit”.
In transmitting the resolution to India, Lord Kimberley pointed out
the necessity of always retaining an adequate number of Europeans
in the service. Lord Lansdowne's government replied on the ist of
the following November, after consulting the provincial administra-
tions. Their letter, which was laid before parliament, dealt fully and
frankly with the important issues involved. Quoting the opinions of
notable administrators, they maintained that material reduction of
the European staff then employed was incompatible with the safety
of British rule.
1 Parl. Papers, 1894, Accounts (10), 1x, 1-110.
## p. 369 (#407) ############################################
SIMULTANEOUS EXAMINATIONS
369
Sir Charles Crosthwaite, lieutenant-governor of the North-Western
Provinces, had observed:
It is a great mistake to suppose that British India has arrived at a stage where
nothing but smooth progress need be anticipated, or to think that the principles of
law and order have penetrated the minds of the people so deeply that the English
element in the civil government may be safely diminished. We know little of what
is below the surface; but we know enough, even without the teaching of recent
events here, in Bombay, and in Rangoon,
to be sure that this is not a true estimate
of the situation. It is instructive to observe that during the late riots in Bombay
native papers like the Hindu Patriot, while demanding in one column a larger share
of administrative appointments for their fellow-countrymen, were calling out in
another column of the same issue against the government for not having more
European police officers in Bombay. What is desired by them is that the British
Government should hold the country, while they administer it. "
The writer laid stress on the existence of strong Muhammadan
opposition to any such arrangement. Sir Dennis Fitzpatrick,
lieutenant-governor of the Panjab, had said:
British rule brought this country out of a state of chaos, the horrors of which it
would be difficult for a stay-at-home resident of Europe in the nineteenth century
adequately to realise, and if the grasp of the British power were relaxed even for
a brief moment over any part of the country, chaos with all its horrors would come
again. Englishmen, even Englishmen who spend their lives in India, are not given
to reflecting much on this; and I doubt whether many natives of the country
nowadays think of it though it was a good deal present to the minds of the people
of the Punjab when I first came to India. The fact is that we have now had 35 years
of internal peace unbroken except by petty local disturbances, and we have begun
to flatter ourselves into the belief that our position in this country is absolutely
unassailable; but as a matter of fact it is not so. It is, and always will be, liable to
disastrous shocks from which it might take a long time to recover; and although
this is not a p. easant subject of reflection to us, with our national vanity and our
tendency to optimism, the more completely we realise it the better.
The writer pointed out that apart from the danger of religious riots
there were always to be found in many parts of India predatory classes
ready to break out whenever British administration might be tem-
porarily relaxed or British control disorganised. He observed that it
was a mistake to suppose that the substitution of Indian for British
administrators would be popular with the masses; its popularity
would be limited to the advanced Indians, a small fraction of the
population.
Lord Lansdowne's government reported that the government of
Madras alone advocated the principle of the resolution, observing that
in special emergencies, local disturbances and the like, Indians en-
tering the civil service might possibly be found wanting, but the mis-
chief thus arising could in present circumstances quickly be repaired.
“This”, said the Government of India, “might represent the state of
things in the tranquil province of Madras, but the conditions of other
parts of India were far different. " They went on to urge that a
i Parl. Papers, 1894, Accounts (10), LX, 39.
2 Idem, pp. 42-55. Cf. Mahmud, History of English Education in India, pp. 182–7.
24
>
CHIVI
## p. 370 (#408) ############################################
370 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858–1918
system of unrestricted competition in examination would not only
dangerously weaken the British element in the civil service but would
also practically exclude from the service Muhammadans, Sikhs and
other races accustomed to rule by tradition and possessed of excep-
tional strength of character, but deficient in literary education. The
natives, moreover, of one part of India would from their dispositions,
ways and habits, be ill-fitted to discharge the duties of civil officers in
another part. As far as Indians generally were concerned, probation
by actual employment formed a competitive examination of the best
kind. Much misapprehension apparently prevailed as to the extent
to which natives of India were already employed in responsible
executive and judicial offices. Taking the years 1870, 1881 and 1893
as convenient points from which the progress of the scheme for the
more liberal employment of Indians could be reviewed, the first
because it was thc year when recruitment for the Indian Civil Service
was reduced by one-sixth, the following figures were significant:
1870
890
1881
900
221
1893
898
331
216
The Covenanted Civil Service
(1) Covenanted Civilians
(2) Military, Uncovenanted and Statutory Civilians
Total
The Provincial Service
(1) Executive Branch
(2) Judicial Branch
I 221
I121
1114
.
::
: :
576
583
726
679
. . .
Total
1030
797
1827
1908
1159
1405
1368
The Subordinate Service
962
. . .
It must be remembered that between 1881 and 1893 the annexation
of Upper Burma had entailed a considerable demand for covenanted
officers, and that the inevitable increase of public business which had
occurred in twenty-three years had called for reinforcements in almost
every branch of the administration; yet the whole strength of the
covenanted service (including military and uncovenanted and
"statutory” civilians, holding covenanted posts) was now seven less
than in the former year and 107 less than in 1870. The number of
covenanted civil servants would have been further reduced but for
a process, which had been going on since 1870, of substituting, in
the interests of greater efficiency, covenanted for military and un-
covenanted officers in the non-regulation provinces. The European
service was now at its minimum strength, and no further reduction
would be practicable for some years to come. In the event, however,
of experience showing that in any province, at any time, the number
of high Indian officers might safely be increased, the best course would
be to proceed under the statute of 1870 and on the lines of the changes
recently accomplished. Seventy-four of the 898 covenanted civil
il. c. Imperial.
## p. 371 (#409) ############################################
EXCHANGE COMPENSATION
371
servants were employed in special departments not concerned with
the general judicial and executive administration of the country;
ninety-three covenanted posts had just been assigned to the provincial
service; thus the cadre of posts at present reserved for Indian civil
servants and military officers was only 731. In the frontier provinces,
the Panjab, Burma and Assam, one-fourth of the covenanted posts
were reserved for military officers of special experience. On the
quality of this small number of men depended the quiet and orderly
government of 217} millions of people, inhabiting 943,000 square
miles of territory. Upon these men, and not immediately on military
force, British rule rested. 1
The views expressed in this dispatch prevailed with Her Majesty's
government. The secretary of state, Mr H. H. Fowler, decided that
by far the best way of meeting the legitimate claims and aspirations
of Indians was to bestow such of the higher posts as could be made
available for them “on those who distinguish themselves by their
capacity and trustworthiness in the performance of subordinate
duties". There were insuperable objections to the establishment of a
system of simultaneous examinations. 2
Early in the ’nineties an increasing fall in the exchange value of the
rupee necessitated the consideration of measures for the reform of the
currency and inflicted considerable hardship upon European officers
in the imperial services. In 1893 the government of Lord Lansdowne,
with the consent of the secretary of state, deciding that a remedy must
be applied, ordered that exchange compensation allowance should
be paid to every European and Anglo-Indian officer of the govern-
ment, not being a statutory native of India, to be calculated on the
difference between the gold value of half his salary at the market rate
of exchange and its value at a privileged rate, which for the time was
fixed at is. 6d. per rupee, and was limited to a sum not exceeding in
any quarter the amount of rupees by which £250 converted at the
privileged rate fell short of the equivalent of £250 converted at a
market rate.
In time the exchange value of the rupee settled down to
IS. 4d. approximately, so the concession represented an addition of
6} per cent. to all salaries of Rs. 2222 a month and under. To salaries
in excess of this amount a fixed monthly addition of Rs. 138. 14. 3
was made. The whole arrangement went some way, but only some
way, to relieve the growing difficulties which a falling rupee and rising
prices were bringing to those numerous servants of the government
who were under the necessity of making regular remittances to England
for the maintenance of their families.
In the period 1894-1905 the work of the services became increasingly
complex and arduous. The population of India was fast rising; trade
and commerce were growing; education was extending; contact with
England was increasing; political agitation was beginning to produce
i Parl. Papers, 1894, Accounts (10), LX, 5-6. : Public Dispatch, 19 April, 1894.
24-2
## p. 372 (#410) ############################################
372 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858–1918
unrest. India was visited with devastating plague epidemics and
attacked by three famines, one resulting from a drought of an extent
and intensity unknown for two centuries. The services responded
keenly to the needs of difficult occasions and to the quickening in-
fluence of Lord Curzon's ardent spirit.
He regarded police reform as one of the most urgent needs of
Indian administration". 1 With the approval of the secretary of state,
his government on 9 July, 1902, appointed a commission which was
presided over by the late Sir Andrew Fraser and reported on 30 May,
1903, that throughout India the police-force was in a most unsatis-
factory condition and that abuses were common everywhere, in-
volving injury to the people and discredit to the government. Radical
reforms were urgently necessary and would be costly because the
department had hitherto been starved.
The commissioners unanimously recommended that the pay of all
ranks should be raised. It was impossible to expect honest and faithful
service from low-paid inspectors and constables subject to great
temptations. It was equally futile to attract high-class recruits from
England for the higher grades, by the offer of meagre salaries and
prospects. After considering this and other beneficial suggestions, the
Government of India decreed on 21 March, 1905, that in future the
force should consist of an imperial branch recruited in Europe and
provincial branches recruited in India. The former would be known
as the "Indian Police Service". It was intended for supervision and
would contain only so many officers as were required to fill the
superintendentships of the districts and posts of equivalent or higher
standing, and to supply a leave and training reserve of assistant super-
intendents. Provincial services of deputy-superintendents would be
recruited to carry on the less important duties of administration.
Promotion from them to superintendentships in the Indian Police
Service would
only be given as a reward for special merit to selected
individuals. The ordinary method of recruitment for the Indian
Police Service would be by competitive examination in London.
Candidates must be above nineteen and under twenty-one years of
age. Every candidate must be a British subject of European descent,
and at the time of his birth his father must have been a British subject
either natural-born or naturalised in the United Kingdom. In ex-
ceptional cases, on the special recommendation of a local government,
the governor-general in council could make direct appointments to
the police service from amongst Europeans domiciled in India, in-
cluding those of mixed descent, subject to the condition that the
candidate put forward had attained an adequate standard of educa-
tional qualifications. This power, however, was seldom exercised.
Candidates successful in the competitive examination in England
would leave that country at once for India where they would undergo
1 Fourth Budget Speech, Raleigh, Curzon in India, p. 104.
## p. 373 (#411) ############################################
POLICE REFORM
373
O
two years of probation and training. After successfully passing through
this ordeal they would be posted to district work.
The police-force and its armed reserves were increased, in order to
render them more capable of preserving internal peace if the country
were at war. A “Department of Criminal Intelligence” was created
which was charged with the duty of investigating special forms of
crime, including political offences, and took the place of the obsolete
“Thagi and Dacoity Department”. When speaking on his last budget,
Lord Curzon summed up his ideas and answered his critics in these
words:
There is entered in the budget the sum of 50 lakhs for police reform. That is only
an instalment and a beginning. We accept with slight modifications the full recom-
mendation of the committee and we intend to carry out their programme. We
want a police force which is free from the temptation to corruption and iniquity,
and whích must therefore be reasonably well paid, which must be intelligent, and
orderly and efficient, and which will make its motto protection instead of oppression.
I confess that my heart breaks within me when I see long diatribes upon how many
natives are getting employment under the new system and how many Europeans.
The police force in India must be an overwhelmingly native force; and I would
make it representative of the best elements in native character and native life.
Equally must it have a European supervising element, and let this also be of the
best. But do not let us proceed to reckon one against the other, and contend as to
who loses and who gains. The sole object of all of us ought to be the good of the
country and the protection of the people.
Seven years later the police were again the subject of special
enquiry. The verdict of another public services commission, whose
report was published in 1917, was that the police reforms of 1905 had
been “on the whole successful, but that hardly sufficient time had
elapsed thoroughly to test their cfficiency". Within these seven years,
however, in various provinces, the police of all ranks had been called
to deal with subterranean revolutionary conspiracy and had acquitted
themselves remarkably well.
Early in his viceroyalty Lord Curzon took charge of the public
works department in order to obtain a grasp of the business. He then
decided to set up a Railway Board “as the indispensable condition of
business-like management and quick and intelligent control”. The
board was established in 1905, and the railway branch of the public
works department was abolished; but public works and railway
engineers were still recruited through the same agency. In the public
works department there were henceforth two main sections, onc con-
cerned with schemes of irrigation and the other with the construction,
repair and maintenance of roads, buildings and bridges. Public
works and railways included an imperial and a provincial service,
both of which were in times of pressure assisted by temporary en-
gineers recruited for the most part in India. In 1906 the residential
engineering college which had been established at Cooper's Hill in
1873 was abolished, as an unnecessary expense, for it appeared that
! Raleigh, op. cit. p. 160.
## p. 374 (#412) ############################################
374 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
recruits might be obtained from the other engineering institutions of
Great Britain. From that time appointments to the superior en-
gineering establishments of the public works and railway department
were made on the nomination of the secretary of state, with the advice
of a specially constituted selection committee. Candidates were
between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-four, and must produce
evidence of superior qualifications. "
The separate organisation for the accounts work of the public works
department was in 1910 amalgamated with the civil accounts branch
of the Indian finance department.
Lord Curzon's interest in the services was by no means confined to
the police and the public works department. By his indomitable
energy, by his personal example, by his thorough-going sympathy, he
did far more for the services generally than any other viceroy had
ever done. His special care was for the political department which
contained separate cadres for military and civil officers, and is the
direct successor of “the diplomatic line"? in which Mountstuart
Elphinstone and other servants of the East India Company, civil and
military, won their spurs. In Lord Curzon's words:
“There is no more varied or responsible service in the world. At one moment
the political may be grinding in the Foreign Office, at anothur he may be required
to stiffen the adıninistration of a backward native state, at a third he may be
presiding over a jirga of unruly tribesmen on the frontier, at a fourth he may be
demarcating a boundary amid the wilds of Tibet or the sands of Seistan. ” “I hope”,
he added, " that the time may never come when the political department will cease
to draw to itself the best abilities and the finest characters that the services in India
can produce. ”
But all the services, imperial, provincial and subordinate, received
his constant attention, for he believed that by raising their standard
and tone "the contentment of the governed could be promoted”. In
this way only could the people be "affected in their homes”. He was
deeply concerned at “the interminable writing” which had grown up
in the administration and threatened “to extinguish all personality,
or initiative or dispatch, under mountains of manuscript and print” 3
It synchronised, he said, with the great development of communica-
tions, and more especially of the telegraph; in other words, it was the
product of modern centralisation. He claimed to have reduced the
total number of obligatory reports to government from nearly 1300
to a little over 1000 and the pages of letter-press and statistics from
35,400 to 20,000, "an immense saving of work to overburdened men
and no sacrifice of value in the reports themselves”. 4 First among
viceroys he tried to roll back this evei •advancing deluge, fully realising
that too much writing means too little reflection and far too little
1 The Report of the Public Service Commission, 1917, p. 330.
Colebrooke, Mountstuart Elphinstone, I, 22.
3 Raleigh, op. cit. p. 78; Ronaldshay, Curzon, 11, 62.
• Raleigh, op. cit. pp. 116–17.
> 3
## p. 375 (#413) ############################################
MILITARY OFFICERS IN BURMA
375
a
intercourse with the people. But in fact another incubus was bearing
heavily upon the judges, the district officers, and their assistants. The
multiplication of lawyers, the mounting files of cases, the prolonged
trials, were tying them to their desks. In Bengal especially, they
were in a grip which Lord Curzon did not shake, the grip of a
devouring machine. While, too, he was fully aware of the pernicious
effects of over-centralisation, his temperament, his close attention to
detail, his anxiety to strengthen every branch of the administration
to meet the onset of new forces, made him a centraliser. 3 One of his
most important administrative achievements was the reorganisation
of the agricultural department which he set on the path of fruitful
advance. The breadth of his sympathies is attested by a farewell
address from the clerks of the secretariat of the Government of India,
expressing warm gratitude because, while absorbed in the momentous
problems of state policy, he had never “lost an opportunity of
ameliorating the condition of the very large body of public servants
known by the general name of the uncovenanted service”.
His successor's government endeavoured to put an end to the
recruitment of military officers for civil posts in Burma. Such
recruitment had already ceased in other provinces, and was now
regarded as an anachronism at headquarters. This idea, however,
was vigorously disputed by the Government of Burma, which wrote
on 17 October, 1906:
The restriction of recruitment to members of the Indian Civil Service would no
doubt raise the level of academic qualifications. The lieutenant-governor is not
prepared to assent to the proposition that it would raise the intellectual level.
Officers of the Indian Army are gentlemen of education and selected officers of
that army are probably not deficient intellectually. Moreover pure intellect is not
the sole qualification required of administrators. Resource, force of character,
knowledge of and sympathy with the people, are also elements of value. In these
respects officers of the Indian Army have attained and are likely to attain a high
position. Sir Herbert White does not regard uniformity in itself as an object of
desire. On the contrary, he considers that diversity of gifts is an advantage. In
such a province as Burma, the work is o'' very varied nature and officers of diverse
qualifications can be utilised. An officer may be of exceptional value in a revenue
or judicial appointment, and yet be less well adapted thai: others for service in
Shan States or frontier districts. Similarly an officer may be capable of rendering
invaluable service in frontier tracts and yet be less suited than his comrades for
employment in settled districts. Even if uniformity were desirable, it had not been
found by experience that it is secured in the Indian Civil Service. . . . The limited
recruitment of military officers allowed by the present system has given to the
commission many officers of exceptional capacity and merít, and may be expected
in do so in future.
The soundness of these contentions was practically admitted by the
Government of India, which dropped the proposal.
From 1905 onwards circumstances gradually developed which
combined to lower the popularity of the Indian Civil Services among
1 Cf. Report of the Sedilion (Rowlatl) Committee, paragraph 172.
* Raleigh, op. cit. p. 487. See also p. 565.
• Ronaldshay, op. cit. II, 189, 193, 253.
.
## p. 376 (#414) ############################################
376 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
>
the youth of England. While work became more exacting and seemed
less likely to afford scope for initiative, the general price level which
had risen about 32 per cent. between 1894 and the period from 1905
to 1909 rose another 5 per cent. between 1910 and 1912. The political
barometer was unsteady, and the general outlook did not inspire the
buoyant confidence of former days. By degrees things slipped into a
position which led the under-secretary of state to suggest in the House
of Commons that the Indian Civil Service was only getting the leavings
of the Home Civil Service. 1 Meantime the interests of another pivot
service had been seriously menaced, for, anxious to foster the growth
of an independent medical profession in India by transferring to
private practitioners some of the posts then held by officers of the
Indian Medical Service and undeterred by a half-hearted and in-
conclusive reply from the governor-general in coincil,? Lord Morley
had ruled that the service must be gradually and increasingly manned
by independent medical practitioners recruited in India. The
governor-general in council then roused himself, consulted the local
governments, and replied that he had gravely “underestimated
objections” to the transfer of appointments which was contemplated.
He now considered that
the mere transfer of a certain number of government appointments from the Indian
Medical Service to private practitioners would not materially encourage the growth
of an independent medical profession; that most of the civil appointments then held
by the Indian Medical Service could not suitably be given to men not in regular
government service with whom private practice would necessarily be the first
consideration; and that the retention of a considerable number of superior civil
mcdical appointments for the Indian Medical Service was essential not only in the
interests of administrative efficiency, but also for the purpose of making the service
itself attractive to able medical men.
It was important to do nothing which would lower its attractiveness. 3
These views commended themselves to Morley's successor, Lord
Crewe; but the axe had been laia at the root of the tree. Already
rigid restrictions on private fees and practice had diminished the
attractions of a once flourishing service; independent Indian com-
petition was rapidly multiplying; and general circumstances,
already noticed, were affecting the British recruiting market. In
September, 1913, the secretary of state found himself compelled to
invite the assistance of the British Medical Association in his search
for remedies. The association drew up a memorandum which was laid
before the Public Services Commission appointed in 1912.
Two years earlier, on 17 March, 1911, a notable debate had taken
place in the imperial legislative council, on the motion of a non-
official member, which brought to a head the agitation which had
long been growing among politically-minded Indians for a larger
1 Hansard, xli, 30 July, 1912.
2 Report of the Medical Services Committee, 1919, pp. 13-15.
3 Idem.
## p. 377 (#415) ############################################
THE COMMISSION OF 1912
377
a
share in the public services. Once more the government resorted to
the old expedient, and on 5 September, 1912, appointed a new public
services commission under the chairmanship of Lord Islington. The
British element included Mr Ramsay Macdonald, Lord Ronaldshay
and Sir Valentine Chirol; the Indian, Mr Gokhale and Mr Justice
(now Sir) Abdur Rahim. The commission spent two winters in taking
a mass of evidence from Indians and Europeans all over India; but
in the words of Sir Valentine Chirol,
Its sittings, held except in very rare cases in public, served chiefly at the time to
stir up Indian opinion by bringing into sharp relief the profound divergencies
between the Indian and the Anglo-Indian point of view, and in a form which on
the one hand, unfortunately, was bound to offend Indian susceptibilities, and on
the other hand was apt to produce the impression that Indians were chiefly
concerned to substitute an indigenous for an alien bureaucracy. '
The report of the commission was ready in 1915, but for reasons
connected with the war was not published until 1917. Its conclusions
were treated as largely obsolete by the authors of the 1918 report on
constitutional reforms on the ground that a new dispensation had
since begun. The commissioners, however, had drawn a clear and
vivid picture of the conditions which governed the difficult questions
before them.
"All parties recognise the fact that we owe all our present material
and political progress to our connection with England: our future
depends on the stability of British rule in India. ” These words were
used by an Indian gentleman when addressing a political conference
in the autumn of 1914, and go far to explain the general attitude of
India throughout the war period. Yet the burden borne by the civil
services was a very heavy one.
Of those members of the imperial services who succeeded in
achieving the ambition of many and were : ermitted to join the army,
113 died on active service. The Indian Civil Service, the public works,
and the state railways contributed the largest number of officers for
military employment; but all spared as many as they could. Officers
of the Indian Medical Service in civil employ were freely recalled to
military duty and were replaced by Indian temporary captains and
lieutenants. So heavy was the demand for doctors that even as late
as April, 1919, there were 331 temporary medical officers serving
in India and 354 serving overseas. Recruits from England were
rarely available to fill vacancies among British civil servants caused
by illness or deputation to military duty. The rank and file who re-
mained were immersed in heavy routine duties and extra war-work.
Recruiting for the army, for bearer corps, labour corps and collection
of supplies, made heavy demands on the imperial, provincial and
subordinate civil services alike. When it is remembered that the total
1 India Old and New, p. 134. Cf. Sydenham, My Working Life, p. 229.
· Report of the Medical Services Committee, 1919, p. 26.
## p. 378 (#416) ############################################
378 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858–1918
a
of all ranks and personnel embarked at Bombay and Karachi during
the war period numbered 1,302,394, of whom 296,221 were British
and 1,006,173 were Indian, and that 172,815 horses, ponies, mules,
camels, draught bullocks and dairy cattle were sent overseas, it will
be realised that the effort to which the services contributed their share
was considerable. The provincial and subordinate services responded
readily to every call made on their energies, and 6112 of the latter were
permitted to undertake military duty.
Revolutionary conspiracy raised its head in the Panjab where it
was thwarted by prompt action, and in Bengal where it was repressed
for a while by strong measures in 1916. In 1917–18 political agitation
and outbreaks of communal animosity added to the anxieties of the
time. With the armistice our period closes. Since then constitutional
reforms and orders passed on the report of a fresh royal commission
have started the services on a new basis. Indianisation has proceeded
with rapid strides. Yet the spirit of the administration must remain
the same if it is to justify itself to the people of India. Six years ago
a leading Hindu nationalist observed in the imperial legislative
assembly
that wherever British administration had been established in
India “the domination of stronger over humbler or weaker com-
munities had been checked, put a stop to, prevented”. The watchword
of the British Government has in fact been help and fair-play for all.
Because they believed in this watchword officers of the old imperial
services never repented themselves of any effort or any trouble. Their
hearts were in their work. They were content with the purposes
for
which they were used. Amid many discouragements they preserved
intact that devotion to duty, that high sense of honour and integrity
which India will always require in her public services if she is really
to go on and prosper.
1 India (Nations of To-day series), p. 200. The figures were supplied by the India Office.
2 See India in 1924-5, pp. 65-6.
: The Honourable Partit Madan Mohan Malaviya on 16 February, 1926.
## p. 379 (#417) ############################################
CHAPTER XXI
LAW REFORM
The necessity for reform of the judicial system and of the law had
been recognised long before the transfer of the government of India
to the crown. As section 53 of the Charter Act of 1833 declared, it was
expedient that a general system of judicial establishments and police to which all
persons whatsoever, as well Europeans as natives, might be subject should be
established in the territories subject to the Company at an early period; and that
such laws as might be applicable in common to all classes of the inhabitants of the
said territories, due regard being had to the rights, feelings and peculiar usages of
the people, should be enacted.
This, so far as it related to the judicial system, was the natural result
of experience of the division of jurisdiction between the king's and the
Company's courts. In 1822 Sir Charles Grey, Chief Justice of Bengal,
had pointed out the “utter want of connection between the Supreme
Court and the provincial courts and the two sorts of legal process
which were employed in them”; and Sir Erskine Perry, Chief Justice
of Bombay, referred later to the strange anomaly in the juris-
prudential condition of British India which consists in the three capital
cities having systems of law different from those of the countries of
which they are the capitals”. The inconvenience and delay entailed
by the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts at the presidency towns over
Europeans outside them had been mitigated by the Charter Act of
1813.
covenanted officers of British descent were, like military officers,
employed alongside of covenanted civil servants. They were selected
either because the tracts in question were in a disturbed state and
unfit for methods of long-established administration, or on account
of their peculiar knowledge and experience. Except in matters of
pension they were treated practically on an equality with their
covenanted colleagues, but were debarred by the operation of the
statute of 1861 from holding the posts of secretary and junior secretary
to the local government and were in practice very seldom appointed
to the highest judicial offices. As the country became more and more
settled, the practice of appointing military and uncovenanted officers
to higher posts ordinarily held by covenanted civil servants fell into
disuse; and in 1876 it was definitely abandoned in the case of Oudh,
the Central Provinces, non-regulation areas in Bengal, and the North-
Western Provinces. It was abolished in Sind in 1885, in the Panjab
in 1903, and in Assam in 1907.
## p. 362 (#400) ############################################
362 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
A small minority of the large number of uncovenanted civil servants
held superior posts. The majority consisted of natives of India re-
cruited in the various provinces by the local governments under a
system of nomination, tempered in some cases by qualifying examina-
tions and probationary periods. Candidates for executive appoint-
ments had to possess minimum educational qualifications attested by
certificates of success in examinations conducted by universities or the
educational departments. Candidates for the judicial line had to be
either bachelors of law of some university or accredited pleaders or
advocates.
In 1853 it had been stated in the House of Commons that the
universal rule and practice in Indian administration was “native
agency and European superintendence". 1 This was still the practice
between 1858 and 1886; but all the time Western education was
spreading, and with its expansion was teaching Indians to feel their
way toward higher spheres and to complain because the ways of
approach were narrow.
An illuminating account of the early history of the police is con-
tained in the report of the commission appointed by Lord Curzon's
government in 1902. The organisation of the force in the various
provinces within our period was the result of a comprehensive
enquiry made in 1860 by a committee appointed by the Government
of India which embodied its recommendations, where approved, in
various acts of the governor-general's legislative council. The force
was to receive a semi-military training from its officers and was to be
subject to general control by the district magistrates and the local
governments. It was charged with the maintenance of law and order
and the detection of crimc. Its chief officers in each province would
be inspector-generals assisted by two or more deputics, and their
subordinates would be district superintendents and assistant super-
intendents. The force was soon established; the district superintendents
were invariably British, and in the more important charges were given
British assistant superintendents. For some years the higher grades
of the force were mainly recruited from the commissioned ranks of
the army; but this practice was repugnant to the military authorities,
and gradually gave place to recruitment in India by nomination. But
from the year 1893 the superior ranks were recruited mainly in
England by competitive examination for which Europeans alone were
eligible, and in a minor degree by appointments in India under a
combined system of nomination and examination which included
Indians. The age of admission in England was seventeen to nineteen.
Up to the year 1870 engineers for the public works department had
been furnished from the corps of the Royal Engineers, from civil
engineers appointed in England? after competitive examination or
1 Sir J. W. Hogg, Hansard, 3 June, 1853, CXXVIII, 1270.
2 Cf. Imperial Gazetteer of India, iv, 319.
## p. 363 (#401) ############################################
PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT
363
special selection, and from qualified students of Indian engineering
colleges. The Thomason College at Rurki, opened in 1848, began to
furnish engineers to the department in 1850. The Poona Civil En-
gineering College, established in 1854 for the education of subordinates
for the Bombay public works department, developed in 1865 into a
college of science at Poona affiliated to the Bombay. University and
educating candidates for an engineering degree. The Madras Civil
Engineering College, affiliated to the Madras University in 1877, also
prepared students for engineering degrees. In England the Royal
Engineering College at Cooper's Hill was established in 1871 for the
education of civil engineers for service in the Indian public works
department. The age of admission was seventeen to twenty-one, and
the course lasted three years. As students began to pass out of
Cooper's Hill in sufficient numbers, the recruitment of civil engineers
from other sources gradually ceased in England. In 1876 Lord
Salisbury, then secretary of state, wrote that, as the European portion
of the superior public works establishments was provided through
Cooper's Hill, the Indian engineering colleges might be regarded as
particularly intended for natives of India. Eventually it was decided
that of thirty recruits appointed in 1885, 1886 and 1887, nine were to
be taken from Indian colleges, fifteen from Cooper's Hill, and six from
the Royal Engineers.
The work of the public works department was distributed among
three branches: (a) “General” which was subdivided into “Roads
and Buildings" and "Irrigation”,(6) State Railways and (c) Accounts.
Each branch included an upper and a lower subordinate establishment.
The finance department was directly controlled by the Government
of India. Officers of its superior staff were liable for employment in
any province. The functions of the department were to bring to
account and audit the expenditure of all branches of the civil ad-
ministration and to deal with questions relating to paper currency,
loan operations and coinage. The nine accountants-general of pro-
vinces were treasurers of charitable endowments and responsible for
the proper check by officers of their department of the accounts of
such local bodies as district and municipal boards. They further
supervised the movements of funds from one district treasury to
another; and were themselves subordinate to a comptroller and
auditor-general. The whole superior staff of the department num-
bered 172. Below this staff were chief superintendents and chief
accountants. Up to the year 1899, while the higher posts were
generally filled by trained members of the Indian Civil Service, the
remainder were filled wholly in India. Then it was found that the
local supply of suitably qualified Europeans and Eurasians was in-
sufficient, and it was decided that at least four out of nine vacancies
should be filled by recruitment in England. In 1909 it was arranged
that half the vacancies should be reserved for natives of India.
## p. 364 (#402) ############################################
364 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858–1918
1
In 1847 Dr Gibson was appointed conservator of forests in Bombay,
and in 1856 Dr Cleghorn received a similar appointment in Madras;
but although both these officers impressed on their governments the
physical value of the forests and the necessity of carefully preventing
denudation of the hills in the interest of the water supply of the
country, forest conservancy was for some time regarded mainly as a
direct source of revenue to the state. After the annexation of Pegu,
however, Lord Dalhousie, seeing that fine forests stood in danger of
reckless spoliation by private individuals, inaugurated a preventive
policy. In 1856 Dietrich Brandis was summoned from Germany to
be superintendent of forests in Pegu and remained there till 1862,
organising forest management. He was then placed on special duty
to do the same in India, and in 1864 was appointed inspector-general
of forests to the central government. To him and to his successors and
pupils, Schlich and Ribbentrop, is due primarily the credit of or-
ganising the forest department, and the introduction of methods of
management adopted from the best European schools.
In 1865 the first Indian Forest Act was planned to provide for the
protection and efficient management of the government forests. In
1866 Brandis proceeded to England to arrange for the recruitment of
forest officers who were to be trained in the schools of France and
Germany, where scientific forestry was far more advanced than it was
in England. From 1885 to 1905 forest probationers studied at Cooper's
Hill, supplementing their courses by continental tours. Up to 1905
they were selected by competitive examination; but from 1905 on-
ward, candidates for examination failing, appointments were made
by a selection committee appointed by the India Office. The forest
department was controlled by conservators (chief officers of provinces
or parts of provinces), deputy-conservators in charge of forest divisions,
and assistant conservators of two grades in charge of forest subdivisions.
All these officers were British and under them was an Indian executive
staff consisting of sub-assistant conscrvators, rangers, foresters and
forest guards. The management of forests was committed to the local
governments, but the head of the department was the inspector-
general for the Government of India.
The growth of the department of public instruction has already
been traced. The control of other departments (jail, postal, tele-
graphs, survey, salt, excise, opium, meteorological, registration,
archaeological, customs, mint, geological survey, agricultural) rested
in British hands. Generally speaking these departments were recruited
in India; but they were often presided over by an officer selected from
one of the services recruited in England. We must pass on to that
distinguished service which has been truly called the pivot of all the
others. 3
1 Imp. Gaz. 11, 107-8.
2 P. 336, supra.
3 Speech by Mr Montagu to the British Medical Association.
## p. 365 (#403) ############################################
INDIAN MEDICAL SERVICE
365
>
The Indian Medical Service was primarily military, but lent a large
proportion of its officers to the civil administration. In times of
emergency these officers could be recalled to military duty; and
during the war few were left in civil employ. Medical officers in civil
employ were responsible for the administration and inspection of the
hospitals and dispensaries established in every district, for medico-
legal work connected with the administration of justice, for attendance
on government servants and for examination of candidates for public
employment. They were also responsible for jails and the care of the
public health. Each province possessed its inspector-general of civil
hospitals or surgeon-general, and its inspector-general of jails, who
were always selected officers of the Indian Medical Service. These
provincial chiefs worked under the local governments, subject to the
supervision of a director-general who was posted to the headquarters
of the central government. Under the inspectors-general of civil
hospitals and surgeons-general were the “civil surgeons”, one of
whom in each district presided over a staff of assistant and sub-assistant
surgeons. Working mainly through these civil surgeons, the Indian
Medical Service not only gallantly combated many a devastating
epidemic, but educated India in the preservation of public health and
in the theory and practice of Western medicine. Its officers have
prevented immeasurable suffering and saved countless lives. “No less
than 34 have gained the blue ribbon of the scientific world, the
fellowship of the Royal Society. "1
The statutory civil service had proved a failure as a means of
admitting Indians to the higher services. It seemed probable that as
years went on and contact between India and England increased,
more Indians would enter the civil service through the door of the
competitive examination in London. As regards British personnel,
the competitive system had proved a conspicuous success. The average
yearly number of candidates had fallen decidedly after 1870, partly
perhaps in consequence of the legislation of that year already men-
tioned, but principally because from 1871 onwards an examination
fee of £5 was demanded of every candidate. Up to that year no fee
had been claimed. In their seventeenth annual report the civil service
commissioners stated that the diminution was "not so much in the
class of competitors as in the number, previously considerable, of
those who presented themselves without sufficient preparation to
warrant any hope of success”. In 1878 the maximum limit of age for
admission was reduced to nineteen, and the probationary period was
fixed at two years to be spent in some university or college approved
by the secretary of state. The object of the change was to bring selected
candidates earlier to their life's work. All along the question was how
to attract the best men possible and how best to fit them for active
duties. It was, however, soon apparent that the lower age limits
Report of the Committee on the reorganisation of the Indian Medical Services, 1919, p. 19.
1
## p. 366 (#404) ############################################
366 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858–1918
1
2
0
10
2
20
1
pressed hardly on Indian candidates, and the age was raised to 21-23
from 1892 to 1905, and to 22–24 from 1906 onwards. When the last
change was made the examination was amalgamated with that for
the home civil service, successful candidates being allowed to state
their preference for either. Throughout the period 1871 to 1914 the
total number of competitors remained fairly constant while the Indian
contingent increased very slowly, as is evident from the following
figures:
Indian Successful
Year
Vacancies Candidates candidates Indians
1870
40
332
7.
1880
27
182
1890
47
205
5
1900
52
213
17
1910
60
184
1914
53
183
26
7
The highest number of candidates in any year between 1871 and 1914
was 237 for 68 vacancies in 1897. 1
In December, 1885, the first Indian National Congress met at
Bombay and demanded that simultaneous examinations should be
established in India and in England for admission to the covenanted
civil service. The demand arose from the Hindu and Parsi pro-
fessional and literary classes. The Muhammadans, as a community,
were for years strongly opposed to it. Conscious of their inferiority
to the Hindus in numbers, wealth and education, they regarded the
congress as aiming in fact at the establishment of a Hindu monopoly
of posts and power. Sayyid Ahmad, their leader, expressed his views
in trenchant language:
If government want to give over the internal rule of the country from its own
hands into those of the people of India, then we will present a petition that, before
doing so, she pass a law of competitive examination, namely that that nation which
passes first in this competition be given the rule of the country; but that in this
competition we be given the pen of our ancestors which is in fact the true pen for
writing the decrees of sovereignty. 2
In order to find a solution for the problem Lord Dufferin's govern-
ment in 1886 appointed a public services commission under Sir Charles
Aitchison, lieutenant-governor of the Panjab. The fifteen members
included four Hindu and two Muhammadan gentlemen of high status.
Of the British members five belonged to the covenanted civil service,
one to the uncovenanted civil service, two were British non-officials,
and one had been chief justice of the Madras High Court of Judica-
ture. Broadly speaking, the object of this commission was to devise
a scheme which might reasonably be "hoped to possess the necessary
elements of finality and to do full justice to the claims of natives of
1 I am indebted to the civil service commissioners for this information.
Speeches and letters of Sir Saiyid Ahmad, Pioneer Press, Allahabad, 1888; Mahmud,
British Education in India, chap. xxx.
## p. 367 (#405) ############################################
THE PUBLIC SERVICES COMMISSION 367
India to higher and more extensive employment in the public service”.
The commission rejected the idea of altering the system of admission
to the covenanted civil service. It had been understood that the
entrance examination was to bear a distinctly English character, and
to constitute a test of English qualifications. The most natural ar-
rangement, therefore, was that this examination should be held in
England, the centre of the educational system on which it was based.
The commission advised abolition of the system of filling appoint-
ments by means of the statutory civil service which had failed to fulfil
the expectations anticipated from it and was "condemned for suffi-
ciently good reasons not only by particular sections of the native
community but also by the very large majority of officials, both
European and native, who had enjoyed practical experience of its
workings”. The attempt to confine the selection to young men of rank
and to attract to the service men combining high social position with
the requisite educational and intellectual qualifications had failed.
A similar result would almost necessarily follow upon any attempt
"to engraft on a superior and imported service recruited in such a
manner as to secure the highest possible English qualifications a
system based on other principles and designed to meet a wholly
different object”. The commission proposed to reduce the list of
scheduled posts reserved by the act of 1861 for members of the
covenanted civil service and to transfer a certain number of these
posts to a local service which would be called "the provincial civil
service” and would be separately recruited in every province.
Appointments to the transferred judicial posts would be on account
of merit and ability proved either in the public service or in practice
at the Indian bar; appointments to executive offices would be on
account of exceptional merit and ability already shown in the public
service. The services would no longer be termed covenanted and
uncovenanted but imperial and provincial. Below the provincial
service would be a “subordinate civil service" from which it would
be partly recruited. But its executive branch would also be recruited
by competitive examination, wherever not inexpedient, and its
judicial branch would be largely filled by selected barristers, advocates
or pleaders. The salaries of members of the provincial civil service
would be fixed on independent grounds, and would have no relation
to those attached to appointments in the imperial civil service. The
commission suggested the formation, where possible, of a provincial
branch in each department of the public service, public works, police,
forests and the rest. Substantial effect was given to this scheme, the
secretary of state directing that the covenanted civil service should be
known in future as "the Civil Service of India" and that each branch
of the provincial civil service should be called by the name of the
particular province to which it belonged. A certain proportion of
· Dispatch, 12 September, 1889.
## p. 368 (#406) ############################################
368 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858–1918
public offices reserved for the civil service of India and afterwards
termed “listed posts”, would in each province be entered on a list as
open to the new provincial service. Rules must be framed and issued,
under sanction of the secretary of state, which would empower local
governments to bestow any listed post upon a native of India. All this
was done; and the local governments were ordered to fill one-sixth
of the offices hitherto reserved for the Indian Civil Service with
provincial servants when the claims of existing statutory civil servants
had been satisfied. The number of civil servants recruited in England
had already been reduced so as not to fill more than five-sixths of the
reserved appointments. After consulting the local governments the
Government of India decided to list ninety-three posts, this figure being
considered suitable for meeting reasonable requirements. It would
be worked up to after satisfying the claims of officers already in the
service and would be liable to expansion.
Thirty years later another public services commission stated that
the reforms recommended by their predecessors in 1886, while failing
to satisfy Indian aspirations for employment of the higher type, "had
undoubtedly resulted in a great improvement in the standard of every
service”. Generally speaking, officers promoted from the provincial
civil services to hold Indian Civil Service posts had done efficient
work. But
the inferiority of status and social position which had always been attached to the
provincial services, aggravated to some extent by subsequent changes, had been
felt by the Indian public as a real grievance, particularly in the case of the more
important services such as the civil, educational and public works.
The Government of India had just completed reorganisation of the
public services in accordance with the orders finally passed on the
recommendations of the commission of 1886–7, when on 22 June,
1893, they were requested by Lord Kimberley, then secretary of state,
to consider a resolution passed by the House of Commons on the 2nd
of that month in favour of the establishment of simultaneous examina-
tions in England and India for admission to the Indian Civil Service,
all competitors “to be finally classed in one list according to merit”.
In transmitting the resolution to India, Lord Kimberley pointed out
the necessity of always retaining an adequate number of Europeans
in the service. Lord Lansdowne's government replied on the ist of
the following November, after consulting the provincial administra-
tions. Their letter, which was laid before parliament, dealt fully and
frankly with the important issues involved. Quoting the opinions of
notable administrators, they maintained that material reduction of
the European staff then employed was incompatible with the safety
of British rule.
1 Parl. Papers, 1894, Accounts (10), 1x, 1-110.
## p. 369 (#407) ############################################
SIMULTANEOUS EXAMINATIONS
369
Sir Charles Crosthwaite, lieutenant-governor of the North-Western
Provinces, had observed:
It is a great mistake to suppose that British India has arrived at a stage where
nothing but smooth progress need be anticipated, or to think that the principles of
law and order have penetrated the minds of the people so deeply that the English
element in the civil government may be safely diminished. We know little of what
is below the surface; but we know enough, even without the teaching of recent
events here, in Bombay, and in Rangoon,
to be sure that this is not a true estimate
of the situation. It is instructive to observe that during the late riots in Bombay
native papers like the Hindu Patriot, while demanding in one column a larger share
of administrative appointments for their fellow-countrymen, were calling out in
another column of the same issue against the government for not having more
European police officers in Bombay. What is desired by them is that the British
Government should hold the country, while they administer it. "
The writer laid stress on the existence of strong Muhammadan
opposition to any such arrangement. Sir Dennis Fitzpatrick,
lieutenant-governor of the Panjab, had said:
British rule brought this country out of a state of chaos, the horrors of which it
would be difficult for a stay-at-home resident of Europe in the nineteenth century
adequately to realise, and if the grasp of the British power were relaxed even for
a brief moment over any part of the country, chaos with all its horrors would come
again. Englishmen, even Englishmen who spend their lives in India, are not given
to reflecting much on this; and I doubt whether many natives of the country
nowadays think of it though it was a good deal present to the minds of the people
of the Punjab when I first came to India. The fact is that we have now had 35 years
of internal peace unbroken except by petty local disturbances, and we have begun
to flatter ourselves into the belief that our position in this country is absolutely
unassailable; but as a matter of fact it is not so. It is, and always will be, liable to
disastrous shocks from which it might take a long time to recover; and although
this is not a p. easant subject of reflection to us, with our national vanity and our
tendency to optimism, the more completely we realise it the better.
The writer pointed out that apart from the danger of religious riots
there were always to be found in many parts of India predatory classes
ready to break out whenever British administration might be tem-
porarily relaxed or British control disorganised. He observed that it
was a mistake to suppose that the substitution of Indian for British
administrators would be popular with the masses; its popularity
would be limited to the advanced Indians, a small fraction of the
population.
Lord Lansdowne's government reported that the government of
Madras alone advocated the principle of the resolution, observing that
in special emergencies, local disturbances and the like, Indians en-
tering the civil service might possibly be found wanting, but the mis-
chief thus arising could in present circumstances quickly be repaired.
“This”, said the Government of India, “might represent the state of
things in the tranquil province of Madras, but the conditions of other
parts of India were far different. " They went on to urge that a
i Parl. Papers, 1894, Accounts (10), LX, 39.
2 Idem, pp. 42-55. Cf. Mahmud, History of English Education in India, pp. 182–7.
24
>
CHIVI
## p. 370 (#408) ############################################
370 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858–1918
system of unrestricted competition in examination would not only
dangerously weaken the British element in the civil service but would
also practically exclude from the service Muhammadans, Sikhs and
other races accustomed to rule by tradition and possessed of excep-
tional strength of character, but deficient in literary education. The
natives, moreover, of one part of India would from their dispositions,
ways and habits, be ill-fitted to discharge the duties of civil officers in
another part. As far as Indians generally were concerned, probation
by actual employment formed a competitive examination of the best
kind. Much misapprehension apparently prevailed as to the extent
to which natives of India were already employed in responsible
executive and judicial offices. Taking the years 1870, 1881 and 1893
as convenient points from which the progress of the scheme for the
more liberal employment of Indians could be reviewed, the first
because it was thc year when recruitment for the Indian Civil Service
was reduced by one-sixth, the following figures were significant:
1870
890
1881
900
221
1893
898
331
216
The Covenanted Civil Service
(1) Covenanted Civilians
(2) Military, Uncovenanted and Statutory Civilians
Total
The Provincial Service
(1) Executive Branch
(2) Judicial Branch
I 221
I121
1114
.
::
: :
576
583
726
679
. . .
Total
1030
797
1827
1908
1159
1405
1368
The Subordinate Service
962
. . .
It must be remembered that between 1881 and 1893 the annexation
of Upper Burma had entailed a considerable demand for covenanted
officers, and that the inevitable increase of public business which had
occurred in twenty-three years had called for reinforcements in almost
every branch of the administration; yet the whole strength of the
covenanted service (including military and uncovenanted and
"statutory” civilians, holding covenanted posts) was now seven less
than in the former year and 107 less than in 1870. The number of
covenanted civil servants would have been further reduced but for
a process, which had been going on since 1870, of substituting, in
the interests of greater efficiency, covenanted for military and un-
covenanted officers in the non-regulation provinces. The European
service was now at its minimum strength, and no further reduction
would be practicable for some years to come. In the event, however,
of experience showing that in any province, at any time, the number
of high Indian officers might safely be increased, the best course would
be to proceed under the statute of 1870 and on the lines of the changes
recently accomplished. Seventy-four of the 898 covenanted civil
il. c. Imperial.
## p. 371 (#409) ############################################
EXCHANGE COMPENSATION
371
servants were employed in special departments not concerned with
the general judicial and executive administration of the country;
ninety-three covenanted posts had just been assigned to the provincial
service; thus the cadre of posts at present reserved for Indian civil
servants and military officers was only 731. In the frontier provinces,
the Panjab, Burma and Assam, one-fourth of the covenanted posts
were reserved for military officers of special experience. On the
quality of this small number of men depended the quiet and orderly
government of 217} millions of people, inhabiting 943,000 square
miles of territory. Upon these men, and not immediately on military
force, British rule rested. 1
The views expressed in this dispatch prevailed with Her Majesty's
government. The secretary of state, Mr H. H. Fowler, decided that
by far the best way of meeting the legitimate claims and aspirations
of Indians was to bestow such of the higher posts as could be made
available for them “on those who distinguish themselves by their
capacity and trustworthiness in the performance of subordinate
duties". There were insuperable objections to the establishment of a
system of simultaneous examinations. 2
Early in the ’nineties an increasing fall in the exchange value of the
rupee necessitated the consideration of measures for the reform of the
currency and inflicted considerable hardship upon European officers
in the imperial services. In 1893 the government of Lord Lansdowne,
with the consent of the secretary of state, deciding that a remedy must
be applied, ordered that exchange compensation allowance should
be paid to every European and Anglo-Indian officer of the govern-
ment, not being a statutory native of India, to be calculated on the
difference between the gold value of half his salary at the market rate
of exchange and its value at a privileged rate, which for the time was
fixed at is. 6d. per rupee, and was limited to a sum not exceeding in
any quarter the amount of rupees by which £250 converted at the
privileged rate fell short of the equivalent of £250 converted at a
market rate.
In time the exchange value of the rupee settled down to
IS. 4d. approximately, so the concession represented an addition of
6} per cent. to all salaries of Rs. 2222 a month and under. To salaries
in excess of this amount a fixed monthly addition of Rs. 138. 14. 3
was made. The whole arrangement went some way, but only some
way, to relieve the growing difficulties which a falling rupee and rising
prices were bringing to those numerous servants of the government
who were under the necessity of making regular remittances to England
for the maintenance of their families.
In the period 1894-1905 the work of the services became increasingly
complex and arduous. The population of India was fast rising; trade
and commerce were growing; education was extending; contact with
England was increasing; political agitation was beginning to produce
i Parl. Papers, 1894, Accounts (10), LX, 5-6. : Public Dispatch, 19 April, 1894.
24-2
## p. 372 (#410) ############################################
372 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858–1918
unrest. India was visited with devastating plague epidemics and
attacked by three famines, one resulting from a drought of an extent
and intensity unknown for two centuries. The services responded
keenly to the needs of difficult occasions and to the quickening in-
fluence of Lord Curzon's ardent spirit.
He regarded police reform as one of the most urgent needs of
Indian administration". 1 With the approval of the secretary of state,
his government on 9 July, 1902, appointed a commission which was
presided over by the late Sir Andrew Fraser and reported on 30 May,
1903, that throughout India the police-force was in a most unsatis-
factory condition and that abuses were common everywhere, in-
volving injury to the people and discredit to the government. Radical
reforms were urgently necessary and would be costly because the
department had hitherto been starved.
The commissioners unanimously recommended that the pay of all
ranks should be raised. It was impossible to expect honest and faithful
service from low-paid inspectors and constables subject to great
temptations. It was equally futile to attract high-class recruits from
England for the higher grades, by the offer of meagre salaries and
prospects. After considering this and other beneficial suggestions, the
Government of India decreed on 21 March, 1905, that in future the
force should consist of an imperial branch recruited in Europe and
provincial branches recruited in India. The former would be known
as the "Indian Police Service". It was intended for supervision and
would contain only so many officers as were required to fill the
superintendentships of the districts and posts of equivalent or higher
standing, and to supply a leave and training reserve of assistant super-
intendents. Provincial services of deputy-superintendents would be
recruited to carry on the less important duties of administration.
Promotion from them to superintendentships in the Indian Police
Service would
only be given as a reward for special merit to selected
individuals. The ordinary method of recruitment for the Indian
Police Service would be by competitive examination in London.
Candidates must be above nineteen and under twenty-one years of
age. Every candidate must be a British subject of European descent,
and at the time of his birth his father must have been a British subject
either natural-born or naturalised in the United Kingdom. In ex-
ceptional cases, on the special recommendation of a local government,
the governor-general in council could make direct appointments to
the police service from amongst Europeans domiciled in India, in-
cluding those of mixed descent, subject to the condition that the
candidate put forward had attained an adequate standard of educa-
tional qualifications. This power, however, was seldom exercised.
Candidates successful in the competitive examination in England
would leave that country at once for India where they would undergo
1 Fourth Budget Speech, Raleigh, Curzon in India, p. 104.
## p. 373 (#411) ############################################
POLICE REFORM
373
O
two years of probation and training. After successfully passing through
this ordeal they would be posted to district work.
The police-force and its armed reserves were increased, in order to
render them more capable of preserving internal peace if the country
were at war. A “Department of Criminal Intelligence” was created
which was charged with the duty of investigating special forms of
crime, including political offences, and took the place of the obsolete
“Thagi and Dacoity Department”. When speaking on his last budget,
Lord Curzon summed up his ideas and answered his critics in these
words:
There is entered in the budget the sum of 50 lakhs for police reform. That is only
an instalment and a beginning. We accept with slight modifications the full recom-
mendation of the committee and we intend to carry out their programme. We
want a police force which is free from the temptation to corruption and iniquity,
and whích must therefore be reasonably well paid, which must be intelligent, and
orderly and efficient, and which will make its motto protection instead of oppression.
I confess that my heart breaks within me when I see long diatribes upon how many
natives are getting employment under the new system and how many Europeans.
The police force in India must be an overwhelmingly native force; and I would
make it representative of the best elements in native character and native life.
Equally must it have a European supervising element, and let this also be of the
best. But do not let us proceed to reckon one against the other, and contend as to
who loses and who gains. The sole object of all of us ought to be the good of the
country and the protection of the people.
Seven years later the police were again the subject of special
enquiry. The verdict of another public services commission, whose
report was published in 1917, was that the police reforms of 1905 had
been “on the whole successful, but that hardly sufficient time had
elapsed thoroughly to test their cfficiency". Within these seven years,
however, in various provinces, the police of all ranks had been called
to deal with subterranean revolutionary conspiracy and had acquitted
themselves remarkably well.
Early in his viceroyalty Lord Curzon took charge of the public
works department in order to obtain a grasp of the business. He then
decided to set up a Railway Board “as the indispensable condition of
business-like management and quick and intelligent control”. The
board was established in 1905, and the railway branch of the public
works department was abolished; but public works and railway
engineers were still recruited through the same agency. In the public
works department there were henceforth two main sections, onc con-
cerned with schemes of irrigation and the other with the construction,
repair and maintenance of roads, buildings and bridges. Public
works and railways included an imperial and a provincial service,
both of which were in times of pressure assisted by temporary en-
gineers recruited for the most part in India. In 1906 the residential
engineering college which had been established at Cooper's Hill in
1873 was abolished, as an unnecessary expense, for it appeared that
! Raleigh, op. cit. p. 160.
## p. 374 (#412) ############################################
374 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
recruits might be obtained from the other engineering institutions of
Great Britain. From that time appointments to the superior en-
gineering establishments of the public works and railway department
were made on the nomination of the secretary of state, with the advice
of a specially constituted selection committee. Candidates were
between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-four, and must produce
evidence of superior qualifications. "
The separate organisation for the accounts work of the public works
department was in 1910 amalgamated with the civil accounts branch
of the Indian finance department.
Lord Curzon's interest in the services was by no means confined to
the police and the public works department. By his indomitable
energy, by his personal example, by his thorough-going sympathy, he
did far more for the services generally than any other viceroy had
ever done. His special care was for the political department which
contained separate cadres for military and civil officers, and is the
direct successor of “the diplomatic line"? in which Mountstuart
Elphinstone and other servants of the East India Company, civil and
military, won their spurs. In Lord Curzon's words:
“There is no more varied or responsible service in the world. At one moment
the political may be grinding in the Foreign Office, at anothur he may be required
to stiffen the adıninistration of a backward native state, at a third he may be
presiding over a jirga of unruly tribesmen on the frontier, at a fourth he may be
demarcating a boundary amid the wilds of Tibet or the sands of Seistan. ” “I hope”,
he added, " that the time may never come when the political department will cease
to draw to itself the best abilities and the finest characters that the services in India
can produce. ”
But all the services, imperial, provincial and subordinate, received
his constant attention, for he believed that by raising their standard
and tone "the contentment of the governed could be promoted”. In
this way only could the people be "affected in their homes”. He was
deeply concerned at “the interminable writing” which had grown up
in the administration and threatened “to extinguish all personality,
or initiative or dispatch, under mountains of manuscript and print” 3
It synchronised, he said, with the great development of communica-
tions, and more especially of the telegraph; in other words, it was the
product of modern centralisation. He claimed to have reduced the
total number of obligatory reports to government from nearly 1300
to a little over 1000 and the pages of letter-press and statistics from
35,400 to 20,000, "an immense saving of work to overburdened men
and no sacrifice of value in the reports themselves”. 4 First among
viceroys he tried to roll back this evei •advancing deluge, fully realising
that too much writing means too little reflection and far too little
1 The Report of the Public Service Commission, 1917, p. 330.
Colebrooke, Mountstuart Elphinstone, I, 22.
3 Raleigh, op. cit. p. 78; Ronaldshay, Curzon, 11, 62.
• Raleigh, op. cit. pp. 116–17.
> 3
## p. 375 (#413) ############################################
MILITARY OFFICERS IN BURMA
375
a
intercourse with the people. But in fact another incubus was bearing
heavily upon the judges, the district officers, and their assistants. The
multiplication of lawyers, the mounting files of cases, the prolonged
trials, were tying them to their desks. In Bengal especially, they
were in a grip which Lord Curzon did not shake, the grip of a
devouring machine. While, too, he was fully aware of the pernicious
effects of over-centralisation, his temperament, his close attention to
detail, his anxiety to strengthen every branch of the administration
to meet the onset of new forces, made him a centraliser. 3 One of his
most important administrative achievements was the reorganisation
of the agricultural department which he set on the path of fruitful
advance. The breadth of his sympathies is attested by a farewell
address from the clerks of the secretariat of the Government of India,
expressing warm gratitude because, while absorbed in the momentous
problems of state policy, he had never “lost an opportunity of
ameliorating the condition of the very large body of public servants
known by the general name of the uncovenanted service”.
His successor's government endeavoured to put an end to the
recruitment of military officers for civil posts in Burma. Such
recruitment had already ceased in other provinces, and was now
regarded as an anachronism at headquarters. This idea, however,
was vigorously disputed by the Government of Burma, which wrote
on 17 October, 1906:
The restriction of recruitment to members of the Indian Civil Service would no
doubt raise the level of academic qualifications. The lieutenant-governor is not
prepared to assent to the proposition that it would raise the intellectual level.
Officers of the Indian Army are gentlemen of education and selected officers of
that army are probably not deficient intellectually. Moreover pure intellect is not
the sole qualification required of administrators. Resource, force of character,
knowledge of and sympathy with the people, are also elements of value. In these
respects officers of the Indian Army have attained and are likely to attain a high
position. Sir Herbert White does not regard uniformity in itself as an object of
desire. On the contrary, he considers that diversity of gifts is an advantage. In
such a province as Burma, the work is o'' very varied nature and officers of diverse
qualifications can be utilised. An officer may be of exceptional value in a revenue
or judicial appointment, and yet be less well adapted thai: others for service in
Shan States or frontier districts. Similarly an officer may be capable of rendering
invaluable service in frontier tracts and yet be less suited than his comrades for
employment in settled districts. Even if uniformity were desirable, it had not been
found by experience that it is secured in the Indian Civil Service. . . . The limited
recruitment of military officers allowed by the present system has given to the
commission many officers of exceptional capacity and merít, and may be expected
in do so in future.
The soundness of these contentions was practically admitted by the
Government of India, which dropped the proposal.
From 1905 onwards circumstances gradually developed which
combined to lower the popularity of the Indian Civil Services among
1 Cf. Report of the Sedilion (Rowlatl) Committee, paragraph 172.
* Raleigh, op. cit. p. 487. See also p. 565.
• Ronaldshay, op. cit. II, 189, 193, 253.
.
## p. 376 (#414) ############################################
376 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
>
the youth of England. While work became more exacting and seemed
less likely to afford scope for initiative, the general price level which
had risen about 32 per cent. between 1894 and the period from 1905
to 1909 rose another 5 per cent. between 1910 and 1912. The political
barometer was unsteady, and the general outlook did not inspire the
buoyant confidence of former days. By degrees things slipped into a
position which led the under-secretary of state to suggest in the House
of Commons that the Indian Civil Service was only getting the leavings
of the Home Civil Service. 1 Meantime the interests of another pivot
service had been seriously menaced, for, anxious to foster the growth
of an independent medical profession in India by transferring to
private practitioners some of the posts then held by officers of the
Indian Medical Service and undeterred by a half-hearted and in-
conclusive reply from the governor-general in coincil,? Lord Morley
had ruled that the service must be gradually and increasingly manned
by independent medical practitioners recruited in India. The
governor-general in council then roused himself, consulted the local
governments, and replied that he had gravely “underestimated
objections” to the transfer of appointments which was contemplated.
He now considered that
the mere transfer of a certain number of government appointments from the Indian
Medical Service to private practitioners would not materially encourage the growth
of an independent medical profession; that most of the civil appointments then held
by the Indian Medical Service could not suitably be given to men not in regular
government service with whom private practice would necessarily be the first
consideration; and that the retention of a considerable number of superior civil
mcdical appointments for the Indian Medical Service was essential not only in the
interests of administrative efficiency, but also for the purpose of making the service
itself attractive to able medical men.
It was important to do nothing which would lower its attractiveness. 3
These views commended themselves to Morley's successor, Lord
Crewe; but the axe had been laia at the root of the tree. Already
rigid restrictions on private fees and practice had diminished the
attractions of a once flourishing service; independent Indian com-
petition was rapidly multiplying; and general circumstances,
already noticed, were affecting the British recruiting market. In
September, 1913, the secretary of state found himself compelled to
invite the assistance of the British Medical Association in his search
for remedies. The association drew up a memorandum which was laid
before the Public Services Commission appointed in 1912.
Two years earlier, on 17 March, 1911, a notable debate had taken
place in the imperial legislative council, on the motion of a non-
official member, which brought to a head the agitation which had
long been growing among politically-minded Indians for a larger
1 Hansard, xli, 30 July, 1912.
2 Report of the Medical Services Committee, 1919, pp. 13-15.
3 Idem.
## p. 377 (#415) ############################################
THE COMMISSION OF 1912
377
a
share in the public services. Once more the government resorted to
the old expedient, and on 5 September, 1912, appointed a new public
services commission under the chairmanship of Lord Islington. The
British element included Mr Ramsay Macdonald, Lord Ronaldshay
and Sir Valentine Chirol; the Indian, Mr Gokhale and Mr Justice
(now Sir) Abdur Rahim. The commission spent two winters in taking
a mass of evidence from Indians and Europeans all over India; but
in the words of Sir Valentine Chirol,
Its sittings, held except in very rare cases in public, served chiefly at the time to
stir up Indian opinion by bringing into sharp relief the profound divergencies
between the Indian and the Anglo-Indian point of view, and in a form which on
the one hand, unfortunately, was bound to offend Indian susceptibilities, and on
the other hand was apt to produce the impression that Indians were chiefly
concerned to substitute an indigenous for an alien bureaucracy. '
The report of the commission was ready in 1915, but for reasons
connected with the war was not published until 1917. Its conclusions
were treated as largely obsolete by the authors of the 1918 report on
constitutional reforms on the ground that a new dispensation had
since begun. The commissioners, however, had drawn a clear and
vivid picture of the conditions which governed the difficult questions
before them.
"All parties recognise the fact that we owe all our present material
and political progress to our connection with England: our future
depends on the stability of British rule in India. ” These words were
used by an Indian gentleman when addressing a political conference
in the autumn of 1914, and go far to explain the general attitude of
India throughout the war period. Yet the burden borne by the civil
services was a very heavy one.
Of those members of the imperial services who succeeded in
achieving the ambition of many and were : ermitted to join the army,
113 died on active service. The Indian Civil Service, the public works,
and the state railways contributed the largest number of officers for
military employment; but all spared as many as they could. Officers
of the Indian Medical Service in civil employ were freely recalled to
military duty and were replaced by Indian temporary captains and
lieutenants. So heavy was the demand for doctors that even as late
as April, 1919, there were 331 temporary medical officers serving
in India and 354 serving overseas. Recruits from England were
rarely available to fill vacancies among British civil servants caused
by illness or deputation to military duty. The rank and file who re-
mained were immersed in heavy routine duties and extra war-work.
Recruiting for the army, for bearer corps, labour corps and collection
of supplies, made heavy demands on the imperial, provincial and
subordinate civil services alike. When it is remembered that the total
1 India Old and New, p. 134. Cf. Sydenham, My Working Life, p. 229.
· Report of the Medical Services Committee, 1919, p. 26.
## p. 378 (#416) ############################################
378 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858–1918
a
of all ranks and personnel embarked at Bombay and Karachi during
the war period numbered 1,302,394, of whom 296,221 were British
and 1,006,173 were Indian, and that 172,815 horses, ponies, mules,
camels, draught bullocks and dairy cattle were sent overseas, it will
be realised that the effort to which the services contributed their share
was considerable. The provincial and subordinate services responded
readily to every call made on their energies, and 6112 of the latter were
permitted to undertake military duty.
Revolutionary conspiracy raised its head in the Panjab where it
was thwarted by prompt action, and in Bengal where it was repressed
for a while by strong measures in 1916. In 1917–18 political agitation
and outbreaks of communal animosity added to the anxieties of the
time. With the armistice our period closes. Since then constitutional
reforms and orders passed on the report of a fresh royal commission
have started the services on a new basis. Indianisation has proceeded
with rapid strides. Yet the spirit of the administration must remain
the same if it is to justify itself to the people of India. Six years ago
a leading Hindu nationalist observed in the imperial legislative
assembly
that wherever British administration had been established in
India “the domination of stronger over humbler or weaker com-
munities had been checked, put a stop to, prevented”. The watchword
of the British Government has in fact been help and fair-play for all.
Because they believed in this watchword officers of the old imperial
services never repented themselves of any effort or any trouble. Their
hearts were in their work. They were content with the purposes
for
which they were used. Amid many discouragements they preserved
intact that devotion to duty, that high sense of honour and integrity
which India will always require in her public services if she is really
to go on and prosper.
1 India (Nations of To-day series), p. 200. The figures were supplied by the India Office.
2 See India in 1924-5, pp. 65-6.
: The Honourable Partit Madan Mohan Malaviya on 16 February, 1926.
## p. 379 (#417) ############################################
CHAPTER XXI
LAW REFORM
The necessity for reform of the judicial system and of the law had
been recognised long before the transfer of the government of India
to the crown. As section 53 of the Charter Act of 1833 declared, it was
expedient that a general system of judicial establishments and police to which all
persons whatsoever, as well Europeans as natives, might be subject should be
established in the territories subject to the Company at an early period; and that
such laws as might be applicable in common to all classes of the inhabitants of the
said territories, due regard being had to the rights, feelings and peculiar usages of
the people, should be enacted.
This, so far as it related to the judicial system, was the natural result
of experience of the division of jurisdiction between the king's and the
Company's courts. In 1822 Sir Charles Grey, Chief Justice of Bengal,
had pointed out the “utter want of connection between the Supreme
Court and the provincial courts and the two sorts of legal process
which were employed in them”; and Sir Erskine Perry, Chief Justice
of Bombay, referred later to the strange anomaly in the juris-
prudential condition of British India which consists in the three capital
cities having systems of law different from those of the countries of
which they are the capitals”. The inconvenience and delay entailed
by the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts at the presidency towns over
Europeans outside them had been mitigated by the Charter Act of
1813.
