From 1858, after the demise of the East India Company's rule in India, the British civil service took on its administrative responsibilities. The change in governance came about due to the Indian Rebellion of 1857, which came close to toppling British rule in the country.[7]
Up to 1853, the Directors of the East India Company made appointments of covenanted civil servants by nominations. This nomination system was abolished by the British Parliament in 1853 and it was decided that appointments would be through competitive examinations of all British subjects, without distinction of race.
The examination for admission to the service was first held only in London in the month of August of each year.[8] All candidate were required to pass a compulsory horse-riding test.
An appointment to the civil service of the Company will not be a matter of favour but a matter of right. He who obtains such an appointment will owe it solely to his own abilities and industry. It is undoubtedly desirable that the civil servants of the Company should have received the best, the most finished education that the native country affords (the Report insisted that the civil servants of the Company should have taken the first degree in arts at Oxford or Cambridge Universities).
The competitive examination for entry to the civil service was combined for the Diplomatic, the Home, the Indian, and the Colonial Services. Candidates had to be aged between 18 and 23 to take the exam.[10] The total marks possible in the examination were 1,900 and one could get up to three opportunities to enter.[citation needed] Successful candidates underwent one or two years of probation in the United Kingdom, according to whether they had taken the London or the Indian examination. This period[11] was spent at the University of Oxford (Indian Institute), the University of Cambridge, colleges in the University of London (including School of Oriental Studies) or Trinity College Dublin,[11] where a candidate studied the law and institutions of India, including criminal law and the law of evidence, which together gave knowledge of the revenue system, as well as reading Indian history and learning the language of the province to which they had been assigned.[11]
The Early Nationalists,[12] also known as the Moderates,[13] worked for implementation of various social reforms such as the appointment of a Public Service Commission and a resolution of the House of Commons (1893) allowing for simultaneous examination for the Indian Civil Service in London and India.
By 1920, there were five methods of entry into the higher civil service: firstly, the open competitive examinations in London; secondly, separate competitive examinations in India; thirdly, nomination in India to satisfy provincial and communal representation; fourthly, promotion from the Provincial Civil Service and lastly, appointments from the bar (one-fourth of the posts in the ICS were to be filled from the bar).[14]
Queen Victoria had suggested that the civil servants in India should have an official dress uniform, as did their counterparts in the Colonial Service. However, the Council of India decided that prescribing a dress uniform would be an undue expense for their officials.[15]
The only civilians allowed a dress uniform by regulations were those who had distinct duties of a political kind to perform, and who are thereby brought into frequent and direct personal contact with native princes.[15] This uniform included a blue coat with gold embroidery, a black velvet lining, collar and cuffs, blue cloth trousers with gold and lace two inches wide, a beavercocked hat with black silk cockade and ostrich feathers, and a sword.[15]
The civil services were divided into two categories – covenanted and uncovenanted. The covenanted civil service consisted of British civil servants occupying the higher posts in the government. The uncovenanted civil service was introduced to facilitate the entry of Indians at the lower rung of the administration.[16][17]
Salary and ranks
After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, pay scales were drawn up.[1] Assistant Commissioners started out in their early twenties on around £300 a year.[1] The governorship of a British province was the highest post an ICS officer could aspire to.[18] The governors at the top of the pyramid got £6,000 a year plus allowances.[1] All ICS officers retired on the same pension of £1,000.[1] This sum was paid as an annuity each year after retirement. Widows of deceased officers were entitled to £300 a year, leading to a popular saying that an ICS marriage was worth "three hundred a year alive or dead".[19]
In the first decades of the twentieth century, the imbalance in salaries and emoluments was so great that 8,000 British officers together earned a total of £13,930,554, while 130,000 Indians in government service (not just those in the Indian Civil Service proper) were collectively paid a total of £3,284,163.[20]
ICS officers normally served for a minimum of twenty-five years, and there was a maximum service period of thirty-five years.[1]
ICS officers served as political officers in the Indian Political Department and also were given fifty percent of the judgeships in the state high court (the rest were generally elevated from the high court bar).[18] The tenure of ICS officers serving as judges of the high court and Supreme Court was determined by the retirement age fixed for judges.[18]
If a responsible government is to be established in India, there will be a far greater need than is even dreamt of at present for persons to take part in public affairs in the legislative assemblies and elsewhere and for this reason the more Indians we can employ in the public service the better. Moreover, it would lessen the burden of Imperial responsibilities if a body of capable Indian administrators could be produced..
Before the First World War, 95% of ICS officers were Europeans; after the war, the British government faced growing difficulties in recruiting British candidates to the service. With fewer young British men interested in joining, mainly due to the decreased levels of compensation compared to other careers,[23] and confronted with numerous vacancies, the government resorted to direct appointments; between 1915 and 1924, 80% of new British ICS appointees entered the service in this way. During the same period, 44% of new appointments to the ICS were filled by Indians.[23]
In 1922, Indian candidates were permitted to sit for the ICS examinations in Delhi; in 1924, the Lee Commission, chaired by Arthur Lee, 1st Viscount Lee of Fareham (which eventually led to the foundation of the Federal Public Service Commission and Provincial Public Service Commission under the Government of India Act 1935) made several recommendations: ICS officers should receive increased and more comprehensive levels of compensation, future batches of ICS officers should be composed of 40% Europeans and 40% Indians with the remaining 20% of appointments to be filled by direct promotion of Indians from the Provincial Civil Services (PCS), and the examinations in Delhi and London were to produce an equal number of ICS probationers.[23] In addition, under-representation of candidates from Indian minority groups (Muslims, Burmese and so on) would be corrected by direct appointments of qualified candidates from those groups, while British candidates would continue to have priority over Indians for ICS appointments.[23] While initially successful, the expansion of the Indian independence movement from the late 1920s resulted in a hardening of Indian attitudes against European officers, and furthered distrust of Indian ICS appointments amongst Indians. This resulted in a declining recruitment base in terms of quality and quantity.[23]
The All India and class 1 Central Services were designated as Central Superior Services as early as 1924.[24] From 1924 to 1934, Administration in India consisted of "ten"[24] All India Services and five central departments, all under the control of Secretary of State for India, and three central departments under joint Provincial and Imperial Control.
After the Government of India Act 1935
The finances of India under British rule depended largely on land taxes, and these became problematic in the 1930s. Epstein argues that after 1919 it became harder and harder to collect the land revenue. The suppression of civil disobedience by the British after 1934 temporarily increased the power of the revenue agents, but after 1937 they were forced by the new Congress-controlled provincial governments to hand back confiscated land. The outbreak of the Second World War strengthened them again, but in the face of the Quit India movement the revenue collectors had to rely on military force, and by 1946–47 direct British control was rapidly disappearing in much of the countryside.[25]
The outbreak of war in 1939 had immediate consequences for recruitment to the ICS. The examinations in London were suspended after that year's batch (12 British and eight Indian examinees) had qualified. In 1940 and 1941, 12 and four British candidates, respectively, were nominated to the ICS; the following year, the final London-nominated ICS candidates, both of whom were Indian, entered the service. Examinations continued to be held in Delhi for Indian candidates until 1943, when the last seven ICS officers (seven examinees, two nominated) joined. By this time, the British government felt it could no longer rely unambiguously on the complete loyalty of its Indian officers. During the period of the Interim Government of India (1946–1947), a few British candidates were given emergency appointments in the ICS, though ultimately none of them ever served in India.[23]
Partition of India, dissolution and subsequent service of officers
At the time of the partition of India and departure of the British, in 1947, the Indian Civil Service was divided between the new Dominions of India and Pakistan. The part which went to India was named the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), while the part that went to Pakistan was named the "Civil Service of Pakistan" (CSP). In 1947, there were 980 ICS officers. 468 were Europeans, 352 Hindus, 101 Muslims, two depressed classes/Scheduled Castes, five domiciled Europeans and Anglo-Indians, 25 Indian Christians, 13 Parsis, 10 Sikhs and four other communities.[18] Many Hindus and Muslims went to India and Pakistan respectively. This sudden loss of officer cadre caused major challenges in administering the nascent states.
Despite offers from the new Indian and Pakistani governments, virtually all of the European former ICS officers left following partition, with the majority of those who did not opt for retirement continuing their careers either in the British Home Civil Service or in another British colonial civil service.[26] A few British ex-ICS officers stayed on over the ensuing quarter-century, notably those who had selected the "judicial side" of the ICS. The last British former ICS officer from the "judicial side" still serving in the subcontinent, Justice Donald Falshaw (ICS 1928), retired as Chief Justice of the Punjab High Court (now the Punjab and Haryana High Court) in May 1966,[27][28] receiving a knighthood in the British 1967 New Year Honours upon his return to Britain. J. P. L. Gwynn (ICS 1939), the last former ICS officer holding British nationality and the last to serve in an executive capacity under the Indian government, ended his Indian service in 1968 as Second Member of the Board of Revenue, but continued to serve in the British Home Civil Service until his final retirement in 1976.[29][30]
Justice William Broome (ICS 1932), a district and sessions judge at the time of independence in 1947, remained in Indian government service as a judge. Having married an Indian, Swarup Kumari Gaur, in 1937, with whom he raised a family, he eventually renounced his British citizenship in 1958 and became an Indian citizen with the personal intervention of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, himself a former barrister who regarded Broome as a distinguished jurist and as "much as Indian as anybody can be who is not born in India". Upon his retirement on 18 March 1972 from the Allahabad High Court as its most senior puisne judge, Broome was the last former ICS officer of European origin serving in India.[28]
Nirmal Kumar Mukarji (ICS 1943), a member of the final batch recruited to the ICS, who retired as Cabinet Secretary in April 1980, was the last Indian administrative officer who had originally joined as an ICS.[18] The last former ICS officer to retire, Aftab Ghulam Nabi Kazi (also a member of the final ICS batch of 1943),[31] retired as Chairman of the Pakistan Board of Investment in 1994. The last living British ex-ICS officer, Ian Dixon Scott (ICS 1932), died in 2002. V. K. Rao (ICS 1937), the last living ICS officer to have joined the service in a regular pre-war intake, died in 2018. He was a retired Chief Secretary of Andhra Pradesh and was the oldest former ICS officer on record at the time of his death. V.M.M. Nair (ICS 1942) transferred to the Indian Political Service in 1946 and then to the Indian Foreign Service after independence, retiring in 1977 as Ambassador to Spain. At his death in 2021, he was the last surviving former Indian Civil Service officer.[32]
Support and criticism
If you take that steel frame out of the fabric, it would collapse. There is one institution we will not cripple, there is one institution we will not deprive of its functions or of its privileges; and that is the institution which built up the British Raj – the British Civil Service of India.
Dewey has commented that "in their heyday they [Indian Civil Service officers] were mostly run by Englishmen with a few notable sons of Hindus and even a fewer Muslims were the most powerful officials in the Empire, if not the world. A tiny cadre, a little over a thousand strong, ruled more than 300 million Indians. Each Civilian had an average 300,000 subjects, and each Civilian penetrated every corner of his subjects' lives, because the Indian Civil Service directed all the activities of the Anglo-Indian state."[34]
The ICS had responsibility for maintaining law and order, and often were at loggerheads with the independence activists during the Indian independence movement. Jawaharlal Nehru often ridiculed the ICS for its support of British policies. He noted that someone had once defined the Indian Civil Service, "with which we are unfortunately still afflicted in this country, as neither Indian, nor civil, nor a service".[35] As Prime Minister, Nehru retained the organisation and its top people, albeit with a change of title to the "Indian Administrative Service". It continued its main roles. Nehru appointed long-time ICS officials Chintaman Deshmukh as his Finance Minister, and K.P.S. Menon as his Foreign Secretary. Sardar Patel appreciated their role in keeping India united after partition, and noted in Parliament that without them, the country would have collapsed.
Commemoration of the Indian Civil Services at Westminster Abbey, London
His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for India, known for short as the India secretary or the Indian secretary, was the British Cabinet minister and the political head of the India Office responsible for the governance of the British Indian Empire, including Aden, Burma and the Persian Gulf Residency. The post was created in 1858 when the East India Company's rule in Bengal ended and India, except for the Princely States, was brought under the direct administration of the government in Whitehall in London, beginning the official colonial period under the British Empire.
A princely state was a nominally sovereign entity of the British Indian Empire that was not directly governed by the British, but rather by an Indian ruler under a form of indirect rule, subject to a subsidiary alliance and the suzerainty or paramountcy of the British crown.
Bangladesh Civil Service, popularly known by its acronym BCS, is the civil service of Bangladesh. Civil service in the Indian subcontinent originated from the Imperial Civil Service which was the elite higher civil service of the British Empire in India during British rule, in the period between 1858 and 1947. After the partition of 1947, East Bengal became a province of Pakistan, and the successor to the Imperial Civil Service in Pakistan was Central Superior Services. After the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, it became known as Bangladesh Civil Service by an ordinance from the then President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
The All India Services (AIS) comprises three Civil Services of India common to the centre and state governments, which includes the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), the Indian Police Service (IPS), and the Indian Forest Service (IFS). Civil servants recruited through All India Services by the central government are assigned to different state government cadres. Some civil servants may, later in their career, also serve the centre on deputation. Officers of these three services comply to the All India Services Rules relating to pay, conduct, leave, various allowances etc.
The Union Public Service Commission is a constitutional body tasked with recruiting officers for All India Services and the Central Civil Services through various standardised examinations, widely considered to be one of the most selective examinations in the world. In 2023, 1.3 million applicants competed for just 1,255 positions. In 1947, Deputy Prime Minister Sardar Vallabhai Patel heralded successful recruits as the 'steel frame of India.' In other words, those who implemented the vision of the government of the day.
The Central Superior Services is a permanent elite civil service authority and the civil service that is responsible for running the bureaucratic operations and government secretariats and directorates of the Cabinet of Pakistan. The Prime Minister is the final authority on all matters regarding the civil service.
The British Raj was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent, lasting from 1858 to 1947. It is also called Crown rule in India, or Direct rule in India. The region under British control was commonly called India in contemporaneous usage and included areas directly administered by the United Kingdom, which were collectively called British India, and areas ruled by indigenous rulers, but under British paramountcy, called the princely states. The region was sometimes called the Indian Empire, though not officially.
Nirmal Kumar Mukarji was an Indian administrator and the last member of the Indian Civil Service to serve. In the course of a long career he was Home Secretary, Cabinet Secretary, and eventually Governor of Punjab.
Aftab Ghulam Nabi KaziSPk, SK, also known as AGN Kazi, was a Pakistani civil servant and a bureaucrat during the Cold War and during the post cold war. Kazi was born in Sindh, Bombay Presidency, in 1919 to an academic family. He started his career in the Indian Civil Service in 1944 and served as the Deputy Commissioner of Bihar and Orissa. After the partition of India, Kazi migrated to Pakistan and joined the Provincial Government of Sindh, and held positions such as Secretary of Finance and Secretary to the Governor.
After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the British Government took over the administration to establish the British Raj. The British Raj was the period of British Parliament rule on the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947, for around 89 years of British occupation. The system of governance was instituted in 1858 when the rule of the East India Company was transferred to the Crown in the person of Queen Victoria.
Mian Aminuddin was a Pakistani civil servant. He served the Imperial Civil Service during the British Raj and then Pakistani civil servivce after independence of Pakistan. He served as the first Mayor of Lahore. He also served as the Chief commissioner of Baluchistan between 1949 and 1952 and then as the fourth Governor of West Punjab between 1953 and 1954.
In India, the Civil Service is the collection of civil servants of the government who constitute the permanent executive branch of the country. This includes servants in the All India Services, the Central Civil Services, and various State Civil Services.
Sir Robert Francis Mudie KCSI, KCIE, OBE was a British civil servant and a member of the British Indian Civil Service during the British Raj. He was the last British and colonial Governor of Sind and after the partition of British India in August 1947, he served as the first Governor of West Punjab in the Dominion of Pakistan.
The Pakistan Administrative Service, or PAS is an elite cadre of the Civil Services of Pakistan. The Pakistan Administrative Service over the years has emerged as the most consolidated and developed post-colonial institution in Pakistan, with the PAS officers of Grade 22 often seen as stronger than the federal government ministers. The service of PAS is generalist in nature and officers are assigned to different departments all across Pakistan during the course of their careers. Almost all of the country's highest-profile positions such as the Federal Secretaries, the provincial Chief Secretaries, and chairmen of top-heavy organizations like the National Highway Authority, Trading Corporation of Pakistan and State Life Insurance Corporation usually belong to the Pakistan Administrative Service.
The Imperial Secretariat Service was a civil service of the British Empire in British India during British rule in the period between 1919 and 1945. The members served in the 5 central departments and then later expanded to 10 central departments at that time, Secretariat of the Viceroy's Executive Council and later Cabinet Secretariat and Central Secretariat.
Subimal Dutt, OBE, ICS was an Indian diplomat and ICS officer. He served as India's Commonwealth Secretary and later as Foreign Secretary under Jawaharlal Nehru and was also India's ambassador to the Soviet Union, Federal Republic of Germany and Bangladesh.
Joint Secretary to the Government of India is a post under the Central Staffing Scheme and the third highest non-political executive rank in the Government of India. The authority for creation of this post solely rests with the Cabinet of India.
The All India Services Act, 1951 is an Indian legislation. The Act established two All India Services and provides for the creation of three more.
Valluri Kameswara Rao was an Indian Civil Service officer and Chief Secretary of Andhra Pradesh, and the oldest living officer of the Indian Civil Service at the time of his death. He served in the civil service of the British Raj as a collector and magistrate. After Independence Rao joined the Indian government's finance department and transferred into the newly founded Indian Administrative Service. He transferred to Andhra State after it was founded in 1953. After the founding of Andhra Pradesh in 1956 Rao became that state's first secretary of public works. He later served the central government on the Planning Commission before returning to Andhra Pradesh as its chief secretary. Rao was principal secretary to the President of India Neelam Sanjiva Reddy from 1981 to 1982.
William George Broome was a British-Indian civil servant and judge. He was an Indian Civil Service officer of the 1932 batch. He had the distinction of being the last British-born judge to serve in India.
References
1 2 3 4 5 6 Dewey, Clive (July 1993). Anglo-Indian Attitudes: Mind of the Indian Civil Service. A&C Black, 1993. ISBN978-0-8264-3254-4.
↑ Surjit Mansingh, The A to Z of India (2010), pp 288–90
↑ Ramesh Kumar Arora and Rajni Goyal, Indian public administration: institutions and issues (1995) p. 42; Ranbir Vohra, The making of India: a historical survey (2001) p 185
↑ Ralhan, Om Prakash, ed. (1995). Encyclopedia of Political Parties – India – Pakistan – Bangladesh – National – Regional – Local. Vol.23. Moderate phrase in India. New Delhi: Anmol Publications. pp.29–36. The phase from 1885 to 1905 is known as the period of the Early Nationalists.
↑ Porter, Robin J. (2001). "Imperial India, 1858–1914". Oxford History of the British Empire: The Nineteenth Century. pp.345, 434.
↑ Arora, Ramesh Kumar; Goyal, Rajni (1995). Indian public administration: Institutions and Issues. p.43.
1 2 3 Cohn, Bernard S. (1996). Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India. Princeton University Press. ISBN978-0-691-00043-5.
↑ Meghna Sabharwal, Evan M. Berman "Public Administration in South Asia: India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan (Public Administration and Public Policy)" (2013)
↑ "Civil Service". The British Library. 8 June 2011. Archived from the original on 25 September 2015. Retrieved 14 August 2015.
↑ P. N., Chopra (2003). A Comprehensive History of India, Volume 3. Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd. ISBN978-81-207-2506-5.
↑ Goel, S.L. (2008). Public Personnel Administration: Theory and Practice. Deep and Deep Publications, 2008. ISBN978-81-7629-395-2.
1 2 3 4 5 6 David C. Potter, "Manpower Shortage and the End of Colonialism: The Case of Indian Civil Service," Modern Asian Studies, (Jan 1973) 7#1 pp 47–73
1 2 Maheshwari, Shriram (1992). Problems and Issues in Administrative Federalism. Allied Publishers. ISBN978-81-7023-342-8.
↑ Simon Epstein, 'District Officers in Decline: The Erosion of British Authority in the Bombay Countryside, 1919 to 1947' in Modern Asian Studies, (May 1982) 16#3, pp 493–518
↑ Wilson, John (2016). The Chaos of Empire: the British Raj and the Conquest of India. New York: PublicAffairs. pp.492–494. ISBN978-1-61039-293-8.
↑ "Last Briton Leaves Indian Service". The Times. 12 May 1966.
1 2 McDonald, Douglas (2015). "Becoming Indian: William Broome and Colonial Continuity in Post-Independence India". Indian Historical Review. 42 (2): 303–331. doi:10.1177/0376983615597167. S2CID146608189.
↑ P. M. Gwynn (17 November 1999). "Obituary: J. P. L. Gwynn". The Independent. Archived from the original on 9 February 2019. Retrieved 8 February 2019.
Blunt, Edward. The I.C.S.: The Indian Civil Service (1937)
Burra, Arudra. "The Indian Civil Service and the Nationalist Movement: Neutrality, Politics and Continuity," Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, Nov 2010, 48#4 pp 404–432
Dewey, Clive. Anglo-Indian Attitudes: The Mind of the Indian Civil Service (1993)
Ewing, Ann. "Administering India: The Indian Civil Service," History Today, June 1982, 32#6 pp 43–48, covers 1858–1947
Gilmour, David. The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj (2007) excerpt and text search
Gould, William. "The Dual State: The Unruly 'Subordinate', Caste, Community and Civil Service Recruitment in North India, 1930–1955," Journal of Historical Sociology, Mar-June 2007, Vol. 20 Issue 1/2, pp 13–43
Kisch, H. M.; Ethel A. Waley-Cohen (ed.) A Young Victorian in India: Letters of H. M. Kisch of the Indian Civil Service (1957)
Krishna, Anirudh. "Continuity and change: the Indian administrative service 30 years ago and today," Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, Nov 2010, 48#4 pp 433–444
MacMillan, Margaret. Women of the Raj: The Mothers, Wives, and Daughters of the British Empire in India (2007)
Masani, Zareer. Indian Tales of the Raj (1990), interviews with retired ICS officers about pre-1947 days
Potter, David C. India's Political Administrators,1919–1983 (1987) 289pp; the standard scholarly history
Potter, David C. "The Last of the Indian Civil Service," South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies (Apr 1979), Vol. 2 Issue 1/2, pp 19–29
Potter, David C. "Manpower Shortage and the End of Colonialism: The Case of Indian Civil Service," Modern Asian Studies, (Jan 1973) 7#1 pp 47–73 in JSTOR
Sharma, Malti. Indianization of the Civil Services in British India, 1858–1935 (2001)
Saumarez Smith, W. H. A Young Man's Country: Letters of a Subdivisional Officer of the Indian Civil Service 1936-1937 (1977)
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