Cover Story
manner.
It was a complex set of systems
meeting the needs of a very complex
society. The towns were generally
directly governed by the imperial
state. In the villages the traditional
system held sway.
This ended with the 1857 revolt.
The abortive revolt had three great
consequences. It marked not just
the end of the Mughal and Maratha
power in central India, but also the
end of East India Company rule.
This “first great war of
independence” actually further
enslaved India when on November
1, 1858 when Lord Canning,
wearing court dress and riding a
black horse emerged out of the
fort in Allahabad to read a long
proclamation by Queen Victoria.
The Queen insisted that the
“document should breathe feelings
of generosity, benevolence and
religious tolerance.”
In 1861 the Indian Civil Service
(ICS) came into being. Each one of
the 400 district officers in British
India was henceforth an ICS officer
as were all members of the higher
bureaucracy. At no given time were
there more than 1200 ICS officers
in India.
Two other significant events took
place in 1861. Thomas Babington
Macaulay’s codification of Indian
law came into effect and the Indian
Police Act introduced uniform
police service throughout India.
In addition to the British District
Officer, each district in British India
was henceforth to have a British
superintendent of police.
The ICS was divided into
separate departments: the executive,
which administered the districts,
and collected the land revenues and
taxes; the judicial, which provided
judges for the district and high
courts; the political, which provided
officers for the diplomatic corps,
residents and agents in the princely
states; and the secretariat, which
provided senior officials for both
the central and state governments.
Below this came the largely Indian
and uncovenanted civil servants
of the police, medical and forestry
services, and in the agriculture and
engineering departments, all adding
up to another 2000 civil servants.
This much-vaunted steel frame of
India consisted of no more than
4000 British and Indian officers at
even the worst of times.
The bedrock of this system
were the 400 district officers,
variously called Collectors and
District Magistrates or Deputy
Commissioners, who administered
the districts, each with an
average size of 4430 square miles
conciliating disputes, dispensing
justice and collecting revenues.
An ICS officer became a district
officer soon after the completion
of his probation and was usually in
his twenties usually lording over
a million people. Each ICS officer
was carefully chosen and was an
eclectic combination of brilliance,
personality and integrity.
It was probably the finest civil
service ever drawing its men,
usually, from Oxford or Cambridge
and after a tough entrance
examination that included “the
ability to jump a five barred gate
on horseback with arms folded and
stirrups crossed.”
They were well paid and cared for,
and usually incorruptible with a well
deserved reputation for accepting no
gifts other than flowers or fruit. They
wore their three initials with pride
and saw themselves “as the modern
equivalent of Plato’s Guardians, men
bred, selected and trained to govern,
selflessly and devotedly.”
But what helped those most to
stay that way was that they were
servants of a foreign empire and
agents of an authoritarian system. In
1868 the first Indian, Satyendranath
Tagore of that famous family, went
to London to take and pass the ICS
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February 2020 | www.smartgovernance.in