THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE
BOOKS OF THE DAY
By SIR FREDERICK WHYTE
Tars book is at once a monument and a sign-post. It relates the history of the great service in which its author played a distinguished part, it describes the nature of the Indian Civilian's task, and it gives a shrewdly sober but not unhopeful estimate of the future which lies before the I.C.S. And if it be an axiom that the new recruit to the Service should read and ponder Part I of the Simon Report, it is not less true that he should take Sir Edward Blunt's volume as its companion-piece. For here he will learn how his Service arose, what it has become, and why it can truly be described as one of the most remarkable, if not the greatest, of administrative services in the world. The I.C.S. is often described as a sun-dried bureaucracy, and some of its members have even rejoiced in the title ; but those who have studied the volumes of the Indian Census, or such books as Rusticus Loquitur, Socrates in an Indian Village, or Jack's Economic Life of a Bengal District, will know that the District Officer is no desiccated person, nor even if immured in the Secretariat is he merely a bureaucrat. And Sir Edward Blunt's book now comes to hand as a timely reminder of the human quality of a civilian's work and as a memorial to the manner in which it has been performed.
Sir Edward's qualifications as historian of his Service arise from a life-time spent in the United Provinces, where he held so great a variety of posts during thirty-four years in India that there is hardly an aspect of life in Northern India, at all events, on which he does not speak with first-hand knowledge. The Bengal Civilian, or those of the North-West Frontier, may perhaps think that an experience exclusively arising from the U.P. has impaired the author's ability to take an All-India view of the function of the Indian Civil Service as a whole ; but even they, or their opposite numbers from Madras, will find that Sir Edward's pages do not reveal the expected bias of Agra and Oudh and that he has drawn widely on the knowledge of his brother civilians from other Provinces in a successful effort to present the picture of their common work for India. The new recruit to the I.C.S., no matter to what Province he is assigned, will find in this book, as Lord Halley pointedly says in his Preface, "a really informative picture of the day-to- day work of Indian administration . . . and I certainly when in service should have valued an account such as he presents." The book opens with an account of the origins of the Service in the days of " John Company " when the " civilian " was a trader, and traces, through three chapters, the process whereby the original mercantile function gradually became administrative and political. It lays emphasis on the special character of the work undertaken, and especially on the close and continuous contact with the life of the people which it demanded, as well as on the extraordinary variety of the duties which the Service has always been called to perform. In such chapters as " The District," " Land Revenue," " Famine and Census," " The Civilian and the People," Sir Edward Blunt gives a vivid picture of the daily tasks of the Indian Civilian such as too rarely appears in the Press today, and by giving these vital subjects their true prominence, reminds the reader of his book that the " politics " which tend to fill the news from India are but a part, and not perhaps the true essence, of Indian life.
But since the political renaissance of modern India impinges, more and more, both on the administration and on the common life of the people, it is natural that the reader should turn with an especial interest to Sir Edward's estimate of the effect of The I.C.S. By Sir Edward Blunt. (Faber and Faber. 8s. 6d.)
politics on both. There is nothing of the sun-dried bureaucrat in this part of his book. This experienced administrator, for all that he describes the I.C.S. as a " silent service " taught to believe that " politics is the enemy of good administration," sees clearly that the work of his own Service in the past has been preparing for the " politics " of today. The Indian Civilian, he says in his conclusion, " has consistently laboured to produce conditions in which he could divest himself of his own authority and hand it over to others . . . he has, therefore, nobody but himself to thank for the present situation." This is but another way of saying that England could not " adminis. ter " India without also teaching India the political principles and ideals of the home country. While this educative and fermenting process was under way, the Service governed the country ; and now that it has reached the turning-point where governing authority passes, in larger measure, to Indian hands, " the civilian who used to serve by ruling, must now learn to rule by serving." This denotes a radical change both in the nature of the authority whom the individual officer serves and in the general conditions of the service. It ought not to make those conditions, either in tenure or security of emolu- ments, less assured ; and Sir Edward believes that " the rights and legitimate interests of the civilian of the future are no less safe, possibly safer, under the new constitution than they were under the old." But it does mean that the Service which the new recruit joins today is a different thing and offers a very different prospect from that which opened before the young Edward Blunt when he landed in Bombay in r9or. There are fewer places at the top of the tree for the civilian of 1937 than were held out to his father : but there are almost equally great—if not intrinsically greater—opportunities of service and for a new kind of distinction. And as far as the credit of the Service itself is concerned, Sir Edward says that " the new civilian will doubtless learn from his older colleagues that the service is going to the dogs ; but he, like them, will take care that the service never gets there."
This is the true answer to the lament over the " lost dominion." Those who maintain that, because the future of the Indian Civil Service cannot identically repeat its famous past, therefore it has no future, have entirely mistaken the nature of the appeal which the new conditions of service can make to the best youth of Great Britain. And, more vitally still, they ignore the indispensable contribution which even a much-reduced British contingent in the Service can make during the long transition from the sovereignty of the British Raj to the full self-government of India. Sir Edward Blunt declares that " the I.C.S. never had a greater chance of doing valuable work, both for India and England, than it has now " ; and he concludes that " if anybody can make the new constitu tion succeed it is the I.C.S., but, the quality of the British element must remain as high as ever, all the more so because the quantity is being reduced." This judgement is endorsed by Lord Hailey, who does not believe that the high traditions of the Service " will be lightly disregarded by the new authori- ties who will control its executive functions."
It is, I hope, clear to the reader why I called this book both a monument and a signpost. In some parts of it Sir Edward Blunt is a laudator temporis acti ; but, unlike those who are wont to praise the good old days, he sees continuity and new opportunity for his own Service even at the critical turning- point of today. And to those who seek entry to it he is a good guide.
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