¹ Nadel, S. F., The Theory of Social Structure (1962), p. 1.Google Scholar

² Lenin, V. I., Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (Moscow reprint, 1968).Google Scholar See also Strachey, John, The End of Empire (London, 1959), for a recent attempt at refutation of Lenin's analysis by an author in sympathy with the general Marxist critique of capitalism.Google Scholar

³ Colonialism refers to a relationship between an independent state and an area of land not an integral part of that state which, with its inhabitants, is entirely subject to the rule of that state through officials of that state physically present in that area. (Imperialism is a more generalized term for the emergence and maintenance of dependence relations between states, from colonialism to economic satellite relationships (e.g. Latin American countries vis-à-vis the U.S.A.).)

⁴ The most convincing analysis I have seen is Magdoff, Harry, The Age of Imperialism (New York, 1969).Google Scholar

⁵ e.g. Emerson, Rupert, From Empire to Nation: The Rise to Self-Assertion of Asian and African Peoples (Boston, 1960).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ The annual breakdown is as follows:

⁷ Tuchman, Barbara, The Guns of August (New York, 1962): ‘When the Battle of the Frontiers ended, the war had been in progress twenty days and during that time had created passions, attitudes, ideas and issues, both among belligerents and watching neutrals, which determined its future course and the course of history since’ (p. 347); known dead in Britain at the end of the war 1:57 per capita of the population.Google Scholar

⁸ National Archives of India, New Delhi, Home Department, Establishments Division (hereinafter Ests.), Part I, File No. 591, serial 26, dated 1922, ‘Indian Civil Service: Note on Recruitment during the war period.’

⁹ A few ‘War Service’ European candidates were appointed to the Service immediately after the war (Hindustan Times, 2 February 1946). Most of them never took up their appointment in India. Hugh Tinker was one. See his ‘Structure of the British Imperial Heritage’, Chapter 2 in Braibanti, R. and Associates, Asian Bureaucratic Systems Emergent from the British Imperial Tradition (Durham, N.C., 1966), p. 64 (ftnt. 63).Google Scholar

¹⁰ East India (Civil Services in India), Report of the Royal Commission on the Superior Civil Services in India, dated 27 March 1924. (Hereinafter referred to as Lee Commission Report.)Google Scholar

¹¹ Details of these recruitments under the Indian Civil Service (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1915, are found in Home Department, Ests., Part 1, File No. 591, serials 1–28, dated 1922. Also Home Department, Ests., A, Proceeding 234, dated May 1921, ‘India Office Memorandum, December 1920’.

¹² Lee Commission Report, p. 17.

¹³ Home Department File No. 497-Ests., dated 1922, ‘Recruitment to the Indian Civil Service in 1922’.

¹⁴ Supplementary Memorandum, dated January 1921, attached to Home Department,Ests., Part 1, File No. 591, dated 1922.

¹⁵ Ibid. These notes from Oxford colleges were included in a letter to the India Office from the Indian Civil Service Delegacy, Oxford, dated 21 December 1920.

¹⁶ Home Department, Ests., File No. 965, Part 1, Serials 1–4, dated 1922, ‘Report of the Committee (MacDonnell's) appointed by the Secretary of State for India to enquire into the impediments to European recruitment for the Indian services’.

¹⁷ Ibid., para. 10.

¹⁸ Lee Commission Report, p. 75.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Mohan Sinha, Vraj, ‘The Problem of Reorganization of the Superior Civil Services in India’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, submitted to University of Saugar, 1957, p. 24.Google Scholar

²⁰ Low, D. A., ‘The Government of India and the First Non-Co-operation Movement—1920–22’, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. XXV, No. 2 (02, 1966), 241–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²¹ Taylor, A. J. P., English History, 1914–1945 (New York, 1965), p. 145.Google Scholar

²² Ibid., p. 177.

²³ Ibid., p. 195.

²⁴ Tinker, op. cit., p. 63: ‘Because professional opportunities, both in Britain and in India, were severely limited from about 1929 with the onset of the depression, competition among able young university graduates was again as intense during the 1930s as it had been in the great days of the 1880s and 1890s.’.Google Scholar

²⁵ Home Department File 675-Ests., dated 1922, ‘Recruitment Rate for the Indian Civil Service’. Mr Meikle's Note of 16 June 1919 is contained in this file. In order to ascertain the number of recruits required for a particular province, the calculation was to multiply the number of senior posts in the province by 7·7/100. For instance, if the number of senior posts in a province was 130, then the recruitment figure would be 130x 7·7/100= 10·1 = 10 recruits per annum. The total of the annual recruitment figure for the I.C.S. as a whole was arrived at by totalling all the provincial figures, plus making certain other adjustments.

²⁶ Lee Commission Report, p. 19.Google Scholar

²⁷ Home Department File No. 36/25-Ests., dated 1925.

²⁸ The author's careful head-count of Muslim names shows that 89 Muslims entered the I.C.S. between 1903 and 1943. One Muslim was successful at the London competition in 1903; one more was successful at the 1910 London competition. The other 87 Muslims entered during the period 1922–43; 11 were successful at the London examinations; 18 were successful at the India examinations; the remaining 58 (68 per cent) were Muslims who were unsuccessful at the examinations but who were nominated to the I.C.S. in order to redress communal inequalities.

²⁹ Telegram from Secretary of State to Home Department, 25 September 1926, in Home Department File No. 38/26-Ests., dated 1926.

³⁰ Home Department File No. 168/28-Ests., dated 1928.

³¹ Ibid.

³² Telegram from Secretary of State to Home Department, dated 9 October 1930 Home Department File No. 86/30-Ests., dated 1930 ‘Recruitment for the I.C.S., 1930–31’

³³ Telegram from Home Department to Secretary of State, dated 22 October 1930, in ibid.

³⁴ Ibid.

³⁵ Telegram from Secretary of State to Home Department, dated 18 September 1931, in Home Department File No. 135/31-Ests., dated 1931, ‘Recruitment for the Indian Civil Service in 1931–32’.

³⁶ Telegram from Secretary of State to Home Department, dated 26 September 1931, in ibid.

³⁷ Telegram from Home Department to Secretary of State, dated 2 October 1931, in ibid.

³⁸ Telegram from Secretary of State to Home Department, dated 15 October 1931, in ibid.

³⁹ Letter from Home Department to Chief Secretaries, in Home Department File No. 547/31-Ests., dated 1931.

⁴⁰ Data obtained from Government of India, Report of the Government of India Secretariat Committee (New Delhi, 1937), Appendix VI.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Home Department File No. 44/35-Ests., dated 1935, ‘Note by Sir David Petrie, Chairman, Public Service Commission, on the results of the I.C.S. examination in London in 1934’.

⁴² Hindustan Times, 9 May 1935. Figures recorded by MrPhilby, H. St. B., a retired I.C.S. officer.Google Scholar

⁴³ Home Department File No. 35/4/36-Ests., dated 1936, ‘Note by Sir David Petrie, Chairman, Public Service Commission, on the results of the I.C.S. examination: in London in 1935.’

⁴⁴ Taylor, op. cit., p. 227.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Ibid., p. 351.

⁴⁶ SirBlunt, Edward, The I.C.S.: The Indian Civil Service (London, 1937), p. 58.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Home Department File no. 35/33/37-Ests., dated 1937, ‘Note regarding the nomination of Indians to the I.C.S. by selection in the U.K.’.

⁴⁸ Press communiqué of 11 May 1936 found in Ibid. Details of the procedures worked out to implement this decision are contained in Home Department File no. 38/2/36-Ests., dated 1936, ‘Appointment of (a) a preliminary Interviewing Committee, and (b) a Final Selection Board, in England, for recruitment to the Indian Civil Service by Selection’.

⁴⁹ India, Legislative Debates, Vol. 6, 1936, pp. 140–60, (31 08 1936).Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Telegram from Secretary of State to Viceroy, dated 18 September 1936, in Home Department File No. 30/36-Ests., dated 1936.

⁵¹ Note by Home Secretary dated 20 September 1936, in ibid.

⁵² Home Department File No. 29/9/36-Ests., dated 1936, ‘Question in the Council of States regarding the number of officers who have retired from, and the number of officers recruited to, the Indian Civil Service during the last five years.’

⁵³ Home Department File No. 31/36-Ests., dated 1936, ‘Results of Indian Civil Service Examination held in India in 1936. Nominations to the Indian Civil Service in 1936.’

⁵⁴ Home Department File no. 35/18/36-Ests, dated 1936, ‘Propaganda work to stimulate European Recruitment for the Indian Civil Service’.

⁵⁵ Home Department File no. 38/2/36-Ests., dated 1936.

⁵⁶ The regulations called for twelve. It is clear from the notes and tables in Home Department File 32/2/37-Ests., dated 1937, ‘Results of the I.C.S. examination held in London in 1937’, that the intention was to stop at twelve on the list, T. C. Puri, but that they moved down the list to number thirteen, D. G. Bhore, because (1) ‘Bhore who is the son of Sir Joseph Bhore is an Anglo-Indian Christian but is not likely to be appointed by nomination in view of the fact that three Indian Christians were successful at the examination’, (2) Puri and Bhore actually had identical marks in the examination (494) and in the viva voce (300), although Civil Service Commissioners placed Puri above Bhore, (3) the next two places on the list were Europeans, and hence were taken into the I.C.S. Office note on 27·9·37: ‘I am strongly in favour of taking him [Bhore] because (1) he was as far as marks are concerned, bracketed with T. C. Puri; (2) he is probably a good type; (3) his father deserves well of Government’. Bhore had lived in England since an early age.

⁵⁷ The regulations called for ten. The Civil Service Commissioners announced the name of number 11, Y. K. Puri, by mistake, having overlooked the second Indian on the examination list, F. K. Sheldon, under the impression that he was a European. ‘All sorts of difficulties may arise by now rejecting the 11th Indian.… The mistake is, however, most unfortunate, especially at this juncture when we are faced with the problem of finding accommodation for the 14 extra Europeans that we have decided to recruit by ‘selection’ in the United Kingdom over and above the theoretical recruitment of 18 Europeans, which are expected to be taken by open competition in London…’ office note, 9…9…38, in Home Department File No. 32/38-Ests., dated 1938, ‘Results of the Indian Civil Service examination held in London in 1938. Posting of successful candidates to Provinces.’

⁵⁸ Letter from Home Department to Secretary of State, dated 28 December 1939, in Home Department File No. 35/56/39-Ests., dated 1939, ‘Question of the recruitment of Indians by examination for the I.C.S. in England during the period of war’.

⁵⁹ Taylor, op.cit, pp. 564–5.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Telegram from Secretary of State to Home Department File No. 35/27/41-Ests., dated 1941, ‘Recruitment of Europeans to the I.C.S. and the I.P. during the war’. ‘…field this year was extremely poor and only 4 recruits have been obtained for I.C.S.…supply of qualified European candidates is now practically exhausted and as there is little chance of securing further releases from armed forces I fear that recruitment may have to be suspended probably for duration of war. No announcement to this effect need be made however for if opportunity occurs to secure one or two good candidates from time to time I will take it’.

⁶¹ Majumdar, R. C., History of the Freedom Movement In India, Vol. III (Calcutta, 1963), p. 750.Google Scholar

⁶² A close inspection of The Combined Civil List for India and Burma, October–December 1946 (Lahore, 1946), makes this clear.Google Scholar

⁶³ Figures compiled by the author in the course of a definitive analysis of information contained in the India Office and Burma Office List, 1947 (London: H.M.S.O.., 1947), ‘Record of Services’, pp. 121–384.Google Scholar They make sense in relation to earlier figures related to the composition of the I.C.S., e.g. 1939: Europeans 599, Indians 587; 1940: Europeans 587, Indians 614; 1941: Europeans 585, Indians 617. The Indian totals include listed posts. Home Department File No. 24/1 /41-Ests., dated 1941, ‘Resolution in the Council of States regarding the suspension of British recruitment to the Indian Civil Service during the period of the war’. I have exercised great care in arriving at the 1947 figures, for they are central to the argument of this essay. They also are at variance with previously published figures, e.g. Europeans 608, Indians 549, in Braibanti, R., ‘Public Bureaucracy and Judiciary in Pakistan’, in LaPalombara, (ed.), Bureaucracy and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 365Google Scholar, and in other writings of his, e.g. Braibanti and Associates, Asian Bureaucratic Systems Emergent from the British Imperial Tradition (Durham: Duke University Press, 1966), p. 645.Google ScholarMosley, L., The Last Days of the British Raj (Jaico, 1961), p. 152,Google Scholar on the other hand, claims that by 1947 only 300 Britons remained in the I.C.S.

⁶⁴ Figures compiled by the author in the course of a definitive analysis of information contained in the India Office and Burma Office List, 1947, ‘Record of Services’, pp. 121–384.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Parl. Debates, H. C., Vol. 434 (1946–1947), col. 497–508.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Ibid.

⁶⁷ Ibid.

⁶⁸ See, however, the more extended treatment of a case which contains suggestive parallels: Boak, A. E. R., Manpower Shortage and the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1955).CrossRefGoogle Scholar