The civil servant as a ruler
I have now said all that I had to say I about my own experiences in the civil service and it is time to come to the more general issues which are the main subject matter of the book. Let us start with the concept of the civil servant as a ruler.
There are two conceptions of the civil service that we have to connect with and these two conceptions are very different. The modern conception of the civil servant is basically that of a manager, who is engaged in the performance of a professional task in the service of the community. A post master, a school inspector, or a hospital administrator, are all civil servants according to this definition. This view focuses on the performance of managerial tasks, usually service oriented, as the essence of the civil servants oeuvre. In this view even the mandarins who man the higher echelons of the civil service are simply manager, whose watch word is likely to be efficiency rather than justice and order.
On this showing the civil servant is likely to professional and a specialist rather than a generalist. Although the cult of the generalist is alive and well, there is a growing realization skill. Thus the old notion of the gifted amateur, who will always muddle through, is now beginning to be discarded. The philosophy of muddling through, when one is traversing a veritable minefield, does not appear to be brave and courageous, but seems rather like suicidal folly.
There is of course another conception of the civil service that of a moral and intellectual elite brought together in the service of the state. This state is usually an imperial state. Historically the notion of the civil service as elite has been taken of its highest pitch of development in imperial states, like medieval China, the British raj or the Roman Empire. The chief purpose of these elitist civil services, the very raison de etre in fact, has been to ensure the survival and perpetuation of the empire they served. The word perpetuation is used in say, sung china, or the roman governor in the age of Trajan, there must have been something eternal in the fabric of the state which they served, it is another matter that the high noon of imperial splendor is followed by a collapse, which is as spectacular in its suddenness as the brilliant coruscation of power. But such matters are the domain of prophets and visionaries, and beyond the ken of civil servants, whose business is essentially to preserve and perpetuate.
This is another feature of elitist civil service which should be noted -their conservative nature. Their real purpose is to preserve a dispensation, which though it may should its real purpose in moralistic rhetoric, is not basically benevolent in nature. In such a state the civil servants prerogative to rule does not does not come from the consent of the people, but springs from the power of the state, whose agents they are and such power is usually obtained by conquest and maintained by force. Paradoxically the highest standards of conduct , the most devoted commitment to the ethic of public service, manifests itself in the administration of territories that constitute the remoter outposts of empire, where the ruling power is seen quite clearly as a colonial power.
But this paradox ruler of more apparent than real, because agents of a foreign ruler often find that they are treated as qausi- divine beings by the native over whom they rule and their life then becomes an attempt to live up to this ideal which is partly imposed upon them. The development of the Indian civil service shows these features in a typical form.
We have thus isolated three features of the elitist civil service that may be considered typical- they serve governments that are despotic, they often hide the real purpose of their administration behind lofty moral pronouncements, and they are essentially conservative in nature. To this let us add a fourth feature- admission to their ranks is usually restricted to a single point at the bottom of the hierarchy. Entrance is usually on the basis of an examination that is supposed to test intellectual ability. Once selected the new recruit can look forward to a career within a closed caste, whose membership confers automatic status and privilege. As typical example we can consider the Chinese mandarins and the Indian Civil Service in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
If imperial china has become a byword for bureaucratic government, the reasons are not far to seek. The government of imperial china was always for vigorous authoritarian rule. No form of government other than absolute monarchy has ever flourished in china. The present government of china is also despotism; it is monarchical absolutism in the guise of a communist state; simply old wine in new bottle. But the point is the dividing line between the ruler and the ruled remains as sharp as ever.
If we take the Chinese Empire at its height, say in the Sung period, we find a society stratified into manifold gradation of rank and status. It is reported that even the emperor’s concubines were carefully divided into thirteen different grades! This is the very epitome of a conservative society.
In this society the only professional open to men of rank and status was the civil service, which therefore enjoyed a prestige most surpassing that of the emperor and his court. All the learning and scholarship in society, all the literally, artistic and intellectual talents were to be found in the civil service: other professions were either considered inferior or even proscribed but imperial decree and therefore out of bound for the children of the gentry. We may liken this dispensation to the classical form of bureaucratic government.
The foremost task of this vast bureaucracy was the maintenance on imperial authority throughout the length and breadth of the Chinese realm. This was much more difficult than one might suppose. Twenty centuries of imperial rule may give the impression that monarchical absolutism possessed a monolithic strength which required no support from an elaborated administrative apparatus, but this would be wrong. In china periods of calm and prosperity have often been followed by turbulence and disorder, when the imperial authority has either disappeared altogether or been replaced by squabbling warlords or intriguing pretender. A part from the ever present threat of external aggression, the authority of the Chinese state has been threatened throughout history by three factors, which arise from the peculiar geo-political character of the Chinese empire.
The first factor has been the very large size of the Chinese state, due to which the threat of rebellion by warlords or over mighty provincial governors remained ever present. The Chinese empire during the Han period was divided into a many as 100 provinces and during the T’ang period this number rose to 350. It is clear, that no central authority however efficient could control so large an area.
The danger of rebellion was particularly acute in the outlying provinces, which were often six to seven weeks march from the imperial capital and where an ambitious governor or military commander may easily be tempted to raise system and its replacement by bureaucratic government, with provincial governors being directly appointed by the court from the ranks of the of the permanents civil service, was devised to check this threat. These officials could be shifted from one province to another at the will of the emperor, and could not assume any legal rights over their territory; unlike feudal lords, who could exact fealty from their fiefdoms. The central government also employed a large number of officials to continuously supervise and inspect the work of provincial officials and report on their doings. Despite these precautions, however, imperial authority was often subjected to serious disruption on these accounts.
The second threat to orderly government often arose from the danger of revolts led by disaffected peasants or banditti. The large population of china, the scarcity of arable land, and the possibility of crop failure due to climatic factors have always made agriculture a precarious business and famines have been almost endemic. This has created a large of citizenry, living beyond the plea, as it were, outside the reach of civil authority and subsisting on petty crime. Such elements are ever ready to rise against the establishment authority at the call of any ambitious adventurer and the frequency of peasant revolts in china is explained by this. It has always therefore been one of the basic responsibilities of the provincial governors and local prefects, to keep a sharp watch over all potential troublemakers and to crush any incipient revolt at the very first hint of trouble.
The third danger to the stability of the state arose from the absence of any establishment convention of setting disputed cases of succession.
This lefty the filed open for powerful factions at the imperial court to intrigue and maneuver to set their own candidate on the throne. It allowed elements in the imperial household, eunuchs, and concubines and the relatives of the king to unsettle the peace of the realm by initiating sordid machination with the sole aim of grabbing power. The cases of the empress Wu, who rose from a minor concubine to be the absolute ruler of china due to her capacity for intrigue and ruthlessness, illustrate this perfectly. Whenever there was a weak monarch on the throne, these possibilities multiplied. In such cases the balance of power shifted imperceptible in favor of the powerful civil service, whose peculiar organization as a body corporate, unified by a single hierarchy and a shared ethos, made it thus a prime mover in all attempts to change the equation of power. Thus the very success of the bureaucracy, become in china a cause of instability.
In view of these very real dangers, the real purpose and mission of the state in china was always the strengthening of the state and the preservation of imperial rule. The main task of administration at the level of the prefecture, which was like a district in India, was the dispensation of justice, the collection of revenue, the maintenance of security, the upkeep of communication, the care of state and granaries and the registration of the land and population. All these tasks were carried out, not with any benevolent end in view, but with the central purpose of strengthening the state.
For the same reason, the Chinese system was a vigorously centralized system, where the prefects reported directly to the provincial governors, and the governors to the central government. Below the percepts -were the hereditary headmen, the village elders, the craft guild, and the family system, the whole fabric of customary obligation and interrelationship built up over the centuries, which assisted the established government in the exercise of authority.
The entire system was staffed and operated by member of the bureaucracy, who formed a single corporate body, right from the humblest provincial scribe, to the greatest mandarin at the court-0right up to the chancellor or the imperial secretary he. In this system, the emperor could, like a spider sitting in the centre of a vast web, keep in touch with all the outlying reaches and ramifications of the structure, if he so desired. In practice however things, did not always work out that way.
However no bureaucracy can survive for a long period purely as a conservative enterprise. It requires a moral and philosophical justification for its work. This common creed, inspires in the best elements a truly heroic commitment to public service, keeps the rank and file committed to a decent standard of behavior, and serves at worst as a sort of intellectual fig leaf to cover the real purpose of the government. It has therefore a dual purpose, and is useful both to the cynics and idealist alike. In the case of the Chinese civil service, this creed was provided by the philosophy of Confucius.
It is the fate of philosopher to be used and abused by those who do not share their exalted normal purpose. This has certainly been the fate of Confucius, who was used by the Chinese state to justify absolutism. It has been the practice to label Confucius, as a conservative thinker. This is a vulgar simplification of the same order as the statement that Yehudi Menuhin is a Jewish violinist. Like all vulgar simplifications, it also contains a germ of truth.
Confucius is above all a practical philosopher. He is not too concerned with abstract metaphysical entities. His concern is basically with a code of conduct that could actually be used to sustain a moral order that he considered desirable.
He considers virtuous conduct -conduct that is unselfish, gentle and compassionate, to be the aspiration norm. Such conduct does not depend upon one’s birth or station in life, but on education. Moral precepts can be inculcated by a process of education and not by any other means. Hence the central place assigned to education in the Confucian canon.
Confucius looks upon social relationship as a complex web of obligation and duties. Virtue lies in the rigorous discharge of these obligations. A special place is assigned in this dispensation to the ruler who is looked upon as the vice regent of heaven, sent down to rule the earth in accordance with the Confucian tenets. All goes well so long as the ruler follows the precepts of morality, but the moment he neglects his duties or strays from the path of virtue, disaster befalls him and his subjects. Confucian ethics have been used to justify absolutist government on the one hand, and on the other they have also been able to finish a moral justification for the wholesale changeover of loyalties whenever one dynasty is replaced by another.
The latent authoritarianism of Confucius is qualified by his insistence that government is to be carried out in accordance with moral precepts and its ultimate aim is the welfare of the people. However his writings do not contain any evolved concept of civil liberty or individual rights. Confucius accords a frankly subordinate status to the people, well below that of the sovereign and his advisers. The children of the earth, as he calls them, are looked upon as rather helpless being who have just about enough intelligence to till earth and raise crops. The onerous task of governance is considered well beyond their capacities, and the best that they can do is to enjoy the blessings of orderly rule and leave the difficult task of governance to the sovereign and his advisors.
Confucius assign great importance to the sovereign’s advisors. They are supposed to be a moral and intellectual elite standing apart from their superior abilities. The important things are that the power and privilege which they enjoy; is entirely due to their merit. This doctrine,. Which has furnished the moral justification for civil service elitism ever since, must be considered advanced thinking for the time. We know that until fairly recent times; and in many countries even today, public office is often assigned on the basis of jobbery and nepotism. It is the greatness of Confucius that he propounded this doctrine more than two thousand years ago, and it is the greatness of Chinese culture that this doctrine was put into practice and faithfully followed, for more than two millennia.
The practical result of this doctrine has been the veritable apotheosis of the official scholar class, which has dominated the culture and social life of china down the ages, and which is responsible for great literary and culture accomplishment as well as the subsequent decline and subjection of the Chinese empire. The history of china is therefore a verdict on the elitist model, because in no other country do we find, this model in existence for such a long period, with the civil service in undisturbed possession of social and political pre-eminence.
And this verdict all said and done, must go against the mandarins. It is true that they have played role in maintaining the political unity of china, kept the system going in times of instability and been responsible for disseminating Chinese culture though the length and breadth of china,. Their active participation in Chinese art and letters have given it’s a polish and sophistication that it may not otherwise have acquired. But their overall impact on Chinese history has been mainly that of a conservative force.
This is only to be expected from a corporate body who own their privileged status, to their mastery of ancient literary classics and who derive their prerogatives from an absolute monarch who is seen as the fountainhead of all authority.
One of the consequences of this system was social stagnation. The hierarchical structure of the bureaucracy and the society in the shape of social structure of the bureaucracy and the society in the shape of a social structure stratified into various gradations of rank, each of which tended to form a closed caste. This naturally restricted social mobility and individual freedom. On the other it hand it rank and power rather than moral worth, the measure of a man’s standing, thus subverting the very Confucian ethics on which it was founded.
One can also say that by making power as an end rather than a means of political endeavor, it legitimized tyranny and misrule By actively participating in palace intrigue and the machinations of concubines, eunuchs and ambitious courtiers, it lowered the tone of an ancient civilization and by switching loyalties at the demise of every dynasty it made it easier for foreigner to establish their rule in china. The case of the Manchu dynasty illustrates this very well.
These are serious charges, but the most serious charge against the mandarins, is that they stifled the social and intellectual the mandarins, is that they stifled the social and intellectual life of the country. By shutting out the country, to all new knowledge emanating from the west, they denied the country the fruits of the enlightenment which swept Europe in the fifteenth century. Their typical middle kingdom insularity and arrogance were responsible for the ultimate political humiliation of China and her subjugation by foreign powers.
We come now to the most recent example of the elitist model, the Indian Civil Service, which as the ancestor of the present day civil service in India as well as Britain, deserves study in its own right.
The present day status and prestige of the Indian administrative service is a legacy of the ICS. Government official have always enjoyed a high status in India, but nothing like the Indian civil service, had been seen before. Imagine a service unassailable in its tenure of power, inflexible in its rectitude (almost), composed of men, who seemed by virtue of their martial prowess and strength of character, like being from another planet. No wonder, the Indian administrative service, through defunct of real power, still able to maintain the bluff due to the overpowering impact of this legacy. But it did not begin this way. The company’s servant in the early years, were usually a crew of rapacious freebooters inspired by a simple motive-avarice. The forerunners of Malcolm, Metcalf, Munro and Elephantine, were usually low paid company hacks, who carried on a more lucrative private trade on the side and were interested only in amassing a quick fortune, and leaving for home, before they were carried off by cholera or some other distemper, which was never very far away. It is interesting that the early civil servants of the company included many members of the British aristocracy, who were lured of India in the hope of making a quick fortune. As the civil service gained in rectitude, it also became a more in exorable middle class body; its collective morality now took on feature of the Victorian middle class morality of its time. The self righteousness of these civil servants and their unctuous faith own superiority can be explained as part of the same syndrome. But between the raffish disreputable ‘nabob’, who desired nothing better than to make a quick fortune and return home to settle in some fashionable part of London, and the ‘minutely just, inflexible upright’. Guardians of the latter day lies an age which witnessed the transition from the age of Walpole to the age of Gladstone.
Much has been written about the Indian civil services, most of it by retired civilians, usually British, and most of it frankly eulogistic in tone. The British claim is the platonic sense and that their charge. There is a lot of sentimental literature about the glories of camp life and the special bond that existed between the district officer and ‘simple and artless’ village folk who came to him for redress. There is no doubt a great deal of truth in this idealized picture of the district officer as a benevolent despot, but this is only one side of the coin. There is another side to it, and this side shoes the picture of a Perry tyrant, who is able to justify his cruelties and repression with reference to lofty principles. The British have a knack of justifying political expediency on the ground of principle. Thus the annexation and absorption of native state by Dalhousie, which was simply a case of bad faith and political chicanery is justified by the apologists of the Raj on the ground that the extension of British rule was good for the natives. General Dyer when he fired on the unarmed gathering at Jallianwala Bagh, said that he wanted to create a ‘moral effect throughout the Punjab’, by his act of graduation barbarity. This other side of the coin shows the face of a self righteous bully and it appears whenever British rule is under attack. Of course this face does not appear very often, but without it the truth would be incomplete. And it makes it hard to sustain the Olympian pose.
Our first maxim was that elitist bureaucracies exist, not for the benefit of those they govern, but to perpetuate the government of a despotic ruler or an alien conqueror. This is certainly true of the company’s civil servant as their conduct during the so called mutiny shows. British historian describes the great revolt of 1857 as a mutiny, as an isolated outbreak brought about by a rag tag coalition of disaffected sepoys and disgruntled princes.
If this were indeed the case, there is hardly any justification for the ruthless savagery with which the revolt was suppressed. Consider for instance, the following instruction of General James Neil to his subordinate Major Reynaud:-
“the villages of Mubgoon and neighborhood to be attacked and destroyed, slaughter all men, take no prisoners-------------------
All sepoys found without papers from regiments that have mutinied who can not give a good account of themselves to be hanged forthwith. Futtehpore to be promptly attacked, the pathan quarter to be destroyed, all in it killed; in fact make a singal example of this place’.
Neill’s orders were carried out in letter in spirit and the whole country around Kanpur was made a desolation ruin. Entire village were destroyed and all adult males who were unfortunate enough to fall into the hand of the conquerors, were either hanged or blown up from the mouth of canon. All without even the semblance of a trial. It can be said in defense of Neill that he was acting in retaliation for the slaughter of women and children at Kanpur, blame for which must be laid at the door of Nana Sahib. But even so this looks more like the maniacal rage of a Timur or a Genghis, rather than the conduct of a servant of Her Majesty’s government supposedly acting in defense of some lofty principle.
Another act of horrific cruelty took place at Amritsar. This incident is recorded in some details in Philip Mason’s book titled; “the men who Ruled India”. One cooper, was the deputy commissioner of Amritsa, and at the outset of the mutiny he made a statement which lays bare the real nature of colonial rule, “government”, said cooper, “could not condescend to exist at the moral suffer name of its subjects”.
Precisely… but it took the munity to uncover the real reason behind the rhetoric and pious sentiment. This same cooper was able to capture a troop of 282 men of the 26th infantry who had surrendered to him peacefully. All these poor men after a night in captivity were executed in the morning, without even the formality of a trial. About a fifty died of shock and exhaustion. Cooper’s excuse was the same as that of Dyer, seventy years later. He wanted to produce a ‘moral effect’, on the Punjab. In plain words, he hoped that by his barbarous act of cruelty he could frighten other rebellious spirits, into a tame acquiescence of British rule. As it happens, history proved both cooper and dyer wrong.
Nor are these isolated incidents. Let me quote from an article by Karl Marx on the ‘Indian Revolt’, dated September 4-1857. Marx writes:-
An officer in the civil service from Allahabad writes; “we have the power of life and death in our hand and I assure you we spare not Not a day passes, but we string up ten to fifteen of them. (non combatants).
Another exulting officer writer, “homes are hanging them up by the score, like a brick.”
Another in allusion to the hanging of a large body of native: “then the fun commenced”.
At third: “we hold court martial on horseback, and every nigger we meet, we either string up or shoot”.
Such instance could be multiplied, but the point should by now be abundantly clear, and the point is that elitist bureaucracies, despite their façade of benevolence, exist, not for the welfare of the governed, but to perpetuate despotic rule.
However it must not be supposed that this is all that there is to myth the British civil servant in India. There is another side, the side that is eulogized in countless journals, biographies, and histories, which dwell on the exploits of the guardians, in British government was better than any other government that had preceded it for a very long time. Its officers were relatively free from venality and corruption, they dispense justice with a strict impartiality, and they were more successful at maintaining order than any other government before them. Their success as final arbiters of almost everything was due to the fact that they were not assimilated by India. For their own part they had made it their policy not to interfere in matter of local issues with a certain Olympian detachment. This explains their success as arbitrators and magistrates.
But as mentioned before, bureaucracies cannot survive for long simply as a holding operation. They need a philosophy to sustain them, an elevating creed that could inure them to the hardship endured in a (possibly), hostile environment, and invest their work with a lofty meaning and purpose. This philosophy in case of the Raj is provided by a set of beliefs which are aptly summarized by the phrase, ‘the white man’s burden’, it is easy for us, after all these years to be cynical about this phrase. It calls up images of a white man in a pith about this phrases. It call up images of a white man in a pith helmet and a riding crop, swaggering about, among the natives. It brings to mind Gunga Din and other characters from the pages of Kipling all of whom, despite the good intentions of the author, are little more than figure of humorous condescension.
Kipling in fact epitomizes the values and attitudes behind this philosophy, which provided a moral justification merely to the ambitious empire builder and the Bible toting Christian soldier but also to the evangelist Christian preacher and the buccaneering Christian trader who followed in his train.
People like Kipling may have really believed in the mission of the white races to civilize ‘the lesser breeds without the law;, but this faith in a divine providence guiding the hand of the empire builder must have come in handy for the Victorian soldiers, who blew up and hanged the Indian mutineers, with a pious satisfaction, that this retribution was divinely ordained.
In the case of truly high minded men however, men like Thomas Munro, and Elphinstone, this became merely an added feeling of responsibility. It was Munro who wrote ”whenever we are obliged to resign our sovereignty, we should leave the natives so far improved from their connection with us, as to be capable of maintaining a free or at least a regular government among themselves”. Echoing the same sentiment, elphinstone wrote “the most desirable death for us to die should be the improvement of the native of such a pitch, as would render it impossible for a foreign nation to retain the government”. But even this benevolence was not entirely disinterested. Munro, in spite of his lofty sentiments wished for an “indefinite prolongation of our rule, and Elphinstone when he blew up the mutineers from the mouth of canon, commended this method of punishment on the grounds that it combine, two of the cardinal principles of justice, “it was painless to the victim and terrible to the beholder”
The benevolent paternalism of these men made their example an inspiration to many generation of civil servant. It called forth prodigious industry and unremitting labor carried out without regards for personal comfort and in a spirit of complete integrity.
The result may still be seen in the settlement records of many districts, which still forms the basis of land revenue administration in a large part of India. It was also responsible for creating the popular stereotype of the incorruptible district officer about whom it may be said, without exaggeration, that he was “inflexibly upright, minutely just”. It is responsible in part for the prestige which the civil service still enjoys in India, in spite of being a morally defunct organization. But all this was made possible, because these men thought members of an alien conquering race still felt a deep sense of responsibility towards their change. They acted responsibly because their power was absolute.
The achievements of British civil servant were not made as civil servant but as ruler. Their story is a signal example of the civil servant as a successful ruler. It is also a tribute to the British character, that so many men could remain uncorrupted by power for so long.
However when it comes to the final reckoning, we have to admit, that the over all character of the British Raj was conservative and status quoist. This is so, in spite of the reformist zeal displayed by the British administration up to 1857. This is believed that the welfare of the people in their charge was their real mission. These individual cases of true Christian charity and genuine devotion to the common weal do bot alter the real character of British rule. For that one must go the average run of the mill civil servant, the Oxbridge educate middle class British gentleman, who was intelligent enough to feel more than a professional sympathy and comradeship for the natives in his charge, yet stupid enough to regard himself as a superior being and smug enough to feel that his own education, background, and value system were best in the world.
These clever, practical, and industrious men formed the backbone of the service, and taken as a whole they were a thoroughly reactionary force. Many viceroys who came in India with liberal dreams , most notable among them being Lord Ripon, found their generous enthusiasm, frustrated by the obdurate resistance of the official class. The illbert Bill agitation furnishes a good case in point. This was an attempt on the part of lord Ripon to set right an obvious anomaly in the criminal procedure code of 1872, which lay down that a European could not be tried by Indian Magistrates. When the Illbert Bill was brought in to set aside this blatant piece of racist arrogance and bring European and Indians on the same footing, the whole official class rose up against the measure to a man. Their views were summarized by Mr. W.S. seton Kerr, foreign secretary to the government of India, who observed,
“it is the cherished conviction of every Englishmen in India, from the highest to the lowest, that he belongs to a race, whom God has destined to govern and subdue”
This racial arrogance seems to have hardened, as British rile became more securely established in India. There is an interesting story told by sir Montagu Gerard in his book- Leave from the diary of a soldier and a sportsman”, about a native potentate of a small principality near Agra who boarded a train by entering a first class compartment and was given a royal send off by his subject. When he came back, they were shocked to find him alighting from a second class compartment. When asked the reason for this unprincely behavior, he disclose that he had been sorely harassed by two sahibs on the way up, who had made him brush their cloths and massage their legs all the way up to Agra. This mind you; was the behavior of two Englishmen towards a prince; the lot of the common man can only be imagined.
The civil servant of the Raj were not the writing or unwitting tools of the British government, nor were they just another estate of the realm.
They were the real rulers of India. As such their behavior and attitude as a collective entity is important. It is often argued by the apologists of the Raj that the aberrant behavior of a single officer should not b used to condemn the whole official class. It is argued by them that individual behavior is too much subject to the accidents of time and pace and the vagaries of personality, to furnish any adequate basis for generalization about a whole class a people. But the same defense cannot be offered, about the policies of the British government, which reveal the considered wisdom, not merely of the official class, but of the British government itself. These policies, taken over a reasonable period of time, show a fairly consistent thread. They are conservative policies in general and their main aim Is the perpetuation of British rule in India. But before we analyze these policies, let us revert to the subject of personal remarks, and to the words of Lord Curzon, that arch imperialist, who may be allowed to have the last word:- “it well be well for England, better for India, and best of all for cause of progressive civilization in general, if it be clearly understood from the outset that we have not the slightest intention of abandoning our Indian possessions, and it is highly improbable that any such intention will be entertained by our posterity.
Lord Curzon’s statement is an unambiguous assertion of the imperialist creed, but what he state with such pompous self assurance, had always been the policy of the Raj. The policy of free trade and laissez faire in economics, divide and rule in politics, and non interference in social reform, all had the common aim of perpetuating British rule.
The quest for profits accruing from the rich India trade provided the initial impulse that led eventually to the establishment of British rule in India. The economic policies of the Raj never lost sight of the fact that it owned its existence to the enterprise and avarice of a mercantile syndicate. Although the British Raj ceased to be a profitable enterprise from 1800 or thereabouts, if we take a simple surplus of revenue over expenditure as our yardstick, it remained a source of lucrative career for the British middle class, as well as a captive market and a source of cheap raw material for British industry. It also prolonged the power and prestige of the British ruling class and gave a fresh lease of life to that otherwise moribund order.
All this explains why he British taxpayer continued to support the expense of the Raj even though the debt of the East Indian company (soon to merged in the public debt of England), stood at some 50 million pounds sterling in 1857. To being with there were the stockholders of the company, whose number stood at some 3000 in 1850. Each stockholder drew a total amounting to some ten and a half percent on his investment, the total amounting to some 670,000 pounds sterling, annually in the large number of civil, military and professional officers in India all of whom drew princely salaries. The average annual salary ion the civil service was said to be about $8000 in the 1850’s, while a member of a Calcutta council drew about $ 50000 and the governor general himself drew upwards of $ 1,00,000. Convert this to current prices and the real worth of these salaries will become obvious. There were also a large number of officers, both civil and military, living in India after endues of India. This situation continues to prevail right up to the end of the Raj and such was the British sense of economic propriety that even the salaries of the officer boys and tea ladies at India house were charged on the consolidated funds of India.
However while all this is interesting and instructive, it still does not explain the real raison de etre, for the empire. For this we must look at the trade between Indian and England. Two things stand out about India’s external trade between 1757 to 1947. First the commodity composition of India’s external trade underwent a transformation in the Nineteenth century and from being a major of cotton piece goods, she became a major exporter of primary commodities, like sugar, indigo and raw cotton by 1850. Second, she enjoyed a very large and persistent surplus of exports over imports, for a period of more than 200 years; both these feature of her trade, so remarkable in them, were due directly to her political subjection to Britain.
Let us consider the question of commodity composition first. In 1761 out of a total export of Rs 3063499/ cotton piece goods accounted for export worth Rs 2430850/. In 1780 out a total export worth 125498 pounds cotton piece goods again accounted for export worth 639938 pounds. Again in 1805 out of a total export of Rs 37595877, piece goods made up Rs 12849670, still about sixty p[percent of the whole. However by 1828-29, this had dropped to 11 percent and by 1850, was further reduced to merely 3 percent of the total export. At the counted for almost 50 percent of the export, whereas their share was negligible during the eighteenth century. (Data id from the ‘Cambridge Economic History of India’)
On the other hand the import into India of cotton yarn and piece goods, made in England, which was nonexistent in the eighteenth century, become thirty percent of the total value of imports by 1820, forty percent by 1850 and fully fifty percent by 1870. Describing this process Karl Marx, writes :- “it was the British intruder who broke up the Indian hand loom and destroyed the spinning wheel.
England began by driving the Indian cottons room the European markets, it then introduced twist into Hindustan, and in the end inundated the very mother country of cotton with cottons. From 1818 to 1836 the export of twist from England to India rose in the proportion of 1 to 5200. In 1824 the export of British muslin to India hardly amounted to 1,000,000 yards, while in 1837 it surpassed 64,000,000 yards. But at the same time the population of Dacca decreased from 150,000 inhabitants to 20,000. This decline of Indian towns celebrated for their fabric was by no means the worst consequence. British steam and science uprooted over the whole surface of Hindustan the union between agriculture and manufacturing industry.”
This remarkable turnaround was affected using tariff barriers to protect British industry, and when that same industry was transformed by the industrial revolution into a steam driven juggernaut, by her political dominion over India to break down the tariffs that protected Indian industry.
Cotton is the natural fabric of India, just as wool is the natural fabric of England. Yet the ease with which cotton could be used for mechanical spinning and weaving made it the mainspring of the industrial Revolution and made England the foremost producer of cotton cloth in the world. When the East India Company started importing Indian cotton piece goods into England, all this was still in the womb of the future. Indian cotton soon became the rage in England,. So much so that ladies of fashion started using cotton even when its use was unwarranted “the general fansie of the people runs upon East India goods to that degree, that the chintz by the weather. Commenting on this phenomenon Dean Swift writes:- “the general fansie of the people runs upon East India goods to that degree, that the chintz and painted calicoes which were before made use of for carpets, quilts etc., and to clothe children and ordinary people now became the dress of our ladies.
Nor was this all, but it crept into our houses, our closets and our bedchambers, curtains, cushion, chairs and at last the bed themselves were nothing but calicoes and Indian stuff.”
The local wool industry alarmed at the prospects of extinction, petitioned the government, which banned the import of printed cotton into England. Only dyed cloth without print being permitted. But this did not prove to be sufficient to stem the tide and Indian cotton continued to be imported in large quantities. Subsequently the government banned the import of dyed cotton as well, only plain white cloth being permitted for import. As time went by duties on Indian cotton were also progressively enhanced. This policy succeeded so well, that British industry felt confident in 1821, that Lancashire could supply the clothing needs of entire India. Provided it was given preferential tariff treatment. What a strange reversal of roles was this: brought about the India’s political servitude. Within the space of a few decades, the extensive cottage industry that had turned out what Karl Marx calls the “admirable textures of Indian labor”, was extinguished and cheap mass produced cotton was suffered to inundate the mother country of cottons.
When the question of reducing tariffs on British cotton was put to sir Charles Grant, a prominent member of the East India Directorate, he had this to say:-
“but with respect to that very large question, I take the liberty to offer one remark ; we have by protecting duties at home and our improvement in machinery, almost entirely excluded from this country the cotton fabrics of India, which were formerly their general staple, and if we use the power, which we have over that country now, to introduce into it the fabrics of this country, so as to exclude their own, it may be questioned,
How far we act justly with respect to our Indian subjects; for it may be taken for granted, that if they were under an Indian government they would impose protecting duties, upon their own fabrics, in their own market, as we have done in our ours.”
Thus the British destroyed Indian industry by resorting to protectionism, and capture her market by invoking the principle of free trade. As ever justifying the pursuit of self interest on the ground of principle. it was the same self interest which made India into a net exporter of indigo, sugar and grain. All these articles were required for domestic consumption by British industry and the British public. It must be remembered that India was never, throughout this period a country surplus in food grain. Indeed she was afflicted with recurring famines, yet despite the famine of 1899-1900, which was until then worst recorded famine in Indian history; she was still forced to export to Britain a very large quantity of gain, fully amounting to ten percent of her total export in terms of value. To those economists who ascribe the change in the commodity composition on India’s export to the fact of industrialization of china, japan etc., I would pose a simple question, what was the economic logic of export of gain by a country where millions were starving for what of gain. Let me save them the trouble of an answer, it was logic of slavery.
But even more remarkable and conclusive is the strange fact of India’s persistently favorable balance of trade. It is estimated that (for instance) between balance 1795-1805 India enjoyed a surplus of roughly sixty millions rupees in her export over imports. The balance was met by importing silver bullion into India. This practice was followed by the east India Company, throughout the eighteenth century, for the developing industry of England, as yet, did not produce anything for which a big demand could be created in the Indian market. This phenomenon is remarked upon by Karl Marx:-“from immemorial times Europe, received the admirable texture of Indian labor, sending in return for them her precious metal, and furnishing thereby this material to the goldsmith- that indispensable member of Indian society, whose love of finery is so great that even the lowest classes, those who go about nearly naked, have commonly a pair of gold earrings and a gold ornaments of some kind hung about their necks.”
However as the British Empire became firmly established in India, this import of bullion ceased. Although India still continued to export more than she imported, the visible account in her balance of payments does not furnish any clue as to how this surplus was financed. It is estimated that between 1847 and 1867, this surplus was 340 million rupees and between 1898 and 1914 this surplus was 340 million rupees and between 1898 and 1914 this surplus continued right up to 1948 but by a strange piece of statistical jugglery it was turned into a deficit. This was due to what are euphemistically called invisibles. In 1898-99 for instance, these invisible, which are termed as service transaction by one economist, amounted to 396.5 million rupees. By virtue of this India ended up with a net deficit of 40.4 million rupees which was then met by foreign borrowings. These so called service transactions are supposed to have included freight payments by India, commissions on banking and insurance, government home charges, and net interest payments. These figures are incredible, because the invisibles add up to four times the value of merchandise exports. The fact is, this deficit was a bogus one. It was nothing other than a tribute exacted by the ruling power from a conquered nation and nationalist writes like Dada Bhai Naoroji and R.C. Dutt has proven this beyond doubt.
One novel expedient used to finance this bogus deficit, was to use India export to other countries to fiancé Britain’s imports from those countries. For instances, India was forced to export opium to china, to enable Britain to imp[ort tea and silk from China. When the Chinese government resisted the export of opium, which was turning her whole population into degenerated addict, the so called opium wars her to submit to the emasculation of her whole population.
The same fixation with economics profit can be seen at work behind the British fixation with matters relating to and revenue. The best minds among the civil servants of the empire devoted a considerable part of their time to questions of land tenure. Sir John Shore was the first acknowledge expert on this subject and Thomas Munro was anther, and both went on to hold very high position in the government of India, Munroe becoming governor of Madras and Sir John Shore who reached the very pinnacle, retired as governor General. Munro’s early career as collector of Canara district set the pattern for the life style and work schedule that was followed by countless administrators after him. This consists of moving on horseback through a vast territorial domain, camping out and working from morning to night settling land disputes and finalizing the records rights and land revenue assessment. British administrators performed a truly monumental task in compiling these records, which still form the basis of land settlement throughout India. But these heroic efforts were inspired ultimately by a rather mercenary motive, that the hancing the collection of revenue. It is for this reason that the British adopted rather cautious and conservative attitude towards the zamindars. In the beginning, trying to establish their rule in an alien country, it was natural for them to seek the cooperation of the local ruling class.
But even after British rule had become unassailable. This ambivalnet attitude to the zamindars remained. The survival of the poligars, zamindars, Mamlatdar, and other functionaries, who presided over anachronistic system of land tenure, was due to this conservative attitude of the British administrators. We had to wait for independence and a government of politicians rather than civil servant for the abolition of zamindari.
It is alleged by the apologists of British rule, that the construction of great irrigation works and the Indian railways network disapprove the theory of the ’revenue collection mentality’, and prove that the British administration was in fact development oriented. This is a doubtful claim. The construction of the western Yamuna canal network was done with a clear purpose of generating additional revenue. The western Yamuna command area was chosen, because this was in fact an already existing system that had fallen into disuse to neglect and the earth works constructed in Mogul times were still extant. The construction of irrigation system on the Cauvery and the Ganga were inspired by the same profit motive.
As regards the railways, the main reason behind their construction was strategic rather than commercial. It was thought that the railways rather than commercial. It was thought that the railways would facilitate the movement of large bodies of troops from one corner of India to another and thereby consolidate the empire. The other reason was to provide a safe and profitable field for British capital which was finding the domestic market saturated and incapable of a sufficiently high return. By providing a guaranteed five percent return on investment and changing it on the revenues of India, the government of India did just that. It is the British imperialists and the British capitalist who are the real progenitors of the Indian railways.
While the economic policies of the British government retarded economic growth and impoverished the century, the politics of the colonial government exacerbated ancient animosities within Indian society and divided the country. After the so called mutiny –the policy of divide and rule was followed with a cold blooded thoroughness, which led eventually to the partition of India. Its effects are still being felt today. Sir John Lawrence, who may be taken as the archetype of the enlightened British administrator in India, was the head of the Punjab committee which was appointed in 1858 to study the military problems that had led to the great revolt. He observes : “as we cannot do without a large native army in India, our main object is to make that army safe ;and next to the grand counterpoise of a sufficient European force, comes a counterpoise of native against native”. The committee goes on to observe that, “different races mixed together do not long preserve their distinctiveness; their corner and angle and prejudice get rubbed off, till at last they assimilate. “to prevent this the system of local recruitment based on caste was evolved and regiments of Dogras, Sikhs, Rajputs, etc, were created as mutually exclusive units which could never, it was, hoped, make common cause on any national issue.
The same policy of divide and rule was behind Lord Minto’s decision to inaugurate the policy of communal presentation and separate electorate for Muslims, in 1906. By openly encouraging division and separatist elements among the Muslims, the British Raj was directly responsible for the eventual partition of India. Of course communal animosities were not new to India, but Akbar’s policy of toleration and communal harmony had been followed by most rulers, barring Aurangzeb. Aurangzeb had favored hi co-religionist simply out of his devotional fervor for Islam, not for reasons of policy.
It was for the first time that the paramount power in India was deliberately fomenting communal discord as a matter of state policy. This policy of communal representation was taken to absurd lengths in the Prime Minister’s communal award of 1932 which provided for separate representation of as many as fifteen categories.
The same policy was behind the treatment of aboriginal tribes, for whom a special dispensation was devised with the specific objective of keeping them cut off from the mainstream. The constitutional scheme of ‘excluded area’ and “partly excluded areas’, which has already been discussed in the previous chapter was born out of the British desire to use the tribal communities as another division factor. It is ironical that the same divisive framework is now sought to be used as a framework for affirmative action by latter day champions of the ‘tribal’ who don’t seem to realize that they are following in the footstep of the British.
This view of race as an exclusive identity frozen in time is alien to the India view. In India the aboriginal tribes had always been regarded as a part of the diverse social fabric. Rajputs intermarried frequently with Bhils and the Bhilalas owe their origin to the fusion of blood. The famous Rani Durgawati was a Rajput princess married to a Gond chieftain- Dalpat Shah ; and such marriages were commonplace throughout history. The British view of race as a unique identity, and of each race as somehow ontologically different from other races, was partly due to their own feeling of racial superiority and partly the result of blinkered approach to the whole question of ethnicity. When Lord Robert said that even the newest British subaltern was superior to any native officer and could not be placed under his command, he was speaking for an entire generation brought up on the myth of British racial superiority.
This is the view of race as a narrow identity and the collateral view of a nation as a political entity based on ethnicity, which is still the source of bitter strife in the world. The Indians despite their disgraceful views about caste and color and their ludicrous rituals of purity and pollution have been more accommodating on the question of race and indeed do not share the tribalistic notion so common in the west.
I have dwelt at some length on the character of British rule in India, because it is the best example we have of the civil servant as a ruler. It is an example we have of the civil servant as a ruler. It is an example surrounded by myth and legend, but once this encrustation is cleared away and it’s real; nature revealed, we find in it same feature that we had identified in the Chinese example.
To begin with regime of civil servant is always beset with a crisis of legitimacy. This is so, because civil servant vested with sate power tend to form an elite corps, a closed caste where entry is restricted and popular participation is not possible this was the case with the Confucian literati in china; this was certainly the case with the covenanted civil servants of the Raj. In the case of the British raj, the feeling of being a class apart, were reinforced by feeling of racial superiority.
To overcome this crises of legitimacy, which is the fate o0f all regime not founded on popular sanction, and to justify their regime in their own eye, if not in the eyes of those over whom they rule, they have to invent a myth, an elevating moral creed which can put an edifying gloss over the more mundane reason which are behind the whole enterprise. In the Chinese case this was provided by the Confucian ethic. In the British case this was provided by the concept of the ‘white man’s burden’, and the mission to civilize the lesser breeds without the law. This myth then became the official creed of the British civil servant.
It is a tribute to British character, that in spite of this they permitted a large body of heterodox opinion to not merely exist but also flourish. It is these heretics, too intelligent to be taken in by the comforting illusions of conventional wisdom, and too independent to merely toe the line, who are the real heroes of the Indian civil service. It is these men who do not cherish any grand illusion about their role, yet carry out their task with wit wisdom and human sympathy, who are the lead players in the drama.
Still the fact remains that in spite of these men, the overriding purpose and mission of the regime of civil servants remains the perpetuation of their own rule. It is this central purpose which provides the real motive force behind the regime and it is this purpose which eventually alienates the regime from a genuine welfare state. The British Raj in India, for instance, could never have introduced the welfare legislation introduced in England, by the Lloyd George government. The fact that it went on exporting large quantities of grains to Britain, in spite of recruitment famine, speak for itself.
The story of the Raj contains a moral for those who dream of utopias, based on the rule of the guardians. The moral is that those who come into possession of real power, are loath to let go of it, and the initial benevolent impulse of their regime is soon replaced by a dead conservatism, where every stratagem is used and every Machiavellian expedient tried out to perpetuate their rule. The history of the British Raj illustrates this perfectly.
However when all is said and done, the fact still remains, that the Raj in its heyday, say about 1880 or thereabout, enjoyed and still enjoys a very real reputation for probity and justice. The British raj, with its global possession and worldwide dominion surpassed in splendor and prestige any regime that had been known in India, at least since the days of Asoka.
Its unassailable political position enabled the Raj to enforce law and order, better than any regime known hitherto. It must be emphasized that the India of myth and legend, the kind of India, described by Megasthenes in his book Indica, had passed away long since men’s memories and into the pages of history. Most people knew nothing about this mythical golden age, their experience was rather of plundering Pindaris and marauding thugs, of predatory bands of robbers and freebooter ravaging innocent villages and bringing death and destruction in their wake. It was the raj which wiped out these myriad forms of criminality and made the Indian country side safe again. It was the British regime again which freed the process of governance from venality and corruption. Let us admit that the British officer was more sympathetic to the underdog and mo0re assiduous in redressing his wrong than his Indian counterpart today. We have to concede that in the conduct of day to day administration, the British raj set a very high standard of governance. But let us remember that the civil servants of the Raj could set high standards, because they were solely and exclusively in command. Their high sense of responsibility was born out of unfettered authority. Their claim to good governance thus exacted a high price from India-the price of freedom.
