Civil Services under the British

The civil service was the "steel frame" that held the colonial state together. It began as the clerical staff of a trading company. Over time it grew into a powerful permanent bureaucracy that ran the country. Two themes run through its story. First, the British built an efficient, well-paid service to govern India in their own interest. Second, they kept Indians out of its higher ranks for as long as they could. Even when Indianisation slowly began, it never transferred real power into Indian hands.

The early service was riddled with corruption. Officials traded privately and took bribes while drawing low salaries.

• Cornwallis (Governor-General, 1786–93) is called the father of the Indian civil service. He tried to check corruption by raising salaries, banning private trade, forbidding gifts and bribes, and promoting by seniority.
• Separation of functions, 1793: Cornwallis was alarmed that so much power sat with one official, the District Collector. His regulations of 1793 therefore separated revenue and judicial functions. The Collector lost his judicial powers and became a revenue collector only.

Early Governors-General also founded institutions of learning, and examiners like to pair each institution with its founder.

• Calcutta Madrasa, 1781: founded by Warren Hastings for the study of Muslim law and related subjects.
• Sanskrit College at Benaras, 1791: founded by Jonathan Duncan, then the Company's Resident at Benaras, for the study of Hindu law and philosophy.
• Fort William College, 1800: set up at Calcutta by Richard Wellesley, the Governor-General (not his soldier brother Arthur Wellesley), to train new recruits. The Court of Directors disapproved and instead opened the East India College at Haileybury in England in 1806.
• The Charter Act of 1853 ended the Company's patronage and threw recruitment open to competitive examination. This was a major change.
• But Indians were barred from high posts from the start. The Charter Act of 1793 reserved all posts worth £500 a year for the Company's covenanted servants. Three reasons were given for excluding Indians. One was the belief that only the English could serve British interests. Another was the prejudice that Indians were untrustworthy. The third was simple competition among Europeans for lucrative jobs.

Even after exams opened, entry stayed nearly impossible for Indians.

• The examination was held in England, in English, and tested classical Greek and Latin. The maximum age was steadily lowered, from 23 (1859) to 19 (1878) under Lytton, making it even harder for Indians to compete.
• Satyendra Nath Tagore became the first Indian to qualify for the ICS, in 1863.
• Surendranath Banerjee also qualified for the ICS, but he was dismissed in 1874 on a minor procedural charge. The dismissal was widely seen as discriminatory. The experience turned him into a leading nationalist voice. He went on to found the Indian Association in 1876.
• The Indian National Congress, from 1885, demanded a lower age limit and a simultaneous examination held in both India and England. In 1893 the House of Commons even passed a resolution for simultaneous exams, but it was never implemented.
• All key, well-paid positions stayed with Europeans. Indianisation did slowly begin after 1918 under nationalist pressure. But it did not transfer effective power. Indian members of the service still served imperial interests and acted as agents of colonial rule.

A series of committees and reports reshaped recruitment over the decades.

• Aitchison Committee on Public Services, 1886: set up by Dufferin. It recommended dropping the terms "covenanted" and "uncovenanted", classifying the service into Imperial, Provincial and Subordinate grades, and raising the age limit to 23.
• Montford (Montagu-Chelmsford) reforms, 1919: accepted that more Indians should be employed. They recommended a simultaneous examination held in both India and England. They also proposed that one-third of recruitment be made in India, rising annually.
• Lee Commission, 1924: recommended that direct recruitment to the ICS reach 50:50 parity between Europeans and Indians within 15 years. It also recommended that a Public Service Commission be set up at once, as the 1919 Act had provided.
• Government of India Act, 1935: provided for a Federal Public Service Commission and Provincial Public Service Commissions. Control still remained in British hands.