Indian Civil Service
The Indian Civil Service (ICS), officially known as the Imperial Civil Service, was the higher civil service of the British Empire in India during British rule in the period between 1858 and 1947.
Not to be confused with Civil Services of India.
Its members ruled over more than 300 million people[1] in the presidencies and provinces of British India and were ultimately responsible for overseeing all government activity in the 250 districts that comprised British India. They were appointed under Section XXXII(32) of the Government of India Act 1858,[2][3] enacted by the British Parliament.[4] The ICS was headed by the Secretary of State for India, a member of the British cabinet.
At first almost all the top thousand members of the ICS, known as "Civilians", were British, and had been educated in the best British schools.[5]
At the time of the partition of India in 1947, the outgoing Government of India's ICS was divided between India and Pakistan.[a] Although these are now organised differently, the contemporary Civil Services of India, the Central Superior Services of Pakistan, Bangladesh Civil Service and Myanmar Civil Service are all descended from the old Indian Civil Service. Historians often rate the ICS, together with the railway system, the legal system, and the Indian Army, as among the most important legacies of British rule in India.[6]
After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, pay scales were drawn up.[1] Assistant Commissioners started out in their early twenties on around £300 a year.[1] The governorship of a British province was the highest post an ICS officer could aspire to.[18] The governors at the top of the pyramid got £6,000 a year plus allowances.[1] All ICS officers retired on the same pension of £1,000.[1] This sum was paid as an annuity each year after retirement. Widows of deceased officers were entitled to £300 a year, leading to a popular saying that an ICS marriage was worth "three hundred a year alive or dead".[19]
In the first decades of the twentieth century, the imbalance in salaries and emoluments was so great that 8,000 British officers together earned a total of £13,930,554, while 130,000 Indians in government service (not just those in the Indian Civil Service proper) were collectively paid a total of £3,284,163.[20]
ICS officers normally served for a minimum of twenty-five years, and there was a maximum service period of thirty-five years.[1]
ICS officers served as political officers in the Indian Political Department and also were given fifty percent of the judgeships in the state high court (the rest were generally elevated from the high court bar).[18] The tenure of ICS officers serving as judges of the high court and Supreme Court was determined by the retirement age fixed for judges.[18]
Source:[b][c]
After the Government of India Act 1935[edit]
The finances of India under British rule depended largely on land taxes, and these became problematic in the 1930s. Epstein argues that after 1919 it became harder and harder to collect the land revenue. The suppression of civil disobedience by the British after 1934 temporarily increased the power of the revenue agents, but after 1937 they were forced by the new Congress-controlled provincial governments to hand back confiscated land. The outbreak of the Second World War strengthened them again, but in the face of the Quit India movement the revenue collectors had to rely on military force, and by 1946–47 direct British control was rapidly disappearing in much of the countryside.[25]
The outbreak of war in 1939 had immediate consequences for recruitment to the ICS. The examinations in London were suspended after that year's batch (12 British and eight Indian examinees) had qualified. In 1940 and 1941, 12 and four British candidates, respectively, were nominated to the ICS; the following year, the final London-nominated ICS candidates, both of whom were Indian, entered the service. Examinations continued to be held in Delhi for Indian candidates until 1943, when the last seven ICS officers (seven examinees, two nominated) joined. By this time, the British government felt it could no longer rely unambiguously on the complete loyalty of its Indian officers. During the period of the Interim Government of India (1946–1947), a few British candidates were given emergency appointments in the ICS, though ultimately none of them ever served in India.[23]
Partition of India, dissolution and subsequent service of officers[edit]
At the time of the partition of India and departure of the British, in 1947, the Indian Civil Service was divided between the new Dominions of India and Pakistan. The part which went to India was named the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), while the part that went to Pakistan was named the "Civil Service of Pakistan" (CSP). In 1947, there were 980 ICS officers. 468 were Europeans, 352 Hindus, 101 Muslims, two depressed classes/Scheduled Castes, five domiciled Europeans and Anglo-Indians, 25 Indian Christians, 13 Parsis, 10 Sikhs and four other communities.[18] Many Hindus and Muslims went to India and Pakistan respectively. This sudden loss of officer cadre caused major challenges in administering the nascent states.
Despite offers from the new Indian and Pakistani governments, virtually all of the European former ICS officers left following partition, with the majority of those who did not opt for retirement continuing their careers either in the British Home Civil Service or in another British colonial civil service.[26] A few British ex-ICS officers stayed on over the ensuing quarter-century, notably those who had selected the "judicial side" of the ICS. The last British former ICS officer from the "judicial side" still serving in the subcontinent, Justice Donald Falshaw (ICS 1928), retired as Chief Justice of the Punjab High Court (now the Punjab and Haryana High Court) in May 1966,[27][28] receiving a knighthood in the British 1967 New Year Honours upon his return to Britain. J. P. L. Gwynn (ICS 1939), the last former ICS officer holding British nationality and the last to serve in an executive capacity under the Indian government, ended his Indian service in 1968 as Second Member of the Board of Revenue, but continued to serve in the British Home Civil Service until his final retirement in 1976.[29][30]
Justice William Broome (ICS 1932), a district and sessions judge at the time of independence in 1947, remained in Indian government service as a judge. Having married an Indian, Swarup Kumari Gaur, in 1937, with whom he raised a family, he eventually renounced his British citizenship in 1958 and became an Indian citizen with the personal intervention of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, himself a former barrister who regarded Broome as a distinguished jurist and as "much as Indian as anybody can be who is not born in India". Upon his retirement on 18 March 1972 from the Allahabad High Court as its most senior puisne judge, Broome was the last former ICS officer of European origin serving in India.[28]
Nirmal Kumar Mukarji (ICS 1943), a member of the final batch recruited to the ICS, who retired as Cabinet Secretary in April 1980, was the last Indian administrative officer who had originally joined as an ICS.[18] The last former ICS officer to retire, Aftab Ghulam Nabi Kazi (also a member of the final ICS batch of 1943),[31] retired as Chairman of the Pakistan Board of Investment in 1994. The last living British ex-ICS officer, Ian Dixon Scott (ICS 1932), died in 2002. V. K. Rao (ICS 1937), the last living ICS officer to have joined the service in a regular pre-war intake, died in 2018. He was a retired Chief Secretary of Andhra Pradesh and was the oldest former ICS officer on record at the time of his death. V.M.M. Nair (ICS 1942) transferred to the Indian Political Service in 1946 and then to the Indian Foreign Service after independence, retiring in 1977 as Ambassador to Spain. At his death in 2021, he was the last surviving former Indian Civil Service officer.[32]