And yet there are many people in England who have much to learn about the Indian Civil Service. They have heard of the Civil Service Supply Association in London, and they know that it is managed by the Civil Servants of the Government public offices in London, who are fully entitled to call themselves the Civil Servants of the Crown. In a single year about 15,000 candidates compete for the Home Civil Service, and about 5,000 are passed. Their name is legion, and they pervade the whole country. But the Indian Civil Service is a much more select and exclusive service. Only about forty new candidates are admitted to it by competitive examination each year. These are the recruits who are sent out annually to replenish the Civil Service throughout the whole of India in the three Presidencies of Bengal, Bombay, and Madras, and their dependencies. There are less than 1,000 members of the Civil Service in the whole of India. In the lower provinces of Bengal, to which this article is chiefly devoted, the Civil Service consisted recently of only 255 members. It is but a little leaven to leaven the whole mass of the native population of Lower Bengal, which numbers more than sixty millions according to the last census.
It is no easy task to attempt to describe the duties of the Indian Civil Service. As to the Indian civilian himself, the pen might almost hesitate to describe him. It reminds us of the epitaph on a good wife—
She was, but words are wanting to say what.
Think what a wife should be, and she was that.
It would perhaps be easier to say what an Indian civilian should be than what he is. He should be not less capable and omniscient than the late Lord John Russell, prepared to command the Channel fleet, or to perform an operation in lithotomy. There is a story current of a distinguished civilian in the mutinies of 1857–58 to whom Lord Clyde said, “Why, Mr. P., you seem to wish to command the army.” “And a very laudable ambition too, I think, my Lord,” replied Mr. P., unabashed. The government of a province and its millions of inhabitants is avowedly the ultimate aim and object of each civilian’s official life; but whilst he is serving his apprenticeship for the higher offices of Government, he must be prepared to adapt his mind to the most humble and unintellectual duties. He must learn to obey, so that he may understand how to rule. He will have to look after the scavengers who are occupied with the drainage and sanitation of the town in which he lives. He will have to count and deliver out postage-stamps with his own hands, and woe betide him if his treasury accounts and cash balances do not agree to the uttermost farthing. The capacity of a civilian’s mental power should be similar to that of the elephant’s trunk, which can pick up a pin and pull down a mighty forest tree. There is nothing too great, and hardly anything too small, to which he may not in the course of his career be expected to apply himself.
The civilian is not unfrequently described in the local newspapers as a Celestial official. There is a linguistic basis for this epithet Celestial. Where the Sanskrit and Bengali languages prevail, the civilian is usually addressed by the title of Dhurmavatar, or Incarnation of Justice. Where the Persian and Hindustani languages are more in vogue, he is usually styled Khudawand, which may be translated as “Lord” or “God.” The civilian from his official cradle being thus addressed as a superhuman personage, not unnaturally sucks in the high-sounding titles and mentally feeds upon them. What wonder, then, if he unconsciously begins to think with thoughts that are not as those of ordinary mortal men. And thus it comes to pass that the young members of the Civil Service, nurtured on sweet words and addressed continually by flattering and exaggerated titles, surrounded from day to day by suppliant and subservient attendants, and frequently cut off from any direct communication with English friends, do acquire a manner of thought and speech which may strike the non-official observer as savouring of the superhuman or Celestial type. It is unwholesome for the human mind to live in an atmosphere of flattery and honeyed words. We remember a native gentleman of high rank and position who asked for an appointment in a Government office for one of his younger sons. “He is a good lad,” he said, “but I want to get him placed where he will find himself addressed by some title less than Maharajah, as he now hears himself called by all the servants on my establishment.”
A member of the Civil Service was formerly bound by a covenant to serve the East India Company for the best part of his life. He now enters into a covenant to serve the Queen-Empress of India for a similar term of years. There is a great gulf between the covenanted and uncovenanted servants of the Queen, but at present we can only treat of the covenanted man. In “vulgar parlance” he used to be described as an individual worth £300 a year dead or alive, and this is still his specific social valuation. If he dies and leaves a widow, she will receive from the Civil Fund an annual sum of £300 a year. If whilst he lives he falls into trouble or sickness, he is still entitled by his covenant to a subsistence allowance of £300 a year. He may be, and usually is, a much larger partaker in the pecuniary advantages of his service. But the time was when in the matrimonial market of Calcutta the solid advantages of the covenanted young civilian might thus be weighed against the brilliant uniforms and ever-willing swords of his military rivals; and if the young man owned a buggy, and a silver teapot, and had subscribed to the Civil Fund, he was looked on as eligible for immediate wedlock.
Under the competitive system of admission to the Civil Service, the civilian is now such a very superior person in ability and acquirements, that we will not attempt to describe him. But we will first refer to the men of the old school, before the competitive system was invented and applied to the Indian Civil Service. We will look back to the time when the civilian in the earliest stage of his Indian career was a most important factor in the fashionable world of Calcutta. Forty or fifty years ago the young civilian, on landing in India, was entered as a student in the College of Fort William. He had passed through the course of instruction and examinations of the old college at Hertford and Haileybury. Discipline at those institutions is said to have been sufficiently lax and irregular. But it was required by the ruling authorities of India that the young civilian, on arriving in India, should again submit himself to some sort of college discipline whilst he was studying the native languages of India in Calcutta. A fine range of buildings called Writers’ Buildings represented the Calcutta College. A young civilian was in those times styled a Writer. His appointment was called a Writership. This was an inheritance of the mercantile nomenclature of the East India Company. The Calcutta College owed its constitution and existence in a great measure to the classical theories of the great Marquis of Wellesley when Governor-General of India. But classical theories combined with Oriental developments are calculated to produce a somewhat hybrid progeny. The young civilians landed in India with a not unjustifiable notion of their own personal and social importance. On leaving their English college, the Chairman of the Court of Directors had solemnly addressed them on the dignity and responsibility of their position. They had been informed that they were to be the future governors of India; they had been told that it was their duty to demean themselves as Christian gentlemen, to become a light to the heathen, and the leaders of Oriental civilisation. Is it then a matter of wonder that these young men on arriving in Calcutta found it somewhat difficult to submit themselves again to anything having the name or the appearance of college or scholastic discipline? Be it remembered that each young man on his arrival in India was entitled to an income equivalent to nearly four hundred pounds a year. A gentleman commoner at an English university with £400 a year and confiding tradesmen to give him credit, is not usually found a good subject for discipline. What, then, could be expected from the young men in Calcutta, with a salary of £400 a year, and open access to the purses of every wealthy money-lender in the country? Nor was this all. The Government, aware of the danger of the native money-lender’s fatal influence, endeavoured to anticipate and avert it. Each young civilian, whilst in college in Calcutta, was authorised to borrow a sum of £400 from Government. The object of this benevolence was to prevent him from getting into the clutches of the native money-lenders. What was the result? The taste of blood is said to lead to the appetite for more. The young man who had found a loan of £400 almost forced on him by a paternal Government, experienced no difficulty in borrowing several thousand pounds from the native money-lender, who, it may be said, felt confident that the Government would eventually see that he was repaid. The wildest extravagance naturally resulted from this system. The nabob who in the plenitude of his acquired wealth ordered “more curricles,” was practically outdone by the young civilian who, with a nominal income of £400 a year, maintained an establishment in Calcutta in which he would not allow the Arab horses in his stable to be counted. He seldom had less than forty horses, but he considered it unlucky to count them. This officer rose subsequently to the highest eminence in the service, and not only paid all his debts, but acquired a respectable competency. A cousin of this gentleman, who also achieved the highest official honours, had a similar love for horses. He had a stud of English race-horses and an English jockey in charge of them. It would be easy but tedious to enumerate other splendid examples of youthful extravagance. It was the fashion to get in debt to the amount of a lakh of rupees, or £10,000, before leaving college. The cautious and canny young man who did not condescend to borrow the £400 proffered to him by Government, was looked upon with very little feeling of respect by anyone, except perhaps his mother.
The time came in due course when the college of Fort William was reformed. Writers’ Buildings were closed as a residential college. The young writers on arriving in India were ordered to remain in Calcutta to obtain a certain qualification in the native languages, but they were expected to live with friends who would keep them under greater social restraint; or to find their own habitations, where it is needless to say that there was no social restraint. The result was that three or four young men who had been friends at the college of Haileybury, in England, joined one another in setting up a house or mess in Calcutta. The Government no longer offered its loan of £400 to each young man. The chief evidence of college discipline (the name of the college being still maintained) consisted in the daily appearance of a venerable native gentleman called a Moonshee or a Pundit; and in a monthly examination in the College Hall, before the Principal and two paid examiners. The venerable native gentlemen who came as instructors in the languages were usually ignorant of English, and were therefore unacceptable to their pupils. They had no personal interest in their pupils, as they drew their Government salary without reference to the progress of their pupils. They attended solemnly from day to day, and were as solemnly requested to come again to-morrow. When a young writer really wished to learn the languages, he invoked the help of one of the two private teachers, Raj Chunder and Harry Mohun who were good English scholars, and so made the path of learning a little more pleasant. Each young writer was required to qualify in the languages in either one or two years after his arrival in India, and so the time came at last when he was obliged to call in the private tutors. Somehow or other these private tutors had a great prophetic power of anticipating the particular passages in the text-books, and the particular papers for translation which would be used at any coming examination. Or if it turned out that they had been mistaken when the day of examination came, they were usually in attendance within reach of the examination hall, and mysteriously entered into some electro-biological or theosophical communication with their pupils, if any of these were nervous or doubtful of their own powers. We would beg, however, emphatically to record that most of the men passed their examinations by their own knowledge and ability. There were always a certain number of men who attained honours and pecuniary rewards and medals for their superior proficiency in the languages; but there were sometimes a few whose idleness and negligence compelled them at the last moment to have recourse to electro-biological assistance.
But whilst the studious existence of the College was thus carried on, its social existence was much more pleasant and influential. Three or four young men living together kept up an establishment which seldom cost any one of them less than £100 per month, his pay from Government being £35. Almost every young civilian used to keep at least three horses and a buggy. The number of their native servants was so large that we hesitate to write it. The use of the hookah was fashionable, and almost every young man kept a man and a boy to look after this elaborate smoking apparatus. Each student had two or three table servants, arrayed in gay liveries with silver crests. Every student belonged to the Bengal Club, to the Racket Club, to the Cricket Club, to the Swimming Club, to the Turf Club, and a few really good riders were admitted to the Tent Club. Proficiency at billiards was a common accomplishment. Play rather than proficiency at whist was the rule, and the stakes were not less than four sovereigns on each rubber, whilst a little quiet betting easily doubled and quadrupled these petty stakes. But there were many other pleasant and necessary expenses. Private parties to ladies, theatricals, and public balls were to be got up at the expense of the young civilians in college, of course in return for the pleasant and ample hospitality extended to them by the residents of Calcutta. Even the expense of dress was not inconsiderable. The usual number of young civilians belonging to the college was about thirty, and at least twenty of this number would appear on the Course, or Rotten Row of Calcutta, every evening, dressed in the highest light of fashion, as an example to the rest of the fashionable world who had been longer exiled from England. But in addition to the ordinary civil society of Calcutta, the young civilian had to keep himself on good terms with the messes of the regiments in Fort William and at Barrackpore, and at the famous old Artillery mess at Dumdum which was then in its palmy days. It was nothing unusual for a young civilian to entertain a large party of his young friends at the Bengal Club, when champagne flowed like water; sometimes, perhaps, it flowed too freely. There is an old but true story of a young civilian who had been entertaining his friends at the Bengal Club. After dinner, and, we may add, after midnight, he was driving home to his house with his new buggy and his best horse and harness, all purchased within the last week, when at an awkward turn of the road he pulled the wrong rein, and his spirited horse plunged headlong into a deep tank or reservoir of water. How the master and his groom saved their lives is hardly known. The unfortunate horse was drowned, and the buggy was fished out next day looking anything but gay. The young man wrote home to his father, asking for funds to buy a new horse and buggy, but he received a stern reply:—“I cannot understand, my dear son, how a young man in your position can require to keep three horses, three grooms, and a cabriolet.” But the good old man sent the money asked for.