Anachronistic Scholarship
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This book is for you if you are reading books for amusement and fill your brain with trivia. Instead, if your interest is to get a better understanding of the history, society and the government in India during the late nineteenth century, you are better off to look elsewhere.
The author happens to be stuck in the late nineteenth century mindset and racial outlook. He has not realized that we are living in the twenty-first century and this kind of scholarship of glorifying the British while demeaning the Indians (labeled by the author as natives) based on the words of selected few people is a Eurocentric cliché which is no more in fashion.
My fundamental criticism of the book is that it is a collection of excerpts from memoirs, letters and other reports from the British ICS officers who were in service of the government. The author presents their words as the absolute fact and made no efforts objectively evaluate those words. The truth is that there were two parties to the process, the rulers and the ruled. Author made no effort to present the views and opinions of the peasants, workers, farmers, traders and educated intelligentsia of India. At best the book is a biased scholarship and at its worst it is racist diatribe.
It is stated a many times that the civilians "loved India". What they loved in reality was their power to rule over the destinies of millions of Indians whose culture and beliefs they would never understand or appreciate. They were bent upon imposing their will on an unwilling but helpless population. It was a power with no accountability and backed by a military machine and terror. Myth of a "benevolent" government cracks open when you learn that the government survived solely on taxes on people and over half the revenues were spent on army and a third was spent on the administrative machinery leaving practically nothing for people's welfare (page 109).
Trying to understand the nineteenth century India through this book will be analogous to learning about slavery through the journals of the slave traders and plantation owners. That says it all.
There's A Rat In My Bed
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So said the wife of a British Civil Servant shortly after their arrival in India.
When author Gilmore first mentioned to his friends that he was contemplating writing a book on the Civil Service I wonder if they looked at him with stunned incomprehension. I mean who wants to read a book on the life of Civil Servants? Well I, for one, got pretty engrossed in reading the results of his inspiration. I admit that before I picked up this book I was a bit uncertain about reading it. After all aren't civil servants people who sit in cubicles with tons of paper to process and file away? Well I found out that members of the Indian Civil Service (ICS) were the folks who ruled India. Called "Civilians" they oversaw the governance of India, collected tax revenues, kept the Maharajahs of the princely states (those areas not directly governed by Britain) from ruining their domains, served as magistrates and judges, and generally just kept things running.
It was a harsh, unpleasant climate for the Brits working there. When a new group of Civilians arrived in India you could expect one third of them to be dead within twenty years. They frequently became ill with cholera, typhoid, or malaria, and in some instances they were killed by tigers or cheetahs. But look at the bright side: after 8 years of service they were given a two year furlough back to England.
Gilmour describes them all: the ambitious, the lazy, the renegades, the sportsmen and the scholars. The British put a lot of emphasis on sportsmanship. If you wanted to join the ICS it helped if you were good at cricket and polo. After all if you were sent to supervise a princely state you had to be able to play polo with the Maharajah.
Some reviewers found this book to be a bit dry. Considering the subject matter I think the author produced a tremendously interesting book. The only thing I found that could be classified as dry were some seemingly unending examples of a topic. For instance when retirement was discussed we learned that Smythe went to Folkstone, Blythe went to Southampton and worked as a shopkeeper, etc. These folks have all sunk into historical oblivion, and the reader won't remember any of them once finished with the book. It was amusing to read, though, how many of them returned to England and became world class bores, telling India stories to everyone that they bumped into.
The book focuses on the nineteenth century. The only aspect of the life that could have been discussed more would be the relations between Civilians and the Indians. The Indians, being very class conscious would, on occasion, unconsciously insult a Civilian. Invited to dinner at an Indian home the host would shake the Civilian's hand, and then immediately plunge his hands into a bowl of water and wash them. After the Civilian left the plates and eating utensils that he used were discarded in the trash.
Gilmour is not very judgmental about the British Raj. He says, for instance, that famine duty brought out the best in the Civilians. They were energetic in helping the hungry Indians. He does not mention that within the first three years of the new national government of India formed in 1947 three huge dams were constructed by the Indians to eliminate floods, provide power, and insure sufficient water for irrigation farming. The British never seemed to consider doing something like that.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of India, and the Raj. I'd even consider it mandatory for such readers. It covers an aspect of British/Indian life that you will not find in any other book (that I know of anyway).
