Far from having flooded India, as is often alleged, with a horde of
overpaid officials, we may justly claim that no Western nation has ever
attempted to govern an alien dependency with a smaller staff of its own
race, or has admitted the subject races to so large a participation in
its public services. The whole vast machinery of executive and judicial
administration in British India employs over 1,250,000 Indians, and only
a little more than 5,000 Englishmen altogether, of whom about one-sixth
constitute what is called _par excellence_ the Civil Service of India.
Not the least remarkable achievement of British rule has been the
building up of a great body of Indian public servants capable of rising
to offices of great trust. Not only, for instance, do Indian Judges sit
on the Bench in the High Courts on terms of complete equality with their
European colleagues, but magisterial work all over India is done chiefly
by Indians. The same holds good of the Revenue Department and of the
much, and often very unjustly, abused Department of Police; and, in
fact, as Anglo-Indian officials are the first to acknowledge, there is
not a department which could be carried on to-day without the loyal and
intelligent co-operation of the Indian public servant. There is room for
improving the position of Indians, not only, as I have already pointed
out, in the Educational Department, but probably in every branch of the
"Provincial" service, which corresponds roughly with what was formerly
called the "Un-covenanted" service. As far back as 1879 Lord Lytton laid
down rules which gave to natives of India one-sixth of the appointments
until then reserved for the "Covenanted" service, and we have certainly
not yet reached the limit of the number of Indians who may ultimately
with advantage be employed in the different branches of the public
service; but few who know the defects as well as the good qualities of
the native will deny that to reduce hastily the European leaven in any
department would be to jeopardize its moral as well as its
administrative efficiency. The condition of the police, for instance, is
a case in point, for any survival of the bad old native traditions is
due very largely to the insufficiency of European control. Mr. Gokhale
has himself admitted as one of the reasons for founding his society of
"Servants of India" the necessity of "building up a higher type of
character and capacity than is generally available in the coun