Indian Civil Service

“ Competitive examinations for admission to the Indian Civil Service had already been opened to Indians as well as Britons, and in 1870 it was further declared to be expedient that additional facilities should be given for the employment of natives of India of proved merit and ability in the Civil Service. ”

“ You may get a High Court judgeship here, membership of the Legislative Council there, possibly an Executive Membership of the Council. Or do you want an expansion of the Legislative Councils? Do you want that a few Indians shall sit as your representatives in the House of Commons? Do you want a large number of Indians in the Civil Service? Let us see whether 50, 100, 200, or 300 civilians will make the Government our own.... The whole Civil Service might be Indian, but the Civil servants have to carry out orders—they cannot direct, they cannot dictate the policy. ”

“ It depends on the Civil Service, and it depends on the power of Indians with the sense and instincts of government, to control wilder spirits without the sense or the instincts of government. As for the Civil Service, which is the other branch on which all depends, it is impossible not to be struck with the warmest admiration of the loyal and manful tone in which leading members of the Civil Service have expressed their resolution to face the new tasks that this legislation will impose upon them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is by a steady adherence to these principles that the Indian Civil Service has been raised to its present high character for integrity and ability; and the native army made what it really is, faithful and devoted to its rulers, and ready to serve them in any quarter of the world. ”

“ Whilst, subject to the maintenance of effective executive control, we have extended and must continue steadily to extend the area of civil employment for Indians in the service of the State, there would certainly seem to be room also for affording them increased opportunities of military employment. ”

“ The principal agencies which must be depended upon for the solution of the Indian problem are work, education, the permanent settlement upon agricultural and pasture lands, security of title, and equal protection of the law. All these are civil agencies, and the more the land interests of the Indians press into the foreground, the more necessary will it be that Indian management be connected with that branch of the service which has the administration of public lands under its special control. ”

“ The Indian civil service, by an act passed in 1853, had been thrown open to all who, being natural-born subjects of the British sovereign, should offer themselves as candidates for examination and admission. Young cadets, who previously had been allowed nearly two years to ‘idle and loiter’ at the presidencies while studying for examination as civilians, were by a new regulation required to complete their studies in a much shorter period, thereby lessening their idleness and rendering them sooner useful. ”

“ No Englishmen are in closer touch with the realities of Indian life than Indian civilians, and means must be found to break down the wall which now rigidly separates the Educational Service from the Civil Service. ”

“ When this is done so that it cannot be undone, and the officers of the Department are clothed with power to protect the Indian under the civil law of the land, and the barriers to the citizenship of the Indian are removed, and he stands upon the same plane with every other man, alike responsible to law, and equally entitled to its protection, then, and not until then, may we hope for peace with our native tribes. ”

“ The truth is that the Indians are earning the right to be regarded as worthy fellow-subjects in more ways than one. The battle-field has always formed the short cut to an honourable equality among races. But the Indians are also proving their title to our respect by the slower and more difficult methods of civil life. There was a greater experiment made in the constitutional government of dependencies than the expansion of the Indian Legislative Council on a partially elective basis three years ago. ”

“ Many other reasons might be suggested why the Indian department should altogether be under military control, but a familiar knowledge of the practical working of the present system would seem to be the most convincing proof of the propriety of the measure. It is pretty generally advocated by those most familiar with our Indian relations, and, so far as I know, the Indians themselves desire it. Civil officers are not usually respected by the tribes, but they fear and regard the military, and will submit to their counsels, advice, and dictation, when they would not listen to a civil agent. ”

“ So long as the country fluctuates in an alternation of sentimental and brutal impulses, according as the wrongs done to the Indian or the wrongs done by him are at the moment more distinctly in mind, it cannot be wondered at that Congress should be reluctant to undertake the re-organization of the Indian service on any large and lasting plan, or that the Indian Office should hesitate to cut out for itself more work than it can look to make up in the interval between sessions. ”

“ They admit that:
“If responsible government is to be established in India there will be a far greater need than is even dreamt of at present for persons to take part in public affairs in the legislative assemblies and elsewhere; and for this reason the more Indians we can employ in the public services the better. Moreover, it would lessen the burden of Imperial responsibilities if a body of capable Indian administrators could be produced. We regard it as necessary, therefore, that recruitment of a largely increased proportion of Indians should be begun at once.” ”

“ Those who agree with the Secretary that the great object of the Indian policy must be the ultimate civilization of the savages, differ with him as to methods, and hold that the surest, most humane, and least costly method is first of all to secure just treatment to the Indians, as it is not and can not be secured by the present civilian system, and then to prove to them that we have the power to enforce our will, as we do not prove it to them now. ”

“ The humane and peaceful policy which has been inaugurated by the Government in the conduct of Indian affairs for the past two years has been productive of gratifying results. The board of commissioners authorized by the law of April 10, 1869, composed of citizens distinguished for intelligence and philanthropy, and serving without pay, has assisted in withdrawing from the Indian service much that has been heretofore regarded as the source of evil and injustice, and which is supposed to have prevented the success of public measures intended as a means of civilization. ”

“ The first great object should be a total and sweeping reform in this respect. The Department of Indian Affairs, as it is now organized, should be abolished as a costly and unnecessary adjunct to a Government already overburdened with political patronage. We have a large number of meritorious and highly educated officers of the army on the retired list. Many of them have acquired considerable insight into Indian character during the course of their campaigns in our Territories and on our frontiers. They are drawing pay from the Government without rendering effective service. ”

“ The Indians still remain under the care of the Department of the Interior. We believe that the Administration earnestly desires the promotion of their true interests, but the grievous wrongs under which they have so long suffered still continue to be visited upon them, and will so long as an impossible policy is attempted to be carried out by an insufficient force. The question as to the legal status of the Indian is now before the courts. ”

“ To throw upon a dozen religious and benevolent societies the responsibility of advising the executive in the appointment of the agents of the Indian service is not a policy. To buy off a few bands, more insolent than the rest, by a wholesale issue of subsistence and the lavish bestowal of presents, without reference to the disposition of the savages to labor for their own support, and even without reference to the good or ill desert of individuals,—this, though doubtless expedient in the critical situation of our frontier population, is the merest expediency, not in any sense a policy. ”

“ To determine this properly we must first know what is to be the future treatment of the Indians. If we intend to have war with them, the bureau should go to the Secretary of War. If we intend to have peace, it should be in the civil department. In our judgment, such wars are wholly unnecessary, and hoping that the government and the country will agree with us, we cannot now advise the change. It is possible, however, that, despite our efforts to maintain peace, war may be forced on us by some tribe or tribes of Indians. ”

“ There is a more general and intelligent interest in the subject than we have ever known, and the discussion is conducted in such an excellent spirit that a question which is usually so little attractive is assuming its true place in public attention. The differences between the Secretary of the Interior and those who advocate making the Indians amenable to law, and those who wish to see the Indian Bureau transferred to the War Department, are differences of method, not of purpose. All aim to civilize the Indians, to teach them self-support, and to merge them gradually in the mass of citizens. ”

“ The objects of the Society as laid down by its promoters are "to train national missionaries for the service of India and to promote by all constitutional means the true interests of the Indian people." Its members "frankly accept the British connexion as ordained, in the inscrutable dispensation of Providence, for India's good," and they recognize that "self-government within the Empire and a higher life generally for their countrymen" constitute a goal which "cannot be attained without years of earnest and patient effort and sacrifices worthy of the cause." ”

“ One swallow does not make the summer. One civilian, 100 or 1,000 civilians in the service of the British Government will not make that Government Indian. There are traditions, there are laws, there are policies to which every civilian, be he black or brown or white, must submit, and as long as these traditions have not been altered, as long as these principles have not been amended, as long as that policy has not been radically changed, the supplanting of European by Indian agency will not make for self-government in this country. ”

“ While the Indians are officially at peace, according to treaties negotiated with them by the civil officers of the Indian Bureau, the military forces stationed in the Indian country have no jurisdiction over the Indians, and of consequence no certain knowledge of their feelings or purposes, and no power to take any action, either of a precautionary or aggressive character. ”

“ Bureau is run in the interests of the politicians, and Indian civilization is merely an incident, the excellent and humanitarian policies approved by the American people will not be fully carried into effect.
It is true that good men and especially good women have gone into the Indian service with a genuine desire to deal justly and kindly by the Indian and to serve the Government honorably and efficiently. Such people often become disgusted with the system and find it impossible to stay, or else are forced out by methods familiar to the experienced. ”

“ The distance which separates the agents—the workers in the field—from the Indian Office in Washington is a chief obstacle to Indian progress. Whatever shall more closely unite these two branches of the Indian Service, and shall enable them to co-operate more heartily and more effectively, will be for the increased efficiency of the work and the betterment of the race for whose improvement the Indian Bureau was established. ”

“ The history of Indian management shows many failures and miscarriages, which patriotic citizens look back upon with keen regret; but it is a mistaken opinion that these failures and miscarriages would have been avoided had the control of Indian affairs been intrusted to another branch of the public service than that which now conducts it. The period during which the management of Indian affairs was in military hands need only be carefully studied to cure any fair-minded man of such a delusion. ”

“ Better by far to stop the further introduction of Indians altogether than to take what work you can out of them and order them away. But now that which was meritorious 10 years ago in the Indian, namely, his service to the Colony for 5 years for a paltry wage, has become a crime for which he would deserve transportation to India, if the Natal Attorney-General be allowed to do so by the Indian and the Home Governments. ”

“ Good management on the one hand and the good sense of the better class of Indians on the other hand, at certain points led to remarkable results; but a forward move along the whole line of the Indian population is not to be looked for till they shall have the same motives to industry that other men have and that all men need. Agencies, reservations and rationing are and long will be a necessity, lessening only as by wise use of public bounty, and by proper legislation and care, the Indians shall approach self-support and citizenship. ”