It is true that East India Company which started to take up
the reins of administration in India after winning the Battle of Plassey in
1757, gradually nibbled at India incorporating more and more area and princely
states, until at last it was able to gobble up the Mughal Empire and the whole
of India in one form or the other. India became a colony of the British, the
sole rationale of her existence was to serve Britain, by exporting her raw
materials to Britain, by providing job opportunities to the Europeans and the
British; serving as soldiers and non-commissioned officers to win their wars in
distant lands and so on. Within 50 years of the Battle of Plassey, wealth got
drained from Indian States. By 1857, India tried to heave a last attempt to
free herself from the stronghold of the foreign rule of the British, which was
strangulating her. But the attempt failed and the rule of India passed on to
the hands of the British Crown from that of the Company. Not that things
improved under the direct rule of the Queen of England. The exploitative nature
of the governance remained and imperialism had even stronger hold on India. By
the time India got her independence from British rule in 1947, after years of
struggle which gathered momentum since the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919 in
Amritsar, India which was rich in natural resources and was exporting to the
world her textiles and spices and gems had become a net importer and a poor
underdeveloped country. The British sucked the blood out of India and left her emaciated.
How could the Christian England have done such a disservice
to our nation or to any nation for that matter? Then, in what way we can say
that Bible influenced and shaped the Civil Service in India? Will it not be a
misnomer, an oxymoron? For this we need to know the lasting influence of the
British Empire in India. It is definitely not just England’s fault that she was
able to conquer India or fleece her. India was divided and politically weak,
with the Mughal Empire tottering at the brink of collapse and the British who
were watching the political scene with keen interest, stepped into the vacuum
and grabbed the rule of Indian. None of the Indian rulers or the Empires was
powerful enough to stand against them, neither the Mughals nor the Marathas nor
any princely state. The major difference between the Mughal rule, who also came
as conquerors and captured the rule in India in 16th century and the
British conquest in 18th century is that the Mughals settled down in
India and the wealth they made stayed in Indian soil. But the British emptied
Indian wealth and carried it all to their country, Britain. It was an economic
exploitation of almost two hundred years and it changes the course of Indian
history. They sucked the wealth out of India and left her dry and a poor country.
It is only now after 74 years of Independence we are lifting our head as the
third largest economy in the world. But the British, to their credit, left us
some good institutions. We became a democracy, with rule of law, before which
all are considered equal, institutions like Reserve bank of India, Supreme
Court of India, Comptroller and Auditor General of India and so on; also a
Civil Service which connected the length and breadth of the country giving
India a ‘steel frame’ to build herself upon. To this we will turn now.
The Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is nothing but a
continuation of the civil service of the British Raj known as the Indian Civil
Service (ICS). As in the other fields in IAS also the conduct rules, recruitment
rules, examination rules and the training methods reflected the deep influence
of the ICS traditions. Though the political set up siphoned off the riches of
India, the administrators at the rural levels and in the villages had
compassion for the people of India, and administered justice in a fair manner.
People of India especially the lower castes and the Dalits, who are the
outcastes under the Hindu Caste system, had suffered ill treatment for
millennia under the heavy hands of Brahmin and generally all the upper castes
under the tyranny of Brahminical Hinduism, received much better treatment. The
ICS showed compassion for such downtrodden people in the rural areas and
villages. They were given justice under the British Law and were treated the same
for education and employment under the State.
Perception of
Corruption:
One important area where British ICS excelled was in ethical
sphere. There was very less corruption among ICS members and those who were
corrupt were punished immediately and the system remained ‘incorruptible.’ This
was the scenario even when I joined the Service in 1974. By the 80s, this has
started to crumble, for corruption had found its way increasingly within the
successor of the incorruptible civil service, the IAS. In my thesis published
as a book in 2011, “Values and Influence of Religion in Public Administration,”
I analyze the ‘why’ of corruption rather than the ‘how’ of the corruption that
was and is still plaguing the country. It will be seen that in India, since
ancient times, corruption was considered a way of life and no one thought it
was wrong. It was considered natural for a government official to be corrupt,
for if honey is placed in the tongue of someone, he will lick it up. It was the
British who showed that corruption was morally wrong and took strict measures
to see that the British ICS which originated as a corrupt and immoral service
was brought under control and the Service turned out to be an ‘incorruptible’
Service.’ ICS laid emphasis to integrity, honesty and neutrality in
administration. Any misconduct of these men in authority was questioned and
debated in British Parliament and appropriate measures were taken. Clive who
laid the foundation of British Empire was hauled up in British Parliament for
the money he swindled from Indian rulers and though absolved of criminal
punishment, it led to his taking his own life. Dyer who ordered shooting of
unarmed civilians who had gathered at Jallianwala Bagh was enquired into and
was relieved of his official charges and banned from any future employment
under the Crown in India. They took action. What made them so?
Keeping aside the exploitative nature of their rule, we need
to see the influences that operated in their ruling an alien country to trace
the origins of such ethical conduct. This in my book I have shown was due to
the influence of Christian and secular moral thought that prevailed in Britain in
the 17th century and up until the last quarter of 19th
century greatly influenced the ICS. These values were based on biblical
teachings, starting from Ten Commandments and Christ’s teachings and his life.
Corruption is strongly condemned in the Bible. The civil service was expected
to maintain absolute integrity, devotion to duty and keep up an officer like
conduct, and these could be traced directly to the Puritan influence in
England. Using the position of an officer to influence in government contracts
or secure employment for a member of one’s family was frowned upon. Patronage
system had plagued English civil administration in the early 18th century
but they put it down with iron hand. They extended that to ICS too. Members of
the IAS are not to raise funds or contributions using their official influence
from the public for any cause of personal interest. Excepting flowers or fruits
the officers are not to accept any gift from the people, the so called phal-phool rule! No free transport, free
boarding, free lodging or any service of pecuniary advantage was to be accepted
by the civil servant from the public or interested parties. It was also included
that no officer will accept or demand dowry, something that plagues Indian
social melee. Civil servants are not to incur debts or obtain loans or be under
such obligation to anyone, but manage within their salaries. Another rule
forbids bigamy or consumption of liquor or engaging in proselytizing
activities. All these stem from the ICS conduct rules. Similarly work-ethics is
emphasized in the Bible. All these have become the cornerstones of the ethical
conduct rules of the ICS and have been passed on to the IAS.
Equality before Law:
Bible stresses on equality before God, for all are created
equal in the eyes of God. Bible says God created the humans in His image and
therefore they are precious in His eyes and are all the same before Him.
Unfortunately Hinduism has created a Caste system which divides the population
hierarchically with the upper castes who by fortunes of birth, control and
subdue the lower castes and the outcastes. This unequal social system has been
prescribed in all the religious and secular literature of Hinduism such as
Upanishads, Epic poems of Mahabharata and Ramayana, Bhagavat Gita, Arthasastra
and Manusmriti, as I have established in my research. It was only during the
British rule education was opened up to the lower castes and outcastes and
employment under government was made through merit and not based on caste. The
majority of the population of India consisting of these lower strata of the
society were able to raise their heads mainly because of British rule in spite
of their atrocities in India. Education and upliftment of the lower castes was
a huge contribution by British Raj, which was influenced by Bible.
Compassion:
Compassion for the poor, needy and the downtrodden was
lacking in Hinduism due to Karma theory which insisted that people are born in
their present status either in upper caste or lower caste due to the
accumulated karmas or deeds, they had done in previous lives, and hence it is
self-made and they have to go through the sufferings as a penance so that they
can be born in the next life in a better status. This faith in repeated births
and deaths, the samskara, the cycle of
life and death which are determined by the supposed accumulated deeds of the
previous lives is so strongly rooted among Hindus, that they will not lift
their little finger to make the life of a lower caste person better. After all
are they not suffering due to bad deeds in the past lives? Though there is no
proof for such an accumulation of karma, the Hindu religious system has drilled
that into their minds for millennia. It
is the British civil servants, the Deputy Commissioners/Collectors who worked
with the people at the grass root level, who saw the need of the poor to be
catered too and their lives uplifted through education and employment,
especially at the village level. They provided medical help to such people. Sati
and female infanticide were abolished, by the British, again showing this
compassion for lives. All the schemes of the Indian government after
independence to uplift the poor and the downtrodden reflect this attitude of
the British which was the direct result of teachings of the Bible.
British rule was a rude but necessary awakening that India
much needed to awake her from feudalism to modernity and the influence of Bible
on ICS and the successor IAS is undisputable.
