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The Masculinities of Post-colonial Governance: Bureaucratic memoirs of the Indian Civil Service*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2015

INDERPAL GREWAL
INDERPAL GREWAL*
Affiliation:
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines the memoirs of Indian Civil Service officers as they continued to work in what became the Indian Administrative Service after independence. Rather than being understood solely as historical archives, these texts constitute a genre that can be called the ‘bureaucratic memoir’ which reveals masculinities that are both colonial and post-colonial. These memoirs, and their publication decades after independence reveal attempts by elites to preserve the power of the bureaucracy into subsequent decades. The texts hope to disavow but instead also reveal the patriarchal intimacies of these elites, even as these were challenged by charges of corruption and failure which emerged almost from the first moments of independence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , March 2016 , pp. 602 - 635
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

My thanks to Kirin Jessel for her invaluable support and assistance in copy-editing. Many thanks to Tina Campt, and the Archives Group, especially Yvette Christiansë, for extremely helpful responses to this article. Additional thanks go to Craig Canfield and my colleagues and students at Yale, whose questions helped me immensely, as well as audiences at Emory University and at UCLA, Sucheta Mahajan, Gyan Pandey, Ruby Lal, Akhil Gupta, Purnima Mankekar, and the Modern Asian Studies reviewers, who gave helpful suggestions.

References

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2 See Thomas Blom Hansen, for a discussion of the struggle for sovereignty and authority from colonial to post-colonial India and the place of a select group of elites, such as the bureaucrats I describe here, as outside the violence of the colonial and post-colonial state: Hansen, T. B. and Stepputat, F. (2005). ‘Sovereigns Beyond the State: On Legality and Authority in Urban India’ in Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants, and States in the Post-colonial World, Princeton, Princeton University Press, pp. 169–191Google Scholar.

3 Vira, D. (1975). Memoirs of a Civil Servant, Delhi, Vikas Publishing HouseGoogle Scholar; Bhoothalingam, S. (1993). Reflections on an Era: Memoirs of a Civil Servant, Delhi, Affiliated East-West Press Private LtdGoogle Scholar; Patel, H. M. (2005). Rites of Passage: A Civil Servant Remembers, Mahajan, S. (ed.), Delhi, Rupa and Co.Google Scholar; Shrinagesh, J. M. (2007). Between Two Stools: My Life in the ICS Before and After Independence, Hartog, R. & Hartog, S. (eds), Delhi, Rupa and Co.Google Scholar

4 This article concerns one group of upper-caste Indian Civil Service bureaucrats. I do not include here the accounts of other groups who also became Indian Administrative Service after independence and who present some quite different perspectives. But others that are similar to those I discuss here include: Bonarjee, N. B. (1970). Under Two Masters, London, Oxford University PressGoogle Scholar; Mangat Rai, E. N. (1973). Commitment, My Style: A Career in the Indian Civil Service, Delhi, Vikas Publishing HouseGoogle Scholar; Menon, K. P. S. (1979). Memories and Musings, New Delhi, Allied PublishersGoogle Scholar; Mukherjee, B. C. (1994). Administration in Changing India, New Delhi, Blaze Publishers and Distributors Pvt. Ltd.Google Scholar

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8 I am not arguing here that this elite was formative of Indian nationalism; rather, I argue that the memoirs attempt to see bureaucratic history as national history (not as nationalist history).

9 Chatterjee, P. (1993). The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Post-colonial Histories, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University PressGoogle Scholar.

10 Rosen, G. (1967). Democracy and Economic Change in India, Berkeley, University of California PressGoogle Scholar; Prakash, G. (1999). Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University PressGoogle Scholar. For the complexity of this process see, Chakrabarty, B. (1992). Jawaharlal Nehru and Planning: 1938–41: India at the Crossroads, Modern Asian Studies, 36:2, pp. 275–287CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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14 This approach is exemplified by Partha Chatterjee's Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, in which ‘nationalist thought’ is presented through the ideas of three powerful men. Chatterjee, P. (1993) Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse?, London, Zed Books, Minnesota PressGoogle Scholar.

15 Some historians have concluded that the Indian Civil Service was critical for the new nation. George Rosen, for instance, writes that although the bureaucracy was not upper-caste, it was elite, and it was efficient and influential despite becoming an elite. Rosen, Democracy and Economic Change.

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17 Rose-Ackerman, S. (2010). Corruption: Greed, Culture and the State, The Yale Law Journal: http://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/corruption-greed-culture-and-the-state, [accessed 10 November 2014].

18 Mukherjee, Administration in Changing India, p. 7.

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24 Pal, L. (1988). ‘Thanks for the Memories. . .’: Political Memoirs, Public Policy and the Political Imagination, Canadian Public Policy/Analyze de Politques, 14:1, pp. 92–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Mitchell, T. (2002). Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity, Berkeley, University of California PressGoogle Scholar.

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27 Hartog, Rudolf wrote Sign of the Tiger: Subhas Chandra Bose and his Indian Legion in Germany, 1941–1945, New Delhi, Rupa and Company, 2002Google Scholar. This was an English version of the German edition, Im Zeichen des Tigers: Die Indische Legion auf Deutscher Seite, 1941–1945, published by Busse Seewald in 1991. Hartog was attached to the Indian legion as an interpreter in Germany in those years.

28 Patel, Rites of Passage, p. 239.

29 Ibid, p. xix.

30 Ibid, p. xii.

31 Ibid, p. xliv.

32 My thanks to Gyan Pandey for making this point.

33 Patel, Rites of Passage, p. xxxii.

34 Ibid, p.xxvi.

35 Ibid, p. xxxii.

36 Ibid, p. xxxvi.

37 Ibid, p. xii. Bipin Chandra, a historian based at Jawaharlal Nehru University, was a prominent historian of India and the nationalist movement, author of key books on the struggle for independence and economic history, and an engaged and politically active scholar. For a critique of Chandra's historiography from a subaltern studies viewpoint, see Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2000). Subaltern Studies and Post-colonial Historiography, Nepantla: Views from the South, 1:1, pp. 9–32Google Scholar.

38 Patel, Rites of Passage, p. xxvii.

39 Ibid, p. xiv.

40 Ibid, p. xiv.

41 Bhoothalingam, Reflections on an Era, ‘A Note’, no page number.

42 Many Shroff, ‘Foreword’, in Bhoothalingam, Reflections on an Era, no page number.

43 Ibid.

44 There is even a fictional account of his school and the life of its headmaster which mentions two Indian boys. Delderfield, R. D. (1972). To Serve Them All My Days, London, Hodder and StoughtonGoogle Scholar.

45 Shrinagesh, Between Two Stools, p. 1.

46 For more on the British boarding school, see Vicinus, M. (1984). Distance and Desire: English Boarding-School Friendships, Signs, 9:4, pp. 600–622CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 See for instance, Deslandes, P. R. (2005). Oxbridge Men: British Masculinity and the Undergraduate Experience: 1850–1920, Bloomington, Indiana University PressGoogle Scholar.

48 Shrinagesh, Between Two Stools, pp. 25–26.

49 Ibid, p. 26.

50 Ibid, p. 37.

51 Ibid, p. 38.

52 Ibid, p. 65.

53 Ibid, p. 55.

54 Patel, Rites of Passage, p. 3.

55 After retirement from politics and bureaucracy, Patel helped develop various educational institutions at Vallabh Vidyanagar in Gujarat.

56 Bhoothalingam, Reflections on an Era, p. 1.

57 Vira, Memoirs of a Civil Servant, p. 145.

58 Ibid, p. 145.

59 Stoler, A. L. (2009). Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense, Princeton, Princeton University Press, p. 59Google Scholar.

60 Stoler, Along the Archival Grain, p. 65.

61 Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World.

62 Potter, India's Political Administrators, p. 113.

63 Fernandes, L. (2006). India's New Middle-Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, pp. 22–23Google Scholar.

64 Krishna, B. (2007). India's Bismarck, Sardar Vallabhai Patel, Mumbai, Indus Source BooksGoogle Scholar; Guha, R. (2008). India after Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy, New York, Harper Collins, p. 746Google Scholar.

65 Shrinagesh, Between Two Stools, p. 35.

66 Deshmukh, C., Bihar IAS Association Lecture, ‘The Sinews of the State’, Institute of Public Administration, Patna University, 7 October 1955.

67 Shrinagesh, Between Two Stools, p. 148.

68 Ibid.

69 Shiv Vishwanathan argues that bureaucratizing science and the focus on importing technology, which these bureaucrats carry out in trips to Europe and North America made knowledge undemocratic. But it is also obvious that it made science and technology also masculinist enterprises. For a quick summary, see: Visvanathan, S. (1998). A Celebration of Difference: Science and Democracy in India, Science, 280:5360, pp. 42–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Mitchell, Rule of Experts.

71 Bhoothalingam, Reflections on an Era, p. 72.

72 Ibid, p. 108. Despite these accomplishments, Bhoothalingam was dogged with a scandal later in his career involving deals for steel manufacturing with private companies—charges that Shrinagesh mentions in his memoir about how corrupt politicians destroyed honest Indian Civil Service men: Shrinagesh, Between Two Stools, pp. 146–147. Indira Gandhi, prime minister at the time, established a commission which exonerated him, but he lost out on an ambassadorship that he had expected after retirement.

73 Vira, Memoirs of a Civil Servant, p. 192.

74 Ibid.

75 Bardhan, P. (1998). The Political Economy of Development in India, Oxford, Oxford University Press, p. 52Google Scholar.

76 Shrinagesh, Between Two Stools, p. 150.

77 From transcripts of Oral History Interview with Shri Dharma Vira, New Delhi, 24 May 1969, by Mrs Aparna Basu for the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.

78 Patel, Rites of Passage, p. 69–70.

79 B. R. Nanda, Interview with H. M. Patel, Transcript, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Oral History Project, Recorded 31 October 1968, p. 21.

80 Shrinagesh, Between Two Stools, p. 6.

81 Vira, Memoirs of a Civil Servant, pp. 16–17.

82 Patnaik, The Indian Administrative Service, p. 32.

83 Patnaik, The Indian Administrative Service, p. 29.

84 Burra, A. (2010). The Indian Civil Service and the Nationalist Movement: Neutrality, Politics and Continuity, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 48:4, pp. 404–432CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85 Patel, Rites of Passage, pp. 30–31.

86 Bhoothalingam, Reflections on an Era, p. 15.

87 Shrinagesh, Between Two Stools, p. 149.

88 Ibid, p. 140.

89 Shah, A. (2009). Morality Corruption and the State: Insights from Jharkhand, Eastern India, Journal of Development Studies, 45:3, pp. 295–313CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 It can be argued that H. P. Patel lived simply and without ostentation. Yet his power and privilege would have been visible to many through his interests, his connections, his work and his travels.

91 Mitchell, Rule of Experts.

92 For instance, the second collection of H. M. Patel's papers, edited by Amrita Abraham and commissioned by his daughter, Amrita Patel, begins with a dedication to A. D. Gorwala. This dedication suggests that Gorwala was an exemplary bureaucrat. The acknowledgements page states that the volume is meant to ‘bring his work and values to a younger generation, the Trustees of the Savita Memorial Trust and his daughters. . .initiated and supported a project to prepare his writings for publication’. The foreword, by I. G. Patel, states that the book is a ‘mirror to what was attempted, achieved and advocated. . .and lays down at the same time, a road map of what we need to do to recapture our dreams’. Patel, H. M. (2005). The First Flush of Freedom Recollections and Reflections, Abraham, A. (ed.), New Delhi, Rupa and CompanyGoogle Scholar.

93 Mukherjee, Administration in Changing India, p. 7.