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Download Thesis This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ ‘Our Rule in India rests wholly on ourselves’ The District Officer in Bengal 1850 – 1905 Kavanagh, Amy Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 26. Sep. 2021 1 ‘Our Rule in India rests wholly on ourselves’: The District Officer in Bengal 1850 – 1905 By Amy Kavanagh Department of History, King’s College London Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History, February 2017 2 Abstract This thesis focuses on the role of district officers in the Indian Civil Service (ICS) in Bengal from 1850 to 1905. Existing historiography incorrectly portrays the ICS as a passive coherent institution. This has limited our understanding of the significant role of district administration in the governance of British India. This thesis demonstrates that an imagined and practised idealised district official influenced policy and was integral in the reciprocal production of the practices of colonial government. This thesis establishes that this model persona existed outside of the Punjab, and had a specific realisation in Bengal. This idealised district officer was envisioned as an autonomous man-on-the-spot who could act as a decision maker. However, this discretionary capacity conflicted with an increasingly codified, professional and bureaucratic ICS. These contradictions were not only between idea and reality but existed within the idealisation of the district officer. The tensions produced by the imagined and practised district officer shaped debates about governance, the rule of law, and bureaucracy. This thesis demonstrates that despite the expansion of bureaucratic control over the practices of local administration, the district officer continued to be an autonomous decision maker. Through examining key moments of construction and contestation this thesis charts the working life-cycle of the idealised district officer. Using a discursive methodology this thesis interrogates an underutilised source group, the ‘governing literature’ of British India. These manuals, guides and handbooks were instrumental in the crafting of an idealised role. This model district officer was integrated into the policies and practices of government. By following the idealised district officer as imagined in texts, as a candidate for the examinations, as a revenue official, as Magistrate and Judge, in his failures and in his final days, this thesis asserts that this model persona had a significant influence on the governance of Bengal. 3 Contents Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... 6 List of Figures ............................................................................................................................ 7 List of Tables ............................................................................................................................. 8 Glossary ..................................................................................................................................... 9 Conversion Rate ....................................................................................................................... 11 Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 12 ‘A historiography which neglects the ruling race’: The historiography of the ICS ............. 21 ‘The whole machine of government’: Bureaucracy, governance and the ICS .................... 25 ‘He belongs all the time to that little Island’: The district officer as coloniser ................... 28 ‘People accustomed to a despotic authority should look to one master’: The history of the district officer ....................................................................................................................... 31 Chapter Outline .................................................................................................................... 45 Chapter One ‘A character to support – a name to gain’: Governing Literature and the District Officer ...................................................................................................................................... 48 ‘The myth of the heroic individual’: Historiography ........................................................... 49 ‘Small compass or accessible form’: The market ................................................................ 53 ‘A handbook of India has become an especial want’: The Genre as an instrument of government .......................................................................................................................... 64 ‘A kind of king’: The Idealised District Officer .................................................................. 69 ‘A mere machine of record’: Bureaucracy and the Indian Civil Service ............................. 76 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 82 Chapter Two ‘Highly polished and costly instruments’: The Competition System ................ 84 ‘The best qualified among all persons’: Historiography...................................................... 85 ‘How to manufacture a man’: Reforming admission to the Indian Civil Service ............... 87 ‘Conscientious plodders’: The design and style of the examinations .................................. 91 ‘A frightful ordeal to pass through’: Taking the exams ....................................................... 99 ‘Men of good general education in several walks of life’: Education and schooling ........ 102 ‘A beggar on horseback’: The ideal Indian Civil Service candidate and the competition wallah ................................................................................................................................. 107 A ‘vessel into which knowledge regarding things Indian is to be poured’: The Probation ............................................................................................................................................ 120 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 126 4 Chapter Three ‘Every Collector must be his own Surveyor’: Revenue, Settlement and Survey ................................................................................................................................................ 127 ‘The gap between professions and performance’: Revenue policy and practise in Bengal ............................................................................................................................................ 129 ‘I am a Collector and not a mere machine’: The work of the Revenue Officer ................ 131 ‘Surveys may be more or less exact’: Survey and Settlement in British India .................. 137 ‘The exercise of a sound discretion is required’: The Process of Settlement and Survey . 141 ‘Professional work mainly depends on clearly defined boundaries’: Boundary Mapping 146 ‘Putting his own shoulder to the wheel’: Surveyor, Collector, and Settlement Officer .... 152 ‘Settlement work is harder in Bengal’: The Survey and Settlement of Chittagong ........... 157 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 161 Chapter Four ‘A very suitable form of punishment’: The Whipping Act and the District Officer .................................................................................................................................... 163 ‘An intrinsic feature of imperial rule’: Historiography ...................................................... 164 ‘We should trust to the discretion of the Magistrate’: The Judicial District Officer ......... 166 ‘The temper of the individual judge’: The origins of the Whipping Act ........................... 170 ‘The rod as an instrument of good’: The Whipping Act .................................................... 175 ‘I went to the spot myself’: The case of Mr Monro ..........................................................
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