Early Administrative Structure

Nature & Character of £ Rule in India

 Colonial Exploitation: The aim of British was economic exploitation of India and
the perpetuation of £ rule. It had nothing to do with welfare of people.

o For such a state, maintaining law and order is essential so that people can be bled dry
without noise. So for this the administration was based on three pillars - civil service,
police and army.

o For the same purpose, railways, telegraphs and postal services were introduced.

 It was a Colonial rule: £ made no efforts to integrate with India, understand its aspirations. Sole
aim was to serve mother country.

 Imperialistic: It was imperialistic and maintained on strength of sword.

 Racist and discriminative: Indians couldn't aspire to gold posts > Rs. 500 p.a. by the 1793 Act.
Thus in army, subedar was the limit and in civil service, sadr-amin was the ceiling. Indians were
racially discriminated against in every interaction.

 Superiority Complex: It believed in superiority of British culture and society. So efforts were
made for Anglicization and missionary activities were encouraged.

Civil Services
 Character: The civilian authorities were very powerful (almost autonomous) in British India. This
was due to their (financial) control over army, distance from London, command over local
information and the colonial nature of the state.

Cornwallis
 Initially the company officials were paid low wages but were allowed to carry on private trade.
Corruption increased when company got administrative powers in Bengal and the company
suffered as a result.

 Raised Salary: So Cornwallis increased their salaries and curbed private trade and corruption.

 Promotion by Seniority:He also laid down that promotion would be by seniority.

Recruitment -Patronage System

 Patronage System: Initially the recruitment was through patronage by the Court of Directors
who had to give a written undertaking that they had not taken any money in return.

o Still corruption crept in and the officials were found seriously lacking in the needed
skills.
 o So in 1800 Lord Wellesley established a college @ Calcutta for civil service officers
training. In 1805 similar college was opened in £ (first in Hertford and later Haileybury).

o All the candidates nominated by the CoD were to undergo a 2 year training here and
would be appointed only if they passed the required exams. But this training was
essentially based on a generalist curriculum and except for the language component had
nothing particularly to do with India.

Recruitment -Competition
 Competition: By 1830s, the power of the collectors had increased immensely (they were in
charge of police, revenue, judicial powers) and also the sphere of state activity had increased
tremendously both into new areas of life and into new geographical areas.

 In the light of the added responsibilities it was felt that the existing patronage system couldn't
bring in adequate number of able personnel and a competition was needed to bring in the best
minds.

o The Charter Act of 1833 introduced an element of limited competition i.e. competition
among the candidates nominated by the directors

o The 1853 Act introduced a full scale open competitive exam.

Indianisation
 Initially, Indians were accommodated only in Uncovenanted Civil Service and were excluded
from the Covenanted Service, because

o The belief that only the British could establish administrative services, serving British
interests.

o The belief that Indians were incapable, untrustworthy and insensitive to British
interests.

o The fact that there was a high competition among the Europeans themselves for
lucrative posts, so why offer them to Indians.

 There was a growing nationalist demand to hold a simultaneous civil services exam in India for
Covenanted Services. But they remained closed to Indians.

 Lytton- Statutory Civil Services: Instead the colonial government introduced, as a compromise,
'statutory civil service' which comprised of some lower rank jobs hitherto reserved for the
covenanted civil services. Here too only the princes and big zamindars would be nominated.

 Rippon: Subsequent efforts of introducing a simultaneous civil services exam in India,

introducing local self government, Ilbert Bill (all by Lord Ripon) met with severe racist arguments
which made it clear that the only reason for not allowing Indians in the covenanted services was
racism.
  INC after its establishment raised the demand for:

o Relaxing the age criterion for the exam

o Holding the exam simultaneously in India and Britain.

 Montford Reforms: In 1922, under Government of India Act 1919, simultaneous examination
began to be held.

 Lee Commission: Direct recruitment to ICS on basis of 50:50 parity between the Europeans and
the Indians and by 1941 Indians outnumbered £ in the Indian civil service.

Army
Origin
 Crown Forces to Native Army: In the 18th century, crown forces (specially the navy) were often
used in India but this created a problem of command. So the company began to raise its own
permanent army in India (though it was the French who first began this tradition of recruiting an
Indian army).

 Sepoy army commanded by British: The new army of the company had Indian sepoys who were
trained, equipped and paid regularly and were commanded by British officials. This tradition
was initiated in the back drop of Anglo-French struggle.

Utility
 It conquered territories,

 it also protected the Empire against real or imagined internal threats

 Collected information about the economy and society

 handled peasant rebellions

 'Anglo -Indian militarism’- i.e. assertions by a number of military intellectuals that India was a
violent society and in a perpetual state of war called for even more expenditure on the army.

Character
 ‘Military Fiscalism: Army claimed the largest share of expenditure (40%) in India.

 Garrison State: A large army was maintained - 250 K men in peace time - and which devoured
~40% of the imperial revenues. This too when there was no external danger except for a brief
period from Russia.

 Separation: It was considered that since the policemen lived their families they were susceptible
to social coercion and ideological currents of the INM. On the other hand army was kept in
barracks, at a low level of literacy and secluded from political currents, to use them against the
Nationalists.
  Racialism: Indian can’t rise beyond the post of Naib Subedar.

 Recruitment:

o In the initial formative phase, to create a high caste identity and thus to command
respect from the natives, EEIC recruited from the upper castes Hindus of Bengal, Bihar
and Oudh only. Hastings (conservative orientalist) took care not to disturb the caste
rules.

o As the £ empire expanded, many other groups (like Marathas, Gurkhas etc.) now began
to be recruited in the arm.

Attempt to Change in Character: Revolt of 1857

o There was a need to curtail expenditures and this necessitated standardization which
meant many of the caste observations which were maintained earlier could not be
observed any more.

o This began to create dissent in the army which was particularly shown by the Bengal
army in the numerous rebellions.

Post 1857
 The Peel Commission recommended that

o The native army should be composed of different ethnicities and castes which as a
general rule should be mixed thoroughly through each regiment.

o Thus in the next few years castes were more evenly mixed across the regiments.
o Recruitment remained focused on Punjab which remained loyal during the mutiny.

 Victorian racism: In 1880s, in the era of Victorian racism, racial theories were developed and
some groups (like Jats, Sikhs, Pathans, Gurkhas) were identified as martial races. It was
considered that these groups were warlike, trustworthy and at the same time intellectually
deficient so that they could fight but not lead.

Police
Pre £ Police System
 It was under the control of the

o Subedar in control of suba

o Faujdars who were in control of the sarkars,

o Kotwals were in charge of the towns

o zamindars in the villages.

£ System

Dual Government
 This system continued for some period under the authority of Mohammad Raza Khan acting as
Naib Nazim. But the undermining of the authority of the nawab meant the crime rates shot up,
especially around the Famine of 1770. This necessitated a British intervention.

Warren Hastings -DM

 In 1781 the faujdars were replaced by £ district magistrates.
 £ let zamindars exercise police powers who were made subservient to the magistrates.
 But this system didn't prove to be effective as the establishment of magistrates proved to be too
inadequate for the purpose and this gave too much autonomy to the zamindars.

Cornwallis- Thana and Daroga

 Taken from Zamindar: Divested the zamindars of their police duties

 Thana and Daroga: Divided the district into multiple thanas and each thana was placed under a
daroga. The darogas were to be appointed and supervised by the district magistrates.

 But a new and alien element in the countryside, the daroga could hardly ignore the ground
realities and began to collude with the powerful local zamindars. This powerful daroga -
zamindar nexus soon emerged as the new instrument of exploitation in rural areas.

 The darogas were Indians and whenever the law and order problems arose, the colonial
authorities made them the scapegoats (attributing it to their lack of morality).

1812
 In 1812 it was abolished and the supervision of the village police was vested in the collector. But
this meant that the collector was now in charge of the police, revenue and judicial powers at the
same time.
 This extreme concentration of powers meant that they and their subordinates in the revenue
department now became the agents of exploitation.

Charle’s Napier Model

 In 1843, Charles Napier in Sind created a new system altogether with a separate police
department with its own officers.

 The whole province was to be under an IG while the district would be under an SP who would be
answerable to both the collector and the IG.

 While the rank and file of the police was to be Indian, the officers would invariably be £.

 This kind of system was ideally suited for colonial conditions and thus was adopted with some
modifications throughout India.
1861 Police Act
 Civilian Police under IG: The 1861 Police Act separated the police from the military authority
entirely and provided for a civilian police with the SP under the control of the collector only and
the IG (a civilian person now) to report to the provincial governor.

 The rural police came under the charge of the SP and the daroga was made the sub inspector.

 System of Civil Constabulary.

CID
 CID was setup by Curzon on the recommendations of Fraser commission in 1903.

Judicial Organization
Pre £ Judicial System
1. The prevailing Mughal system was never centrally organized and had local variations depending
upon the interpretations and discretion of the local qazis and faujdars.

2. The focus of the system was more on mutual resolution of the conflict rather than on punitive
justice. Punishment depended often on the status and caste of the accused.

To many company officials this system looked like one marked by unusual laxity and a cause of the
degeneration.

Dual Government

Initial Changes - Warren Hastings

 The dominant themes of the changes in this phase were - centralization, Europeanization,
institutionalization of the civil justice system.

 Centralization and europeanization:

o In 1772, Warren Hastings wanted to take full control of the judicial system. So he
introduced a new system in which each district was to have 2 courts, a civil court (diwani
adalat) and a criminal court (faujdari adalat). Thus the Mughal nomenclature was
retained.

o Civil Courts: The civil courts were to be administered by European district collectors
(who were to be assisted by maulavis and pundits). The criminal courts were to remain
under qazis and muftis but to remain under the supervision of the European district
collectors.

o There would be an appellate court in Calcutta (there was a conflict between the
jurisdiction of SC and the Supreme Council over this jurisdiction). The appellate court -
sadar nizamat adalat - was shifted from Murshidabad to Calcutta
 o Laws: Laws to be applicable were Muslim laws in criminal justice and the Muslim laws
or the Hindu laws in civil justice. This was in consonance with £ system as well since
issues like marriages, inheritance etc. were decided by the church law.

 Institutionalization:

o The problem in having certainty and uniformity in law still remained that it was based
on Hindu and Muslim laws which could be interpreted differently by different pundits
and maulvis and in fact differently by the same person on different occasions.

o Codification: To reduce this uncertainty, separate committees of pundits and maulavis

were setup by Hastings and their interpretations codified. These changes also meant
that practice of law now needed special expertise and the profession of 'lawyers' came
up.

Cornwallis -The credit for real foundation of the judicial system goes to Cornwallis.
The entire judicial reform of Cornwallis spoke of one thing - a total exclusion of Indians from the whole
system, which became less ambiguous in its authoritarian and racially superior tone.

1. Seperation:

1. Civil and criminal courts were separated.

2. Executive and judiciary were separated too as a safeguard of property rights against the
abuse by collectors.

2. The £ also brought the concept of rule of law and equality before law.

3. Civil:

1. For civil matters, @ ground level were subordinate courts headed by Indians,

2. Then Registrar's court headed by €.

3. District Court: Each district had a civil court (diwani adalat) headed by district judge who
was a civil servant. Thus the post of collector and district judge was separated.

4. Appeals from diwani adalat lay first with one of the 4 provincial courts and then with the
Sadar Diwani Adalat.

4. Criminal:

1. For criminal cases, @ the top was Sadar Nizamat Adalat,

2. followed by 4 Circuit courts (which replaced the faujdari courts since such an important
branch of administration could not be left to Indians) headed by civil servants

3. and numerous petty courts @ ground levels.

 4. The jurisdiction of these criminal courts didn't extend to Europeans for whom there was
the SC in Calcutta.

Subsequent Reforms

1. In 1831, the circuit courts and provincial courts were abolished by William Bentinck.

2. He also raised he positions of Indians to deputy magistrates.

3. Laws: Lenient form of Muslim criminal law was used in criminal courts; customary laws were
used in civil courts. In 1833, a Law Commission headed by Macaulay was formed which
eventually resulted in IPC.

4. Indian High Court Act of 1861 high courts came up in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras.

5. In 1865, their jurisdiction was increased and by 1869, all Indian subjects were brought under
their jurisdiction.

Impact

1. Problem of Judicial Interpretation-Alien: Although initially in personal matters the traditional

Hindu and Muslim laws were applied, the judicial interpretations often made the laws look alien
to the natives.

2. Distant Justice: Justice now became distant, not just physically (courts were in cities now) but
also psychologically as the natives couldn't understand the complex judicial procedures.

3. Expensive Justice: This system necessitated the presence of lawyers which in turn made justice
expensive as well and hence a tool in the hands of the elite(moneylendersss) to exploit ordinary
people.

4. Delayed Justice: Cases began to pile up and justice got delayed - sometimes by up to 50 years.

5. Equality only in theory: There were contradictions in £ system as well.

1. The concept of equality before law didn't apply to Europeans.

2. Moreover since the laws used were still Hindu and Muslim the upper castes in both
communities benefitted from the interpretations.

3. Moreover, the police and the army always remained above the law.