File 978/1917 Pt 1 'Mesopotamia: administration; occupation of Baghdad; the proclamation; Sir P Cox's position' [‎83r] (170/402)

leave concessions and generous local allowances will in all probability be
called for. Without these or similar attractions it seems to us doubtful
whether many of our officers now serving in Mesopotamia will willingly cut
themselves permanently adrift from their career in India or will volunteer
for any but a very temporary transfer to the new service.
7. Regarded as an ideal towards which we should gradually work, we see
no reason to dissent from the proposal to discountenance the employment of
Indians in the new administration and to draw the Asiatic element in the
administration from men of Arab and .Persian domicile or descent. But we
regard this ideal neither as one capable of being realised forthwith
nor as one which it would be politic openly to avow. To discharge the
whole body of Indian Moslems already employed to good purpose in the
Basrah Yilayet and definitely to deny the administration the option
of drawing further on this useful material, before the requisite number of
clerks and petty officials of sufficient education are available locally, would seem
bad economy and an unnecessary drag on ordinary administrative efficiency.
To publish any formal orders rigorously excluding all Indians as such from
employment in the new administration would clearly be impolitic in the
extreme. Such a course would not fail to rouse a deep resentment in India
and to excite a strong antipathy against the Arabs, Indian sympathy with
whom it should be our aim to foster. Much the wiser course will be to weed
out Indians already in the service gradually and unostentatiously and to
refrain from admitting any others to posts in the administration for which
local candidates of reasonably similar qualifications are forthcoming.
8. Even more invidious would it be, while publicly debarring Indians
from a share in the administration, to proceed to call upon India for
material assistance in other directions. This suggests the wisdom of refraining
from any precipitate action in the undertaking of large irrigation schemes in
Mesopotamia which would be beyond the scope of indigenous labour to con
struct, or of indigenous cultivators to exploit. The inevitable tendency of any
vast addition to the culturable area to act as a strong and rapid solvent of
existing tribal organisms and institutions will doubtless receive due consider
ation before any large schemes are initiated. The only aspect of the problem
with which we ourselves are concerned, is to emphasise the possibility of the
administration finding itself faced, however much against its will, with the
necessity for drawing on Indian labour and Indian cultivators to carry out its
schemes. Not only would this militate against the principles laid down by
the Committee, but it would raise a fresh crop of difficulties, not the least among
which would be the invidious necessity for debarring Hindus from a share
in the advantages offered in this holy land of Islam to their Moslem
brethren. At the same time in the actual carrying out of its schemes the
future administration of Mesopotamia may, of course, rely upon us to render
any assistance, as regards both British officers and Indian subordinates, which
it may be within the power of our Irrigation Department to render.
9. We are not blind to the fact that the decision that India should be
divorced from all share in the administration of Mesopotamia' will in many
quarters in India necessarily cause deep disappointment and in some, not