'Memoirs and Recollections of An Officer of the Indian Political Service' [‎65r] (129/156)

It was decided in Whitehall that the posts I have mentioned should be filled in the
first instance, and as a temporary expedient only, by a number of specially selected
officers from the ranks of the still existing All India Services; principally the Indian
Civil Service^and the Indian Political Service The branch of the British Government of India with responsibility for managing political relations between British-ruled India and its surrounding states, and by extension the Gulf, during the period 1937-47. . A senior Civil Service Commissioner
(Sir Richard ^Hosworthy) was sent out from London to New Delhi to interview suitable
candidates to fill these posts. A large number of my contemporaries were accordingly
interviewed by the great man, and I was included in their number. As the process of
interviewing so many officials was necessarily a lengthy one, we had to wait sometime
to learn which of us had been lucky enough to be selected. In the meanwhile my wife
and children had gone up to Simla to escape the rigours of a very hot summer in the
plains. Sometime in June I was granted a few days leave to join them. We stayed at
the United Service Club in the company of our fellow officers, many of them personal
friends who were all deeply concerned about their future. It was during this short
holiday that I received a telegram informing me that I was one of the twenty or so
officials who had been selected to stay on in the sub-continent. I was instructed
to report myself at once to the U.K. High Commissioner in New Delhi. There I learnt
that I was to proceed at short notice to set up the U.K. High Commission in Karachi
which was to be the capital of Pakistan. I and the others who had been selected to
serve on, in the two new dominions, were offered temporary appointments in the rank of
First Secretary under the Commonwealth Relations Office in London (the successors to the
India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. ). We were told that eventually some of us would be sent to London in the
course of the next few months to undergo a further interview for acceptance into H.M.
Foreign Service or the Home Civil Service. Many of my colleagues had already applied
for transfer to these Services. Since it was obvious that one of the new temporary
appointments might prove a useful stepping-stone to permanent government employ, I
accepted with alacrity the offer I had received.
The instructions given to me as to how I was to proceed when I reached Karachi were of
the sketchiest. I had no knowledge of the methods of work or of the accounting procedures
of the Home Civil Service. I was merely told that a bank account had been opened in my
oj
name in Kar/chi, and I was to locate and rent suitable office accommodation and residential
family accommodation for individual members of the staff in government employ. But
no-one could provide me with any detailed idea of the size of the new post in terms of
the numbers of officials who would eventually become the regular staff
of what amounted to the equivalent of an Embassy at the capital of the new state of
Pakistan.
It was a sad moment when I came to say goodbye to my friends and colleagues in the
Political Department at New Delhi. For me, and for them very shortly, it was the end
of our careers as Political Officers and servants of the Crown in India. Very few of
the others knew what was to happen to them; all they had been told was that on the
15th August, their jobs were finished and that, thereafter, they would be shipped home