'Memoirs and Recollections of An Officer of the Indian Political Service' [‎75r] (149/156)

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conditions of service. We discovered that the rules provided for the payment of various
types of allowances to compensate one for the high cost of living, hire of accommodation
and the grant of diplomatic privileges, etc. But the Commonwealth Relations Office,
under whom we were serving, had not so far provided for any of these easements. When
our situation became known to the Foreign Office, it was decided that we should be accorded
a visit by the Chief Inspector; not only the Chief Inspector but his Deputy also came to
Karachi. They reported adversely'the conditions in which we were living, and eventually
this gave rise to considerable improvements. Nevertheless, for many of the staff the
accommodation problem remained acute and unsatisfactory for a long time ahead. In the
High Commission, a special section had been set up to deal with the many applications
we were receiving for the grant of assisted passages to the UK for persons of mixed
Anglo-Indian parentage, as well as for the families of the many Britishers who had
settled down in the country and had made India their domicile. Many of these people were
fearful that, under the new dispensation in India and Pakistan, there would be no place
for them, and that at the very least they would become the victims of racial discrimina
tion. They therefore asked for repatriation to the UK for themselves and their families,
despite the fact that in many cases they had never visited the home country in their
lives. Eventually a number of these people got what they wanted. Berths were found
for them in the shipping allocated for the repatriation of officials and the many
thousands of British Army and RAF personnel who had hitherto been stationed in the
sub-continent, and now had to leave. I regret, however, to say that in the case,
especially, of the Anglo-Indians, they found that life in post-war England - arriving
as some of them did in Liverpool and Glasgow in the depths of winter and in an alien
atmosphere - was very far from what they had expected. Eventually the great majority
of them found their way back to the sub-continent where, even under changed conditions,
life was more tolerable for them than elsewhere.
A very moving ceremony took place in Karachi about this time, when the last battalion
of regular British Infantry remaining in the country finally left Pakistan to return to
the United Kingdom. This was the 1st Battalion of the Black Watch who, in the presence
of a large crowd of British Officials and residents, marched up the gangway of the mili
tary troop ship taking them home, to the music of the regimental bagpipes. A similar
ceremony had already taken place at the Gateway of India in Bombay. Nothing that had
previously happened in the preceding few months made a greater impact on us than this
sad occasion. The era of the British Indian Empire had finally run its course.
Thanks to the bitterness caused by the massive killings and upheavals in the Punjab and
the subsequent fighting between the Pakistani tribesmen and the Indian troops in Kashmir,
relations between the newly established Governments of the two countries was at flash
point. In their capacity as the diplomatic representatives of H.M.G. in New Delhi and
Karachi, it was one of the principal preoccupations of the two British High Commissioners