Royal Commission on the Public Services in India (the Islington Commission)

This series contains the written and oral evidence taken by the Royal Commission on the Public Services in India. The written evidence consists of replies to the Royal Commission's questionnaires as well as statements, memoranda and notes from officials, non-officials and associations. The oral evidence is in the form of witnesses corrected proofs. The series also contains papers on the preparation of the Royal Commission's report and on the administration of its activities.

The Royal Commission on the Public Services in India was commissioned by the King on 31 August 1912 to examine the Indian Civil Service and other civil services, imperial and provincial, with regard to recruitment; systems of training and probabtion, conditions of service, salary, leave and pension; such limitations as existed in the employment of non-Europeans, and the working of the existing system of division of services into imperial and provincial; and to consider the requirements of the public service and recommend any changes which seemed necessary. It consisted of Lord Islington (Chairman), the Earl of Ronaldshay, Sir Murray Hammick, Sir Theodore Morison, Sir Valentine Chirol, Mahadev Bhaskar Chaubal, Abdur Rahim, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Walter Culley Madge, Frank George Sly, Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher, and J Ramsay MacDonald. The Secretaries to the Royal Commission were Montagu S D Butler of the Indian Civil Service and R R Scott of the Admiralty. The 12 members of the Royal Commission assembled at Madras on 31 December 1912. The Royal Commission spent two seasons in India: 1912-1913 and 1913-1914. In its first season it restricted its inquiry to the Indian and Provincial civil services. It also subsequently decided to exclude from its line of investigation all special or isolated appointments, and such services as were either not strictly of a civil character, or appeared to raise no question of importance, which would not adequately be covered by the findings on some related department. In particular it decided not to extend its investigations to appointments in the political departments of the Government of India or of the local governments. It also excluded the various subordinate and upper subordinate services and ministerial establishments, except where they had a direct bearing on the issue of recruitment for the services. The Royal Commission also decided to deal only with the officers employed either directly in the imperial departments under the Government of India or in the nine presidencies or provinces of Madras, Bombay, Bengal, the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, the Punjab, Burma, Bihar and Orissa, the Central Provinces and Berar, and Assam. In total this left 24 departments and 9,949 officers. The Royal Commission visited all the provinces except Assam, and held private conferences with the members of the Government of India and Provincial Governments. It also sat in London, in July 1913, and again in May and June 1914, and for the most part it sat in public. The Royal Commission lost one of its members with the death of Gopal Krishna Gokhale on 19 February 1915. The Royal Commission's main recommendations concerned the limitations on the employment of non-Europeans in the public services. It came to the conclusion that the existing system had failed to admit a sufficient number of Indians into the Civil Service, and its recommendations aimed to admit more Indians to the higher offices and place them on equal terms of conditions of service and prospects with Europeans in the Indian Civil Service. The Report of the Royal Commission was signed on 14 August 1915, but was not published until 26 January 1917, by which time the basis of the report had changed as a result of the First World War. It was condemned by educated Indians as being insufficient, and in June 1923, the Lee Commission was appointed to look again at the question of the reorganisation of the civil services in India.

The series has been arranged into the following eight sub-series: Q/2/1 Officials and Non-Officials who furnished written evidence to the Royal Commission but who were not orally examined; Q/2/2 Questions relating to the Indian and Provincial Civil Services; Q/2/3 Voluntary submissions in answer to the Royal Commission's questions relating to the Indian and Provincial Civil Services; Q/2/4 Further evidence; Q/2/5 Witnesses corrected proofs of the Minutes of Evidence taken before the Royal Commission at Calcutta, Bombay, Madras and Delhi; Q/2/6 Witnesses corrected proofs of the Minutes of Evidence taken before the Royal Commission at London; Q/2/7 Papers relating to the Royal Commission's Report; Q/2/8 Papers relating to the administration of the Royal Commission's activities

Unrestricted

More papers in the India Office Records relating to the Islington Commission can be found in the Public and Judicial Department Annual Files (IOR/L/PJ/6), the Services and General Department Records at IOR/L/SG/7/1-4 and in the Surveyor's Records at IOR/L/SUR/6/16/45 and IOR/L/SUR/6/17/6. Other copies of the Commission's report can be found in the Parliamentary Papers at IOR/V/4/SESSION 1916 VOL 7 and in the Parliamentary Branch Records at IOR/L/PARL/2/380. The Minutes of Evidence can be found at IOR/V/4/SESSION 1914 VOL 21-24 and IOR/V/4/SESSION 1914-16 VOL 15-17. Copies of volumes 2-16 of the Minutes of Evidence are also at IOR/L/PARL/2/380 and 380A-E. See also the following India Office Private Papers Collections: Papers of Sir Montagu Butler (Mss Eur F225/2, 9, 28 and 29), Correspondence of Gopal Krishna Gokhale (Mss Eur IOR Pos 11697-11710), and the Indian Police Collection (Mss Eur F161/21).

Royal Commission on the Public Services In India, Report of the Commissioners, Volume I (London: HMSO, 1917). The evidence relating to the Indian and provincial civil services taken in India and London was also published in nineteen volumes (Volumes II to XX).