An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

by Shashi Tharoor

The British system of rule in India was, by any standards, remarkable. A 24-year-old district officer found himself in charge of 4,000 square miles and a million people. The duties which the district officer had to perform were enumerated in a contemporary account as follows: ‘Collector of the Land Revenue. Registrar of the landed property in the District. Judge between landlord and tenant. Ministerial officer of the Courts of Justice. Treasurer and Accountant of the District. Administrator of the District Excise. Ex officio President of the Local Rates Committee. Referee for all questions of compensation for lands taken up for public purposes. Agent for the Government in all local suits to which it is a party. Referee in local public works. Manager of estates of minors. Magistrate, Police Magistrate and Criminal Judge. Head of Police. Ex officio President of Municipalities…’ All these tasks were performed by a young man, in a foreign country, with little knowledge of the local language or conditions, following uniform rules of procedure laid down by the distant government, but convinced of his innate superiority over those he had been assigned to rule and his God-given right to dispense authority in all these functions. Authority, but not welfare; there was no ‘development work’ listed for any British official in a district.