EUROPEANS IN GOVERNMENT SERVICE

IN its issue of May 13, the “Pioneer” has once again taken up the cause of “The European in Government Service.” In the course of an article, the journal expatiates on what it is pleased to regard as the grievances of Europeans in Government employ. The European is depicted as the injured party and the people of India are somehow to blame for it. The complaint is that there is a general feeling of hostility against European officers among the people and in many places they are exposed to actual hardship through boycotting of their servants and are made to feel that they are not wanted in India. Our contemporary admits that the great majority of Indians, both educated and uneducated, desire that the services of a certain proportion of Europeans are necessary for India in the present stage of transition, but there are a few who make the position of Europeans irksome and the remedy suggested is the repudiation of this hostile attitude by the leaders of the people. In this country, the position of Indians in the various services of Government has been far enviable. In those rare cases in which Indians established their claims by dint of seniority and ability in the face of almost insurmountable obstacles, to some of the highest posts in the executive branch of the services, these claims were brushed aside more or less on racial grounds inspite of the declaration regarding equality of treatment between subject and subject embodied in the Gracious Proclamation of Victoria the Great. Take the case of Sir (then Mr.) K.G. Gupta, who was the senior most member of the Bengal Civil Service and had behind him a record of service of which the most brilliant of Lieutenant-Governors might very well be proud. The Lieutenant-Governorship of Bengal fell vacant but Sir Gupta was superseded apparently because he was Indian.

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