Word: gilmour
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However, in “The Ruling Caste,” David Gilmour, constructs a portrait of India that is far different from those found in other works. As opposed to focusing on the lives of the Indians, Gilmour looks to the few thousand British civil servants who, for about a century, were in charge of running a country of over 300 million people...
Immediately the audience is captured by this world that Gilmour, the author of the engaging biography about Queen Victoria’s viceroy “Curzon: Imperial Statesman,” expertly recreates. He begins by talking about the “empress of India” Queen Victoria, who “never went east of Berlin or south of San Sebastian...
...Gilmour devotes just a small portion of the book to Victoria and Disraeli. The Indian Civil Service (ICS) becomes the preliminary focus of Gilmour’s book, which includes letters, pictures, and diagrams that encompass the British experience within their precious jewel of India...
...intriguing vantage for Gilmour is the schooling required for ICS. Since the families involved in the civil service were from the highest pedigree, it was not uncommon that sons of earls populated these “Etons of India?...
...Gilmour interjects amusing tales of the inept legacy students who were in over their heads in the rigorous environment of Haileybury. Another interesting anecdote concerns Haileybury’s most famous professor, the economist Thomas Malthus, who memorably encountered several of his students on the way to chapel with “tankards of beer...