Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 12 October 1888.

Attribution: In Scrapbook 4 (28/4, p. 88).

Text: Civil and Military Gazette.

Notes: ‘I've sent to the C … M a second section of my exercises in administration’ (to Mrs Hill, [8] October 1888: Letters, i, 263). The satire makes plain the grounds of RK's objection to western education for Indians: by forcing educational ‘beef ‘ upon a nation that eats none, the result is a ‘horrible intellectual indigestion’.

Reprinted in ‘Turnovers’, iv, 1888.

ii.

Of Things in Particular.

Q.– At our last Conference, holden at least a month ago, you referred to the Civil Power and the Educational Department as factors in the Government of the Empire and superior to the army. Be good enough to explain the nature of the Civil Power.

A.– The Civil Power is bounded on the north by the District Officer's tent and baggage camel, on the East by the irresponsible Vakil, on the south by the Indian Ocean, and on the West by the interests of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce. In the centre is the Brown Man, its organ is the Pioneer, and it is kept humble by the Secretariat.

Q.– What is the Secretariat?

A.– The most uncivil power in the world, devised for the benefit of the bilious civilian who is too clever to live.

Q.– Is there then no conscious existence in the Secretariat?

A.– None. This may be proved by reference to the Resolutions composed therein.

Q.– What affinity has the Secretariat for the Civil Power proper as by you described?

A.– The affinity of the brake for the train and of the gadfly for the hide of the buffalo. The Secretariat being born of the District is immeasurably superior thereto: both being the coat and the lining of the Civil Power.

Q.– On what does the District Officer subsist?

A.– In ancient days the upon the prestige of the White Man, at present – upon the mehrbani of the Secretariat.

Q.– And what was the prestige of the White Man?

A.– It has been officially proved never to have existed, and I am therefore unable to expatiate upon it.