Baring had not expected to feel satisfaction over something as pedestrian as mentoring a junior. Yet here it was — the faint sense that ushering new blood into the civil service was more than an indulgence. It was a safeguard. In times like these, the British administration in India needed both continuity and loyalty, preferably in the same package.
Alan Wilson, however, viewed it from a different angle entirely.
British India was not merely a jewel in the crown of the Empire — it was the crown itself. More valuable than Canada, more vital than Australia, more irreplaceable than the lost Thirteen Colonies. Without India, the rest was little more than consolation.
Its scale alone defied comparison: resources, manpower, strategic position. Even in the present year, 1945, British India's economy outstripped Japan's in total output and key industrial indicators — a fact most London newspapers were happy to underreport. During the last war, its revenues had reached a staggering one billion rupees, nearly half the fiscal income of Britain itself, and matching Japan's government revenue pound for pound.
It was no accident that, throughout the 19th century, Britain's foreign policy — from skirmishes in Burma to entanglements in Afghanistan — had revolved around safeguarding India.
Alan knew that a posting here, under different circumstances, would have been a golden ladder. Thirty years earlier, ambitious men had crossed oceans for the privilege of administering this colony. In India, a civil servant could live like a prince without the suffocating checks and balances of Whitehall.
But times had changed. The jewel was slipping from its setting. Every month brought the end nearer. His task now was not to bask in prestige, but to mine what influence and capital he could from the waning light.
Hyderabad, he decided, was a place to start.
Not just any princely state — the largest and richest, ruled by a man whose name had made headlines far beyond the subcontinent. In 1937, Mir Osman Ali Khan had been named by American press as the richest man in the world. That title alone made Hyderabad a nexus of influence, and perhaps of opportunity.
Baring had been clear: Alan could recruit his own aides. Trusted men, capable of moving quietly in a court where loyalty was bought in coin, courtesy, and calculated favors.
The file he carried home contained, among other things, a set of "assessment questions" for British Indian civil servants. Alan allowed himself a thin smile. Even in war, even on the cusp of imperial collapse, the bureaucracy still clung to its rituals. Exams. Essays. Forms in triplicate.
On the bus ride back, he scanned the pages. They were less about abstract governance than about today's political terrain — Congress versus the Muslim League, the delicate interplay between the provinces and the princely states. It was a test of realism, not theory.
Meanwhile, Baring was making his case in the Viceroy's study.
"A gifted young man," he told Wavell. "If not for the war, he might have been Oxford's youngest graduate in years. Yes, he's young — but precisely for that reason, Hyderabad suits him."
Wavell raised an eyebrow. "Hyderabad as a first post is rather… generous."
"On the contrary," Baring replied smoothly, "a provincial appointment would draw attention — perhaps opposition. Hyderabad is different. The Nizam is London's honored guest; our treaty limits how much direct power we can place there. The Resident's role is as much diplomacy as administration, and our manpower is already stretched thin. A younger officer can represent the Crown without provoking the perception of interference."
He left unsaid what both men knew: British India's civil service was exhausted. The war's outcome in Europe might be clear, but here the future was still an open question — independence, continued dominion status, or something in between. And in that uncertainty, small deviations from protocol hardly mattered.
That night, Alan sat at his desk, the lamplight a small island in the dark.
One question on the exam read: Identify the key supporters of British administration in India and the principal sources of opposition.
His pen moved slowly but without pause.
Supporters:— The Untouchable castes, who under British rule hold rights denied them in a Hindu order.— The rulers of the 560 princely states, wary of losing privilege under Congress or League rule.
Opponents:— Congress under Nehru, seeking full transfer of power.— The Muslim League under Jinnah, determined to avoid a united India under Hindu majority.
Then he added a note — more for himself than for any examiner:
Congress and the League differ in methods, not in threat to the Raj. The Untouchables and the princes, for now, are our pillars. My task in Hyderabad is to make the Nizam one of those pillars.
He underlined the next line twice:
Mir Osman Ali Khan commands the wealthiest and most powerful state in India. He is Muslim, a minority even within his own dominion. That fact alone inclines him toward London's friendship.
Alan set the pen down.
In politics, as in war, knowing who your friends are — and who they must become — was the first rule of survival.