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British Colonial Service, the people who gov-
erned India. Graduates from British universities,
these men were trained for their work in India.
Most eventually rose to be District Offi cers,
responsible for several hundred districts, the
basic administrative units in India. They would
have had the help of no more than a handful of
British and Anglo-Indian offi cials, who would
be concerned with the practical issues of gov-
ernment and communication with the higher
echelons of the administration. They would have
had to deal with tax collection, labour problems,
local confl ict, rising Nationalism, local disputes,
issues of law including tax disputes, with the
education of staff for the administration (Fryken-
berg, 1986), with local problems such as disease
epidemics, famines and attacks on local people
by wild animals. They would also have had to
coordinate the activities of other branches of the
colonial administration within the District, for
example, the Forestry Service and the Survey of
India. Though life in the Colonial Service is fre-
quently portrayed as one of self-indulgence, of
being waited on by servants, and of lavish social
activities, and though there is much truth in this,
the work of Empire was nonetheless challeng-
ing, personally demanding, often diffi cult and
sometimes dangerous. The numbers of admin-
istrators were comparatively few and their levels
of responsibility substantial. Indians were often
treated harshly and with derision, possibly a
result of the power bestowed on colonial offi -
cials, whose perceptions of their own superiority
may well have been reinforced by the negative
sentiments expressed about Indians since the
late 18th century in Britain, by authors such as
Dow (1770) and Macaulay (1907) (cited in
Arnold, 2004). Most colonial offi cers were com-
mitted to the success of the Empire, and as a
consequence, theirs was often a life of worry, of
loneliness through separation from their fami-
lies, at times of being hated, attacked, and in
some cases killed. With this as a background, the
desire to get away to the hills for respite is clear.
Besides District Offi cers, there were many
others who assumed signifi cant positions in the
administration, including offi cers in the Forest
Service, the Education Service, the Survey of
India, the Police and the Political Service, which
was made up of offi cers from the ICS or the
Army, and whose principal role was to work
with the many princes who ruled large areas of
India, overseen by the British. Other offi cials
were involved in the Medical Service and played
a role in commercial enterprise such as quality
control on produce from India's tea, coffee and
jute plantations. For these too, work could be
arduous, and although most would probably have
had a higher standard of living than they would
ever have achieved in Britain, nevertheless, this
came at a price as theirs was a working life in rela-
tive isolation and trips to the hills would thus
assuage their thirst for Western company.
India's Colonial Administration was virtually
all male, though some wives did play major roles
in their husbands' work and became very involved
in Indian life. Some wives went up to the hills for
most of the year but the hardier among them
would remain with their husbands, keeping a close
eye on local conditions and participating in their
husbands' work where they were able. As the fol-
lowing quotation indicates, some women made
stalwart efforts to learn the local language.
You had to learn the language even as a
woman, or you missed so much . . . I had a
munshi to teach me, but he always taught
along military lines, because that was what he
was used to. He would say, 'Go to the adjutant,
and tell him that number 3 company has
mutinied.' And all I wanted . . . was how to say,
'The meat is tough.'
(Patricia Edge, whose husband was
in the Army and the Survey of India. Source:
The role of the army was to keep the peace
throughout India and consequently, soldiers
were stationed in remote cantonments with few
sources of entertainment, the North West Frontier
being one example. Some were already stationed
on the hills, such as the satellites around Simla, or
at Ooty, but where they were in the heat of the
plains, the hills had considerable appeal for peri-
ods of leave. They offered a rich social life and a
relative abundance of women, Indian, Anglo-
Indian and British, many of whom were prepared
to enjoy, or endure, the attentions of the soldiers.
The impact of Christian missionaries, like
the colonial period, was also at its strongest
between the late 19th century and the end of
the First World War. However, they were
viewed with some degree of suspicion by the
higher echelons of society on the hill stations.
Christianity in colonial India came from sev-
eral missionary sources: the Society for the
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