'Memoirs and Recollections of An Officer of the Indian Political Service' [‎70r] (139/156)

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in the course of time, we were sent a British Army Brigadier and an R.A.F. Wing Commander,
who were appointed Military and Air Advisers respectively. The Senior Trade Commissioner
was recruited from the Foreign Service. From Whitehall as time went on, the staff was
augmented by secretaries, technicians, and clerical officers. Finally, accommodation had
also to be found for a large Information and Press Office. Many of these new-comers
reached us after Independence, but each arrival created new problems. They all had to be
provided with accommodation in Karachi, now swollen by the arrival from India of a mass
of Muslim officials and administrators to serve in the newly created Government of Paki
stan. Newly appointed Foreign Ambassadors and High Commissioners reported for duty., and
found themselves living in suites or even single rooms at the Palace Hotel which had to
serve the dual purpose of Residential accommodation and working Chanceries. Last, but
not least, there were the millions of Muslim refugees from the Eastern Punjab, who had
been compelled to leave for ever their ancestral homes in the districts of that great
province which had been alloted to India by the Boundary Commission under Sir Cyril
Radcliffe (Later Lord), which had had at short notice to delineate the boundaries
separating Pakistan from India, not only in the Punjab, but also in Eastern Bengal.
On the 15th August 19A7, Independence was finally proclaimed and the centuries-old
British Connection came to an end. The Indian Empire ceased to exist at the stroke
of midnight. To us, the surviving officials of the All India Services, it was the end
of our careers in the country which we had been proud to serve, and where most of us
had followed in the footsteps of dedicated and distinguished forebears. I became the
last of the sixth generation of Cottons who had served the Crown in an unbroken line
of son following father, since the second half of the 18th century.
With some of my colleagues I attended the Independence ceremony on the "maidan" at Karachi
where the Union Jack, with its centrally emblazoned Star of India, was hauled down and
replaced by the green and white standard of Pakistan with its crescent and star. Looking
back on it now, it seems incredible that order could ever have been restored from the
chaos that reigned in Karachi and up-country in Pakistan at the time, to say nothing of
far away East Bengal. Pakistan had been placed at a great disadvantage in the partition
ing of the sub-continent. It had to rely on the just division of the assets - financial,
material and cultural - of the previously united country. What made it worse was that
these assets were largely in the possession and under the control of India. Pakistan’s
share had to be painfully extracted from the new Indian Government, which was in a far
from generous mood. This imbalance extended to every aspect of Government - official
archives and records, equipment, valuables, the contents of Government Departments and
buildings; in fact the whole machinery of government. But perhaps the greatest weakness
of Pakistan, both west and east, was the dearth of experienced and senior civil servants.
The Indian Muslim had never possessed, nor had he particularly wanted to posses, the
tradition nor indeed the aptitude for administration in the way that came £o naturally