Word: raj
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Perhaps the only time in history that a bureaucrat's job has been glamorous was during the British Raj. In the course of a typical day, an officer of the Indian Civil Service (ICS) might have been called upon to judge a case in which a jealous husband had chopped off his wife's nose, arrange for rice to reach a famine-stricken town, meet a local maharajah for tea, and then wind down by heading off into the jungle to shoot a panther. Then again, everything about the ICS was extraordinary?not least, the immense power wielded...
...myth? Revisionist historians have recently accused the imperial civil servants of sins ranging from selfishness to incompetence in dealing with famines. Now, British historian David Gilmour has risen to the defense of the ICS with his new book, The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj. Gilmour has already written monumental biographies of two of the most controversial figures of the Raj?the writer Rudyard Kipling and the viceroy Lord Curzon. His latest work aims to rebut the revisionist attacks and provide a more flattering group portrait of the men who ruled the Raj...
...when they were no older than 19 (the age limit, introduced in the late 1870s, was eventually raised to 23), ICS officers were soon shipped off to India's far-flung provinces to be part of what Prime Minister David Lloyd George called "the steel frame" that held the Raj together. The ICS officer was one part taxman, responsible for collecting the tolls and revenues due to the Raj from his district, and one part magistrate, settling his district's legal disputes, which might range from petty theft to murder. In addition, he was in charge of "forests, roads, schools...
...face. The murders were part of a wave of executions on May 13 on the remote northern Sri Lankan island of Kayts. That evening, the gunmen killed nine others, including four of the Ketheeswarans' relatives. "I can't imagine what type of animals would do this," says Father Amal Raj from nearby St. Philip Neri's church, who helped move the bodies...
...should have prompted a call to the A.S.P.C.A.) A precocious celebutant makes her entrance via helicopter. A self-proclaimed "divo" (like diva but different) rents out the mall to stage a faux fashion show (prompting a backstage catfight over a limited supply of bustiers). There are hired dancers, a raj-like litter hoisted by hand-picked hotties and an apparent contractual obligation for someone to arrive in a stretch Hummer. I had no idea so many stretch Hummers even existed. No wonder we had to go to war in Iraq...