The Indian Civil Service (ICS), for part of the 19th century officially known as the Imperial Civil Service, is the elite higher civil service of the British Empire in British India during British rule in the period between 1858 and 1947.
Its members ruled over more than 200 million people in the British Raj. They were ultimately responsible for overseeing all government activity in the 250 districts that comprised British India. They were appointed under Section XXXII(32) of the Government of India Act 1858, enacted by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The ICS was headed by the Secretary of State for India, a member of the British cabinet.
At first almost all the top thousand members of the ICS, known as "Civilians", were British, and had been educated in the "best" British schools. By 1905, five per cent were from Bengal. In 1947 there were 322 Indians and 688 British members; most of the latter left at the time of partition and independence.
Until the 1930s the Indians in the service were very few and were not given high posts by the British. Wainwright notes that by the mid-1880s, "the basis of racial discrimination in the sub-continent had solidified".
At the time of the birth of India and Pakistan in 1947, the outgoing Government of India's ICS was divided between India and Pakistan.[a] Although these are now organised differently, the contemporary Civil Services of India, the Central Superior Services of Pakistan, Bangladesh Civil Service and Myanmar Civil Service are all descended from the old Indian Civil Service.
Historians often rate the ICS, together with the railway system, the legal system, and the Indian Army, as among the most important legacies of British rule in India.
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