Indian Civil Service in 1947.

At the time of the partition of India and the departure of the British, in 1947, the Indian Civil Service was divided between the new Dominions of India and Pakistan. The part which went to India was named the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), while the part that went to Pakistan was named the "Civil Service of Pakistan" (CSP).

At the time of Partition, there were 980 ICS officers. 468 were Europeans, 352 Hindus, 101 Muslims, two depressed classes/Scheduled Castes, five domiciled Europeans and Anglo-Indians, 25 Indian Christians, 13 Parsis, 10 Sikhs, and four other communities.

Most European officers left South Asia at Partition, while Hindus and Muslims went to India and Pakistan respectively.

Nirmal Kumar Mukherjee, who retired as Cabinet Secretary in April 1980, had been the last Indian administrative officer who had originally joined as an ICS (in 1944), while the last ICS officer to retire in Pakistan was Agha Shahi, also of 1944 batch, who retired as a foreign advisor to the president in 1982. The last recruited batch of the ICS was in October 1944.

The 81 ICS officers who opted for service in Pakistan helped immeasurably in providing an administrative structure that kept things going in the early years. Many of them were from northern India or from the Bengal cadre of the ICS and formed the core of a new central service called the Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS) which was later rechristened as the Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP).

The Muslim ICS who opted for Pakistan.

A.T. Naqvi, S. Ghias-ud-Din Ahmed, H.A. Majid, Syed Fida Hasan, M.R. Kayani, S.H. Raza, Abdul Majeed, Naseer Ahmad Faruqui, Mirza Muzaffar (M M) Ahmad, Shaikh Nazrul Bakar (originally of the Bihar cadre, he had to retire prematurely because of a clash with Aziz Ahmed who emerged as the Deputy Chief Martial Law Administrator in 1958), Shahabuddin Rahmatullah, Asghar Ali, M.M. Niaz, Qamar-ul-Islam and Qudratullah Shahab.

Kayani (ICS, Punjab, 1927) was the Chief Justice of West Pakistan from 1958 to 1962. He was not elevated to the Supreme Court because of his open criticism of the military authorities.

Ghulam Mueenuddin, (ICS, Punjab, 1930) was Secretary of the Establishment Division and, later, the Chief Election Commissioner. He was a principal negotiator of the Indus Waters Treaty (1960) and is the father of Daniyal Mueenuddin, the Pakistani-American author of the widely acclaimed short story collection “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders”.

M.M. Ahmad joined the ICS in 1939 and, at one stage of his career, was arguably the most influential civil servant in Pakistan with supervisory authority over three ministries.

Four Chief Justices of the Supreme Court of Pakistan had their origins in the ICS, namely, Muhammad Shahabuddin (1960), A.R. Cornelius (1960-68), S.A. Rahman (1968) and Sheikh Anwarul Haq (1977-81). Justice Shahabuddin (ICS, 1921) was born in Ellore (Madras) and was a Judge of the High Court there; after Partition, he was appointed as a Judge of the Dacca High Court. Justice Cornelius entered the ICS in 1926 and was a Judge of the Lahore High Court. Post-1947, he was a founding father of Pakistan cricket and is the recipient of Hilal-i-Pakistan.

On the other hand, there were amongst others, Sahibzada Khurshid Ahmed Khan, Chief Commissioner, Delhi in 1947 and son of a co-founder of the AMU and Syed Hasan Zaheer (son of Sir Wazir Hasan who was President of the All India Muslim League in 1936) opted for India. In the Punjab cadre, two Muslim ICS, BFHB Tyabji (of the family of the first Muslim President of the Indian National Congress, a Sulaimani Bohra) and M. Azim Hussain (son of Sir Fazle Hussain) chose to serve in India while Cornelius and Burke, both Indian Christians, opted for Pakistan.

Till he died at the age of 104, Samuel Martin Burke (1906-2010) was an ICS officer who outlived many others. He belonged to the 1930 batch and later quit the ICS but was recalled by the Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah to join the foreign service.

Then there was Dr. Akhtar Hameed Khan (1914-1999) who is widely credited with pioneering micro-credit initiatives, farmers’ cooperatives, and rural training programs in the developing world. A son-in-law of Allama Mashriqi, his particular contribution was the establishment of a comprehensive project for rural development, the Comilla Model (1959) which earned him the Ramon Magsaysay Award.