An official is often defined not by the work he does but by the shadow he leaves in the files of his superiors. As George Orwell observed, "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity." In the high offices of the Indian Civil Service, this tendency was often distilled into a single, devastating sentence. It could derail a career with unerring precision. These were the legendary backhanded compliments of the Annual Confidential Reports, or ACRs. They served both as a measure of an officer's worth and as a display of a senior's wit. Since Annual Confidential Reports are not in the public domain, one must turn to memoirs and the remembered lore of the service, where the spirit and conventions of the ICS are vividly recalled. The sources are as authentic as the red tape that bound the Raj. They include the autobiographical writings of Philip Mason, who wrote as Philip Woodruff, especially The Men Who Ruled India. They also include 'Many Worlds' by KPS. Menon, who achieved the rare distinction of being the first and the last Indian to top the ICS examination in 1922 during its entire century long history. Further insight comes from Charles Allen's Plain Tales from the Raj and from the historical works of Narendra Luther, an IAS officer of 1955 batch who........

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