IOR/L/PS/8/17-78

Political and Secret DepartmentSecretary, India Office Political & Secret Department: Secret Service and Intelligence Papers, 1874-1917.

These papers probably accumulated as a result of the role that the Secretary of the India Office's Political and Secret Department played up to World War I as controller of secret intelligence matters concerning India. In these papers may lie the origins of the organisation of this intelligence from the India Office in London.

The India Office's Political and secret Department was probably thought to be the appropriate office in which such matters should be handled, under the particular supervision of the Political and Secret secretary, to whom only such high sensitive matters were entrusted. As controller The Political Secretary reported directly to the Secretary of State for India and disposed of a special Secret Service Fund. He worked in concert with his counterparts in India.

Sir Owen Tudor Bourne, Political Secretary (1874-86) appears to have been instrumental in first taking control of the organisation and payments of agents for secret service assignments. The papers date from the beginning of his period in office, but also include some secret service papers of Political Secretaries Sir Edward Bradford (1887-91), Sir Steuart Colvin Bayley (1891-95), Sir William Lee-Warner (1895-1902), Sir Richmond Ritchie (1903-09) and Sir Arthur Hirtzel (1910-17).

The origin of the India Office secret service Fund emerged in 1859 but it was from the early 1870s that the agreed procedure of acquiring such funds was established. When a grant of money was required, the Political Secretary submitted to the Secretary of State for India (customarily through the Private Secretary to the Secretary of State) a memorandum suggesting the required sum. The memo was sent by the Secretary of State to the Political Committee and then to the Council of India. As soon as the sanction for the payment of money for Secret Service purposes had been sanctioned by the Secretary of State in Council it was deposited at the Bank of England in the Secretary of State's own account -from time to time he would grant cheques on this account payable to the Political Secretary - the Political Secretary would then make the authorised disbursements by cheques on a 'separate account' at his own bankers as required.

The administration of the secret service payments and the direction of secret service agents working for the India Office, was by nature a non-avowed and discreet affair, the details of which are not clearly discernible in the departmental or the Secretary's papers. Only a vague outline of the mechanisms of the embryonic intelligence-gathering system emerges from these surviving secret papers. However, the papers suggest that the Political Secretary played a key role from the late 19th century in controlling the gathering of intelligence and the activities of agents, receiving their reports and paying them for their services.

The papers are better understood in the context of the development of intelligence matters affecting India. By the early 1870s the Government of India considered setting up a political intelligence service to examine potential threats to India's security from Russia, central Asia, northern India, Afghanistan and from within the Indian princely states. The Government of India's Foreign Department was required to report to the India Office's Political and Secret Department on information received related to India's external relations because this often had an impact on broader British foreign policy. From about 1887, seditious activity within British India was normally dealt with by the Government of India's Home Department, which reported to the India Office through the Judicial and Public Department. Secret or confidential material about sedition appears to have been dealt with by a secret branch of the Public and Judicial Department. Because intelligence matters relating to India began to fall into internal as well as foreign (or external) spheres, there was some uncertainty in the allocation of intelligence subjects between the two interested bodies within the India Office - the Public and Judicial and Political and Secret Departments.

In the 1880s the Government of India began to set up local government Special Branches, assisted by the local police which reported intelligence weekly to local governments on a range of issues such as foreigners, Indian religious leaders and sects, the native press and societies. In 1903 the Department of Criminal Intelligence (DCI) was established under the Political Branch of the Home Department of the Government of India at Simla. It became the Raj's central domestic and foreign intelligence agency. It was underpinned by Criminal Investigation Departments (CIDs) in all provinces of India.Local information and intelligence was collected and communicated to provincial and to the central governments on all criminal and political matters, political intrigues and revolutionary or anarchist activity.

In the early 1900s, there were close links between unrest in India and the political activities of the Indian community in Britain. Seditious activities and anti-British ideas originating in India were brought to Britain and Europe by visiting Indians, particularly by students receiving education or civil service training. Some Indians, organised themselves into radical and anarchist groups. From 1905 political unrest flared up in India, including the first bombings and assassinations of British officials by Indians. From 1907 Indian revolutionary parties appeared in London, Paris, North America, China and in the Far East. From 1908 London became the centre of Indian nationalism in Europe. In order to cope with the new situation, the India Office requested the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard to undertake surveillance of Indians in Britain. The co-ordination of such a sensitive matter appears to have been entrusted to the India Office's Political and Secret Secretary.

In London Indian nationalists were watched by the Special Branch (SB) of the Metropolitan Police. However, because the officers knew no Indian languages, nor were familiar with Indian nationalist politics, the intelligence gathered was not effective. The India Office in London became the point of contact between the DCI in India (reporting to the Judicial and Public Department) and Scotland Yard, but control and co-ordination were lacking. In July 1909 an Indian section of the Special Branch was established. Within the India Office, the Political and Secret and Public and Judicial departments must have co-operated in their overlapping intelligence interests.

After the murder of Sir Curzon Wyllie (a prominent British official with experience in India) in 1909, Political Secretaries Sir William Lee warner and Sur Arthur Hirtzel were particularly active in making improvements to intelligence-gathering during this increased period of revolutionary activity. the India Office and Scotland Yard desired expert British police officers from India (working under Home Department Control) to bring their intelligence to deal with the situation in Britain. In 1909 officers of the Indian Police were selected from the DCI to form a secret service agency, based at the India Office, reporting to the Secretary of the Public and Judicial Department. It was later known as the Indian Political Intelligence unit (IPI).

Two British officers of the Indian Police were sent to London in August 1909. IPI comprised an itinerant officer J. A. Wallinger ('Special Assistant to DCI'), attached to and based in the India Office, and a stationary officer in Europe. Their duties were to control agents in the main centres, watch Indian nationalists and revolutionary propaganda in Europe, notably Paris where the centre of Indian nationalist and revolutionary activity outside India had shifted after 1910. By 1911 Scotland Yard SB officers were working closely with Wallinger on surveillance of Indians in London. Wallinger also watched Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, improved relations with French intelligence and co-ordinated intelligence operations on Indians in North America.

During the First World War German strategy to defeat Britain had important Indian significance. First the Germans cultivated Indian nationalists and armed Bengali revolutionaries. The revolutionaries, based in Germany, France and Switzerland tried to influence Indian POWs in Iraq and Indian soldiers in France. Secondly, Germany planned the downfall of the British Empire by trying to create instability on India's frontiers, especially from Afghanistan. Germany also tried to influence the Turks as leaders of all Muslims to wage a jihad against the allies, and in so doing, create instability within Muslim India. As a result of German policy, the scope of Indian-related intelligence increased in importance. Indian nationalist activity also increased in North America, the Far East, Japan and China and additional agents were sent there. After the failure of German subversion by 1917, the security of India was under threat from the Bolsheviks in Russia who wanted to foster revolution in India.

Very few of these Political Secretary's papers passed through the Political Department's registry system, but the few that show signs of having done so have been clearly kept back or taken possession of personally by him. The unregistered and 'secret' nature of the papers indicates that the Political Secretary had personal control of the papers and also controlled and directed the intelligence work of the Political Department until its transfer to the specially established IPI in the Public and Judicial Department. As a result of the expansion of intelligence-gathering organisation during the First World War, keeping the work under the control of the Political Secretary was no probably longer feasible. By 1917, the work seems to have been firmly based in the Public and Judicial Department. By 1925, this small separate branch became a section in its own right on the Public and Judicial Department's establishment, known as the India Police Intelligence unit.

The intelligence work of the Political Department was eventually subsumed within the responsibilities of the IPI. Some of the Political Department intelligence papers overlap with the early IPI files of the Public and Judicial (Separate) series, 1913-1947 [IOR/L/P & IOR/J/12]. That is to say, these Political and Secret Secretary's intelligence papers overlap with some of the early IPI files in the Public and Judicial (Separate) series, L/P&J/12. In many ways the L/P&J/12 files follow on from these papers informally kept by the Political and Secret Secretary in a much more systematic way and in a properly registered system from 1910. However, the pre-First World War papers in L/P&J/12 have been lost. These surviving Political and Secret Secretary's papers in this series may be all that's left of the pre-1910 India Office papers on Indian intelligence matters. The papers in this series may give some clues as to what issues were current at the time which have not survived in the P&J(S) series.