Kallol Bhattacherjee’s book, , explores how Indian diplomats were recruited immediately after Independence in 1947. So far this information has been orally transmitted or recounted piecemeal in individual memoirs. The writer has interviewed some of the doyens of Indian Foreign Service like M.
K. Rasgotra (1948 batch) and K. Natwar Singh (1953 batch).
He has also spoken to family members of some who are no more. As a colony, India did not need diplomatic representation abroad until the Second World War. Whereas, for internal administration, Indians had begun to be recruited to the elite Indian Civil Service (ICS), precursor to the Indian Administrative Service.
The demand, however, for Indian diplomats was immediate once India began functioning as an independent nation. This was achieved by hybrid and selective recruitment. Some ICS officers were seconded to the ministry of external affairs (MEA), which remained under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru until his death in 1964.
Below them were placed members of erstwhile ruling families, journalists, All India Radio staffers, associates of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose with deep knowledge of East Asia and Myanmar, etc. From 1948, when two recruitment examinations were held, direct entrants began joining the Indian Foreign Service (IFS). Shri M.
K. Rasgotra of that batch, foreign secretary in early 1980s, is the oldest surviving member of the service. The writer explains the troika of Girija Shankar Bajpai, K.
P.S. Menon and S.
Dutt as.
