Ronald Wingate - Indian Government

Indian Government

In 1932, Wingate was appointed the Deputy Secretary of the Foreign and Political Department of the Indian government. As India was in the middle of reforms aimed at eventual independence, the result of the report of the Simon Commission, Wingate found the period a very interesting time to be in the high levels of the government. His first job was to help integrate the princely states into federation with the rest India in preparation for independence. A particular challenge in the process involved determining how many representatives each of the states would have in the Constituent Assembly of India. Wingate proposed "a scheme based upon permutations and combinations of the number of guns which were fired to salute the categories of Indian princes". The idea was acclaimed "as a stroke of genius" and adopted by the government.

In May 1935, Wingate was granted a year's leave and went to Vichy for a much needed vacation with is wife. While in Vichy, Wingate heard of the terrible 1935 Balochistan earthquake and returned immediately to England to see if his services were required by the government. Because of his loyalty to Quetta, Wingate volunteered to return there immediately. He was not asked to return immediately, but in October (after less than half of his promised leave), Wingate was ordered to return to India and become the Revenue Commissioner of Baluchistan.

Upon returning to Quetta, Wingate was saddened to find that most of his friends and acquaintances in the city had been killed by earthquake, and he spent the first six weeks of his time in the city helping to remove "four hundred smashed and disintregating corpses a day" from the ruins of the city. Shortly thereafter, the Chief Commissioner of Baluchistan, Alexander Cater, left his position and Wingate became the Acting Chief Commissioner of Baluchistan. During this period, Wingate, like most officers of the Indian Civil Service, supported Indian self-rule, and began to see the end of British India as inevitable. As such, Wingate decided in 1936 that he would leave India once his term as revenue commissioner ended. In November 1937, he was offered the position of Minister to Nepal but declined. Instead, he took two years of leave that he had saved, planning to retire at its conclusion.

Wingate spent the next year traveling throughout Europe, and in early 1939, he rented a flat on the Chelsea Embankment, where he planned to live with his wife. He spent his time exploring London and soon began planning to run for a seat in House of Commons as the member from his constituency was planning to retire. After the outbreak of the Second World War; however, the member of parliament decided not to retire, and Wingate abandoned his hopes at politics, deciding that he would "have been quite useless as a Member of Parliament."