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Rupa Publications India RITES OF PASSAGE A CIVIL SERVANT REMEMBERS by H M Patel
Rites of Passage are typical of such memoirs being a dry as dust narration of his days in Cambridge in Britain before making it to the ICS in 1927 and the string of usual (except for a stint as India’s Trade Commissioner in Hamburg just on the verge of the Second World War) step by step postings right up to the secretariat of the erstwhile Bombay Province What starts off as a humdrum recital of a twice told tale, suddenly takes wings and resonates with dramatic and even explosive impact with Patel’s induction, first as Secretary to the Viceroy’s Executive Council, and then as Defence and Cabinet Secretary into the Central Government on the eve of the formation of the Interim Government in September 1946 From then on, Patel takes a ringside seat enabling him to observe and recall in his memoirs history in the making right before his eyes