Caltech professor, British Raj official
David Clephan Elliot, 90, a retired Caltech history professor who was one of the few remaining members of the Indian Civil Service, which helped govern India when it was under British colonial rule, died Nov. 21 at Verdugo Hills Hospital in Glendale. The cause of death was not disclosed.
Elliot taught history in the humanities division at Caltech from 1950 to 1986. His areas of expertise included the Liberal Party in Scotland and the English Restoration, as well as arms control and national defense. He served for many years as faculty secretary and vice chairman of the history department in addition to heading the committee that planned Caltech’s yearlong 75th anniversary celebration in 1966. The student body voted him the most popular professor in 1977.
Born in 1917 in Larkhall, Scotland, Elliot was the son of a minister and the grandson of a shepherd. A graduate of the University of St. Andrews who received a master’s from Oxford and a doctorate from Harvard, he was sent in 1940 to the Punjab region, which today straddles the border between India and Pakistan. He was one of the elite corps of young British scholars who made up much of the Indian Civil Service, often referred to as the “steel frame” of the British Raj.
He spent seven years in India, beginning as a district officer and magistrate who rode on horseback to remote villages to arbitrate disputes that, he said, usually concerned “land, water rights or women.”
“It was a wonderful life,” he once told an interviewer. “The Indian scene was full of color and formality -- and romantic, too, in a ‘Boy’s Adventure Story’ sort of way.”
By 23, according to his family, Elliot was responsible for governing millions of people in areas of India larger than his native Scotland. He ended his service as political undersecretary of the Punjab, leaving during the turmoil that led up to independence from British rule in 1947.
In 1997, Elliot was invited back to India as a guest of the government to help celebrate the nation’s 50th anniversary.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
