P. J. Griffiths

(Percival Joseph Griffiths)

Percival Joseph Griffiths

In This Collection

Other Works by P. J. Griffiths

  • Are We Humbugs? (1944)
  • Modern India (1957)
  • A History of the Inchcape Group (1977)
  • Vignettes of India (1985)
  • Empire into Commonwealth
  • The Changing Face of Communism
  • The Road to Freedom

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Griffiths, Sir Percival Joseph

B. C. Bloomfield

Griffiths, Sir Percival Joseph (1899–1992), administrator in India and businessman, was born on 15 January 1899 in Tooting, London, the second son of Joseph Thomas Griffiths (1862–1936), schoolteacher, of Ashford, Middlesex, and his wife, Rose, née Millward (1864–1967), also a teacher. Educated at the Central Foundation School, London, he was recommended by his headmaster, W. H. Wagstaff, to Peterhouse, Cambridge, to which he was admitted on 15 January 1917. He served as a rifleman in the Queen’s Westminster rifles, and was then commissioned second lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps, during the latter stages of the First World War. Released from the service, he entered Peterhouse on 15 January 1919 with a £50 entrance scholarship (later a foundation scholarship for £60), being allowed one term’s grace for his war service. He took first-class honours in part one of the mathematical tripos in 1919, and was among the senior optimes in part two of that tripos in 1921, simultaneously gaining a BSc honours degree at London University.

At the age of thirteen Griffiths had decided to go to India after reading a life of Nicholson. He now attempted to enter the Indian Civil Service. Successful in the entrance examination, he joined the civil service on 30 October 1922 and arrived in India on 13 December 1922 on the British India ship Mashobra. During the voyage he met, and became engaged to marry, Kathleen Mary Wilkes (1899–1979), daughter of Thomas Richard Wilkes, of Burton Latimer, Kettering, Northamptonshire, a trained teacher going out to India as governess for two young girls. They were subsequently married at St Thomas’s Church, Dacca, on 8 April 1924. Griffiths was first stationed in Dacca and afterwards spent most of his service in eastern India, being assistant magistrate and collector in Contai; in Kalimpong, from 1924 to May 1928 (and again from September 1933); chief manager of the estate of the nawab of Dacca from March 1929; magistrate and collector in Midnapore from 1934, where his three predecessors had been assassinated; and finally deputy commissioner in Darjeeling from May 1936. He took early retirement from the Indian Civil Service in August 1937 under the new proportionate pension scheme. He spoke Bengali fluently, knew Hindi and Urdu, Tibetan, Nepalese, and Sanskrit, and possessed a sound working knowledge of German, French, and Italian. He made many close Indian—and Pakistani—friends during his time as an official, and those friendships long continued.

For someone to leave the ‘Heaven-born’—as members of the Indian Civil Service were familiarly known—to become a ‘box-wallah’, or businessman, was extremely unusual, but Griffiths realized that Indian independence was coming and that prospects for promotion were likely to reduce rapidly. Always ambitious, with a wife and three children to support, Griffiths became political adviser to the Indian tea industry and took up one of the European reserved seats in the Indian legislative assembly as a non-official member, becoming leader of the European group in 1946. During the Second World War he was publicity adviser to Linlithgow’s administration and acted as central organizer of the national war front. He was made CIE in 1943, and acted as the principal representative for European business interests then and in the discussions leading up to independence. Mountbatten paid tribute to his work and influence during this period and, always direct in his opinions, Griffiths was trusted by both Indians and British alike, although he later admitted to a mistrust of Jinnah.

After independence Griffiths stayed in India, continuing to represent European business interests and travelling constantly between the UK and the subcontinent. In 1947 he was knighted and became adviser to the Indian Tea Association, based in London, his association with it continuing to 1976. He was also adviser to the newly formed India, Pakistan, and Burma Association, representing companies trading to the now independent countries, and was president from 1963 to 1973. He was appointed KBE in 1963. He was a director of numerous tea companies, and of the Inchcape Group and its subsidiaries, and undertook many overseas tours in Asia and Africa for those companies and the Federation of British Industries. He was a member of the governing body of the School of Oriental and African Studies from 1957 to 1983 (vice-chairman in 1965–76), and a member of its finance and general purposes and investments committees, being elected an honorary fellow of the school in 1971.

Griffiths was a prolific author, report writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, his most important books being Modern India (1957), which had run to a fourth edition by 1965; The History of the Indian Tea Industry (1967); To Guard my People (1971), a history of the Indian police; A Licence to Trade: the History of the English Chartered Companies (1974); A History of the Inchcape Group (1977); and the privately published, autobiographical Vignettes of India (1985). He was an avid reader and pianist, and keenly interested in classical music. Lady Griffiths suffered ill health in later years and her husband’s activities were curtailed as he cared for her assiduously from 1978, but she died on 25 February 1979. There were three sons from the marriage, Richard (b. 1925), Michael (1926–1983), and John (b. 1934). Griffiths married second, on 15 July 1985, Marie Shirley-Smith, née Lynden-Lemon, widow of Sir Hubert Shirley-Smith. Griffiths himself suffered a fall in 1982 and temporarily entered a nursing home to recover from that and the effects of a low blood count, down to 40 per cent of normal, but he recovered, although he resigned many of his voluntary activities. He died on 14 July 1992 at Dormy House, Ridgemont Road, Sunningdale, Berkshire, from old age peacefully in his sleep, and was cremated on 20 July at Woking crematorium.

Griffiths was small, with short legs and a large head, his wavy hair parted on the left and smooth on his scalp. P. J., as he was generally known, and signed himself, was variously described as ‘aggressive’, the ‘bravest man in India’, the ‘tiger of Bengal’, and a ‘defiant cocksparrow’. His initial response to any problem or difficult situation was to confront it and propose a solution. He was renowned for his integrity and sense of duty, and as a dogged and successful negotiator in political and commercial matters. Always active, and until his later years in good health (he maintained that he had never had a day’s sickness in India), he seemed to have the secret of perpetual motion. He radiated trustworthiness and was liked even by those from whom he differed.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percival_Griffiths