Author, historian and member of the Indian Civil Service

 

Samuel Martin Burke as a sessions judge in the mid-1930s. 

As a member of the Indian Civil Service (ICS), Samuel Martin Burke, who has died aged 104, adhered to its characteristic high principles. He was fired not by ambition, but by an intense belief in administering justice to a subject people and, where possible, to improving the appalling conditions under which they lived.

However, it is as a writer and historian – often published under the name of SM Burke – that he will be best remembered. Pakistan's Foreign Policy: An Historical Analysis (1973); Mainsprings of Indian and Pakistani Foreign Policy (1974); Akbar, the Greatest Mogul (1989); Bahadur Shah, the Last Mogul Emperor of India (1995); The British Raj in India: An Historical Review (1995); and Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah: His Personality and his Politics (1997) are monuments to rigorous scholarship.

His account of Akbar leaves florid, extravagant expression to the contemporary sources in Persian that he quotes extensively. His book on Pakistan's founding father provides an outstanding examination of the influences that affected Jinnah's most crucial decisions. A protege of the liberal-secularist Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Jinnah nevertheless broke with the Indian National Congress and strove for the creation of Pakistan. Yet even after Pakistan became a reality, Jinnah desired all communities to live in harmony with each other. Burke records: "It was not only the plight of the Muslim refugees who had arrived from India that grieved the Quaid-i-Azam [great leader] deeply. The sad conditions of the Hindus in Pakistan hurt him no less."

Burke's magnum opus, written with Salim Al-Din Qureshi, was the wide-ranging review of the British Raj. Starting with the arrival of the early European traders in India and the consequent British conquest, the reader is taken right up to Queen Victoria's time and then the events of the two world wars. The rise of Indian nationalism and the demand for a separate Muslim state are considered, analysed and assessed in a thoroughly balanced and objective manner. The major players in the development of the drama are fleshed out and portrayed with honesty and precision.

Unlike many of his colleagues in the ICS, Burke was neither white nor had an Oxbridge background, for, by the early years of the 20th century, selected Indians were permitted to sit the competitive examinations. Educated upper-caste Indians, especially in Bengal, had for decades been petitioning London for the opportunity to serve in judicial and administrative capacities, and a few had been admitted to the ICS even before 1900.

Burke was born in the Christian village of Martinpur, Punjab (now in Pakistan), when Edward VII was King-Emperor and a year after Lord Curzon had relinquished the viceroyalty of India. Burke's grandfather had become a Christian. His father, Janab Khairuddin, was the first graduate to come from Martinpur. A headmaster, he wrote Urdu verse using the nom de plume Burq (lightning). Hence the new surname of Burke.

Samuel Martin had a brilliant academic career. With a scholarship, he went to Government College in Lahore (now Government College University), and started studying science subjects, since he wished to pursue medicine.

However, long hours in the labs left him little time for his beloved cricket, and so he switched to history, philosophy, Persian and Urdu, graduating with a first-class BA (hons). This was followed by an MA in history, also a first.

He sat the ICS examination and was selected for a two-year training period in Britain, where he received a thorough grounding in administration and law. Returning to India, he rose through the ranks. His privately published memoir, A Life of Fulfilment, provides an interesting account of his experiences as a non-white "burra sahib" in British India – a district head and later a sessions judge.

With partition and the creation of Pakistan in 1947, Burke assisted Sir Muhammad Zafrullah Khan in setting up the new country's fledgling foreign ministry and was appointed Pakistan's envoy to 11 different countries. After retirement, from 1961 until 1975 he was professor of South Asian studies at the University of Minnesota and founded the Burke Library in St Paul, Minnesota. In 1983 the UN Institute for Training and Research invited him to serve on its international panel.

In addition to a varied and successful career, Burke had a very happy home life. His English wife, Louise, adjusted to her husband's extended family with amazing ease. He dedicated A Life of Fulfilment to her. He is survived by three daughters, nine grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and seven great-great-grandchildren.

• Samuel Martin Burke, civil servant, diplomat, historian, born 3 July 1906; died 9 October 2010