At the apex of this honours system was membership of the British peerage which meant a seat in the House of Lords in London. Lord Sinha was the first and only Indian to achieve that distinction by the time Indian Independence arrived in 1947. Even then, he was a mere Baron, with the whole hierarchy of the peerage (Viscounts, Earls, Marquesses and the exalted Dukes) above him. But the extent of Lord Sinha's stature, in the British Indian context, can be gauged from the appointments he held: first Indian Member of the Viceroy's Executive Council (similar to membership of free India's Union Cabinet); a Minister of His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom (Under-Secretary of State for India); the first Indian Privy Councillor, who, as a member of the Judicial Committee of the Council, was a member of the highest Court of Appeal in the British Empire. To round off an illustrious career, His Lordship became the first Indian Governor of Orissa and Bihar when those provinces were carved out of the Bengal Presidency.

In the British honours system, after the peerage follows baronetage, a system of hereditary knighthood. For some obscure reason, the Raj preferred to confer baronetcies almost exclusively on the Parsee magnets of Bombay, and no Bengali enjoyed this distinction.

Lesser mortals were fobbed off with non-hereditary knight-hoods. High Court Judges, University Vice-Chancellors (Sir Asutosh and Sir Gooroo Dass held both offices) and the senior-most civil servants were considered eminent enough to add the prefix 'Sir' to their names.

Titles of Maharaja, Maharaja Bahadur, Nawab Bahadur etc. - once the preserve of sovereign rulers - were generally reserved for landowners, particularly the landed gentry newly created by Lord William Bentinck's permanent settlement. These worthies needed to add feudal respectability to their newly acquired acres, and the imperial power was happy to supply personal, and sometimes, hereditary titles of distinction.

There then followed membership of the junior grades of the British Orders of Chivalry like O.B.E., C.B.E. etc. which carried a suffix after an individual's name but did not carry a title. Three Orders of Chivalry,

• the Exalted Order of the Star of India,
• the Eminent Order of the Indian Empire, and
• the Order of the Crown of India (the last reserved for women, and awarded only to the wives of British pro-consuls as far as is known)

were created exclusively for the Indian Empire. No further members were admitted to these three orders after 1947.

Often, there would be a combination of knighthood, membership of an order of chivalry and/or an Indian title with the result that there would be a prefix as well as suffix (as in Raja Reshee Case Law, C.I.E.). The presence of a 'K' or 'G' as in Kt. or G.C.I.E. in the suffix would indicate the grade or degree of knighthood. The first step would be an 'M' (Member: M.B.E. or M.V.O.) or 'C' (Companion or Commander: C.S.I. or C.B.), in which case, the recipient continued to be addressed as Miss, Mrs. or Mr. - or more likely, in the latter instance - as Esquire. Advancement to the next grade would bring a knighthood 'K' (Knight Companion or Commander: K.C.I.E.), the final accolade being reserved for 'G' (Knight Grand Cross or Grand Commander). Precedence would also be demarcated between orders. For instance, a K.C.S.I. would take precedence over a K.C.I.E., who in turn, would precede a mere Kt..

Most honours systems get devalued over time and the Raj proved no exception. In the late nineteenth century, it took talent like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's to earn a Rai Bahadur-ship, but by the middle of the twentieth century, according to Manohar Malgaokar, every Honours List hatched another crop of 'freshly minted Rai Sahibs and Rai Bahadurs'.

Despite the relative proliferation towards the sunset years of the Empire, the titles continued to be much coveted and were a good measure of social standing. Abbreviations of the decorations and honours found in the 'Eminent Bengalees' pages have been explained below.