After only four terms, he came to the conclusion that he had no interest in school mastering and after a six-month break he started studying for entrance examinations to join the Indian Civil Service (ICS).
Robert Francis Mudie had previously been a sergeant in the Officer Training Corps at Cambridge, and immediately applied for a commission.
Mudie was transferred first to the Royal Welch Fusiliers, then to a territorial division before joining the 2/4th battalion Somerset Light Infantry which was sent to India.
In India the first British official he met was Charles Innes who was at the time district collector in Calicut and later became Governor of Burma.
By this point he had been commissioned into the Indian Army Reserve of Officers and held the rank of Captain [2] To enter the ICS, Robert Francis Mudie had been required to pass a medical, learn Bengali and to ride a horse.
At Saturna where there was no horse, he passed the equestrian proficiency test by answering the question "Would you jump that cactus hedge?"
However he failed a medical examination, so he wrote to John Kerr, the Chief Secretary of Bengal, saying "...all I had to do in the ICS is to live in the country, so I would like to know what I am to die of and how soon, and could I now go to the War."
Mudie had also failed to master Bengali, instead passing the proficiency test in Urdu, the preferred language for the army.
[4] He was one of a handful of Europeans who remained in senior positions, to support the fledgling state of Pakistan after the departure of the British.
Any attempt at "impartiality" or detachment would simply be taken as another proof of Britain's pro-India and anti-Muslim attitude.Mudie was critical of India's 'attack' on Hyderabad and in notes from 1948 wrote: Indian attack on Hyderabad is akin to the German attack on Belgium/Poland; Hindus in sub-continent can be compared to the Southern Irish in Ulster and the Hindu-Muslim equation can be drawn alongside as a parallel to the Spaniards-Moors relations.
In a speech given at the International Islamic Economic Conference in November 1949, Mudie claimed Indo-Pak war must be prevented at all costs [because of the very real possibility of] Russian intervention.but went on to say Kashmir goes right to the root of the matter.
It would outflank the West Punjab - should it ever come to the one-nation theory [being] enforced by war.Thus Pakistan [had to] aid the Pathan invaders and later its army had to enter Kashmir to come to the aid of the local insurgents.He went on to conclude [the] fundamental problem is Nehru's refusal to accept two-nation theory and Muslim right to rule themselves in Kashmir.After resigning in 1949 from position of Governor of West Punjab, he returned to Britain and continued to be active in international affairs.
His first wife died in 1960 and in the same year he remarried to Mary Elizabeth Abercromby, daughter of the late John Ellison Macqueen.