Christie joined the Indian Civil Service in 1928, and served in Bengal at Asansol and Chittagong Hill Tracts until 1937.
[3] In 1947 he was appointed Joint Private secretary with George Abell to the Viceroy Lord Wavell and worked on emergency plans for dealing with the possibility of a collapse of order on transition of power.
Lord Mountbatten replaced Wavell as Viceroy with the objective of handing over power to a united India within a year.
Christie and his colleague V. P. Menon realized partition was almost inevitable and decided to prepare a document to hold in readiness on the administrative issues involved in dividing all aspects of the state.
[4] The implications of the thirty-three page document The Administrative Consequences of Partition stunned the party leaders, Jawaharlal Nehru and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, to silence when presented to them.