John Dring

John Dring
John Dring in about 1935

Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Arthur John Dring KBE CIE JP (1902–1991) was the second Prime Minister of the independent State of Bahawalpur (now in modern Pakistan), a senior member of the Indian Political Service in the last decades of the British Raj, Assistant Private Secretary to the Governor-General of India and an advisor to governments on plebscites for two former British colonies in Africa. Dring Stadium in Bahawalpur, the site of the first India-Pakistan cricket test, is named after him. He was called John throughout his life.

Dring was born on 4 November 1902 in Calcutta, India to Sir William Arthur Dring and his wife Lady Jane Reid Greenshields Dring (née Ross, formerly Alston), the second child and only son of the couple. The Dring family had been resident in India since 1830. Dring spent his earliest years in India but was sent to England to be educated in 1911, as was customary for members of elite families in British India. He attended Winchester College and RMC Sandhurst and returned to India in 1923 when he joined the Guides Cavalry as a Lieutenant.

In 1927, Dring joined the Indian Political Service and soon became Assistant Private Secretary to the Viceroy of India. The Channel 4 historical drama Indian Summers revolves around a fictional character called Ralph Whelan who was the Private Secretary to the Viceroy of India in Shimla in 1932-1935. The character of Ralph Whelan has several similarities with the real-life John Dring, who was in the same political position in the same place at the same time, with the same family history. The National Portrait Gallery of the UK holds a portrait of Dring.