By Kulbhushan Kain
The East India Company annexed Dehradun from the Gurkhas (Raja of Nepal) in 1815. At that time, the population of the valley was around 17,000. For the establishment of a Police Force in the Valley, a budget of Rs 229 rupees per month – yes – was sanctioned towards the salary of the personnel. The total number of men employed was 49.
Electricty came earlier to Mussoorie. Mussoorie became a Municipality in 1832 vis a vis Dehradun which became a Municipality in 1867. The first road was built in 1823. The people, (except for the Europeans and well to do Indians), lived in thatched mud huts, or huts made of grass screens. There were only nine masonry houses that belonged to Indians – three in Dehradun, one at Rajpur, and four in Rishikesh.
One gets a good idea of how Dehradun appeared in the account of John Northam, a writer and editor who wrote about his travels through Dehradun and Mussoorie in the second half of the 19th century. He wrote (I haven’t changed the spellings of his text), “At Mohan, (Mohand), which lies at the southern extremity of the Siwilik range, the scene is a very pleasing one with the river on the right, as well as one of the prettiest and most ample encamping-grounds in India. Mohan rejoices in a post office, vernacular schools, and a dak bungalow, where an obliging khansama will provide you with the usually antiquated chicken, which enters loud and distressing protests against being devoured at so short a notice. Mohan is a very pretty spot, and from the dak bungalow, perched upon a picturesque knoll, commands a view of much of the Sahiranpur District, with little peeps of wooded hill scenery.”
He further elaborated, that after crossing the pass and going down a hill, the couple of miles or so to Asarori, he reached the outskirts of a forest (present day Clement Town) “where game abounds, and where the wild boar had his lair. If the traveler yearned for a cup of tea, that luxury can be supplied to him from a tumble-down “shanty” on a hillock which people, in generous moments, have called a “rest-house”. The traveler may even indulge in the extravagance of boiled eggs and bread and butter.”
The entry into Dehradun via the Kansrao Pass is equally interesting. Captain Mundy, the Aide-de-Camp to Lord Combermere wrote that, when he went to “Deyradun” in April 1828, the route was most beautiful and reminded him of the regions of the Alps. He wrote that from the summit of the hill near Kansrao (where there was a small bungalow), he could see the beautiful valley of Dehradun “luxuriant with many tinted forest, and refreshed by rippling little rivers which run in a meandering course across the whole length of the vale from the Ganges to the Jumna”.
The beginnings of change in Dehradun from a rather inaccessible hamlet to a town can be attributed to Mr FJ Shore, the Superintendent of Dehradun from 1822 to 1833. He may be called the founder of the new towns of Dehradun and Mussoorie just as Guru Ram Rai can be called the founder of the old town.
Shore was a brilliant man – bordering on the eccentric. His way of dressing provoked ire and so did his mannerisms. Unusual for the times – he was openly critical of the British administration in India. But it seems he had a robust intellect. Before he took over the administration of Doon, there were no roads. Yet, when he left, 39 miles of roads had been built with the help of convict labour. At the beginning of his tenure, the whole the agricultural community could not muster more than half a dozen carts whereas, when he left in 1829, they possessed upwards of 100. He advanced money to build the Dehradun jail out of his own pocket, and after the influx of people from the plains, he even asked shopkeepers to set up shops along the highways by means of advances (hardly ever repaid) out of his private purse. From a population of 17,000 people in 1815, Dehradun, Mussoorie and Jaunsar Bawar grew to more than a lakh in 1867.
Today, Dehradun alone is bursting at its seams, with more than 10 lakh people (after calculating its percentage growth over the years since the last census in 2011).
Unplanned growth has taken its toll. The lifelines of the city, the canals, have disappeared. Among the prominent canals flowing through Dehradun were Kalapathar, Bijapur, Jakhan, Rajpur, Eastern Canal, and Kalanga (which still survives). These canals were built by Rani Karnavati and the outstanding engineer Sir Proby Cautley. Nearly all these canals have now been buried under roads to justify the widening of the roads and to accommodate the boom in automobile traffic. There was a time when the Rajpur Canal ran through Paltan Bazaar and its waters filled the pond in front of the Jhanda Mela ground. Where have the basmati rice fields of Majra and the tea estates of Niranjanpur, Kaulagarh, Hope Town gone? What happened to the bungalows? What happened to the desolate but beautiful road that ran from Haridwar Road to Mokhampur? What happened to the suicide alley? What happened to the road which was full of trees beyond Dilaram Bazaar? The answer is simple – bricks and mortar have been planted into the soil replacing grass and trees.
The twin cities of Dehradun and Mussoorie have taken a beating. The city which lived by the adage “ignorance is bliss” has become just like any other big city.
A funny incident about the innocent times was told to me by the ace story teller Raj Kanwarji.
He narrated that “Good Old Tommy” or the common British Other Rank (soldier) was bound for the Palladium Cinema on the ground floor of the Hackman Hotel in Mussoorie. Due to rain, he had to engage a rickshaw. When he reached his destination, he asked the rickshaw puller, “Kitna paisa?” to which the man replied quite reasonably, “Baara anna (75 paise)”.
Tommy saw red.
“Darn it,” he retorted. “Do you think I am a bleeding Maharaja? Here pakroh ek rupiah,” and strutted into the cinema with an expanded chest, proud of the bargain!
Those were the days we thought would never end!
(Kulbhushan Kain is an award winning educationist with more than 4 decades of working in schools in India and abroad. He is a prolific writer who loves cricket, travelling and cooking. He can be reached at kulbhushan.kain@gmail.com)
