Still, there was a sizeable population of lions in North India in the early 1800s. We know that William Frazer shot eighty-four lions in the 1820s and took great pride in having been personally responsible for the extinction of the species in Haryana 21 . In the 1830s, Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s lancers were spearing these cats near Lahore. There are reports of large lion populations in Central India in the 1850s and of ten lions being shot in Kotah, Rajasthan, in 1866. Then, suddenly, the lions virtually disappear except for a small population in Gujarat. What happened?
In my view, habitat loss was far more devastating than hunting. According to Angus Maddison’s estimates, between 1820 and 1913, the country’s population jumped from 209 million to 303 million (not counting the rest of the subcontinent). This meant that agriculture had to be scaled up in order to feed this growing population. At the same time, the railways made it possible to export agricultural commodities like opium and raw cotton. In short, the open ranges needed by the lion (and the cheetah) were just gobbled up by farming within a few generations. The tiger too suffered habitat loss, but did better than the lion because it can survive in hilly and swampy terrain that is less conducive to agriculture.
By the late nineteenth century, there were reports that perhaps only a dozen Asiatic lions were left in the wild in the Gir forests of Junagarh, a princely state in Gujarat. The actual number was almost certainly larger, but at last alarm bells began to ring. Lord Curzon, the Viceroy, heard of this and refused to go on a lion hunt in Gir during his state visit to Junagarh in November 1900. The Nawabs of Junagarh, with the support of the colonial government, now became the guardians of the endangered species for the next half-century. The Gir forest was protected and hunting strictly regulated. Only the most senior British officials and Indian princes were allowed the privilege. In fact, there is a lot of correspondence to show that the Nawabs had to refuse permission to many princes and British officials who wanted to hunt in Gir. It must have been diplomatically difficult but, to their credit, the Nawabs stood their ground. Gir is still the only place where the Asiatic lion survives in the wild with a count of 411 in 2010. The Indian cheetah was not so lucky. The last documented sighting of the Indian cheetah was in Madhya Pradesh in 1947, the same year that India became independent. 22
A NEW NEW DELHI
After the sack of 1858, Delhi dwindled to being a mere district headquarters in Punjab province. The census of 1881 showed that its urban population had dwindled to 173,393. 23 The Mughal-era city of Shahjehanabad was still the main urban hub, with European troops based inside the Red Fort and Indian troops stationed in Daryagunj. The railways had connected the city to Lahore in the west and to Calcutta in the east. To the north of the walled city, the British had built a Civil Lines with large bungalows and gardens. With its numerous historical buildings, late-nineteenth-century Delhi would have been picturesque but, compared to Bombay, Calcutta or Madras, it was a backwater. And so it remained till 1911.
Meanwhile, tiny cracks were appearing in the foundations of the British Raj. Yet again, the vagaries of nature were partly responsible for this. From 1874, India suffered a series of severe droughts. At first Bengal and Bihar were affected, but the Viceroy Lord Northbrook and famine commissioner Sir Richard Temple dealt with it reasonably competently by importing rice from Burma. Instead of congratulating them, however, British Prime Minster Disraeli’s government severely criticized them for wasting money. Northbrook resigned over his growing differences with Disraeli’s hawkish approach. The replacement, Lord Lytton, proved a disaster.
In 1876, the rains failed for a third year and the famine situation became acute in southern India. Lord Lytton, however, remained focused on fiscal control and even rebuked the Governor of Madras for being too generous. Sir Richard Temple, in the meantime, had learnt his lesson and had become a champion of the Malthusian approach. By 1877, the famine had spread across the Deccan and Rajasthan to the northwest, and yet, grain from surplus provinces was still being exported out to the rest of the world. The Great Famine would directly or indirectly kill 5.5 million people, more than two-thirds of them in British-controlled parts of the subcontinent. The experience was made worse by the fact that, amidst this crisis, Lord Lytton spent extravagantly on the Delhi Durbar of 1877, where Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in front of all the princes of the subcontinent. It was a shock that fundamentally undermined the moral standing of British rule in the eyes of many Indians, especially the educated. This resentment would lead to the formation of the Indian National Congress in 1885 and would ultimately build into the wider Independence Movement of the early twentieth century.
As the demands for independence gathered momentum, the colonial government began to look for ways to shore up legitimacy. One idea that gained favour was to follow the Mughals and build a new capital in Delhi as it was believed that the ‘idea of Delhi clings to the Mohammedan mind’. The idea was not without its critics, but Viceroy Hardinge probably felt that this was his best chance to be remembered as the founder of a great city. Ultimately the factor that clinched the issue was the need for a grand sound-bite for the Durbar held in 1911 to commemorate the coronation of George V as Emperor of India. The proclamation was read out at Coronation Park, to the far north of the city. This is the same spot where Queen Victoria had been declared the Empress of India. A great stone column was raised to mark the event. Almost no tourist visits the place these days and one is likely to find oneself alone with the column and the stern statutes of colonial-era worthies. King George V glares down from a pedestal removed from the canopy opposite India Gate in the 1960s. There are several pedestals without statues, as if their occupants were upset by years of neglect and have walked off.
The architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker were given the job of designing the new city. The original idea was to build the city to the north of Shahjehanabad, roughly around where Delhi University now stands. However, after a number of ground surveys, it was decided to build the new city to the south of the existing urban cluster. This had the symbolic advantage of being close to the ruins of many older Delhis—Dinpanah, Indraprastha, Feroze Shah Kotla. Note that the new city was not built as a practical hub of commerce and industry. It was meant as a display of imperial power—a city of magnificent processions and imposing symbolic structures.
The centrepiece was the palace of the Viceroy built on Raisina Hill, what we now know as Rashtrapati Bhavan. There were many opinions about what this building should look like, ranging from classical European to Indo–Sarcenic and Mughal. Lutyens’s own opinion of India aesthetics was closer to those of Mughal Emperor Babur, but Baker was somewhat more sympathetic to the native style. Ultimately, the compromise was a design that combines classical European columns with Mughal and Rajput detailing. In front of the palace was a grand avenue called Kingsway (now Rajpath) inspired by the Mall in Washington DC. The intention was to impress and, more than a century later, it still impresses.
The rest of New Delhi consisted of government offices and spacious bungalows built in the mould of a garden city. It was a Civil Lines on a gigantic scale with a strict hierarchy. In the delightful politically incorrect style of the time, the residential areas were clearly demarcated on the basis of race and seniority as ‘fat white’, ‘thin white’ and ‘thin black’. Since no senior Indian official was envisaged, there was no space for ‘fat black’. 24 The whole thing was designed for a population of less than 60,000 including servants and other support staff. The only space for commerce was Connaught Place and its surroundings. Dubbed as ‘Lutyens’s Delhi’, this imperial construct serves today as the capital of the Republic of India. It is amusing that, after independence, over-fed politicians feigning poverty in their white kurta-pyjamas would come to occupy the spacious bungalows meant for the ‘fat white’.
A lot has been written about the grand buildings and bungalows of Lutyens’s Delhi. However, if one looks at early photographs of the cityscape in the 1920s and 1930s, it looks very different from what we see
today. It is not just that much of the city is a construction zone, but even the completed bits look somehow naked. On second glance one realizes that the difference is that the trees that we now associate with the city have not yet grown. Indeed, the systematic and careful planting of trees was a very important part of the overall design and remains a signature feature of the national capital.
The systematic planning of trees was not new in Delhi. At its height, Shahjehanabad (Old Delhi) had several private Mughal gardens belonging to the royal family and senior nobility. This included the Begum Jehanara’s gardens north of Chandni Chowk and the two famous gardens within the Red Fort—Hayat Baksh (Life-Giver) and Mahtab Bagh (Moonlit Garden). The British, however, took this to a totally different level as they tried to create a garden city. There are archival records of heated debates between foresters, horticulturists and civil servants about the ideal species to be planted. Finally the Town Planning Committee submitted a report in 1913 with a list of thirteen trees including neem, jamun and imli that were considered suitable for planting along the avenues of New Delhi. 25 Other species would be introduced in later times, but trees from the original shortlist still dominate many of the roads of Lutyens’s Delhi.
The colonial town-planners also invested heavily in reforesting the Aravalli ridges around New Delhi, particularly the Central Ridge just behind Rashtrapati Bhavan. The principal tree that was used for this was the Central American mesquite or ‘vilayati keekar’ that would become a very common tree in Delhi. People tend to confuse it with the local keekar or babool but, in fact, it is an invasive species that has edged out many of the trees native to the area. 26 As a result of all this tree planting, Central Delhi looks extraordinarily green when seen from a height (say from the Taj Hotel on Mansingh Road). Whatever one may think of the elitism of Lutyens’s Delhi, it is certainly unique.
As the construction of the new city neared completion, the British raised their own pillar in front of the Viceregal palace—the Jaipur column headed by a six-point crystal star. It is easily visible through the main gate on Raisina Hill. At its base, it is inscribed: ‘In thought faith/ In word wisdom/ In deed courage/ In life service/ So may India be great.’ One could take these words as being patronizing or one could think of them as a premonition that colonial rule would soon end. Perhaps recognizing their own transience, the colonial rulers merely wanted later generations to think well of them. By the time New Delhi was completed in the mid-thirties, it was abundantly clear the British rule would not last too much longer.
TO CROSS THE BLACK WATERS
As we have seen, India had withdrawn into itself from the twelfth century. I have not been able to find a good explanation for why they imposed on themselves caste rules that prohibited the crossing of the seas. It is particularly puzzling since Indian merchants and princes became very wealthy from maritime trade. Brahmin scholars also benefited greatly from the demand for their services in South East Asia. It must also be added, nonetheless, that caste rules were never watertight. Indian Muslims, and even Hindus, continued to travel to foreign lands. There are remains of a large Indian trading post in far away Azerbaijan. Built in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the Ateshgah of Baku includes the remains of a Hindu temple and inscriptions invoking the gods Ganesh and Shiva. There are also records of Indian merchants in Samarkand and Bukhara. Still, it must be admitted that these overseas outposts were a shadow of the thriving Indian networks that had once extended from China to the Middle East.
It was in the nineteenth century, under British rule, that Indians began again to travel abroad in large numbers. An important driver of migration was the demand for indentured labour in British colonies after the abolition of slavery in 1834. The initial demand came from sugar cane plantations, but soon Indians were being used to build railway lines and work mines. In the early years, the workers expected to come home at the end of the indenture period, but the British decided that it was cheaper to encourage Indians to settle in the colonies. Thus, Indian women were encouraged to join their menfolk. The indentured workers faced a hard life, but the migration process was given a boost by the Great Famine of 1877. In this way, large Indian communities came to settle in faraway British colonies like Fiji, Trinidad, Guyana, Malaya, South Africa and Mauritius. The French colony of Reunion and the Dutch colony of Surinam also received substantial numbers. The place where half a million Indian workers landed in Mauritius is preserved as ‘Aapravasi Ghat’ (Immigration Depot) and now is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 27
A surviving example of a contract for an indentured worker of that period reads as follows: 28
I, Peroo, engage to proceed to Mauritius to serve E. Antard, pere, or such other persons as I may be transferred to (such transfer being made by mutual consent, to be declared before a public officer), as a khidmutgar, for the space of five years from the date of this agreement, on consideration of receiving a remuneration of Company’s rupees ten (10) per month, and food and clothing as follows; viz
Daily:
14 chittanks rice, 2 chittanks dholl, 1/2 chiitanks ghee, 1/4 chittanks salt.
Yearly:
1 blanket, 2 dhooties, 1 chintz mirjace, 1 lascar’s cap, 1 wooden bowl
… also one lotah or brass cup between four persons, and medicine and medical attendance when required; also to be sent back to Calcutta at the expiration of my period of service, free of all expense to myself, should such be my wish, subject to the terms of my general agreement. Executed this day ____ of November 1837.
The contract is followed by a short note signed by F.W. Birch, Superintendent of Calcutta Police that describes Peroo as ‘Height, 5 feet, 3 inches; age 28 years; colour, light; particular marks, none; caste Mussalman.’ Hundreds of thousands of Indians would have left their homes with contracts like these. It is estimated that less than a third returned. Many perished during the sea journeys and the years of hard labour. Yet, enough of them survived to form the Indian communities scattered across these faraway lands.
Soon, Indian traders and clerks also began to follow the British to the colonies. Gujarati merchants and shopkeepers established a network in eastern and southern Africa. The Tamil Chettiar community was especially active in South East Asia and established a network in Burma, Malaya, Singapore and even French-controlled Vietnam. As they settled in these areas, they would have found tiny remnants of Indian merchant communities that had survived from ancient times. The ‘Chitty’ community, for instance, had survived for centuries in Malaya with little contact with the original homeland. They had intermarried with local women and adopted local dress, but somehow had retained their Hindu religion and customs. The community is now rapidly merging with the broader Tamil community in modern Malaysia.
Although this network of Indian communities was created and maintained by British power, the diaspora played an important role in India’s struggle for independence from colonial rule. Mahatma Gandhi, for instance, was part of the Indian community in South Africa between 1893 and 1914, and he developed his political and spiritual philosophy of non-violence while fighting for the rights of Indians there. The incident in June 1893 that changed the course of his life was his eviction, on racial grounds, from the first-class compartment of a train, despite the fact that he had a valid ticket. This took place at Pietermaritzburg station—visitors will see a plaque on the platform marking the spot where he was thrown out. Gandhi would return to India only in 1915, at the age of 46, but would soon become the country’s leading political figure.
Singapore, by contrast, was the hub of a very different effort to rid India of its colonial masters. When the Japanese captured the island-city during the Second World War, Netaji Subhash Bose used the opportunity to form the Azad Hind Fauj or Indian National Army, by recruiting Indian civilians and soldiers held as prisoners-of-war. The first review of the troops took place in July 1943 on the Padang, a large open field that still exists at the heart of the city. There is a small memorial near the Singapore Cricket Club that marks th
e event. The original had been demolished by the British after the war, so the current memorial dates only from 1995. You are likely to encounter a few Indian tourists getting themselves photographed in front of it.
A twenty-minute walk will take you to Dhoby Ghat where Bose declared the formation of the Provisional Government of Free India. The proclamation was read out at the Cathay Cinema Hall. The building has been demolished, but a part of its façade has been preserved as part of a new shopping mall. Bose’s army would fail in military terms alongside the defeat of its Japanese sponsors, but it fundamentally undermined the confidence of the British colonial government in the loyalties of its Indian troops. Although seven decades have passed, there are still a few Singaporean and Malaysian Indians alive who personally witnessed and participated in these events. I found it remarkable that these people, many of whom had been born in these parts and had never seen India, had been willing to die for the idea of a civilization.
8
The Contours of Modern India
After centuries of foreign domination, India finally became independent on 15 August 1947. Unfortunately it was not a time of unmitigated celebration. The subcontinent was partitioned at birth into Muslim-dominated Pakistan and Hindu-majority India, which predictably was a very bloody affair. The matter did not end there. Over a third of the country was ruled by local princes who were less than enthusiastic about losing their kingdoms. There were even enclaves still ruled by the French and the Portuguese, leftovers from the age of colonial conquest. Add to this the fact that the long border with China (initially Tibet) was disputed. Thus, the borders of modern India were not established in August 1947, but evolved to their current shape only in the mid-1970s, when Sikkim was incorporated into the Union. The continued disputes with China and Pakistan mean that the contours are still not set in stone. We now turn to the story of how modern India came to have its present borders.
Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography Page 22