Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

by Sanyal, Sanjeev

  An Indian railways map of March 1868 shows that by this time Howrah (i.e. Calcutta) had been connected to Delhi and the line was being extended to Lahore. The Lahore–Multan line had also been built, some of it with the use of four-thousand-year-old Harappan bricks. From Multan one could use the Indus Steam Flotilla to sail down to Karachi. In the west, Bombay had been connected to Ahmedabad and Nagpur but the link to the Delhi–Calcutta line was still not complete. Similarly, the link between Madras and Bombay was still being built near Sholapur. There were a number of side lines already in operation or being built.

  Map of the Indian Railways in 1868

  (source : Development of Indian Railways by Nalinaksha Sanyal)

  Given the available technology and the difficult terrain of central India, this was an impressive achievement. Yet, the pace of expansion accelerated in the 1870s with an average 468 miles (749 km) being added per year compared to 250 miles (400 km) in the previous period. 15 In 1878, 900 miles (1440 km) were added in a single year. This is incredible by any standard. By 1882, the country had a network that connected almost all major cities, and the Victorian engineers were feeling confident enough to build into the steep Himalayan hillsides in order to connect hill stations like Darjeeling and Simla.

  Nonetheless, do not think of this as a seamless and integrated network. It was built in a hurry by different companies, agencies and princely states, using different standards and gauges, and with different objectives. This caused all kinds of operational inefficiencies that have not been entirely ironed out even in the twenty-first century. Still, the railway network dramatically re-ordered the economic geography of the country. Agricultural commodities could now be exported out from the hinterland while manufactured imports could be brought in cheaply. In many places, the traditional artisan economy suffered a major shock even as the old caravan routes became redundant. The Marwari merchants of Rajasthan, for instance, were forced to leave their homes and look for opportunities in the new world. Many would make their way to Calcutta where their descendants would become very successful businessmen. Their semi-abandoned but beautifully frescoed ancestral homes can still be seen in towns like Mandawa and Jhunjhunu in the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan.

  Meanwhile, new towns sprouted along the railway routes even as some communities took advantage of their rapid expansion. One such group was the racially mixed Anglo-Indian (i.e. Eurasian) community that joined the railways in large numbers. They created a colourful sub-culture that has faded away in recent decades. I remember how, when I was growing up in the early 1980s, there was still a strong Anglo-Indian community in Kolkata, with its distinctive cuisine, its love of music and sport, and somewhat idiosyncratic use of the English language. Today, a few pockets remain but the Anglo-Indians are increasingly indistinguishable from the wider Indian Christian population. There is a sizeable diaspora in Australia and Canada, where too it has increasingly integrated with the wider society. Nevertheless, the memory of the old Anglo-Indian community remains alive in novels and films such as John Masters’s Bhowani Junction. Writer Carl Muller’s trilogy about the Burghers of Sri Lanka is a humorous account of the lives and attitudes of this disappearing world. 16

  As a linkage technology, the railway system was the Internet or mobile network of its time. As it carried people and goods across the country, it allowed a new form of interaction between different parts of the subcontinent. The social reformer and religious leader Swami Vivekananda used trains to criss-cross the country in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Mahatma Gandhi would do the same as he tried to re-acquaint himself with India after his return from South Africa. By 1924, 576 million passenger trips were being made per year. Of course, this does not mean that train journeys were always enjoyable, especially for the second- and third-class passengers. A report listed out the following complaints of third-class passengers in 1903:

  Overcrowding of carriages and insufficiency of trains

  Use of cattle trucks and goods wagons for pilgrims

  Absence of latrines in the coaches and their extremely unsuitable character

  Absence of arrangements for meals and insufficient drinking water

  Absence of waiting halls and their extremely uncomfortable nature when available

  Inadequate booking facilities

  Harassment at checking and examination of tickets

  Bribery and exactions at stations, platforms and in the train

  Want of courtesy and sympathetic treatment of passengers by railway staff

  A century later, many of these complaints still ring true. Thankfully, cattle trucks are no longer used for passengers but the resentment still remains. An innocuous comment about ‘cattle class’ by Shashi Tharoor (then a minister) in 2009 would lead to an uproar.

  HIGH NOON OF EMPIRE

  The period between the Revolt of 1857 and the First World War was the high noon of the British Empire. Nowhere was this more evident than in Calcutta (now Kolkata), the empire’s eastern capital. Extravagant buildings embodying Victorian confidence were constructed by the government, banks, companies and wealthy individuals. A surprisingly large number of them have survived into the twenty-first century, hidden behind billboards and other debris of later times. One of the positive consequences of its economic decline in the second half of the twentieth century is that Kolkata is home to the finest collection of nineteenth-century buildings that have survived anywhere in the world. The best way to see it is to wander around the financial district around Lal Dighi on a Sunday morning when the chaotic traffic and the crowds will not distract from the beauty of the old streetscape.

  The area used to be called Dalhousie Square but has since been renamed after three Indian revolutionaries Binoy, Badal and Dinesh. Be sure to see the High Court, the Writers’ Building, the Chartered Bank Building, the General Post Office and Guillander House. The area is also home to the exceptionally ugly Telephone Bhavan built in the twentieth century. Lal Dighi itself is half-hidden by car parks and a tram depot, sad and neglected, waiting for someone to rescue it. You may also peek from the gate at the Raj Bhavan, once the palace of the Governor General, now home to the Governor of West Bengal. However, be careful about taking photographs too close to public buildings. As I discovered, in these terrorist-plagued times, one runs the risk of being asked a lot of questions by the police!

  Even as Calcutta was basking in the high noon of Empire, a rival was emerging in the western coast—Bombay (now Mumbai). It was not a new settlement. The area had been home to a major port in ancient times; the seventh-century cave temples of Elephanta Island are a testimony to those times. Nonetheless, the origins of the modern city go back to the Portuguese occupation of the area in the sixteenth century. At this stage, Bombay was an archipelago of several marshy islands. The names of some of the islands have survived as the names of neighbourhoods—Colaba, Mahim, Parel, Worli, Mazagaon. The islands passed into British hands in 1662 as part of the dowry received by King Charles II on his marriage to Catherine of Braganza. In turn, it was then leased to the East India Company for ten pounds a year.

  Initially, the settlement was not a big success because the aggressive Marathas prevented the British from expanding into the mainland. However, by the late eighteenth century, the British position was secure enough to allow the growth of a significant port and trading hub. This encouraged the British governor to initiate a series of civil engineering works, loosely dubbed the Hornby Vellard project, to connect the various islands by landfills and causeways. By 1838, the seven southern islands had been combined into one Bombay Island. By 1845, the Mahim causeway had connected Mahim to Bandra on the island of Salsette. Although all the main islands have been consolidated, the process of building linkages continues to this day. The latest is the Bandra–Worli Sealink opened in 2009 to link South Mumbai to the ‘suburbs’.

  One of the first to take advantage of the emerging city were the Parsis, descendants of Zoroastrian refugees from Iran who had settled along the Gujarat c
oast. They first moved to Bombay to work for the British as shipbuilders but, by the 1830s, became very wealthy by engaging in the opium trade with China. Nonetheless, in the mid-nineteenth century, the city was still much smaller than Calcutta or Madras. Two factors dramatically changed its fortunes in the 1860s—the American Civil War and the opening of the Suez Canal. When the blockade by the American North of the ports of the American South suddenly deprived the mills of Lancashire of raw cotton, they switched to the cotton fields of western India. The newly built railway network transported cotton directly from the fields to Bombay port. New cotton mills began to be built in Bombay itself. The opium trade with China also boomed at the same time, with 37,000 chests being shipped out every year.

  With all this new money, both the government and the wealthy merchants of the city embarked on an orgy of new construction—the more extravagant the better. There was a speculative boom in cotton, land and in ambitious ventures like the Back Bay Reclamation Company. Trading was furious at the informal stock-market that had appeared under a tree in front of the Town Hall (according to legend, it was a banyan tree in what is now Horniman Circle). Migrants moved in by the tens of thousands and congested slums proliferated. A contemporary would comment, ‘To ride home to Malabar Hill along the sands of Back Bay was to encounter sights and odours too horrible to describe … To travel by rail from Bori Bunder to Byculla, or to go to Mody Bay, was to see in the foreshore the latrine of the whole population of Native Town.’ 17 The locations of the slums have changed over the last one-and-a-half centuries, but anyone who has travelled in Mumbai’s suburban trains will know what the above comment means.

  In 1865, the American Civil War ended and the prices of shares and cotton crashed in Bombay. By 1866, several of the city’s banks and real estate companies had failed, and many previously wealthy individuals were left bankrupt. The city was strewn with half-built projects that were no longer viable. Nonetheless, the boom years had given Bombay a new status and a speculative spirit that remains very much alive to this day. Strike up a conversation with the street vendors of Nariman Point or the Fort, and you are likely to be given stock-market tips aplenty (although I would be somewhat wary of investing on the basis of this advice).

  MAPPING TIBET

  By the 1860s, the British surveyors had an accurate map of the subcontinent and were beginning to wonder what lay beyond the Himalayas. This was no idle curiosity; it was driven by Russian inroads into Central Asia. The ‘Great Game’ had begun. The problem was that the Tibetan authorities were not keen to let in Europeans inside their borders—a few who had tried had been tortured and killed. The Survey of India decided to use Indian spies disguised as traders and pilgrims. The first and most famous of these was a young schoolteacher from the Kumaon hills, Nain Singh. In 1865, he crossed from Nepal into Tibet along with a party of traders. A few days after the crossing, the traders slipped away one night with most of Nain Singh’s money and left him stranded in a strange land.

  Fortunately, they had left behind his most valuable possessions, concealed in a box with a false bottom—a sextant, a thermometer, a chronometer, a compass and a container of mercury. He also had a Buddhist rosary, except it had 100 beads instead of the usual 108. Nain Singh planned to measure distance by slipping one bead for every 100 paces walked. He also had a prayer wheel that concealed slips of paper on which he recorded compass bearings and distances 18 .

  Nain Singh somehow begged his way across the cold and desolate landscape. In January 1865, he finally entered the forbidden city of Lhasa. He took care to behave in a manner appropriate for a pilgrim, including making a brief visit to the Dalai Lama of that time. Meanwhile, he supported himself by teaching local merchants the Indian system of keeping accounts. His position, however, was very precarious. This was brought home when he witnessed the beheading of a Chinese man who had arrived in Lhasa without permission. After this incident, Nain Singh seldom appeared in public. At night, he would climb out quietly from the window onto the roof of the small inn where he stayed. Then, he would use his sextant to determine latitude by measuring the angular altitude of the stars. He also used his thermometer to record the boiling point of water as the higher the altitude, the lower the boiling point. Using this method, he estimated that Lhasa was at an altitude of 3420 metres above sea level. This is very close to the modern measurement of 3540 metres.

  Nain Singh left Lhasa in April along with a Ladakhi caravan and headed west for 800 km along the River Tsangpo. All along he kept taking readings in secret. After two months with the caravan he slipped away on his own and made his way back to India via the sacred Mansarovar Lake. He arrived back at the Survey of India headquarters on 27 October 1866. During his twenty-one-month adventure, he had surveyed thousands of kilometres, taken thirty-one latitude fixes, and determined elevation in thirty-three places and the first accurate position of the Tibetan capital. Nain Singh would return to Tibet in 1873–75 to explore a more northerly route from Leh in Ladakh to Lhasa. Some of his family members would join the dangerous profession and work for the Survey of India.

  Nain Singh’s reports raised an interesting geographical question. Where did the Tsangpo flow? Did it cross the Himalayas as Singh suggested, and become the river known to Indians as the Brahmaputra? In order to solve the mystery, the Survey decided to slip someone back into Tibet and float something identifiable down the Tsangpo. If it turned up in the Brahmaputra in Assam, they would know the answer.

  The two man team for the job consisted of a Chinese lama living in Darjeeling and a Sikkimese surveyor called Kinthup. The Survey had badly misjudged the lama, who was more intent on enjoying himself than on getting the work done, and often got drunk. The team was stuck in one village for four months because the lama fell in love with their host’s wife. When the affair became known, the lama had to pay Rs 25 in compensation and leave. Things did not improve when at last they had crossed into Tibet. The lama sold Kinthup as a slave to the headman of a Tibetan village and disappeared. From May 1881 to March 1882, Kinthup worked as a slave before taking refuge in a monastery as a novice monk. After several months of living as a monk, he received permission to go on a pilgrimage. He went to a place near the Tsangpo and spent many days cutting up 500 logs into a regular size. These he hid in a cave before returning to the monastery.

  A few months later, he got permission to go to Lhasa on a pilgrimage. There he got a fellow Sikkimese to write the following message for his bosses at the Survey:

  ‘Sir, The Lama who was sent with me sold me to a Djongpen (headman) as a slave and himself fled away with the Government things that were in his charge. On account of which the journey proved a bad one; however, I, Kinthup, have prepared the 500 logs according to the order of Captain Harman, and am prepared to throw them 50 logs a day into the Tsangpo from Bipung in Pemake, from the fifth to the fifteenth day of the tenth Tibetan month of the year called Chuhuluk, of the Tibetan calendar’. 19

  Kinthup did as he promised before returning to India. Unfortunately, the watch on the Brahmaputra had been abandoned by now and the letter arrived too late. Since we now know that the Tsangpo is indeed the Brahmaputra, the logs must have floated unnoticed down to Assam and then into Bengal. Kinthup, thus, did not receive the acclaim he deserved and he lived out his remaining life as a tailor in Darjeeling. Such was the world that inspired Rudyard Kipling to write tales of adventure like The Man who would be King and Kim.

  THE LAST OF THE LIONS

  Life in British India was not just about cartographic surveys and Victorian engineering. The British also enjoyed life in India. One of the popular pastimes of the rich and powerful was the hunt, particularly of tigers. According to Valmik Thapar, as many as 20,000 tigers were shot for sport between 1860 and 1960 by Indian princes and British hunting parties. Mahesh Rangarajan separately estimates that an overall 80,000 tigers may have been destroyed between 1875 and 1925, as they were considered dangerous and official bounties were paid for them. 20 Despite this devastation, it is
thought that the tiger population in 1900 was between 25,000 and 40,000. So, where were the lions?

  As we have seen, the British encountered the lion quite early when Sir Thomas Roe dealt with one during Emperor Jehangir’s time. Accounts of lion hunts in Aurangzeb’s time suggest that the animal was still fairly common in the beginning of the eighteenth century. However, their numbers seem to have dramatically fallen by the early nineteenth century. My guess is that it was a combination of two important factors. First, the rapid improvement in gun technology made it very easy to kill an animal that prefers to live in the open. Second, the collapse of Mughal power also removed imperial protection. Any rebel, mercenary or local despot with a gun could go out and shoot the animal.