A requiem for those exiled in the hills
In just under 200 years of Mussoorie’s existence, the place has been a home away from home to those exiled up here. It all began when Amir Dost Mohammed, nicknamed the Amir-i-Kabir, the founder of the Barakzi dynasty of Afghanistan, specifically asked for permission to live in Mussoorie’s Bala Hisar from 1840 to 1842 so that he could chase game. This is the same spot where, 44 years later, the Allen Memorial School was to come up. Fortunately, luck favoured him and he was restored to the throne in Kabul. In our times, he is credited for introducing the aromatic basmati rice from Kunar in Afghanistan to the Doon Valley.
Stepping into his footprints was Raja Lal Singh, who had been externed from Punjab to Agra where, during the blistering summer months, he asked to get away to the cooler climes of the Doon valley and onwards to the sleepy hollow of Barlowganj. Redemption of a sort came his way when at the time of India’s Independence, his grandson, Kunwar Shamsher Singh, signed a single cheque and stopped the liquidation of the Doon Club. ‘May God bless his soul,’ say all those parched throats that are slaked at this watering hole down the years.
In 1851 and again in 1852 came Maharaja Duleep Singh, son of Maharaja Ranjit Singh of the Lahore Durbar, to be interned in the Castle Hill Estate, where on Taylor’s Flat or Survey Field, he played cricket with the boys of the Mussoorie Seminary.
Life for him was not all cricket: two years later he was sent to England, where he became the blue-eyed boy of Queen Victoria. She fondly called him her Dark Prince. Though he refused to forgive her for stealing the Koh-i-Noor diamond that he had worn as a child.
Another internee not destined to see his fort again in Kabul was Amir Yakub Khan. He stayed at Bellevue, now in ruins, called Radha Bhawan. Arrived in Doon in 1880, he was buried here 43 years later. Of course, the Third Anglo-Afghan Conference was attended by Amanullah Khan, but Amir Yaqub Khan was not even invited to the meet. In gratitude for the signing of the Anglo-Afghan Treaty, Amanullah Khan built
the Masjid-a-Amania off the road in Library.
From Nepal came Maharaja Deb Shumsher Rana, escaping a coup by his brother and built the hill station’s largest residence in Jharipani’s Fairlawn Palace. He had also brought the famous Nau Lakha necklace concealed in a bottle of pickle. Please don’t ask me what it did for the pickle. No one knows or will tell.
In 1959, His Holiness the Dalai Lama crossed into India after an epic 15-day journey on foot from Lhasa, in one of history’s great escapes where husbanding his strength he left Lhasa on March 17, resting at the Tawang Monastery, 50 miles inside the Indian border. Arrived as a guest at Birla House, he saw the first Tibetan refugee settlement come up in Happy Valley.
Sometimes, I wonder what it must be like for all of them, to be torn away from their home cultures, from the familiar, and be left to weave a forlorn tapestry of memories. History can often be like the floodwaters of a river: blind, ruthless, insensate force carrying everything before it.
Ganesh Saili
Author, photographer, illustrator
sailiganesh@gmail.com