Bygone Doon by Pradeep Singh

Cities that have some antiquity enjoy a layered past. The patina of time and neglect erase from one’s mind and memory the precincts that once buzzed with life, laboured activity and travails of the times. In the not too distant a past, the Doon Valley was a picture of raw natural beauty – not necessarily the idealised beauty of landscape artists but perhaps more a biodiversity aficionado’s delight. Vast portions of the Valley, especially, the eastern pargana (Parva Doon), were a stretch of wetlands from Mothrowala to Rishikesh barely interspersed with rank marshes, malarial, and wildlife infested. The geology of the Doon Valley had its own peculiarities in that the copious amount of water that was received in the monsoons, and at other times too, was seen as run-offs that cascaded charmingly in gorges and streams but then disappeared underground to be finally arrested by the Siwaliks to the south of Doon. This mass of water then appeared in several wetlands (locally ‘johards’ and ‘ogal...

The march of time and human development and the evolution of society and culture are evidenced through the emergence of civilisations. This phenomenon is a global one. The Indus Valley Civilisation marked a visible historic phase in the Indian subcontinent and its offshoots have made what the region is today: a unique conglomeration of races, cultures, faiths and political systems. It provided a lasting blueprint for systematic growth of urbanism in an otherwise vast hinterland of rural landscape. Successive micro civilisations, empires and kingdoms emerged with each pushing the basic historical agenda of progress and development, even if it was not uniform and linear in its unfolding. In the context of India, one transformative initiative came with the coming of the British to the subcontinent through the agency of their East India Company, whose exploits and their outcomes have been chronicled copiously. But, for our purpose, we will focus on one peculiar innovation and landmark inst...

Legendary Dacoit, Sultana Daku Dehradun, as cities and towns go, is a relatively young one. In India, the antiquity of many towns defies accurate dating and, in cases of cities like Banaras and Haridwar, these revered precincts of the Hindus are often called “eternal cities” with unfathomable age, where temple bells and oil lamps have been heard and seen without a break in recorded history. The Doon Valley that keeps Doon in its bosom was for much of known history considered ‘terra incognita’. But no place can be an island to itself for all times; thus sometime in the medieval period of our history (1500 AD or so onwards) the Valley began to see contests amongst princely houses for its possession. The main contenders in this tussle for territory were the royals of Garhwal and Sirmaur. The fate of the Valley thus fluctuated periodically with gains to the one who flexed military might to its advantage. In the balance, the Rajas of Garhwal retained the Doon Valley more often, whereas the...

Coming of the sons and daughters of soils of Punjab post Partion ( in 1947) to Dehra Dun is well known and there are still some present who recall the traumatic upheaval that scarred their lives with inerasable memories. But less well known is the historical fact that Dehra Dun has an over a three century old connect with two prominent sons of the Sikh Gurus. Doon Valley was a portal to the holy places of Hindus and the spiritual alma mater of many a luminary that sought the higher reaches of the Himalayas for effacing their material desires and elevating their consciousness. Even the gentler Siwalik ranges that enclosed the Doon Valley were no less attractive to men of God for which reason they were at times referred to as “Siddh Pahara”. The developments in the second half of the seventeenth century in the Sikh Panth,far removed from the then almost unknown Doon Valley, had outcomes that were soon to see their manifestation in this remote tract of land in the Siwaliks. Guru Har Rai t...

The decade from 1804 to 1815 was perhaps the most tumultuous in the history of Dehradun. In the space of ten years, three sovereign powers juggled the fortunes of the Valley. The dice of destiny finally came up trumps for none other than the British East India Company, which was glad and more relieved that the doughty khukri wielding Gorkhas had withdrawn beyond the Kaali River across the frontiers of Uttarakhand. But this did not happen without the British losing face after several bloody reverses in the mountain fastness of the Himalayan ranges. For all the splendid isolation the Doon Valley had experienced for centuries, the start of the nineteenth century catapulted the region into the maelstrom of unbridled imperialistic pursuit by two adversaries, neither of whom was native to India. The East India Company juggernaut heading north westward from Bengal was ponderously moving across the Gangetic Plain, subduing by force or subterfuge the local chiefs and rajas. Their grip on the af...