Bygone Doon by Pradeep Singh

“The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky As an urban township, Dehradun was a rather late phenomenon. The genesis for it was due to the efforts of the Udasi institution, the Darbar of Guru Ram Rai. A distinguished spiritual head of the Udasi order, Ram Rai, came to Dehradun in 1676 and a form of urbanisation in the late medieval style influenced by Mughal and emerging Sikh styles in architecture was used. However, this urbanisation was spread across a limited area around the Darbar and a few neighbouring streets, auxiliary establishments to the Darbar. The next significant step towards the gentrification of Dehradun took place a decade after the British East India Company annexed Dehradun to its dominions in 1815-16 displacing with difficulty the Gorkhali occupation of Uttarakhand and Himachal and parts of United Provinces, Bihar and Bengal. Both, Guru Ram Rai in the late seventeenth century and the British admini...

A remembered glorious past is a cultural feature of almost all societies. Its foundation is based on myths and oral traditions far before historical knowledge was adopted as an essential tool for exploring the past on the strength of facts through rational examination and accepted by those devoted to the study of history as a scientific subject. Dehradun as an inhabited region is a fairly recent phenomenon. It was considered “terra incognita”, neither mapped nor explored till a few centuries ago. It was associated with a mythical past and legends. However, around the fourteenth century it came to be noticed but not with significant political developments – hedged between the Himalayas on the northern side and the near parallel lesser ranges of the Siwaliks, which drew their name from Shiva stories in these verdant hills. The rivers Yamuna and Ganga defined the Valley in the west and east, respectively. But in the not too distant past, in the second half of the nineteenth century in Deh...

While mountains and hills have defined the geography of a region, the passes in these barriers have played a significant part in the anthropology and history of the area. These passages, not necessarily the most convenient, provided the available access for animal species and later for human beings with different quests and compulsions. Thus, invaders, explorers, settlers and trade entrepreneurs or exile seekers all sought the passes to their imaginary space. Spiritual solace seekers and wisdom sharers often travelled before many others. Guru Nanak Dev and, later, Ram Rai, the elder son of the seventh Sikh Guru, an Udasi Guru, established his Darbar Sahib in the Doon Valley, while Guru Nanak Dev traversed the valley to go to Haridwar. Both these luminaries came into the valley through the longer route along the Yamuna, fording it at Paonta. The other options were considered remote and risky for life. Dehradun was secure from its northern boundary made by layers of Himalayan mountain ra...

“Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.” – Chinese Proverb The British East India Company had annexed the Doon Valley after their hard fought battles of the Anglo-Gorkha War of 1814-15. Originally, the Valley and much of Dehradun district was the dominion of the Raja of Garhwal but a large portion of it was retained by the British post the Treaty of Sagauli of 1816 with the Maharaja of Nepal. It was not long before the British succumbed to the seductive charm of the ridge that lay to the north west of the Doon Valley and came to be known as Mussoorie. Surviving two summers in the heat and dust of India was an accomplishment for the British and many did not survive the first, itself, if burial records are looked at. Therefore, places with pleasant climates were always much sought after, both, for sanity and pleasure. In this, Mussoorie disappointed none as it matched many vistas of Scotland and Ireland to which all yearned to return even though many could not affo...

Among the many blessings that have shaped the uniqueness of Dehradun, one has been more lasting and meaningful and has impacted countless in the past and continues to do so year after year. As vision can reap rewarding harvests, it no doubt was the foresight of certain determined individuals and institutions that Dehradun today is a beacon for the country’s children and youth to come and educate themselves at some of the finest schools located in the Doon Valley. Dehradun was not one of the earliest regions acquired by the East India Company in its territorial expansion across the Indian subcontinent. Yet, the Valley and the Himalayan ridge to the north surged ahead of the rest in the field of education. Despite its relative geographical isolation, a few advantages did lie in the sylvan valley and the surrounding uplands. The coming of the railways to Dehradun in 1900 created a boom in people buying residential plots to live here and enjoy the general good climate that the Valley had t...

“Under the Guru’s instruction, God’s Word is heard; under the Guru’s instruction, its knowledge is acquired; under the Guru’s instruction, man learns that God is everywhere contained.”… Japji V Preachers, prophets and preceptors have been a plenty. And no less has been the spiritual dilemma for mankind, ever since its earliest dawns of consciousness. The unfamiliar stirring of the soul even for those who were comfortably placed was increasingly becoming common with the passage of time. From amongst this rose those who chose to ascend the stairway towards the door of the Almighty to seek answers to quell the duality that afflicted the people. Those who had advanced deeper onto the pathway to God however had to fulfill their self-confessed responsibility of showing the path to others around them. This by nature of the circumstances could only be done through the medium of the local language, intelligible to the commonest of the people. Here the limitations of chosen words were indeed a c...

  At not too distant a time, when the British and tigers were still abundant in the Doon Valley, it was in vogue for the civil servants and those in public life to write big tomes dedicated to recording their memoirs or official gazetteers. Penning memoirs, both personal as well as official was par for the course for the British residents and often this peculiar colonial and Raj genre took a few thick volumes to satisfy the sense of obligation that its authors felt towards committing their thoughts for posterity. However, there is no field of human endeavour in which there is no exception to the common tradition. Residing at Dick Road in Dalanwala, the serene and sylvan suburb of Dehradun, AR Gill put together a very modest and slim volume with an equally unexceptional title, “The Valley of Doon” in 1952. This work of AR Gill defies the usual genres by being not a history, a memoir or a travel guide or just a compendium of useful data. Yet it manages in its modest word count to tou...

  Passes, the silent witnesses to geopolitics and cultural exchange, are the portals through which has marched humanity in her longings for a better homeland. Before the homo-sapiens were driven by circumstances and inner restlessness, myriad species too had found passes convenient for migrations dictated by emerging challenges in their environment and habitat. While flying species were relatively unconcerned about terrain when migrating across large land masses, mammals including humans had to consider challenges forced in their path when they sought to move over long distances. Major obstacles to smooth travel by early man were in the shape of hills and higher mountains. Staying over a period in a limited geographical area made it unsustainable as, soon, the available resources like food, fodder, fuel, water and soil fertility were exhausted. This required fresh search for alternate spaces to survive as a social group. In the early days of humanity living as groups, pastoralism w...

There are not many regions in the world whose geographical attributes are recalled with ease even before its name. The Geography of Dehradun or the Doon Valley distinguishes itself far more than its name. The district has stellar boundaries in that the two holy rivers of the subcontinent, the Ganga and the Yamuna flow on the district’s eastern and western borders. While the mighty Himalayas make up the northern perimeter, the sylvan Siwalik Ranges enclose the district in the south and separate it from the great plains of the country. To add more to the allure of the Doon Valley is the fact that here geology, mythology and spirituality have waltzed together since time immemorial. In this cosmic dance, the Nagsidh Range of hills has a place of its own. Nagsidh hills, with a peak rising to an elevation of 2640 feet, are positioned in the central part of the Doon Valley, facing the higher Himalayas to the north and, to the south, run the Siwalik Ranges from which the Nagsidh range has sepa...

  No city was built in a day and no inspiration to found one was adequate without the participation of important stakeholders in this process. Guru Ram Rai (1646-1687), when he found his way to the heart of the Doon Valley, it ended the splendid isolation in which this other-worldly ‘Shangri-La’ was cocooned. The saint’s desire to set up his spiritual seat in the central portion of the valley set off a train of events which kindled a nascent urbanism in the heart of what was a pure pastoral stretch of land lying between the Siwalik Ranges to the south and the Himalayas on the northern extremes. Guru Ram Rai, who had by now been ordained into the Udasi (Udaseen) sampradaya, sought the solitude of the Doon Valley to pursue his spiritual career away from the clamour of Delhi from where he came to Doon in 1676. His initial abode was indeed very rudimentary and inadequate for the future activities of his Udasi establishment, which was soon to become known as Darbar of Guru Ram Rai. But ...

  Nine decades ago James Hilton created an imaginary utopia termed Shangri-La in his bestselling novel, The Lost Horizon. His writing created a buzz amongst the public at large on finding Shangri-Las in different places and continents. Near home, culturally and geographically, Tibetans long before Hilton had recorded in their ancient texts the existence of seven Shangri La-like places which were called Nghe-Beyul and one such Beyul called Khembalung is said to be the creation of the great Padmasambhava in the ninth century and it became a revered Buddhist refuge during the period when Buddhism was under attack. Well into the seventeenth century, Dehradun itself was referred to as ‘terra incognita’ and its existence to the larger world was known more precisely once the Udasi saint, Guru Ram Rai (1646-1687), came and settled in the Doon Valley in 1676 and set up his establishment which has since been known as the Darbar of Guru Ram Rai. Subsequent conquest of the Doon Valley by the G...

  Suswa river When one hears of Dehradun, to most people the association that springs to mind is of the two globally known sacred rivers, the Ganga and the Yamuna. These two revered Rivers delineate the eastern and western limits of the district. But the name Dehradun brings to the minds of the locals the days gone by when the local fresh water rivers such as the Suswa, Song, Bindal, Rispana, Tons, Asan, Jakhan and their equally endearing tributary streams and forest water courses called “raos” are the memories of convivial times. Those of us in our twilight years will readily recall bathing in these local rivers whose water was not only refreshing but also healthy and wholesome to drink. Picnics by these enchanting bounties of nature were taken for granted on Sundays and the long summer vacations. Our local rivers of the Doon Valley had a larger role than just being places of rustic pleasure, which too was precious now that it’s a lost treasure. The upper reaches of Uttarakhand, b...

  When the evening descended across the Valley it was that blessed time when the smoke from humble homes and some better off ones all rose in one direction: towards the darkening sky that anticipated a rendezvous with the stars. The warm fires that set free the smoke to travel upwards were however not one in the Valley’s social hierarchy. Yes, indeed, the Doon Valley was sparsely populated in the days gone by and the villages lay some distance apart, separated often by stretches of forests that had their presence even in the town. The Doon of yesteryears was a happy home to several social groups quite distinct from each other in at least what cooked on their kitchen hearths. With some hindsight and the benefit of local oral traditions, we are in luck to know what our ancestors and the predecessor residents of the Doon Valley ate and drank. In the distant past, there was no homogeneity in the Valley’s population. Despite the challenges of traveling and the remoteness of Dehradun, th...

  The British, through the efforts of the East India Company, started their association with the Siwalik Ranges of the Doon Valley in 1815. This was one of the landmark outcomes of the Anglo-Gorkha War of 1814-5 when the forces of the East India Company pushed back the Gorkhali army units over a lengthy disputed border stretching from Himachal Pradesh through Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Bengal. As a result, the East India Company now had virtual control over much of the subcontinent barring Punjab and further west. It gave the British access to land and resources far beyond they had ever expected when they ventured out to south Asia from their remote British Isles in the early seventeenth century. The territorial control of much of India had necessitated the permanent presence of a very large population of Britain’s subjects like the Scots, Irish, Welsh and the English in various parts of India. But the conquest of the country was easier than the conquest of its climate a...

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...