Bygone Doon by Pradeep Singh

  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...

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...