Bygone Doon by Pradeep Singh

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...