Shillong
anecdotes
The ‘Azalea Walk’ was one of the most
beautiful sights in Shillong[1].
It started from Lawmali by the side of the stream, skirting on to Wahingdoh and
Raitsamthiah sides. Suna Valley, locally known as ‘Ka Them Suna Pani’, was covered by a dense forest with tall pine
trees.
It is located very close to Mawlai bridge on the Shillong-Guwahati road.
It is located very close to Mawlai bridge on the Shillong-Guwahati road.
Different varieties of orchids found in the
dense forest made the valley more beautiful. British and local people
frequently visit this valley to admire the natural beauty, listening to the
sweet music of birds, watching the varieties of orchids hanging on tall trees
and to see the magnificent twin roaring waterfalls - Bishop Falls and Beadon
Falls.
Shillong Peak, locally known as ‘U Lum Shyllong’, the highest mountain in
the Khasi and Jaintia Hills, was covered with thick forests of pine trees and
aged red rhododendron trees. Beautiful orchids hung in clusters from the
branches of trees. Birds and animals abounded. In spring the whole hillside was
ablaze with colour when the rhododendrons were in bloom. The British even built
a few bungalows near the top of the peak.
Iewduh, presently known by the people as ‘Bara Bazar’, is the most prominent
among the markets of Shillong. Monoliths, megaliths and dolmens at Khlieh
Iewduh (top of Bara Bazar) stand as mute testimony to the wisdom of the
founders of Iewduh. Iewduh (meaning the last market day of the Khasi eight-day
week) is arguably the biggest market of the Khasi Hills and has now become one
of the largest markets of North East India. On every eighth day, a weekly
market called 'Ka Sengi Iewduh' is
held in accordance with the Khasi calendar in the same site where the present
Bazar is located, but it was confined only to the south western portion. Iewduh
is also famous as a news and information centre since the days of Shillong Syiemship.
During British rule, it was talked about as 'Ka Khubor Iewduh' or Bara Bazar News
and this practice is continued till this day. Iewduh was a quiet place in early
days with only the crows and other birds during the day, and jackals howling at
night. Iewduh, being the highest point in the town, people used to move around
it for a breath of fresh air in the morning and evening.
There was a canal built by the British
which appears to have disappeared. The canal started near St. Edmund’s College,
ran along the Welsh Mission Guest House and All Saint’s Church, and passing
through a culvert near the Government Press, split into two branches[2].
One branch flowed towards the Government House and the other, passing through a
park where the Secretariat now stands, reached the Wards Lake. Deprived of its
fresh water supply, it has been found to be contaminated.
In 1928, W.A.J. Archbold wrote an interesting
article about Shillong. The following
trifle, as he calls it, was chosen from a number of similar articles which
appeared originally in The Statesman – they were meant to enliven
the Sabbatic rest of the Anglo-Indian, and to prevent him from thinking too
much about the great things he was doing:
“The
Shillongese, an affable, kindly race, live in Bungalows much like those of
other people[3]. These
are called castles, halls, and the like, according to the social grade of the
occupier. Belonging, in consequence of the irony of fate, or whatever
Shakespeare would call one of the greatest injustices that have ever disgraced
this mighty empire, to one of the lower rungs of the official ladder, we only
live in a “dale”, and manage to be very happy
there.
I
had almost forgotten to add, that from the names of some of the houses I gather
that quite a number of our gallant Allies have settled here. I have not yet
made their acquintance, but I hope to catch a glimpse of la vie Parisseine before I go down. When the
Shillongese are not drilling, they are at the office – very snug little places,
smothered in crimson ramblers. When they are not
at the office, they are usually to be found at the club or knocking balls about
in the links.
If
one feels inclined to go it here one gives a tea at the club. Sometimes, as I
have pointed out, there is a lecture to follow, but not always. Bridge is not
unknown in Shillong. The wicked play on Sundays, but as I am told that all
winnings are put into the War Loan or the sweeps, even bishops can have little
to say. It is a fine forward game that is played, especially in the ladies’
room, where a “double” is very common but no less thrilling incident.
Fishing
is practiced here by the experts, but as I hear that there is some nasty rule
about putting back what one catches I have not yet bought a shrimping net. As at Shimla and elsewhere, a great many people amuse
themselves by dropping cards into little boxes, then seeing whether anything
will happen. There is also the “Reading Circle”,
about whose proceedings only dim reports reach me, not being one of the elect:
but I believe it is quite exciting when you are really in the thick of it. Sewing shirts for soldiers occupies a good many of the
pretty sister Susies one sees about: and possibly it is just as well. We know
the mischief that Satan finds for idle hands to do, but if he had lived in
Shillong, he might have found something to say about idle eyes.
Oh, the eyes of Shillong! You are really too dammed bewitching,
as Mr. Mantalini would say. Deep dreamy blues, oceans of liquid tenderness;
honest searching browns; piercing, soul-revelling greys; flashing, defiant
blacks! One day a poet will arise, but I’m sadly afraid they’ll have him down
to Gauhati before he has accumulated sufficient data to work upon. Bachelors all get engaged here, with the exception of a few
tough veterans. Sometimes several ardent competitors choose the same beautiful
prize, and then the struggle is intense. I have stories that would melt
the heart of an accountant-general, prepatory stropping of razors on boots, and
other things too sad for relation here.
Lovers
of “old Shillong”
will regret to hear of the passing of one of the
historic landmarks of the place. I need hardly say that I allude to the familiar and picturesque water-tank
which formed a prominent feature in the grouping of the secretariat buildings.
It belonged to the Perpendicular style of architecture, and no doubt served a
useful purpose in its day, though the increase in the amount of water taken
internally of late perhaps necessitated other and more direct arrangements.
The
foundation stone of this interesting structure was, according to the
inscription, laid with due pomp and ceremony by Sir Lancelot Hare before the great and wise of old Eastern Bengal.
However, new faces, new minds! Many a silent tear was dropped as the PWD
authorities gently and reverently carried the fragments of the dear old tank to
their new home, though where that is exactly to be I have not as yet been able
to make out. Reports say that a portico is to be added, and that thus its
time-worn public servant will become one of those cottages which seem so
fashionable in Shillong.
It
is pleasant to think that, smothered in honeysuckle,
with its aged sides echoing to the sound of children’s voices, its declining
years will be happy. There is something after all in what an eminent professor
says about the consciences of metals. Even water-tanks have their feelings! But
I grow sentimental. The place of this ornamental receptacle has been taken by a
very elegant trap-door, which, if left open, may lead to the disappearance of
valuable public officers. We shall know where to look for them, which is one
comfort; uncertainty is what is most to be dreaded in such cases. All of which
goes to prove Shillong, though possibly at times a dangerous, is a very
interesting and delightful location.”
In 1929, the headquarters for all
Ramkrishna Mission institutions was established in Shillong. In 1929, there
were 11 municipal wards, 3 in the so called British area and 8 in the
Non-British Syiemship area.
In 1930, the Nepali immigrants in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills
district were either Khutiwalas,
daily labourers, or men who were recruited for the two Battalions in Shillong.
The daily labourers were largely a hot weather population, attracted by the
potato traffic they stayed from March to the Durga Pujas and then return to their country, though owing to work
on the new Sylhet Road a great number than usual had stayed back in 1930.
The
daily labourers did not take settlement of land and did not as a rule bring
their families. The Khutiwalas very
often brought their families and occasionally took settlement of land from Syiems but they visited their own
country periodically and generally returned there in the end. The pensioned and
discharged sepoys showed a tendency
to settle in Shillong.
Interestingly,
the Nepalis in Shillong refered their social disputes to the Gurkha Panchayat and other disputes to
the British courts. One of the important aspects of the Gurkha settlement in
Shillong was the establishment and development of institutions of their own
through which the Gurkhas tried to preserve their cultural and ethnic identity.
The British wards were European Ward,
Police Bazar and Jail Road, and the non-British Wards were Kench's Trace,
Laitumkhrah, Malki, Mawprem and Jhalupura, Mawkhar proper, Mission Compound and
Jaiaw, southeast Mawkhar, Garikhana and Laban. In 1931, Laban Ward was split
into Laban and Lumparing-cum-Madan Laban. In 1933, Kench's Trace was excluded
from the Municipality and in 1941 it was reinstated.
The earlier 1913 building of
the Church of the Divine Saviour (Salvatorians Fathers from Germany) was a
wooden structure. It was destroyed in the Good Friday fire of 10 April 1936.
Built by the Salvatorian Fathers from Germany, it was the first Catholic
Cathedral Church in what was then the Mission of Assam.
Two days after the destructive fire, on 12
April 1936, which was Easter Sunday, the
late Rt. Rev. Stephan Ferrando, who earlier on 14 March 1936 had just taken
over as the second Bishop of Shillong, consoled his grief stricken people from
the still smoking ruins of his once beautiful Cathedral Church.
Almost immediately after the destruction of
the old church building in 1936 plans were made to construct a new one. With
the help of the late Archbishop Louis Mathias, the first Bishop of Shillong,
the services of Dr. John D. Gogerly, a renowned Architect of Calcutta, was
obtained for the design of the new Cathedral Church. Dr. Gogerly, however,
never saw the beautiful Cathedral he designed as he migrated to Australia where
he died.
Described as modern Gothic, the Church
building plan was approved on 22 August
1936 by the then Chairman of the Shillong Municipality, who was also the
Deputy Commissioner of the former United Khasi & Jaintia Hills District,
Mr. Keith Cantlie. The first stone of the new Church was blessed on 25 October
1936 at the feast of Christ.
S.P. Chatterjee, a geographer who came to
the Khasi Hills in the late 1920s, called the plateau where the Garos, Khasi
and Pnars reside ‘Meghalaya’, the Abode of Clouds. The term was first used in a
doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Paris in 1936.
Dr Arthur Hughes was known as the
Schweitzer[4]
of Assam. He was an unassuming medical missionary who, in his 30 years in the
Khasi Hills from 1939 to 1969, made the Welsh Mission Hospital in Shillong a
beacon of hope for rich and poor alike. Arriving in 1939 in Shillong with his
wife Nancy, Hughes was soon involved in his work.
In 1942 Dr. Arthur Hughes
took over from Roberts as well as caring for the wounded of the Burma Road.
From 1942 to 1945, he treated thousands of Indian, British and American wounded
officers and men. The inhabitants of Shillong still remember the fact that
their Blood Bank was created by him.
Since
the implementation of Provincial Autonomy under the Government of India Act 1937 till the general elections of 1946,
with short breaks of a total of 20 months, Sir Syed Muhammad Saadulla was the
Premier of Assam and the undisputed leader of the Assam Provincial Muslim
League and its Coalition Cabinets. Saadulla was perhaps one of the pioneers of
coalition politics in India. More interestingly, he was the only Muslim member
of the Constitution Drafting Committee appointed by the Consituent Assembly of
India.
Mutaguchi
Renya[5]
(March 1944–July 1944) was the Governor of Assam (Japanese occupation) and C.
Chatterjee (March 1944–July 1944) was the Governor of Assam (for the
provisional government of Free India). Sir Muhammad Saleh Akbar Hydari[6]
(4 May 1947–15 August 1947 and 15 August 1947–28 December 1948) was the
Governor of Assam. The Lady Hydari Park is named in his wife’s memory.
Robert James Kadel gives us a brief glimpse
into the sanitary arrangements that existed in Shillong in 1944. On 22 May
1944, he was given time off for some ‘R&R’ with his colleague Bill Hamond[7]
and they proceeded for Shillong. One day when Kadel went to the toilet outside
and was sitting there, he felt a draft from below. He got up quick and soon
became aware of what was happening. At the back of the toilet, there was a trap
door and as he looked down, there was a person pulling out a bucket and
replacing an empty bucket. He informs us helpfully that “they use human waste for manure in India”. Nothing more is
mentioned, except that on 4 June 1944 they left Shillong in the morning by
truck.
From Habibuz Zaman, we get a glimpse of the
transportation system that existed in 1945[8].
At that time the journey from Calcutta to Shillong included trains, ferries and
buses. The first leg of the journey was from Calcutta to Parbatipur and then a
connecting train to Amingaon. During the second world war, the trains operated
in the dark to guard against air raids. The next leg of the journey was by
ferry across the mighty Brahmaputra from Amingaon to Pandu. Then there was a
short walk to the bus station for the bus to Shillong.
The Pandu-Shillong road was a one way road only. At Nongpoh cars were only allowed to
move in one direction. Traffic from both directions met at this point. There
were specified times for the vehicles to move in each direction. Due to this
arrangement, the entire journey from Pandu to Shillong would take about 7
hours.
Dr. Hugh Gordon Roberts retired in 1945 but
was asked to return in 1949 to set up a smaller hospital in Jowai. When the
Executive Councillor was an Assam Valley Muslim, the Ministership went to his
co-religionist from the Surma Valley. In the first Muslim League Coalition
Cabinet of Saadulla, there were two Muslim Ministers, Shamsul Ulema M.A.N.M.
Wahid and Ali Hyder Khan, both from Sylhet. His second Cabinet included Abdul
Matin Choudhury and Munawar Ali, also from Sylhet the later being also the
representative of the Provincial Muslim League in the party's Central
Committee.
The first Congress Coalition Government of
Gopinath Bardoloi had three Muslim Ministers, Khan Bahadur Mahmud Ali and Ali
Hyder Khan of the Surma Valley and Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed of Kamrup. On the eve
of Partition, i.e., after the elections of 1946, Abdul Matlib Majumdar of
Cachar was a member of the Bardoloi Cabinet. Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed ultimately
rose from the Assam Legislative Assembly all the way to the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
With the growth of Shillong,
different offices were set up which had a dominant number of Bengalis employed
in white collar jobs. With India's independence in 1947, Bengali women in
Shillong belonging to both the upper and the middle-classes, started to take up
higher education. In 1947 and the years shortly thereafter, large numbers of
Bengalis moved across into India as refugees. Their larger numbers changed the
demographic picture of Shillong without the cultural and emotional attachment
that the older generation of Bengalis had with Shillong.
The Bivar Estate at
Lachaumiere acquired by the Nawab of
Dacca, Salimullah early in the last century but was taken over by the
Government in 1947[9].
On 15 November 1947 Rt. Rev.
Stephan Ferrando inaugurated the new Cathedral Church[10].
Its high location and alluring design has also made the church a prominent
landmark of Shillong. On a clear day from this vantage point where the Church
stands, the mighty Brahmaputra and the snow-crowned peaks of the Himalayas can
also be seen.
A
unique feature of the Cathedral Church building is that it stands on sand. The
need for giving the building an elastic foundation was the more compelling
reason. The type of foundation was recommended since the region is prone to
severe earthquakes. The elasticity is provided by the sand on which the
structure has been made to stand. At the time of building the foundation,
trenches were cut from rock and half filled with sand. The structure has no
direct connection with the rock. Theoretically the Church building, in times of
earthquakes, can rock safely on the shock absorbing sand which is designed to
reduce the violence.
In
1950, as a leader of the Muslim community in Assam Sir Syed Muhammad Saadulla
joined the Indian National Congress. The party refused to concede his demands
for allotment of a specific number of Muslims as Congress candidates including
himself of the first election to the Assam Legislative Assembly in 1952 in free
India. They offered him a seat in the Lok Sabha. In protest Saadulla resigned
on the eve of the elections. His nomination paper as an Independent candidate
was rejected. That was the end of his political career. Sir Syed Muhammad
Saadulla passed away in 1955.
When
the Hill State movement was well underway in the late 1960s, the Government of
Assam had to recognise that it was a legitimate demand of the hill people to
ask for a state of their own[11].
When it came to the naming of this autonomous state, the name ‘Meghalaya’ was
chosen. Its author was S.P. Chatterjee, a geographer who came to these parts in
the late 1920s. He called the plateau where the Garos, Khasi and Pnars reside ‘Meghalaya,’
the Abode of Clouds. First used in a doctoral dissertation submitted to the
University of Paris in 1936, the term has come to denote the State and its
people.
If
Dr. Gogerly’s work symbolized gratitude to God for the gift of faith, the
services of the late Brother Santi Mantarro, who executed the work, epitomized
the passion which transformed this dream into a poetic prayer in stone[12].
Together with his group of Khasi masons, he gave concrete form to what Dr.
Gogerly perceived on paper. Eventually when Brother Santi Mantarro died in 1971,
it was the late Reverand Father Ignatius Rubio, who completed the unfinished
task in 1972.
On the flanks of the inside
of the Cathedral Church are another set of 14 Stations of the Cross. Made of
terracotta in relief, these works of art also depict scenes from the suffering
and death of Jesus Christ. These depictions, it is said, earlier adorned the
old Cathedral Church. They are reported to have been produced by the Art
Institute in Munich (Bavaria) in Germany. The inside of the Church also holds
several works of church art which portray scenes from Holy Scripture and the
life of Saints. Of special beauty are the set of stained glass windows made of
Grenoble, France in 1947.
[1]Cherrapunjee:
the arena of rain: a history and guide to Sohra & Shillong / E.P. Philemon,
Guwahati: Spectrum Publications, c1995.
[2]Encyclopaedia
of North-east India, Volume 4, By Col Ved Prakash.
[3]Bengal
Haggis, WAJ Archbold, 1928.
[4]Albert
Schweitzer (14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965) was a Franco-German (Alsatian)
theologian, organist, philosopher, physician, and medical missionary.
[5]Mutaguchi
was made commander of the Fifteenth Army from March 1943, and strongly pushed
forward his own plan to advance into Assam, leading to the Battle of Imphal.
After the failure of the Imphal offensive in late 1944, Mutaguchi refused to
allow his divisional commanders to retreat, and instead dismissed all three of
them. Some 50,000 of Mutaguchi's 65,000-man force died, most from starvation or
disease. With the complete collapse of the offensive, Mutaguchi was himself
relieved of command and recalled to Tokyo. He was forced into retirement in
December 1944. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renya_Mutaguchi.
[6]Sir Muhammad
Saleh Akbar Hydari (1894 – December 28, 1948) was the last British-appointed
and the first Indian governor of Assam. He was the son of Sir Akbar Hydari, who
served as the Prime Minister of Hyderabad. He entered the ICS in 1919 and began
his career in Madras Presidency. He was knighted with the KCIE in 1944. From
May 1947 he served as governor of Assam until his death in 1948. He is
remembered for entering accord with Nagas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Saleh_Akbar_Hydari.
[7]“Where I came
in — in China, Burma, India”, Turner Publishing Company, Robert James Kadel.
[8]Zaman,
Habibuz. 1999, Seventy years in a shaky subcontinent / Habibuz,
Zaman Janus, London :
[9]Sengupta,
Sutapa. & Dhar, Bibhash. & North-East India Council for Social
Science Research. 2004, Shillong: a
tribal town in transition / editors, Sutapa Sengupta, Bibhas Dhar
Reliance Pub. House, New Delhi:Interview with Mr. Hashimuddin, Advocate,
Sylhetipara, Streamlet Road, Hussain, p. 88.
[10]http://catholiccathedralshillong.org/cathedral/sites/shillongcathedral/
[11]http://www.theshillongtimes.com/b-21aprl.htm,
Influence and contribution of Bengali settlers in Khasi Hills, Prof. David R
Syiemlieh. The author who is the Controller of Examinations of NEHU, Shillong,
presented this paper on the occasion of celebration of Bengali New Year's Day
on 15 April 2010.
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