Shillong Muslims and Assam legislatures
Some of the Muslim
luminaries of Assam had become permanent settlers of Shillong and had landed
properties including houses. They were inseparably connected for a long time
with Assam politics based in the Provincial Capital.
The beginnings of their
activities could be traced to the tenures of the Assam
Legislative Council from 1912 to 1920 when it was a Chief Commissioner's
Province for the second time.
Jessie Moore was the wife of
a missionary, the Late Pitt Moore, and she travelled to Shillong in 1912.
“At 8 a.m. on March 6, I took the motor for
Shillong, 63 miles[1].
The cost of the motor ride was 18 Rupees (six dollars). The driver was careful,
and we went up, up, until 2.p.m., when Shillong, the beautiful hill station
among the pine trees appeared. Shillong is 5,000 feet above sea level, and the
climate is very pleasant. The roads are metalled, and the place is kept very clean.
I enjoyed walking about, and saw the government
offices and many bungalows. On 8 March (1912), our Clara’s 31st
birthday, I called on Rev. and Mrs. Evans of the Welsh Presbetarian Mission,
and in the afternoon several of their missionaries called on me at the dak
bungalow. The stone houses of Shillong were ruined in the big earthquake of
June 12, 1897, and it has since been rebuilt.”
It
appears that the Golam Hyder Mollah family conglomerate pretty much cornered
the Shillong market[2]. They had a Mechanical
Workshop with Noel, an Englishman as Manager on a monthly salary of Rs. 450.
They were responsible for electricity generation by Dynamo for the Golam Hyder Complex
in Police Bazar area. They also dabbled in the banking business. A fifth
generation descendant of Golam Hyder claimed that the Bank had failed after
some time but the depositors were fully paid out of the money received by
selling away some of the properties.
They
owned a large scale Departmental Store Complex in Police Bazar called English Shop.
It supplied groceries, stationeries, general merchandise and every other item
of European and Indian demands including clothes and shoes etc. for everyone's
use. Their reach also extended to the Imperial Confectionary, soda water
manufacture, dairy and bakery, and even the printing press. They were
responsible for the diversion of Umkhra river in Polo Ground area and had the
contract for construction of Shillong Guwahati road. They were the contractors
for the mosque in Thana Road, the Church of England near the present State
Central Library and a number of other buildings.
In
1913 the Church of the Divine Saviour (Salvatorians Fathers from Germany) was constructed.
This building had a wooden structure. In 1913, the four villages of Malki,
Laitumkhrah, Jhalupara and Mawprem were made part of the town. Khasi and
Jaintia settlers moved into the new town for work and settlement as did
Europeans, Marwari traders, Nepali crofters and soldiers and Bengali traders
and Babus so indispensible for the
Raj. By their numbers these communities contributed towards the making of
Shillong.
The
Welsh Mission Hospital in Shillong was founded in 1913 by Dr Hugh Gordon
Roberts, who qualified as a doctor (having worked as a chartered accountant
previously) in Liverpool in 1912. The institution is still called the 'Roberts
Hospital' by the people of Shillong. His memorial bust stands at the entrance
of the building.
[1]Stray leaves from Assam: a
continuation of my journal Twenty years in Assam,
Further leaves from
Assam and Autumn leaves
from Assam - Moore,
Jessie Fremont, 1916. Princeton University. http://www.archive.org/stream/strayleavesfroma00moor#page/12/mode/2up
[2]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:
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