The hard sell for Shillong

The hard sell for Shillong

By this time, Political Agents, geologists and botanists were suggesting the shifting of the District Head Quarters to the place now known as Upper Shillong or any other suitable site in the vicinity which would be more advantageous for communication[1].
To the British officers Gauhati, the head quaters of the Assam Division, was an unhealthy place and even Hopkinson himself had a bout of malaria.  

The search for a new location for the District Head Quarters of the Khasi and Jaintia Hills ultimately led the last of the Commissioners of Assam, Colonel Henry Hopkinson (1861–1874), to the valley of Yeodo. For a number of years, Hopkinson tried to convince the Board of Revenue at Fort William in Calcutta that for the sake of efficient administration, "officials of Government must live in a good place". He had lived in Shillong and considered it to be the place most suited to the purpose. But the authorities did not accept his suggestion, even though their interest in Shillong was not altogether absent.  

Investigations were conducted by the Board of Revenue and the Military Department and in 1860, the authorities mooted the idea of shifting the District Head Quarters to Shillong. The reasons were the extraordinarily heavy rainfall and humid weather of Cherra, which they could not withstand and made their life very uncomfortable during the wet season. Other considerations were the interrupted communications, the requirement of a cantonment, settlement for retired and serving Europeans and employees of the District Civil Station, and the necessity of a central location of the Head Quarters.  

During 1860-61, the possibility of locating a Station in the Cossyah Hills at some higher elevation than that of Cherra, was first considered in connection with the scheme brought forward by the Military Department of encouraging the settlement of Non-Commissioned Officers and soldiers of good character in India[2]. The site of Shillong speedily drew attention, not only as suited for such a settlement, but also as a Sanatorium, as a Cantonment for troops quartered in the Hills, and as the proper spot for the Head Quarters of the Civil Officer of the District. 

Moreover, there were no European enterprise at Cherra and no suitable establishment for supply of essential commodities for a growing population. After further investigation made by a Committee, a survey of the topography by Major F.A. Rowlatt, and a detailed report of the Deputy Commissioner, on 29 October 1861 the Fort William authorities in Calcutta decided to shift only the District offices to Shillong.  

Fitzwilliam Thomas Pollock was an Executive Engineer who had a significant role to play in the future of Shillong. According to Pollock, Major F.A. Rowlatt, the Deputy Commissioner (ex-Chief Civil Officer of the Khasia and Jyntia Hills), in his wanderings discovered Shillong, where the rainfall was not above 72 inches, so he persuaded the Government to desert Cherra and to form a Station near Shillong, not Shillong itself, which had a bad name even amongst the Cossyahs, who only used it as a burial-place[3] (this could be the reason why the Muslims have their burial place and Hindus their cremation ground in Upper Laban). He had built himself a little bungalow and his idea was to form the station around there.  

According to Pollock, the Committee was comprised of old Indian officers, who had lived all their lives in the plains, and had commanded Oude (Avadh) men, and were asked to report on the eligibility of the proposed site. The Committee in fact consisted of Lieutenant Colonel Richardson, Surgeon Major Jerdon, Major Raban, Major Briggs, and Captain Morton[4]. Pollock was of the view that they must have found the place too cold, and reported unfavourably as to its fitness for native troops, forgetting that it was not proposed to locate Bengal Sepoys there, but Gurkhas, whose homes were in Nepal at an elevation of 10,000 feet above sea-level.

Pollock also suggested alternative sites[5] which, according to him, were better than the proposed site:

“Opposite to Morflong (sic), twenty miles nearer Gowhatty than Shillong, there is a beautiful plateau as like Ootacamund as it can be, and 6,000 feet high; but for some reason it was not even inspected by the commission appointed to choose a site in preference to Cherra.

As it was a part of my work to travel over the hills and plains in search of the best routes for road-making, I soon came to know the greater part of the country, and certainly the best site for a station I have seen was a plateau 5,500 feet high, fifteen miles from Jynteahpoor on the Jowai road, almost level, and with ample accommodation for a couple of regiments and a battery of artillery, flanked on two sides by lovely mountain streams, swarming with trout and masher, and with fair small game shooting about; and as steamers can ply to Jynteahpoor in the rains and within three to four miles of it at all seasons, surely that would have been preferable to the present Sanatarium.

At Shillong there is literally no amusement for the European officers. Cricket was the only game we could indulge in. Shooting and fishing there were none within a day’s reach, and it is very expensive moving about on the hills”.

Treating the slopes of Shillong and the less elevated plateau of Yeodo as one locality, the Committee wrote a most eulogistic report of the fitness of the place in relation to climate, location, and resources. Amongst the various places in view, the Committee recommended in favour of the high plateau of Shillong (now known as Upper Shillong) for the Civil Station and Iewduh for the invalid European troops and the lines of the regiments[6].

So as a medium, Shillong, which lay in a hollow, was fixed upon. It was also subject to certain diseases, and even to cholera, but was of course, an improvement on Gowhatty, and since the province was made into a Chief Commissionership the Cantonment and Civil Lines had been greatly extended, and reached to Captain Rowlatt's (later Major Rowlatt) original site. The Cart Road, laid out and commenced by Pollock himself, had been finished, and now light covered-in carriages plied between Shillong and Gowhatty, and a person could reach it within 12 hours after landing.

Accordingly the immediate transfer of the Office of the Deputy Commissioner of the Cossyah and Jynteeah Hills from Cherra to Shillong was authorised. The official recommendation to transfer the station from Cherrapunji to Shillong was made in letter No.32, dated 27 May 1862, from Brigadier General G.D. Showers, Commissioner of the Cossiah and Jyntia Hills[7]. The question, however, of the adoption of Shillong as a Sanatorium and Military Station, awaited the final decision of His Excellency the Governor General in Council. 

Major Rowlatt’s topographical survey altogether ignored the name Yeodo. Hopkinson asserted that the local people also recognised the new settlement as Shillong, and few persons used the term Yeodo.  

"The new settlement extends throughout its entire length along the lower slopes of the Shillong range. Shillong is as appropriate a name to one part of the tract as another and has already been accepted, while it will be hardly possible to impose the name Yeodo upon the upper portion of the tract."  

Hopkinson also added that Yeodo could be spelt in "all sorts of ways" and might be confounded with one or two other places. According to one account, a Japanese town had the same name[8].  

In October 1861, the superiority of Shillong over Cherra Poonjee as the Chief Civil Station of the Cossyah and Jynteah Hills was recognised by Government, and the transfer directed to be made. The unhappy disturbances[9] which shortly afterwards broke out among the Jynteeahs, interrupted the completion of the change at the time, but in May 1862, Brigadier-General Showers again brought forward the subject, and wrote so favourably of the locality, both in a military and sanitary point of view, that a Committee was appointed to examine its capabilities.  

It was at this point in history that other religious influences came to the vicinity of the Khasi Hills. On 15 April 1862, Kalikadas Dutta and Braja Sundar Mitra established the Brahmo Samaj[10] in Sylhet. As with the Welsh Mission in the Khasi Hills, the Brahmo Samaj would, in later years, have a profound influence on the Khasi people.

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[1]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 :

[2]Annual report on administration of the Bengal Presidency, 1860/61.

[3]Sport in British Burmah, Assam, and the Cassyah and Jyntiah Hills. By Lieutenant Colonel Pollock, Madras Staff Corps, Volume 1, Chapman and Hall, London, 1879.

[4]Annual Report on the Administration of the Bengal Presidency for 1863-64.

[5]Sport in British Burmah, Assam, and the Cassyah and Jyntiah hills. with notes of sport in the hilly districts of the northern division, Madras Presidency, indicating the best localities in those countries for sport, with natural history notes, illustrations of the people, scenery, and game, together with maps to guide the traveller or sportsman, and hints on weapons, fishing-tackle, etc., best suited for killing game met with in those provinces. Volume 2. Lieutenant Colonel Fitz William Thomas Pollock, Chapman and Hall, London, 1879. Harvard University.Pg.76.

[6]The Gurkhas, settlement and society : with reference to Shillong, 1867-1969 / Sanjay Rana. New Delhi : Mittal Publications, 2008. 

[7] http://meghalaya.nic.in/raj_bhavan/intro.htm

[8]A History of Assam, Edward Albert Gait, Pg.399, Thacker Spink & Co., Calcutta 1906, University of California.

[9]In January 1862, the Jaintias (Syntengs) were seriously disaffected and a serious outbreak occurred. One company numbering about 300, came within 7 miles of Cherra, intending to march upon the European settlement. During the night a sudden rush was made upon Theria Ghat village, at the foot of the Hills, were a number of Bengalis were slain, their skulls being carried away on the point of their spears in triumph.

 

[10]The Brahmo Samaj was conceived as reformation of the prevailing Bengal of the time and began the Bengal Renaissance of the 19th century pioneering all religious, social and educational advance of the Hindu community in the 19th century.