200 years of DC office in Shimla

Shriniwas Joshi

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“How 200 years of Deputy Commissioner office in Shimla being celebrated when Shimla was not in existence in 1815?” was the common objection that I heard when the District Administration decided to celebrate the event. I asked the question to Dinesh Malhotra, DC and the guiding force behind the celebration. His version was that though Lieutenant R. Rose did not come to Shimla and run the administration in 1815 from Sabathu as Assistant Agent of the Governor General, yet the foundation for the office of the DC was laid in that year as he was doing all that a DC does in a district.

The designation of this officer went on changing to political agent to Sub- Commissioner to Superintendent Protected Hill States to Deputy Commissioner for Lord WH Hay in 1861. Shakti S Chandel, in his book ‘Bilaspur’, writes about the formation of Shimla: “In 1816, the British also retained a tract of land belonging to the Keonthal state. It was Simla, the future summer capital of the Government of India. Lieutenant Ross, Assistant Political Agent for the hill states erected in 1819, the first English house at Simla, a wooden cottage with a thatched roof.

The place was further developed during the period of Captain CP Kennedy, who succeeded Ross, and stayed at Simla until 1835. Till 1816, there was not even a tract of land that could be named as the foundation of Shimla and yet 2015 is being celebrated as 200 years of the DCs in Shimla. Is it not playing with the history?” said the detractors. The plea that in that year an institution was created that got converted into that of DC was beyond their comprehension.

Anyway, conceived and produced by the Deputy Commissioner and edited by Raaja Bhasin, a coffee table-book, “The DC, Shimla Two Centuries of an Institution 1815-2015,” was released during the occasion (See photo). And the book starts with a quote from Panchari: “Once you start working on something, don’t be afraid of failure and don’t abandon it. People who work sincerely are the happiest.” Is it the reply of the Deputy Commissioner to the so-called whistle-blowers? Raaja Bhasin says in “Two Centuries of Snows, Cedars and Cinders”, “Shimla rose in the wake of Gorkha Wars that come to end in 1815-1816.

This was when the victorious British decided to retain certain spots as sanitaria and military outposts. From a tiny village whose name is variously reported as Shimlu, Shemalaya, Semla, Shumla and Shemla, the town went on to officially become the summer capital of British India in 1864. Including the preface, there are 17 articles on Shimla or bureaucracy in the book. ‘Rules of the Game’ is an article by Avay Shukla, who retired as a senior bureaucrat from HP-IAS and has a great sense of humour. I am quoting from his expose: “I have for sometime been convinced that Moses (of Old Testament fame) was the original bureaucrat. He offered to his peoples the Promised Land-and then made them wander around in the desert for forty years.

If this is not classic bureaucratic stratagem, then what is? There’s more. He was adapt at beating around the bush (till one of them caught fire and he called it an act of God!). He was wont to deliver sermons from raised areas which no one understood. And here’s the clinching one – he framed conduct rules, which subsequently came to be known as Ten Commandments.”

The book has been hurriedly published and so carries the flaws of ‘hurry’ like printing aberrations. I am pointing out a couple. If Governor-General has a hyphen, why is it not with wherever the word has been used? The shortened form of government as ‘govt.’ appears weird in a book of quality. There is gap-differences in-between the lines, especially the article by Minakshi Chaudhry is unnecessarily widely spread. The excellent and ‘nostalgic’ photographs – old and new- compensate for this ignorable oddness and the coffee-table book deserves to be on the coffee-table of every household in Shimla.