Renaming Shimla mocking history
Rajesh Kochhar
The suggestion to rename Shimla as Shyamala (literally meaning dark-complexioned, used as an epithet for goddess Durga) is ill-advised and un-historical.
Neither tradition, nor any documentation links Shimla with any deity. The imagined association is a back-formation and a mindless exercise in Sanskritisation.
Shimla entered history in the wake of war between British India and the kingdom of Nepal, which began in 1814 and came to an end a year later for what is now Himachal Pradesh with victory for the British.
Greatly impressed with the valour of their adversaries (the Gorkhas), the British decided to induct them into their own army. A Gorkha battalion was raised and headquartered at Subathu, while a detachment was posted at Kotgarh. As the army officers and surveyors travelled between these two cantonments, they discovered the utility of Shimla as an attractive halt.
In May 1816, a British surveyor, known to be John Anthony Hodgson, on way from Subathu to Kotgarh, pitched his tent on the Ridge ‘and found villages distant and supplies scarce’. The next year, on August 30, 1817, Alexander Gerard described ‘Semla’ as ‘a middling sized village’. This was the first official record of the name Shimla. An account of a decade later would not even call Shimla a village. Captain Godfrey Charles Mundy, aide-de-camp to the commander-in-chief Lord Combermere, wrote in 1828 that Shimla was ‘a name given to two or three miserable shepherds’ huts’.
Shimla grew slowly. Understandably the first visitors were the European army officers stationed at Subathu.
The first ever permanent residence was built in 1822 by Charles Pratt Kennedy, who was the army commandant at Subathu as also the assistant political agent for the protected hill states.
Prior to 1815, the entire Shimla area was part of the territory of the Rana of Keonthal with Junga as his capital. That year, part of the Shimla area was handed over to the Maharaja of Patiala as a reward for his help during the war.
European ‘gentlemen, chiefly invalids from the plains’, who chose to live in Shimla, were given rent-free land by the Rana of Keonthal or Maharaja of Patiala depending on the legal ownership of the land. Shimla came into limelight in 1827 when the governor general Lord Amherst chose to spend two summer months here. It is only now that the British took administrative interest in the budding hill station. In 1830, 13 villages from Keonthal and four villages from Patiala that together constituted the Shimla ilaqa were transferred to the British, through a negotiated settlement. The names of these 17 villages are on record in the official gazetteer, but Shimla does not figure in the list. Obviously, at the time it did not have any administrative or revenue identity.
Near Shimla there is an ancient Hanuman temple atop a hill quaintly named Jakhu. Nobody has ever suggested that the name be derived from a Sanskrit word. In surplus economies, it is not uncommon for temples to be built which in turn get surrounded by townships named after the presiding deity. But it is perfectly understandable that a small settlement of economically and ritually marginalised shepherds should have a local name. The whole area in fact abounds in names without any obvious etymology.
Nobody could have foreseen that a nondescript hamlet in the hills would one day become the summer capital of a vast empire. The thought of renaming Shimla seems to be driven by a desire to give it a religion-backed identity to match its latter-day splendor and importance.
Changing the name of a well-established and internationally recognised place involves large effort and expenditure. Such a step should be taken for solid reasons and not on a whim. No one should have the right to make the mockery of history.
(The writer is Honorary Professor, PU, Chandigarh)
