The Raja of Harsil: The Legend of Frederick "Pahari Wilson"

Robert Hutchison

Description

A young British officer deserted during the First Afghan War (1839-42) and went to ground in the wilds of Tehri-Garhwal. Frederick 'Pahari'Wilson changed the face of the region forever and became a Himalayan legend. He played a daring role in the Great Game, was witness to the Anglo-Sikh War of 1845 - when the British nearly lost India - and became a pioneering force in the great Indian Railways adventure. Capturing the humour of the petty world of officers'clubs in Meerut, Mussoorie and Shimla, the chill of stiff winds on the high passes into Tibet, and the hardships of life in the remote valleys of Garhwal, The Raja of Harsil is a thrilling account of that tumultuous and exciting period. Driven by personal ambition, Frederick Wilson introduced commercial timbering to the Himalayas and became India's first timber magnate. An avid hunter, ornithologist and botanist, he settled at Harsil, near the source of the Ganges, and shared the lives and destinies of the Garhwali people. He acquired enormous wealth - becoming the richest man in northern India - and famous as the 'raja'of Harsil before falling into disfavour - termed a pariah for plundering Garhwal of its wildlife and natural resources.

Sujets

• Afghan War
• Histoire
• Regalía
• South Asia
• British people
• Harsil
• War in Afghanistan (disambiguation)
• Pahari languages
• Royalty
• Himalayan
• Military
• British
• Garhwal
• History
• Asia
• Redevance
• India
• Raja
• Prince

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789351940920
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Robert Hutchison studied at McGill University in Montreal, Canada and interrupted his studies to travel and begin a career in journalism. A native of Quebec, he has lived in Switzerland for many years. He is fluent in English and French.
From 1961 to 1976, Hutchison was a correspondent for the Sunday and Daily Telegraph of London. He has also contributed articles to The Sunday Times (London) and The Smithsonian (Washington). His photos have appeared in leading publications around the world. He is the author of the following works: Vesco, Off The Books, Juggernaut, In the Tracks of the Yeti and Their Kingdom Come .
When not writing or photographing his favourite pastimes are ski-touring in the Alps and trekking in the Himalayas. While researching a feature article on the Garhwali activist Sunderlal Bahuguna in 1987 he fell in love with India’s Garhwal region and has visited the area many times since. ‘Mussoorie,’ he says, ‘is my second home.’
 
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For Lucia and Tamara
 
Contents
Author’s Note
Christmas Eve, 1841
Camel’s Back Road
Lamkot Mountain
The Degchi Brigade
Umar the Terrible
Captain Apsley’s Report
Up the Country
Nasty Business at Jhala
The Ghostmen
The Pradhan and the Pundit
Mungetu Chand
Murder at Chitkul
Mungetu’s Daughter
The Raja’s Golden Bird
A Visit with Cautley
Medical Deception
Mingdoling Monastery
Simla Safe House
Done for Adultery
Tin Wizard
Shaitan’s Folly
Clean Slate
Brass Rupees
The Beau Colonel’s Story
Dance of Illusions
The Red Lion
Monkshood and Mischief
Seeds of War
Talwandi Junction
India’s Waterloo
Himalaya Club
Wilson’s Bundobust
Markham’s ‘Invaluable Companion’
A Visit to Firozpur
The Monkey Takes Leave
Timber Concession Renewed
Pursuing the Ibex
The Vansittart Investigations
Princess Khaneti
Everything will become Red
Wretchedly Worried
Difficult Contract to Make
Rogue’s March
Upholding the Right
Delhi Falls to the Rebels
Organized Thuggery
Devils in the Doon
Profit Transfer
Prosperity Reigns
Selku Mela at Mukhba
Someshwar’s Curse
The Rape
A Hidden Hand
Torrid Nights at the Charleville
The Sink Asks a Favour
The Kalwa Disconnects
Death at Darkot
Ruffled Feathers
Mountaineer’s Farewell
Ungrateful Son
Epilogue
Glossary
Acknowledgements
 
Author’s Note
F rederick ‘Pahari’ Wilson is a historical figure. He did exist, although his origins are strangely obscure. He passed through the British hill station of Mussoorie for the first time in the early 1840s, but nobody is quite sure precisely when or why. One thing, however, is certain: within his lifetime he became a legend throughout the North-West Provinces of British India. In Garhwal that legend lives to this day, even if Wilson has been forgotten by historians and is totally unknown in his home country.
He claimed to be from a middle-class Yorkshire family and grew up around Wakefield, near Leeds. At various times he described himself as merchant, cragsman, forester or contractor. Others called him a ‘Ranger of the Himalayas’. His life was adventuresome to say the least. Early in his career he was a deserter on the run. He settled at Harsil, a remote village in the Bhagirathi valley near the source of the Ganges. He became a spy who trained other spies to infiltrate the lands to the north. In this context he knew George Hayward, the headstrong young Englishman who in 1870 was murdered in Dardistan while trying to reach the source of the Oxus.
One of the problems in attempting to discover Wilson is that if you speak to any six persons in Tehri-Garhwal today you are likely to get six different versions of his life, all with some concordant facts but all essentially different. We know that he had two wives, both from Harsil’s neighbouring village of Mukhba. The prettier one was Raimatta, who proved unable to bear children. The more enduring one was her aunt, Sungrami, whose nickname was Gulabi. She was two years younger than her niece and bore Wilson three sons: Nathanial, Charles and Henry. The people of Harsil and Mukhba still tell tales about them, using their local names of Natthu, Charli Sahib and Indri.
A few years after settling in Harsil, Wilson petitioned the raja of Tehri-Garhwal, Sudarshan Shah, for an exclusive concession to hunt musk deer in the Garhwal Himalayas. The raja rejected his plea but recognized Wilson as a future source of revenue for the royal coffers. He asked whether the Englishman might desire something else. Wilson requested a timber concession instead. This was granted against an annual payment of Rs 150, later increased to Rs 400 a year. Wilson introduced commercial timbering to the Himalayas and it made him immensely rich, perhaps the richest man in northern India. With timbering he brought progress to a region that had never known a cash economy until he minted his own coin, the Wilson rupee. The local people called him Hulseyn Sahib, Hulseyn being their transliteration for Wilson.
I believe, and my research tends to confirm, that Rudyard Kipling based his short story ‘The Man Who Would Be King’ on Wilson. Kipling supposedly said of the pioneering timber magnate: ‘He lived a life that would have been the envy of kings.’ Indeed, Wilson became known as the ‘Raja of Harsil’. In the villages of Upper Tangnore – the name then used for the Garhwali hill district where Harsil is located – folk ballads are still sung about the infamous exploits of Wilson’s eldest son, Nathanial.
The Kipling connection remains misty. The writer Ben Macintyre claimed that an American adventurer, Josiah Harlan, was Kipling’s inspiration for the would-be king, Daniel Dravot. 1 In Kipling’s short story, Dravot took over a scruffy village in the Afghan mountains, transforming it and the surrounding valleys into an independent hill state. However, when his subjects discovered that the despotic Dravot was not the god they imagined they cast him to his death from a rickety footbridge into the deep gorge below.
It is true that in 1839 Josiah Harlan, a deserter from the East India Company army, led a ragtag rebel force north from Kabul to the region of Ghor, where he concluded a treaty with the local tribesmen conferring upon him the title of Prince of Ghor. But Harlan’s situation soon became untenable and he was forced to flee. Reaching India in 1842, twenty-four years before Kipling was born, Harlan recounted his tale to the authorities. Soon after, he returned to the United States. He died in San Francisco in 1871, when Kipling was five.
In November 1887, the twenty-two-year-old Kipling joined the staff of the Pioneer in Allahabad, the same newspaper that four years earlier had published a front-page obituary eulogizing Frederick Wilson. In May and June of 1888, Kipling joined his friends, Professor and Mrs S.