Passage to India, 70 years on from independence
As India celebrates the 70th anniversary of its independence, John Lee discovers the debt it owes to its former ruler and the part it played in...
Since I was travelling to the most mysterious and least explored part of India, it was helpful that I began in the city that is most familiar to my Western senses. Before travelling to northeast India, I started out in the northwest.
New Delhi was founded in 1911 by British King George V but it was designed and built by Sir Edwin Lutyens. As a child in Malahide, on Dublin’s north coast, I had often gazed across at what we called the White House on Lambay Island. He redesigned the complex of buildings on the island for the 3rd Lord Revelstoke who owned Barings Bank. Barings Bank is gone and so is the British Empire. But New Delhi still stands and, though I was warned that my senses could be overwhelmed by an Indian city, I felt quite at home, perhaps because of my Lambay musings. I stayed
at the five-star WelcomHotel in Dwarka and, despite the infamous traffic and crowds, spent a pleasant evening viewing Lutyens’ masterpieces like the Viceroy’s House and the Baroda House.
The breathtaking new city was inaugurated as the British seat of Indian rule in 1931.
Now it is a completely Indian city, all colour and cars and cows in the street. India gained independence 70 years ago, in 1947, but Dehli’s splendour remains a monument to British hubris.
I flew across the north of India. It’s an unusual three-and-a-halfhour flight – as you look out the window to your left, you are often below the level of the peaks of the majestic Himalayas. I landed in Imphal, in the eastern state of Manipur, one of seven states (the Seven Sisters) that make up the region.
Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet lie to the north and Myanmar to the east – you will see on a map that the region is connected to the main body of India by a strip of land. After the hubris of Delhi you witness monuments to British bravery in Imphal.
It is here that the British, so often not given full credit for their military successes in World War Two, held back the advance of the Japanese Empire. The Japanese had driven into India from Burma. British and Indian forces under Lieutenant General William Slim beat the Japanese back into Burma in 1944. I spent hours touring the War Cemetery.
My group was based at the Classic Grande in Imphal. Soldiers posted outside our hotel were a reminder that this is a volatile area. Situated on the frontier with Burma, there is border conflict. Still, it is an extraordinarily lush and varied culture and is wholly safe for tourists.
My visit coincided with the 5th International Tourism Mart, a jamboree for travel firms. It provided a great crash course in local culture. One night they put on an extravagant stage show of all the dances of the tribes in the northeast. There were more than 50 displays. The cultures of India, China, Nepal, Tibet and Burma and others all mix in the northeast. It felt more like southeast Asia than India proper.
We moved on to Guwahati in the state of Assam. It is a small city by Indian standards, with a population of one million. Still, it had all the colour and hustle and bustle of Delhi. It lies on the mighty Brahmaputra River.
We took a night cruise along a bank dominated by the 35ft-high golden statue of the medieval general Lachit Borphukan on his chariot. He saved Assam from the Mughals in 1671. I also visited a Hindu temple, the Kamakhya Temple, in Guwahati. It is 4,000 years old yet a good Catholic boy was welcomed warmly.
We followed the course of the Brahmaputra up to Kaziranga National Park. This is a 275sq.km of tall elephant grass, tropical forest and marshland. Criss-crossed by four major rivers, including Brahamaputra, it is a paradise for wildlife.
Again the British, who did so much harm in India, played an inspiring role here. In 1904, Baroness Mary Curzon, wife of Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India, visited the area. She had been told it was a haven for the Indian one-horned rhinoceros. She didn’t see one. Lady Curzon had a judicious chat with the husband and persuaded him to establish the Kaziranga Proposed Reserve Forest. Hunting was soon banned and the modern Kaziranga
National Park now has 2,500 rhinos. On our dawn elephant treks (on the back of gentle giant Asian elephants) we could get close to rhinos, water buffalo, swamp deer and many other abundant herds.
Elephant rides are a bit of a cliché, perhaps as naff as a donkey ride on the beach, but it is the best way to see the animals without disturbing them. The elephants seemed healthy and happy. Yet it was on the back of a Jeep – a means of viewing wildlife I’m less fond of – that I had my most memorable Indian experience.
As evening was falling, we paused on a track to listen to the birds and animals as they worked themselves into a frenzy of warning calls. Our driver knew there was a tiger in the area.
Suddenly he strode languorously across the track between the strands of 10ft-high elephant grass. I know that you won’t have a huge problem seeing lions on the African savannah but it is a fortuitous event when you see a tiger in Kaziranga.
One day we stopped at the Diphlu River Lodge where we were greeted with a céad míle fáilte. Manager Ranesh Roy, was educated by Christian Brothers in Darjeeling. Just as my opinion of the British in India had been transformed by Kaziranga, Ranesh was able to convince me of many of the positive traits of the Christian Brothers I had long forgotten. If there is anywhere on Earth that deserves to be a Unesco World Heritage Site, it is Kaziranga.
Our final night, before flying back to Delhi, was spent on an island in the middle of the Brahmaputra River called Majuli.
We stayed in a government enclosure. It was a luxury-free experience but yet another wholly unique experience in this mysterious and wonderful part of India.