Namaste Readers,
This post is quite extensive, providing intricate details and a wealth of historical information. Therefore, make sure you have some time on your hands, grab your favorite hot drink, get comfy, and prepare to embark on a journey. Oh, and if you're feeling generous, toss one my way too, will you?
Thank you for your presence at Berkana. I am deeply grateful to be able to share the gift of words with you.
Discovery or Invasion?
The history of the Nilgiris, as transcribed by colonial officers, consistently represents the region as a 'discovery' in the 1820s by John Sullivan, the then Collector of the Coimbatore district in the Madras Presidency. The precursor to this 'discovery' occurred during the fourth Anglo-Mysore war, which was won by the British East India Company. At that time, the district of Nilgiris, with its indigenous population of grazers, gatherers, and farmers, remained untouched by foreign colonial powers for an extended period, largely due to the efforts of the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore, Tipu Sultan.
Known as the Sher-e-Mysore, "Tiger of Mysore", Tipu Sultan was not only a fierce military strategist and protector of his territory but also a revered figure in the French territory of Pondicherry, inspiring none other than Napoleon Bonaparte himself. Napoleon desired to establish a strong connection with India as a joint strategic move against the British. His ultimate goal was to form an alliance with Tipu Sahib and establish French influence in India via Middle East eventually blocking Britain's trade route to India.
However, history took a different turn. During the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, an army from the British East India Company, supported by the Marathas and the Nizam of Hyderabad, emerged victorious against Tipu Sultan. The Kingdom of Mysore succumbed to a prolonged siege by the combined forces, and Tipu Sultan lost his life on May 4, 1799, while defending his fortress at Seringapatam. General Harris, upon Tipu Sultan's demise, famously declared, "Now India is ours," marking a significant turning point in history.
Numerous Anglo-Mysore wars were fought over decades and the Treaty of Seringapatam was signed to establish a British dominion over the Deccan. A couple of decades later a perilous expedition into the secluded biome of the Nilgiris took place. This expedition was coupled with the subsequent establishment of infrastructure to connect these remote biomes to the rest of the Madras Presidency. The expedition, led by John Sullivan, commenced on January 2, 1819, and comprised a formidable force, including soldiers, war elephants, and a diverse array of support animals such as dogs and ponies. The rear guard consisted of two dozen English huntsmen, reminiscent of several instances of successful invasions executed across the subcontinent. I fail to understand under what circumstances, amid numerous victories and displays of power, the invasion of a rich and isolated biome could ever be considered a genuine 'discovery.'
The journey to conquer the mountain began from the side of Denaigoukot (now Sirumugai near Mettupalayam in Coimbatore district). Upon ascending to an altitude of 1,000 feet, the explorers encountered the inevitable challenge of parting with their elephants and shedding excess baggage. Undeterred, they pressed on, employing cords and pulleys to navigate the ascent with precision. Diligently carving steps into the rugged terrain and overcoming numerous obstacles, the explorers ultimately reached the Nilgiris plateau. Their triumphant arrival occurred at Dimhutti village in Kotagiri on January 8, 1819.
Captivated by the breathtaking panorama of the blue-green ranges adorned with ethereal cotton candy clouds, Sullivan was compelled to convey his awe in a letter to Sir Thomas Munro, the Governor of Madras at that time:
“My dear Colonel, I have been in the Highlands for the last week. This is the finest country… it resembles I suppose Switzerland more than any other part of Europe… it freezes here every night, this morning we found ice in our Water chatties (clay pots).”
Terra Nullis
“The Nilgiri district may almost be said to be one of those happy countries which have no history.”
— W. Francis, The Nilgiris (Gazetteer), Government of Madras
Sullivan acquired extensive land from the Toda people, establishing the first British settlement in the Nilgiris. Consequently, the entire narrative of the Nilgiris shifted to being one of those virgin territories discovered and developed by the British. Sullivan's explorations and infrastructural projects triggered a significant influx of European immigrants who settled within the Nilgiris. The lush mosaic of shola forests and grasslands offered a sanctuary for healing and respite, particularly for the wounded and ailing soldiers of the crown. It was believed that the ecosystem of the mystical Nilgiris could alleviate the melancholy and malaise perpetuated by the First Great War. In addition to these developments, the town of Ootacamund was established as a military cantonment and evolved into the summer capital of the Madras Presidency. During the heat wave, both the governor and his administration relocated to Ootacamund, seeking relief in its elevated and rejuvenating environs.
It is a well-established fact that colonial historians used Europe’s post-Enlightenment history as a yardstick to measure all other histories. So naturally, for the longest time, they agreed that the Nilgiris had no history because the region remained Terra Nullis — a land without any masters. This viewpoint dismisses the reality that the indigenous people, including the Todas, Badagas, Kotas, Irulas, and Kurumbas, have resided and thrived in the mountain ranges for centuries. It fails to acknowledge their active participation in and dependence on the montane ecosystems, as well as their effective coexistence with a shared economy based on barter, livestock, and agriculture.
In the historical and anthropological studies of the people of the Nilgiris, this narrative has always been discussed since the colonial period. Recently, attention has turned to pre-colonial times—an era where their cultural narratives clearly reached their height. The accounts of the Nilgiri communities, akin to other indigenous groups, frequently highlight their historical isolation from the rest of the Madras presidency. However, this view is skewed by the European gaze because enough data has been collated and studies conducted in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, and genetics to suggest that the Nilgiri communities, often portrayed as culturally isolated and 'timelessly primitive,' were not genuinely cut off. They maintained connections with neighboring indigenous communities and remained engaged with the states and empires situated in the plains below. However, the people of Nilgiris were selectively isolationist and followed distinctive religious and linguistic practices, despite their connection with the outside world, which is proof of their resistance to other ways of being.
Ajay Skaria, a scholar in Postcolonial and Subaltern Studies, conducted a study in 1999. Despite his academic skills in researching the pre-colonial history of the people in the forested western ghats, he couldn't find any written sources from the local population. This indicates that there were zero local sources cited while documenting, and thus solidifying the history of the people of Nilgiris. In the modern context, this can be seen as a complete lack of representation of indigenous voices in the formation of their history. Skaria's findings indicate that the documentation available is largely a product of external perspectives, especially of those individuals who were sent to the region as enforcers of colonial rule. As a result, the contention is made that these records dictate a form of 'imposed modernity,' marked with a tone of subjugation.
I am deeply perturbed by the lack of first-person narrative, and the indigenous ways of life being shadowed by the colonial perspective. When such pseudo-narratives are built, they align with the Western definition of progress. The indigenous ways of living in connection with nature were considered primitive. The bias of this assumption runs deeper because it imposes the idea that a certain way of life is more refined than another. Right here lies the foundation of early capitalism. Consider, if you will, these institutions to be distant relatives. Imperialism declared the superiority of the material aspect of life, and capitalism invented the hamster wheel on which this material dream manifests.
The people of the Nilgiris lived with simplicity and spiritual practices that rooted them to their land and ancestors. This sense of ease and connection extends into their living spaces, which were built with the vision of sustainability and climate-intensive models refined over generations to enable and flourish their communities. Here are some details about the dwellings, art, and culture of the Todas, known to be the most ancient indigenous people of the Nilgiris. If you delve deeper, you will notice skilled handicrafts, well-designed community spaces, and a sophisticated vernacular rich in oral traditions and poetry.
For the people of the Nilgiris, history is an oral repertoire of stories belonging to the collective memory - a memory of the commons. One doesn’t need more proof than that to understand that the indigenous way of life was a choice in the face of the obliteration of people and culture by colonialism and its false sense of modernity. It is typically anglocentric narcissism that led the world astray from man’s intuitive connection with nature and also into the dominant culture of competition and envy. It was the constant pressure to adapt to religion, culture, history, art, and literature as per Europe’s standards that has led to massive cultural dysphoria across all former colonies. The European gaze has thus transformed the Nilgiris forever.
Rights to Land
If the transformation remained limited to cultural and architectural curiosities, then I suppose no serious complaints could have been passed because, to his credit, John Sullivan, unlike many of his colleagues in the company, advocated for the indigenous people of the Nilgiris to have complete autonomy over their land. Much to the dismay of his seniors and subordinates, he did love the land and the people as his own. However, this blue valley of serenity and abundance was not where he was destined to grow old. In 1838, struck by personal tragedy, Sullivan, after decades of calling Nilgiris his home, left the wild country in the hands of his fellow officers and departed for his English countryside life, never to return. At St. Stephen's Cathedral, Ooty, stands an ageless gravestone of his wife, Henrietta Cecilia, and his daughter, Harriet Anne, who remain at rest in the womb of Nilgiris.
Sullivan was a massive thorn on the side of the Madras presidency. The government wanted to establish complete sovereignty over the land, but Sullivan adamantly resisted and continued his own administrative style while supporting Toda proprietary rights. He contested that they were the individuals with the longest history of inhabiting the hills, thereby inheriting rights to the land on the plateau. In 1828, the government addressed the dispute by establishing that land transactions could occur under government supervision, using the same rate as Sullivan did when purchasing his lands from the Todas in 1819. The government argued that sovereign rule took precedence over the claims asserted by the Toda community. Soon after Sullivan resigned from his post as Collector, the government started exerting its absolute control over the Nilgiris and its people.
In addition to the stealth of land and resources of the people of Nilgiris, there is yet another problem with this story of sovereign control. Only the Toda pastoral community received all the attention and validation of being the people of Nilgiris by the early European ethnographers and anthropologists. Their tall physical stature, evolved marriage systems, and 'Roman nose' led some administrators like Sullivan to believe that their ancestral rights to the land needed to be respected.
The earlier reports suggested a narrative of the Todas to be distinctively different and superior. However, there is no proof that the Todas themselves have ever asserted their superiority in any aspect of existence, including their sovereignty over the entirety of the Nilgiris. In fact, as far as the basic demographics of the Niligiris are concerned, the majority of the population are the agriculturist Badagas.
In the Toda worldview, there was no such concept as 'property.' The understanding of land was established through the annual exchange of gifts or oral agreements; there was no written demarcation and documentation of private land that any of these people practiced. The lack of recognition of other communities in the Nilgiris—Badaga, Kota, Irula, and Kurumba—created inherent systems of discrimination and denied their right to land. These excluded communities were largely represented as the 'hill tribe' in the colonial administration's vocabulary.
Terraforming
The Shola-grassland mosaics in southern India represent bi-phasic Pleistocene remnants that have naturally endured for over 20,000 years. However, the colonial administration had a different opinion when they first encountered the shola-grassland mosaic ecosystem. Unlike other forest ecosystems of the subcontinent, the timber growth of this region was inadequate for trade. Hence, the prospect of economic profitability in the region seemed low. It was quickly assumed that deliberate fires for agriculture and overgrazing by the people of the hills had led to this depletion of the forest ecosystem.
This assumption was absurd because the Nilgiris was a vast montane ecosystem, and the empty terraces were spread across thousands of acres of unleveled hills, while the people of Nilgiris were a small population of a few thousand who lived in close-knit communities. It seemed impossible that such widespread destruction could have been caused by such sparsely populated and self-sufficient communities. At best, this narrative seemed like a sorry excuse to take control of the ecosystem of the hills to investigate and experiment with its potential for profitability.
On a much sinister note, this narrative was built to push the people of Nilgiris to lose connection with their land, thus destroying their self-sustained web of life. Based on the narrative that the land was degraded due to overgrazing and agricultural fires, eventually, a massive revival program ensued to 'restore' the grassland into a dense timber-abundant paradise. The entire theory was based on the denial of any possible alternate truth. It was thus part colonial ignorance and part arrogance that led to the systemic forced plantation of the Niligiris grassland and later deforestation of the naturally occurring and ecologically unique Shola forests. These plantation experiments were driven by cultural perceptions rather than ecological truth and eventually caused long-term and negative changes to these diverse ecosystems.
Upon discovery, the Nilgiris were perceived as extensive wastelands, destined for replanting and restoration to make them habitable and resource-rich for early settlers seeking refuge from the sweltering heat of the mainlands. This practice of reshaping ecosystems to suit colonial tastes and benefits is a recurring theme throughout the planet's colonial history. In his groundbreaking book, "The Nutmeg’s Curse" (thanks to the suggestion of
and ), avant-garde author Amitav Ghosh borrows the concept of ‘terraforming’ from H.G. Wells’s "War of the Worlds" and juxtaposes it against the colonial subjugation of newly discovered ecosystems. Ghosh describes it as an 'extrapolation from colonial history', where the European colony is often aimed to be transformed into a ‘Neo-Europe’.With the increasing rate of settlement, fuelwood became sparse and essentially reliant on the shola patches. However, the government distrusted the people of the Nilgiris with the care of the already sparse local Shola forest because they were thought to be the real source of the trouble. Many deforestation acts were passed, and the felling of shola trees and grazing were made illegal without a written permit from the Governor-General. To counter the demand of the settlers, the government brought in fuelwood vendors from the towns below, but the cost of transportation and high supply skyrocketed the fuel price, much to the settlers' dismay.
To exercise greater economic controls, the government started its timber plantation project on the grassland by constructing a state-run nursery of both local shola and exotic invasive species. The germinated sprouts were then planted in the acres of expansive grasslands. It remains, to date, the most spectacular failure in the history of colonial forestry. The winter frost erased any chance of propagation by killing the shola seedlings in a matter of days. However, some of the exotic species like Eucalyptus, Pine, Birch, and Fir survived, forever changing the layered underground water tables and soil structure of the Nilgiris, for the worse.
Between the period of 1861 to 1875, the government was under a lot of pressure to make the Nilgiris yield economically. They dug their claws deeper with the expansion of both fuelwood plantations and diversified into commercial crops like private plantations of tea, coffee, and cinchona. To encourage plantation development, the Colonial government leased extensive forest and grassland areas to private planters. Despite this, planters showed a distinct preference for shola areas over grasslands when selecting sites for their plantations.
The government, foreseeing the growth of these plantations, actively supported the sale of land to potential plantation owners. However, the fearless and ageless agriculturalist Badaga people made it difficult by creating legal hurdles to selling the land. This was done under the clause of ‘grazing pattah’: a land tenure system in place for indigenous communities, wherein the state government permitted hill cultivators to occupy land near their settlements at a rate of one-quarter of the ordinary land acquisition rate.
Although the local communities resisted strenuously against the colonial demands on their land, the eventual success of tea in the Nilgiris reduced them to the role of plantation workers due to the loss of ownership and, consequently, their ancestral occupations as grazers, agriculturalists, or hunters. Eventually, working on plantation land became a regular occupation for most people of Nilgiris, causing a significant loss of cultural and social identity.
Even in its unique narrative, the Nilgiris and its people share a common tale of suffering everlasting consequences of misjudgments and incessant economic demands of the colonial government. Looking back at the Nilgiris story, one can say with conviction that both the human and non-human have suffered under colonial adamance and subjugation. What were once charming forest-grassland mosaics are now dominated by invasive alien tree species. The endemic population of the Nilgiris Tahr drastically declined due to the loss of its grassland habitat. Many grassland orchids were declared endangered by the end of the Raj. The underground water table is permanently skewed, causing extensive landslides during the monsoon and drought during summers to this day. And the indigenous communities endured the greatest of all losses - of land on which their livelihood relied and of identity, which was interlaced with their ecosystem. The once proud people and guardians of the extensive shola-grassland mosaics were eventually reduced to the status of forced laborers in the tea plantations.
A deeper criticism of colonialism is not just a denouncement of the Western way of shaping and influencing modern life; it is a call for alternative ways of living. It is an expression of yearning for what could have been if our history had not been disrupted by gunpowder and coercion. It represents the irrevocable loss of creation myths, ideologies, and diverse realities that might have intersected with modernism and technology to create a fairer world. A world guided towards a more diverse, inclusive path, diverging from the current anglocentric world in which we reside.
History serves as an archived piece of information documenting the past, akin to a rearview mirror allowing subsequent generations to comprehend and analyze the bygone era. It is crucial to bear in mind that the history of the colonial world has predominantly been written by the subjugator, in their language. Consequently, these pages require deconstruction and repositioning, crafting a narrative that rightfully acknowledges the experiences and perspectives of the subjugated, both human and non-human alike. With this desperate letter to a lost world, I rest the case of Nilgiris - a beauty like no other, frozen in time, still awaiting its awakening from the colonial dream.
References:
1. https://sci-hub.se/10.1017/s0026749x16000299; 2. https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.biocon.2018.05.029; 3. https://sci-hub.se/10.2307/20723238
I cannot help but feel nostalgia and also sadness when reading this. Colonial powers have a lot of things in common in the way they treat their colonies, portraying our ancestors as insular and documenting that there was no "culture" before the Europeans came when the indigenous ways have far more wisdom than theirs.
Whew. Honestly it’s hard to read this and not dissociate from the degree of irreparable loss contained in this history. But what if we stayed with it, the grief that threatens to cut us in two and turn our vision of the world inside out? What if out of the grief this history beckons us to, we took the initial steps toward a 1000-year repair? So much will stay with me from this piece, more than I can find words for right now. Thank you for your hard and diligent labor of bearing witness, and inviting us to do the same.