The Pioneers of the
High Ranges (Munnar)
The British Raj in India has left an indelible imprint in the history of India. After the transference of power from Britain to India, the Europeans started their journey back to their homeland. The 1924 flood had adversely affected life at the High Range. Finlay Muir & Co. took over the Kannan Devan Company. Later in 1964, Tata Group joined and Tata-Finlay Ltd. was launched in 1983. In 2005 the Company was renamed the Kannan Devan Hills Produce Company Pvt. Ltd. For those who spent their early years in the British Company, much of the glory seems to have departed. However, since the latter half of the 20th-century Tourism Industry has been drawing sustenance from the charm and uniqueness of the place. I have already written that Appachen had great respect for the British Managers, whether you call it his subservient approach to them or not. He used to tell us that he got due or even more consideration from them. We haven’t even heard him say about any kind of ill-treatment from their part extended to the coolies either. By and large, they were gentle and peace-loving. There were even times, my father told us, when they showed great concern about his financial constraints in meeting the responsibilities of his siblings and his own family, and helped him with the needed money.
As far as I am concerned, I remember only the fag end of the British Raj (in fact, I had no idea of the Raj at that age), as I was born in the post-independent India. All my knowledge about the British in India comes from my classes in Social Studies in my school and British History in my college days. Anyway, I have heard only good reports of the British from my father, elder brothers and sisters, as they got more chances of interaction with them, however brief in each case it would be.
My father was a good footballer and he used to play football with the English Managers. What I learned in later years of E.M.Forster’s A Passage to India, as “East is East and West is West, and the never the twain shall meet” was beyond my imagination, quite unbelievable. People nowadays speak disparagingly of the racial spirit of the British, but it had never happened in our experience. What do you find in our so-called democratic country? Divisions and segregations based on caste, creed, and religion, and even class! What right do we have to talk contemptuously of the racial segregation of the White against the natives? Why should we maintain our hatred towards them on the question of colonialism? Had we had their opportunities, would not we have done the same thing in the same manner or sometimes even in the worse manner? Once I asked my friend who lives in England whether they wouldn’t experience racism there. Her reply was quick to come, “Don’t we have it in India?” What she meant was the kind of discrimination we still ‘entertain’ in India.
“In 1978, the High Range will celebrate its commercial centenary and perhaps some enterprising planters will light a bonfire on the peak of Aneimudi…….If they do, shades of John Daniel Munro and the Turner Brothers will certainly be there—and perhaps the old Baron himself. We hope they will have it in their hearts to say with the truth, “Well done”, good and faithful servants–” W.S.S. Mackay’s words were quoted in the book titled, Facets of a Hundred Years of Planting published by Tata-Finlay Limited.
There was a time when people considered the Nilgiris as the centre of tea in South India. They did not have much idea about the High Range in Kerala that produced the largest quantity of tea in India. Moreover, as it was written by S.K.Mehera, Managing Director of Tata-Finlay Limited, in his Foreword in the book Facets of a Hundred Years Planting, “it is an area where God, when He created the world, was magnanimous in His bestowal of favours and the sheer natural beauty of the High Range is alone reason for those who do not know it to acquaint themselves of its existence and to go and see it.”
Despite the commercial interest of the Britishers in the High Range, the place was a home away from their home in England. In landscape and climate, the region resembled their native place. They found that there was a particular enigma attached to the place of natural beauty. A fact worthy to be mentioned is that they had taken additional care to preserve and nurture the flora and fauna of the High Range.
Several generations of both the British and the Indians, great and small had contributed in ample measures in the making of the High Range. “We marvel at the hard work and the mettle they all worked with. There were both known and unknown figures among them worthy to be called the pioneers of the Tea plantation.“The State Manual of Travancore, 1940, describes the High Range in South India like this:
“Fifty years ago(1890) these lands were practically unexplored regions covered by thick, fever-haunted forests, the abode of elephants, tigers, bison, and leopards, having no means of communication.” The first European to visit the Kannan Devan Hills was the Duke of Wellington. In 1790, General Meadows sent Col. Arthur Wellesley with a small force to lie in wait at the Kumali gap, the only possible means of escape for Tipu Sultan who had been devastating the lines of Travancore. But when Wellesley reached the Cumbum Valley, he got orders to return as Tipu had diverted his way on knowing their plans. Wellesley decided to return through the Cardamom hills. He first reached Bodinayakanur and with great difficulty, marched up a cattle track to the Surianalle Valley. He reached a level bit of ground with a small pond in the middle of it. The climate was enchanting. He and his little army felt that it was ‘a capital place for a permanent fort.’ They subsisted on Ibex which was plentiful in those days and so tame as to be stuck with a bayonet. The work of the entrenchment for the fort had scarcely commenced at the present Devamallay by the great Duke of Wellington when Wellesley was called back.
In 1862, General Douglas Hamilton was sent to these hills to discover suitable convalescence stations for troops and his report on the High Range is remarkably accurate. He climbed the Aneimudi Peak, highest in India, and gave a beautiful description of the terrain: “surpassingly grand and incomparably beautiful. The views from this mountain are the grandest and most extensive, I have ever beheld; some of the precipices are of stupendous magnitude, and the charming variety of the scenery, comprising undulating grassy hills, wooded valleys, rocky cages, overhanging precipices, the green fields in the valley of Unjanaad with the grand mass of the Pulnees beyond, and the blue Ranges in the far distance, present a view far beyond my power to describe and which must be seen to be appreciated.”
“The Kannan Devan Hills tract had been confirmed as Travancore territory and was owned by the Poonjar Chiefs, Rajas of Travancore. John Daniel Munro of Peermade was an Officer of the Independent Kingdom of Travancore and designated Superintendent of the Cardamom Hills. His interest in Shikar had led him into these remote mountain regions. He got the first and later the second Pooniat Concession from the Poonjar Raja on payment of the sum of Rs.5000/-as lease and annual security of Rs.3000/-for an area comprising 227 square miles. In 1878, H.Gribble Turner of the Madras Civil Service and his half-brother A.W.Turner, who were on a long vacation, explored the regions. In 1879, the North Travancore Land Planting and Agricultural Society was founded and the two Pooniat Concessions were conveyed to this Society.
On his return to Madras in 1878, H.G.Turner began to offer land for cultivation while A.W.Turner harnessed a nucleus labour force from the Tamil low country and returned to the High Range to begin clearing the jungle for a cinchona plantation under Devimallay. Transportation was extremely difficult. Supplies of food and other essential commodities had to be brought from Bodimettu which was then the only accessible entrance to the district. Journeying and transportation were difficult in the interior parts. The things had to be head-loaded during the last lap. As there was always a shortage of food, the planters had to go into the jungle “shooting to secure something for the pot.”
They (the pioneers)were men of great character and determination. Investing what capital they could in a highly speculative undertaking, they faced the possibility of living in isolation for years with complete equanimity.
The health issues were a matter of deep concern. Mrs.Knight’s death of cholera and Mr.Aff. Martin’s son’s, death resulting from a fall from a pony, cast a gloom on the district. Each planter had his own medicine chest and had himself to doctor his coolies with only Doctor Short’s old book on Medicine in India to help him. An apothecary was employed in 1890 to visit each estate once a month unless specially called for. An extract from an interesting article by one of the pioneer planters in “The Madras Mail”, April 8, 1892, reads thus: “Pleasure and profit attend a settler in these altitudes. Where the delicious climate, pure water, and healthy life really make life worth living; where a man can rear his family and make unto himself a home to last for his life and for his sons’ lives, where he can grow cinchona and tea….”
Nostalgic memories flooded my mind when I read an article on a European couple in the Malayala Manorama Sunday Supplement by S.V.Rajesh (Dec.22, 2019). I was inspired to write a poem on it and I’ve inserted it here.
