South Asia: Creating Dilemmas of Diversity - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 172

THE RAJ
Under British government control, social reforms were
abandoned and attention was given to maintaining the
status quo. The army was reorganized under British offi-
cers. The British legal system was introduced, and the
Indian Civil Service was formed. This initiated the
cumbersome bureaucracy that, like the road and railway
system, would tie the country together. In all of this,
Indians were deliberately excluded from positions of
power. The country was measured, cataloged, mapped,
organized, and centralized. The Grand T Trunk Road
stretched more than a thousand miles between Calcutta
in Bengal and Peshawar near the Afghan border.
In 1877, Queen Victoria was declared Empress of
India, and her representative in India became the viceroy .
New treaties offering varying degrees of autonomy were
made with the various princely states. There were more
than 500 of these native states, occupying nearly 40 percent
of the landmass. Larger states such Hyderabad, Punjab,
Bengal, and Assam had governors or commissioners
who reported directly to the viceroy . Smaller states had
advisors. But these political alliances with their incum-
bent privileges contributed to even greater division of
this already deeply divided region.
The British avoided contact with their subjects. New
towns, suburbs, and military stations were built across
India. In cities, military cantonments and civilian districts
known as civil lines were spatially and socially separate en-
tities, complete with their own accommodations and serv-
ices. These British mini-worlds in the lowlands had their
counterparts in the highlands: hill stations (Figure 6-14).

Hill Stations

Hill stations are mountain-amenity landscapes
offering opportunities for rest and recreation at
relatively cool elevations of 5,000 to 7,000 feet
(1,500-2,200 m). They existed throughout the
colonial world and remain important centers of
commerce and tourism in many parts of Asia.
In India, hill stations were of great significance,
and not just as social, economic, and political
centers for Europeans. They symbolized the
paramountcy of the Raj and revealed prevailing
attitudes of nineteenth-century Europe: racism
based on beliefs grounded in environmental
determinism.
At that time, it was believed that white people
could not withstand the rigors of torrid, foreign
lowlands for extended periods. The combined on-
slaught of heat, dust, and “natives” would surely
damage European sensibilities and possibly cause
offspring to be less than normal. It was essential
that Europeans be restored in more familiar, tem-
perate climes. As one Englishman remarked, “like
meat, we keep better there.”
Hill stations have been described as “island(s)
of British atmosphere hung above the Indian
plains,” and “comforting little piece(s) of England.”
At the highest location, a protective nest of Euro-
pean architecture, trees, plants, and parks im-
planted British ideals of restorative havens,

Figure 6-14
Clinging to the mountainside is the hill station of
Simla, founded by the British in 1819. Simla
served as the summer capital from 1865 to 1939.
It was much cooler than either Calcutta or Delhi.
All government materials were hauled by train
and caravan from Calcutta (Delhi after 1912)
each year . Photograph courtesy of B. A. Weightman.