The Mahatma in Mussoorie

- By Surbhi Agarwal*

Extensive research in recent years helped Surbhi Agarwal discover an unlikely sojourn between Mahatma Gandhi and Mussoorie. Here, she presents a brief account of the details she gathered of Gandhi’s trips to ‘The Queen of the Hills’ between the 1920s-40s.

In my school-days, preparations for the August 15 Independence Day celebrations would begin a month earlier. July would mean that our school would start preparing with national songs, cultural programmes, and more. Years later, on one such July in 2015, I began to wonder what the freedom struggle meant to Mussoorie, my hometown in the Himalayan foothills.

I remembered my grandmother mentioning Mahatma Gandhi’s visit to Mussoorie, and how she and the other women of the family had collectively gone to see him at the prayer meeting at the grounds of The Sylverton Hotel. Now, this required further delving. Why would Gandhi, a National Congress leader, come to a town that was a stronghold of the British population, when the British were often vehemently against him?

The questions increased and the mystery deepened. This was followed by many restless days, and a lot of online research.

I decided to interview a few noted senior-citizens of the town. Alas, even these visits gave no clarity. Some said that there was no possibility of a freedom struggle in Mussoorie, as this was a British town where people primarily came for fun and frolic. Some only knew that Gandhi had visited Mussoorie, but his reasons for doing so were still unknown.

None of the published Mussoorie history books had any records of the national movement and the freedom struggle in town. It wasn’t possible to find much more than brief write-ups of Gandhi’s visit(s).

So, I decided to visit the Uttarakhand State Archives Department. Here, a newly set-up archive centre had been formed after the statehood of Uttarakhand (from Uttar Pradesh) in 2000, as a necessity for the new state records. The address led me in the middle of rice paddy fields. After many wrong entries and turns we finally found the road to the department building, built in the middle of nowhere.

The Archives Department is housed in a typical government-style two-storey building. In its library, I found some old newspapers and magazines published before 1947 in Garhwal, Dehradun, and the nearby region. These spoke of the national leaders from Garhwal and also about the then-current happenings around the state and country. But none mentioned Mahatma Gandhi’s Mussoorie visits, or of any other leaders or activists from Mussoorie region.

I returned to Mussoorie empty-handed.

Next, I decided to look into the Mussoorie Nagar Palika/Municipal Board records. In the course of some online browsing, I had come across a few sites which had records of Mahatma Gandhi’s daily activities, meetings, visits, travels etc. Here I found that his first visit to Mussoorie had actually been in 1929. Hence, I thought of looking up more of this date at the Nagar Palika with due permissions.

The 1929 Municipal Board comprised mainly of British members, and thus, there was much resistance to Gandhi in Mussoorie. Initially, due to various fears, the permissions for Gandhi’s visit were not granted. However, with the interference of a few prominent Indians, the Municipal Board agreed, and Gandhi did arrive in Mussoorie in 1929 as part of his Uttar Pradesh tour.

In order to extract more details of this tour, I decided to delve into the collection of the public Library of Mussoorie: The Tilak Memorial Library. This library was specifically for the Indian community, and thus, has been stocked with a good collection of 19th and 20th century Indian writers, including large collections on the national movement and our national leaders.

I could finally piece together the puzzle! Here, I found the collection on the life events of Mahatma Gandhi with his travels, speeches, correspondence, etc.

1929

Mohandas ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi’s first Mussoorie visit was on October 17, 1929. He spent the morning of 16-17 in Dehradun, where he lay the foundation stone of the Shradhanand Abla Ashram. This followed with a spinning competition held at the Kanya Gurukul, and he also planted a tree in the memory of Keshav Dev Shastri in Rajpur.

He travelled with his wife Kasturba Gandhi and Mira Behn. In those days, motor transport to Mussoorie only came up to the Bhatta village. Gandhi went from Dehradun to Bhatta in a motor car, and from Bhatta, walked about six kilometres ascent to Mussoorie. Already, there was a massive crowd to greet him near The Library, one of the major touchstones of the town on the Mall Road. Much against his wishes, he was put in a hand-pulled rickshaw and taken to the Birla House, where he was accommodated, in Happy Valley.

The next day (October 18) he was invited to address European Municipal Councillors. Records state that Gandhi, in his address, said, “That the poor coolies without whom the existence of the British in a town like Mussoorie was not possible, were so poor. They were barely dressed, lived in hovels, and had atta and salt only to eat”. He stated that it was the responsibility of the Municipal Council to see that these Coolies were given a fixed rate and decent accommodation.

Gandhi then addressed the local community, to whom he expressed painful surprise that the practice of untouchability existed in a town like Mussoorie. He had sent his son Devdas Gandhi in 1926 and had asked him to assess the social situation in the town. During his 1929 visit, Mahatma Gandhi bestirred the only Hindu Temple in town to be open to all castes. After some protests and demonstrations, he succeeded.

In a public function, he addressed women from a European Girls’ College. He said to them that they must help the poor by adopting khadi (handspun cotton) and help in the total alcohol prohibition movement. They must urge men to do their duty towards the Indian labour.

Gandhi’s stay in Mussoorie was till October 24. In those seven days, he held numerous prayer meetings, initially in Happy Valley, but as many people could not come so far, he began to hold these meetings at the Sylverton near the Picture Palace area.

Soon after this first visit, he went on to the Lahore Congress, where he would propose the Swaraj.

Visits after 1929

Gandhi’s 1929 visit was primarily for the work of Congress. He followed this with a quick visit to our town in 1935, when he again addressed the Mussoorie public on the Congress’s work.

Gandhi’s third and final visit to Mussoorie was in May 1946. The ‘Quit India’ Movement on 1942-1944 had led to Gandhi being jailed. In 1944, his wife Kasturba Gandhi had also passed away. At 76 and in poor health, the Mahatma had been advised to spend a few days in a hill-station, and he chose Mussoorie.

He reached Mussoorie on May 28, 1946, and, as earlier, stayed at the Birla House in Happy Valley. From May 29 to June 8, he regularly addressed prayer meetings at the Sylverton, where he emphasised various issues such as building dharamshalas for the poor, the misery of rickshaw coolies, the need for better sanitation for the labourers, and more. He mentioned his frail health, and that he was not addressing them as a Congress worker, but as a common fellow Indian. “Mussoorie, like other hill stations, is only for the rich and not for the poor,” he said. It saddened him to be carried by the rickshaw puller, as he thought that no healthy human being should impose such hardship on a fellow human.

He left Mussoorie on June 8. Soon after, he wrote an article about his time in Mussoorie for the Harijan Sevak, a weekly newspaper that he had founded.

In the knowledge I gathered while researching the Mahatma’s sojourns to the ‘Queen of the Hills’, I also discovered that Gandhi came to Mussoorie on the invitation of his close friend and known freedom fighter, Abbas Tyabji, who had shifted to Mussoorie in early 1920’s, was fondly called ‘Chhota Gandhi’ (Little Gandhi).

Eventually, a Gandhi Dwar (doorway) and a statue of Mahatma Gandhi was installed near The Library Bazaar.

Gandhi then addressed the local community, to whom he expressed painful surprise that the practice of untouchability existed in a town like Mussoorie. During his 1929 visit, Mahatma Gandhi bestirred the only Hindu Temple in town to be open to all castes. After some protests and demonstrations, he succeeded.

It is well-known that the freedom movement of the Uttarakhand state was inspired by Gandhi’s visits, as was Uttarakhand’s Chipko movement. Gandhi continuously reprimanded the British to pay fair wages and to better the lot of the coolies and the rickshaw pullers in the region. This eventually led to the abolition of the hand-pulled rickshaws in Mussoorie in the 1980s by the Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy. The allotment of shops or cycle rickshaws were done for the rickshaw pullers.

In 1929, in his address to the British women, Gandhi had asked for their help to contribute in the abolition of alcohol, which was (and continues to be) a huge menace in the hills. This inspired the women of Uttarakhand to demand the prohibition of alcohol a few years ago, but they achieved little success.

Also noteworthy is that, after his 1946 visit, dharamshalas for the poor were built in Mussoorie, and the rickshaw pullers were given fixed rates and uniforms. His 1929 visit led to the establishment of the first girls’ school for Indian girls, The Sanatan Dharma Girls Inter College, in Mussoorie. And of course, we cannot forget that his 1929 visit had opened the temple doors for lower castes in a step against caste discrimination in the town.

From October 2018 onwards, the information gathered above was curated in a form of an exhibition of photographs, artifacts, and documents at the Mussoorie Heritage Centre. This exhibition was replicated for students of the Woodstock School as part of their celebration of Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th Birth Anniversary in October 2019. Heritage Walks tracing Gandhi’s footsteps in Mussoorie have been conducted, and various presentations and talks have been held on the above theme. Gandhi experts like Anil Nauriya and Pawan Gupta were invited to give more details on Mahatma Gandhi’s Mussoorie visits at a talk held at the Mussoorie Nagar Palika.

Courtesy: This article has been adapted from The Chakkar

* Surbhi Agarwal, is an Independent Art and History Researcher, Curator, Designer, Collector, Social Entrepreneur, Social Activist, and Environmentalist. She runs the Mussoorie Heritage Centre. You can find her on Instagram at: @mussoorieheritagecentre.