Once the Promised Land

The Anglo Indians and McCluskiegunge

The Portuguese Mestiços had established precedent, when they congregated in Goa though a few remained in little enclaves at Mattanchery at Cochin and Bandra in Bombay. The Moplahs (many claiming Arab descent) attempted to obtain support in creating Moplistan in Malabar but are now well integrated and scattered across Kerala today. The Anglo Indians also tried to establish their new homeland at Whitefield and Lapra (renamed later as Mccluskiegunge) in Bihar. While most people know about Goa and Whitefield, and some have heard about the Moplistan attempt, only a few know the details behind the creation of McCluskiegunge. There have been a few articles, a film and a handful of academic books on the town though. Though the town developed, thrived and declined over time, McClusckie, the person behind its creation is not very well known and usually mentioned in passing, so I thought it a good idea to peruse the story of his effort and spend some time writing about it. McCluskiegunge today is mainly a curiosity and not many people tread the old path leading to that forgotten town off Ranchi, nevertheless I can promise you a short and interesting historic aside.

Till the turn of the 20^th century, Anglo Indians were somewhat comfortably placed, working mainly in the Railways, telephone, schools and telegraph offices and the customs offices at the docks. They were quite well organized and lived in urban settings, though concentrated in certain locales and segregated to a certain extent. The church, schools, charitable organizations and their clubs kept them occupied. As government offices started to recruit more and more Indians, the Anglo Indians started to become more and more anxious about their future in India. After the 1920’s a sense of foreboding was apparent among the British and consequently in the AI community, that a departure date of the English was not too far into the future, as the nationalist movements perked up. Fears of discrimination, unemployment and an uncertain future for their progeny gnawed at their minds incessantly.

As Indianization speeded up, the AI’s pleaded for constitutional protection being a minority without a homeland, living in a nation where neither the British nor the Indian communities accepted them wholeheartedly. The feeling of insecurity and the sense of a lack of identity dogged the AI’s of that period. They had been loyal to the masters, religion and culture, but with the masters leaving, what would happen to them? That they were hardly concerned with or associated with the Indian independence movement was also an issue isolating them from the mainstream.  Ruled by two opposing complexes as McCluskie’s nephew Percevial Damzen observed, that of inferiority to the British and secondly a superiority to the native Indian, the community struggled to get along with changing times. It was under these circumstances that the concept of an AI homeland or AI ‘Mooluk’ were bandied about, and as you can imagine one of the pioneers was M T McCluskie.

Born in 1872, McCluskie was a well to do businessman in Calcutta and a representative of the Anglo Indian community in the Bengal legislative council. Living in a prestigious Park Street residence, he boasted of connections with the ruling British elite.

Around 1930 he had been to Bangalore and toured the profitable orchard run by AT McIssac at Gangenahalli, near Hebbal. Returning to Calcutta, he floated the idea of a scheme where a colony could be formed for the AI’s and appealed for a government grant of land and monetary support, which were straightaway refused by Delhi. He would not drop the idea and then proposed a cooperative in the lines adopted by the Young family at Newllano (previously Stables) near Leesville in LA, USA, (moving from llano Del Rio in CA). The idea of a ‘homeland’ galvanized the community and soon The Colonization society of India or CSI was formed with McCluskie as Chairman. But what he did not contend with was the fact that while the early settlers in America were hard working people regardless of their age, driven by a desire to succeed and create what they started out for, the AI’s McCluskie had been herding were mainly retirees or people close to drawing pensions, desiring only of quiet solitude and a place to peacefully spend their last days, akin to a resort. What McCluskie wanted was to create an independent nation state, one which was truly self-sufficient serviced by a hard working commune.

That McCluskie was dependent on the wealthy AI was clear since he could not obtain grants from the British Government. But naturally, the wealthy AI was advanced in age. That was something McCluskie consciously accepted in order to realize his single minded dream of creating such a homeland with agriculture as its mainstay and self-help as its motto. Whatever said and done, McCluskie had decided that this was the only solution, what with some 800,000 AI’s in limbo as India started to rise up and agitate against the British.

The drive to find a proper locale for the homeland was easier said than done. During the early 1930’s, he approached the administrators of Lahore, Madras, Central provinces, Bombay, Bengal and Assam, with no luck. He tried going to London to ask for allocations, but that also failed. Pendra Road looked like a potential site, but while everything else was right, there was no a good water sources nearby and so he had to give it up. A couple of sites located in Dehra Dun could not be acquired, and with a heavy heart McCluskie realized that no government would help him and that he had to turn to private land owners. He was nearly successful with a place named Palamau near Ranchi, but the registration process was rejected by the government on the basis that the land was unsuitable and secondly because the AI’s were not agriculturists.

It was finally in 1933 that he and his team managed to find and register an area around Lapra (which had a railway station and located in today’s Jharkhand) near Ranchi in Bihar, acquiring it from the Raja of Chota Nagpur, Pratap Odhainath Sahadev. Finally some 10,000 acres were obtained on a perpetual lease across 10 villages in the vicinity. The Damodar River flowed along the north, there was ample space for growth and future acquisition as well as ample grazing land for cattle, sheep, goats and pigs. The other sides also had rivers, there was a rail and road link, the city of Ranchi was nearby (40 miles away). An agriculturist AB Christicole concurred that it was a good place to settle and cultivate. Some 163 members booked about 2250 acres of land in 1934 and by the end of the year it had surged close to 4100 acres and some 430 members. 

As the pioneers drifted in to settle down, the settlers decided to rename Lapra to McCluskiegunge, in gratitude to their benefactor and founder. In 1935, the colony was formally inaugurated and renamed as the pioneers, driven by McCluskie’s encouragement got to the task of making their ‘mooluk’. For three years the colony grew, built amenities and farms, cultivating wheat, groundnuts and potatoes, flourishing as other colonies sprung up around India like Abbot’s Whitefield in Bangalore, Majra in Dehra Dun. There were talks of others such as a prospect in the Andamans, dismaying McCluskie who wanted only one Mooluk for the AI’s. Strangest was the proposal to settle AI’s in Mexico, as Margaret Miles proposed or Papua and New Guinea as suggested by one Mr Ward! What most people may not know is that the settlement at Lapra was originally called Erin’s isle since its shape resembled Ireland! Most called it the Gunge.

But let us get back to the leadership. The dream and the idea of the homeland was mooted and driven forward incessantly by McCluskie. Soon after the inauguration of the homeland in his name, McCluskie the visionary passed away in Dec 1935.

One visitor Mc Gowan wrote in Feb 1934 - [McCluskiegunge] is like a beautiful dream, everything your own and in a lovely spot with no dogmatic treatment and no dread of the sack, and, above all, no streets and drains for latrines and spittoons, no dirty leaves, waste paper and mud chatties to be served in and to trample on of an evening walk, and, lo, no ... Dewalies, ...riots, and any fear of Dacoities and Bomb throwing. It would be just splendid: Farming, Commerce, and Industry, Dance Halls and Picture Houses for the money-maker…………….

As the community grew, there were record stores, cosmetics shops, we had a bakery, a butchery, a cobbler. The inhabitants would go on picnics and shoots, hunt wild boar and deer.  While the arms magistrate used to go from Ranchi to renew gun licenses because there were so many guns in McCluskiegange. They say it was a very sociable place in those days, where dances were held, stage plays and fancy dress parties organized while the staid played housie or bingo. Colonial bungalows and smart little houses with gardens dotted the landscape. It had thick forests around and streams flowing. People mentioned that it was like a mini England, a Chota Vilayet.

There were other minor problems, such as when Christians (of Portuguese origin from Goa), tried to move to McCluskiegange and the settlers complained of the menace of intrusions of outsiders posing as Anglo-Indians. But it held on and in May 1938, Gidney described McCluskiegunge as ‘A home for Anglo-Indians under the sun of India, their motherland, an effort at self-help which will command the respect and admiration of our compatriots, a colony worthy of the traditions of our forefathers, a concrete evidence of our affection for the land of our birth, a memory to the blood of our mothers and grandmothers which runs in our veins.’

Water which was in theory available all over, was actually a huge problem and we can find that no administrator or engineer worked out a decent solution for it showing a lack of initiative or insight with digging deeper wells and getting water up from a low water table. The Anglo Indian in Lapra was nether good at tilling the land nor commercially savvy and soon Bania shops and local labor took over the commerce and labor, setting to rest the idea of a self-driven, self-helping colony. Soon the settlers were driven by petty behavior, jealousy, non-cooperation and meanness. The complacent and somewhat isolated or marooned pioneers of Chota Bilayet or mini England were prey to all kinds of manmade and other types of problems.

By 1940 the bubble had burst and with a lack of leadership, increasing overheads and no light at the end of the dark tunnel, properties started going up for sale and settlers planned departure to far away destinations. In what way was McCluskie himself responsible for its failure? One classic reason stated is that he himself never left the comforts of Calcutta and settled down in Lapra. Other community leaders also stayed put in Calcutta and they all talked about their orphan child Lapra, from far away. Was it not a recipe for failure?

Two other factors can be attributed to the failure of a rebound by the fledgling colony. One was the Second World War and the second was the drive for Indian independence and its realization in 1947. Most of the Anglo Indians succumbed to the first of the complexes, insecurity and fled to Australia, Canada and England. It is not right of course to lay all the blame on the fleeing AI, for the native Indian was also to blame, for not giving them a welcome, albeit wholeheartedly. The Indian complained that the fleeing AI did not think themselves as Indians in the first place, so why should they have any fondness for them? There were other reasons, the resurgence and concentration of Maoists in nearby villages, not to forget the collapse of the Colonization Society of India in 1955 and the drift of its youth to other locales.

Sadly, the colony declined rapidly through the post-independence years and is a relic of what it once was with not much left of the dream of its founder. It is today a destination for a certain kind of tourist while remaining Anglo Indian descendants do not take kindly to prying eyes, fed up with articles detailing its failures and glorifying its past. But it is what it is and unless a new generation of AI descendants come back to refurbish it, the ‘mooluk’ or Chota Bilayet would crumble away to remain only in articles. The town itself is not dead nor one which has to die, it just needs fresh leadership and a new objective and a different kind of entrepreneurship drive to keep it going.

As the 1990’s approached, we saw that most dwellers had left and the population finally dwindled to some 50 residents. But a savior came by. Alfred George deRozario, an Anglo Indian (and his wife Dorothy), pained by the plight of the settlement established the Don Bosco Academy in April 1997. It soon became a prestigious institution and today boasts a school with classes upto the 10^th and strength of more than 1,300,The Don Bosco School did provide an opportunity to the old timers who converted their homes as hostels for students, but I think all agree that it not surely a permanent solution.

The persona of McCluskie other than being a founder of the colony in Lapra is not clear to many people, so let me tell you what I could unearth. Ernest Timothy was the son of an Irish father and an Indian mother. According to a contemporary and writer Harry Hobbs, McCluskie used to work as a tie fitter in an outfitters shop and once won a lottery with which he set himself up as a land agent and worked his way to success. I think his home was once at 5 Park Street which is today location of the Park hotel. Kunta Lahiri mentions that it was 22 Park Street in which case it is the home to a shop called twigs and Tales as well as a medical center! McCluskie is generally described as having been a successful real estate house broker and land agent in Calcutta and his first claim to fame was the printing of the  ‘The Calcutta directory and guide” in 1906. In 1907 he complied and released the McCluskie's Indian Directory & Guide. Commercial & Official. While McCluskie did create the Gunge, he was not part of it for long. Though not often mentioned, he visited the Gunge just once! Perhaps it was due to his failing health. The Statesman headlined his obituary calling him 'A Great Leader and a Worthy Citizen', which was perhaps just right. Other than this little amount of information, nothing else has been put to words or published, to my limited knowledge.

In the opening pages of Vikas Kumar’s novel, Denis McCGone is wistful – He is infuriated with his wife who is upset with Denis always thinking of his homeland and McCluskieGunge. He retorts Hell…? Lisa, in this naughty world, the connectedness with one’s soil, the sense of our own roots, is really felicitating. Each and everything is fallacious in this prosy life. But the root always steers the life, it can’t die easily. I know I have to carry the weight of a fool, you can’t understand Lisa, the pull of the rootless people…..

As Lord Irvin said, ‘God made British and God made Indians, but we made the Anglo Indian’. It is as Jha explains, the AI is a paradox, neither British nor Indian, neither fair nor dark, they ate not just English dishes, but loved the ladoos, and they were like the veritable Indian coconut, brown outside, white inside. McCluskiegunge is still the only place AI’s can continue to claim as a homeland, so someday somebody will come back, as they say, it is still a leftover of a dream for independence.

Post-independence, it was not uncommon to see Anglo Indian secretaries in most large offices, and perhaps men found more competition at the work place. But this was not applicable to every Anglo Indian. A huge number of them lived, remained and thrived in post-independence India. A classic case is that of Cyril Stacey an INA colonel, whom I had written about earlier. There are so many more and I have come across and knew a few in Madras and Bombay. In hindsight, one can always say that fears are fears and they tend to grow until one is forced to act, only to realize much later that it was perhaps not so bad, after all. Do the Anglo Indians scattered across the globe think so? Maybe, maybe not!

The story of Bangalore’s Whitefield is equally interesting and I will get to some of it someday, and probe into that oft mentioned juicy rumor of Churchill’s visit and trysts with a certain Rose Hamilton at the Waverly Inn.

References

In search of a homeland – The Anglo Indians and McCluskiegange – Kuntala Lahiri Dutt (1990)

Domicile and Diaspora – Alison Blunt

Anglo Indians and minority politics in South Asia – U E Charlton-Stevens

McClusckieGunge – A novel by Vikas Kumar Jha

A lovely ode to the Gunge by Usha Utup  with reworded ‘what a wonderful world’

Note: Most people today spell McCluskiegunge as McCluskieganj, perhaps for convenience. The former is the spelling used by the founders. It was sometimes referred to as Gunge in correspondence. Lapra is still valid, but largely forgotten. 

I am obliged to Kuntala Lahiri and Alison Blunt for the original work which forms the backbone of this summary and count myself lucky for having had the opportunity to access and read their theses.

Anglo Indian memories

COLONEL CYRIL J STRACEY - I.N.A – A REMARKABLE MAN 

Pics

McCluskie plaque courtesy Soumyendu

ET McCluskie pic courtesy Malcolm Hourigan