A town known for its sylvan charms
By Romesh Dutt

DHARAMPUR was a decrepit, little hamlet of few thatched huts in the valley area formed by the Kasauli and Barog mountain ranges, before the advent of the British into the hills. It originally formed a part of the Baghat state, which had its capital at Solan. It was ceded to the Patiala State under British duress in 1815.

The records of the Baghat state were burnt in a palace fire in 1962. As such, little is known about the early history of the town except that Rana Duleep Singh, a Baghat ruler, built the Mansa Devi temple on the ridge overlooking the town at the close of the eighteenth century. Known to be intensely religious, the Baghat ruler performed all the rituals due to the deity with meticulous care and regularity. Dharampur was believed to have derived its name from this dharmic bent of mind of its former ruler.

In those days, the hamlet was mainly concentrated around the site from where the Kasauli road takes off. It is currently called Sukki Johri, the name given to a fairly large natural pond that existed at the spot in the early days of the town’s history and, which, according to a popular local legend, went dry after a Brahmin cast a curse on it.

As per this legend, a local chieftain had a quaint system of dispensing justice. Whosoever was found guilty of some offence by him was ordered to pass one night, not in the jail, but in the waters of the pond. Once he handed out such a sentence to a Brahmin at the height of winter. The Brahmin, started his watery ‘sit-in’, looking steadily at the light of a distant lamp that shone in some local person’s hut and by implication, drawing warmth from it. However, at day-break the chieftain and his deputies found that the pond had mysteriously dried up during the night. There was no trace left of the priest, either.

Curse or no curse, the very name Sukki Johri suggests it was once a natural pond which went dry at some point in the distant post. That it must have been the main source of the hamlet’s water supply was borne by the fact that its inhabitants were dependent on the rain water that collected in it for their daily needs. In thosedays, the drying up of the pond only meant that the habitat had fallen on bad days.

Dharampur’s fortunes took a turn for the better from 1860 when the Grand Hindustan-Tibet Cart Road, the initial stretch of which connected Kalka with Shimla, was commissioned. It was called a cart road, as in those days, horse carriage were used for passenger travel and bullock carts for movement of goods. The introduction in Shimla Hills of Karl Benz’ 1884 invention — the motor car — was still over half a century away.

As the 30-km long ascent from Kalka to Dharampur involved a continuous climb from an altitude of 2100 feet to nearly 4864 feet, the beasts of burden got exhausted and had to be changed with a new pair. This lead to adoption of Dharampur as a halting station en route to Shimla which in turn led to a general opening up the local economy.

The town’s growth prospects got a further boost with the Central government’s decision of making Shimla its summer seat in 1864. The annual summer exodus of His Majesty’s Indian Government involved movement of between 15,000 to 20,000 tonnes of official baggage alone.

The movement of that kind of load in those days of non mechanical transport required an organised effort and substantial manpower. After some false starts, two Englishmen set up a pony carriage and bullock cart service between ‘Umballa’ and Shimla, under the name and style of The Mountain Car Company. As the outfit failed to live upto expectations, the government took it over in 1878; renaming it The Government Dawk and Bullock Train Service. This was, perhaps, the first recorded ‘governmentisation’, if not nationalisation, of a private enterprise in India.

An idea of the conditions under which ‘The Train Service’ operated and how these opened up immense opportunities for the local people could be had from the fact that it took, in fair weather, about four hours to cover the distance between Ambala and Kalka. During the monsoons, this could extend up to 14 hours depending upon the fury of the rain and floods in the Ghaggar, which crossed the road a few kilometres ahead of Kalka.

In the absence of a bridge, elephants had to be employed to ford the hill stream, which became highly treacherous during the rains. Sometimes the water levels rose to such heights and currents became so strong that even those giant animals shied away from the waters.

The Service took another seven to eight hours to cover the 100 km long distance between Kalka and Shimla. Even then it was called the best wheeled mail service in the world and the person in charge of its operations, one Daulat Ram, was conferred the title of Rai Bahadur in recognition of his meritorious service.

All this organised road activity brought about a sea-change in the local economy, creating hundreds of jobs, in addition to enabling local farmers gross larger returns from their produce. A further boost was brought about by the commissioning of the Kalka - Shimla Railways in 1903. (The first railway train steamed into Shimla on November 9, 1903).

The geographical location of Dharampur made it an automatic rail head and out agency for Dagshai, Kasauli and Subathu cantonments, all of which were brimming with white soldiers. This in addition to bringing in a sizeable staff of the railwaymen and their families, also brought about a manifold increase in job and business opportunities for the local people.

By this time, the town had come to be known for its sylvan charms and bracing climate, lent to it by its altitude and thick pine forests interspersed here and there with fir and Spanish chestnuts. As it happened, it was also just the time when the English had woken up to the need of sanatoriums for the treatment of tuberculosis. The first such institution was opened at Papworth, near Cambridge in England, in 1908. That institute soon became internationally famous.

The British exhibited remarkable speed in replicating Papworth in India too where the disease had assumed menacing proportions. And what place could lay a better claim to such an institution than Dharampur? The Maharaja of Patiala was soon persuaded to open a sanatorium in 1913. It was named after the then Governor-General, Lord Hardinge, who made a special trip from New Delhi to inaugurate it.

The Hardinge sanatorium was soon followed by the setting up of there similar institutions at nearby Mandodhar (Dr. Nanavati’s), Garkhal (Marwari sanatorium) and at Dharampur (King Edward’s) itself. Unfortunately, the presence of these institutions, however, laudable be the cause pursued by them, turned out to be yet another curse on Dharampur. It came to be known as the town of T.B. patients.

The extent of the scare caused by the town’s association with T.B. could be gauged from the fact that conductors of first class carriages of all trains on the Kalka-Shimla section used to issue warning to passengers asking them to pull down the shutters of their windows as soon as the trains neared Dharampur. It was feared that the very air at Dharampur was thick with T.B. bacilli, coughed up by over 500 patients concentrated in its sanatoriums.

This almost sounded the death knell of the future growth prospects of the town, however due course of time, the conquest of T.B. by the media science, helped Dharampur get rid of the curse. Ironically, some of the very people who had virtually been granted second lives by the town’s sanatoriums set about destroying its beauty and embalming qualities. Taking up the avocation of forest contractors, they ravaged range after range of the very forest that had helped breathe a new life into them.

Even as Dharampur emerged as a flourishing timber market, most of its forest cover vanished, giving the town a barren, forlorn look. It no longer exudes the ‘pine fresh air’ for which it had become famous, once.

After Independence, Dharampur became a part of the erstwhile Pepsu and after its merger with Punjab, it formed part of the Shimla district’s Kandaghat sub division.

In a bid to revive the sagging economy of the town, the Punjab government established a Regional Industrial Training Centre for Girls and a Bamboo and Cane Craft Training centre at Dharampur. A combined phone-cum-Sub Post Office also set up.

In view of the high incidence of venereal diseases in the area, the government also established a V.D. clinic here with help from the World Health Organisation. While no systematic study had been conducted, it was surmised that the return of the soldiers from the two World Wars to the nearby cantonments had a lot to do with the spread of this disease.

The Himachal Government set up an industrial estate and a furniture factory at Dharampur and also provide it with a primary health centre. The centre was set up in a building which was formerly used as a ‘Dak Bungalow’. It was last used in that form by a Rani of the Maharaja of Patiala, who had contracted T.B. and had been brought here for treatment by the specialists of the Hardinge sanatorium.

The Himachal Government applied the much needed healing touch to the local community of a nomadic tribe known as Banjaras. The government not only granted them enough money to settle down in permanent homes but also came out with special plans to enable them to earn their livelihood.

The distinguished persons associated with Dharampur include famous Urdu poet, Jagan Nath Azad. His wife, a T.B. victim, died here. Azad wrote a poem, pouring out his anguish at her demise, amidst the beauty of the pine-forested Dharampur.

Another Urdu poet Sajjad Zaheer, his wife Razia and comrade S.A. Dange and his spouse, Usha, used to spend their summers here as guests of a local celebrity — a hard core Leftist and a ‘Urdu Daan’ — Guru Dutt. Dutt became famous inscribing hundreds of famous Urdu couplets on stones. He exhibited these at Ludhiana in the eighties. His unique work was highly applauded. Noted Punjabi poet, Shiv Kumar Batalvi was also a frequent visitor to the town.

A haven for TB patients

TWENTY lakh people get afflicted by tuberculosis and five lakh die of it in India every year. In other words, one person out of four persons who contracts T.B. succumbs to it every passing minute in our country.

A health official estimates that one out of every 20 Himachalis, either suffers or had suffered at one stage in his or her life, from tuberculosis.

With the exception of the lower belt of Solan district, almost the whole of Himachal Pradesh is virtually a zero industry area. The economy of the state is sustained by horticulture, which is fast-reaching a saturation point for want of additional land and the need to conserve the green cover. Horticulture will cease to be an activity of any consequence, if the present, predominantly small land holdings will be allowed to be further divided with each passing generation, in times to come.

This can be averted only if the lands passes on to one member of the family of the deceased owner and with the rest of the members taking up jobs or getting self employed in profitable ventures. Needless to emphasise that such openings will be hard to come by unless some action plan for the industrialisation of interior areas is formulated and implemented in the right earnest now. Statistics ‘showing industrialisation’ of various districts released by government agencies year after year were merely on paper and ground realities paint a grim picture.

These two factors brought into focus two establishments located in Dharampur. One was the Hardinge T.B. sanatorium and the other was the Purewal Group of Industries in the private sector.

The sanatorium, the first such health care unit in India, was set up in Dharampur in view of its easy accessibility both by rail and road and the presence of thick pine forests in and around it. The pines were believed to be beneficial to T.B. sufferers.

The Dharampur sanatorium had become a household name for T.B. care in the country in the days when the disease was considered to be almost fatal for those who either could not afford the high cost of the then available treatment (One injection alone cost Rs 34 in 1948. The minimum duration of treatment was two years) or were in its advance stage. With the emergence, in the 60s of relatively cheap and highly efficacious antibiotics, enabling even the doctors practising in moffusil areas to cure the disease, a section of the health planners started thinking in terms of closing down the sanatoriums, altogether. Before long the Hardinge sanatorium too started languishing, as its building was not being maintained properly and obsolete equipment was not replaced.

Consequently these institutions started facing neglect. Soon three out of four such establishments at Dharampur — the Marwari, Dr Nanavati’s and King Edward sanatoriums — were closed down.

Thanks to the farsightedness of the present health authorities, and the tireless work done by its present Medical Superintendent, Dr M.K. Jain, this institute has recently been given a face lift.

The kitchen and laboratory sections have not only been renovated but have also been equipped with modern gadgets. The O.P.D. and administrative blocks have been repaired and provided with new hygienic toilets. A regular water supply has been assured with the setting up eight tanks, solar geysers have been installed to provide hot water to the inmates.

Proposals have been submitted for construction of residential quarters and the acquisition of a modern X-ray plant to the authorities concerned. The demand to solve the problem of the shortage of staff, which is acute as of now, is being sympathetically considered.

The indoor patients are being given Direct Observation, Treatment (DOT) under supervision of trained staff. The treatment ensures that no patient misses out the daily intake of medicines.

Dr Jain feels that in the colder zones of the state where the families slept and lived in one room which also served as a kitchen — a practice forced by the need to conserve fuel wood till the end of the winter — there was no way one could dispense with domiciliary treatment.

Institutions like the Hardinge sanatorium will continue to play a prominant role in the recovery of TB patients as long as the problems of living in overcrowded rooms, ignorance, poverty and the high cost of treatment.

In certain types of tuberculosis like the multi-drug resistant one requires medicines that can cost up to Rs 200 per day and have to be continued for two to five years) are not addressed to.

The other problem of setting up viable industrial units in the interior areas can only be tackled by giving priority to manufacture of high value items like watch and electronic components on the pattern of Switzerland.

The Purewal Group of Industries, the manufacturers of Maxima quartz watches, have been exporting watch components to Switzerland for the past several years.

Their basic products — the watch components — are ideally suited for manufacture in the hills, characterised by poor communications and high cost of transport.

This group, which produces over two million watches annually, today employes nearly 1400 people. The factory’s work force comes from places as far as Kakkarhatti, Subathu, Dagshai and even Solan.

— R.D.

The sanitation system is in a mess

CHRONIC shortage of water, lack of sanitation, frequent traffic jams and insufficient health care facilities are some of the most pressing problems of the present-day Dharampur.

The town’s water supply scheme is based on the waters of a hill stream, that flowed by Dagroh village about 4 km away from the town. Thanks to rapid deforestation, the stream, considered perennial only a few years ago, was reduced to a mere trickle and sometimes went totally dry during the two summer months of May and June.

The amount of water available in this stream in these two months is not even sufficient for Dagroh and some other adjoining villages, which enjoyed ancient rights over it and had originally agreed to let the I.P.H. Department to instal a lift pump for the supply of water to the town only on the condition of the villagers continuing to enjoy first rights to the water source. It was understood that the I.P.H. Department would only lift surplus waters.

As a result the villagers did not allow any pumping during the periods of lean flow in the stream which has been forcing the authorities to supply water to the town through tankers for the last three years. This arrangement was no substitute to tap water supplies and was highly inconvenient. The citizens have been clamouring for some permanent solution to this problem for the last several years.

Shortage of water has ruled out the installation of sewerage system. Some house owners have converted their dry latrines into flush ones without constructing tanks. Muck from such latrines is let out into public drains which cause extreme nuisance to neighbours and passersby.

The town’s sanitation is perpetually in a mess. There are only five safai karamcharis for a population of over 5,000. This force amounts to next to nothing in a hill town, large parts of which can never be serviced by mechanised garbage disposal system. Heaps of garbage could be seen lying at street corners. This situation is compounded by unplanned house construction. Many houses do not have any access to the existing public drainage system. Owners of these houses simply let their effluent water spill on to the streets.

Rows upon rows of terraced houses have also been built without taking into consideration the load bearing capacity of the soil. At places householders have not left even a foot of the desired ‘set off’ empty spaces normally provided on grounds of proper hygiene.

Like in most other places in these hills, shops have been concentrated along the National Highway leading to unsavoury congestion and avoidable traffic hazards. The bus and taxi stands too have been located on the National Highway itself. A proposal to shift these has been hanging fire for well over one year.

Over 2,500 vehicles, including heavy ones, pass through the highway daily. Some of these were driven at high speeds, which is highly hazardous for pedestrians. Ever since the setting up of the Ambuja cement plant at Darlaghat in this district a few years back, the intersection of the Subathu road and the National Highway has become a near perpetual centre of traffic jams.

Nobody knows what happened to a proposal for providing "bye-pass road for heavy vehicular traffic to the town, which was mooted some years back.

The railway road once extended from the Subathu road end to the National Highway which helped considerably ease the congestion in the main market of the town. For reasons best known to themselves, the railway authorities have closed this road to traffic Citizens demand that the Railways should re-open this road.

The townsmen had also been pressing for the upgradation of the local primary health centre into a community health centre. The existing P.H.C. neither has the x-ray plant nor any satisfactory pathological laboratory, and has remained without a lady doctor for quite some time now. As the town lies on the National Highway, quite a few accident cases keep on coming to the P.H.C. every now and then. The P.H.C. does not have any emergency ward nor any facilities to deal with such cases speedily simply because the official pattern of such institutions does not provide for these. It’s conversion into a community health centre would solve all these problems besides providing better health care to the citizens.

Citizens have also been complaining of extremely low voltage power supplies to the town for the past several years.

People say that even an earthen oil lamp gives better light than a 100 watt bulb illuminated by the state electricity board’s supply. Students complain that they find it hard to concentrate on their studies at night time under such insufficient lighting conditions.

The townsmen have also been demanding the setting up of a college. This, if granted, would serve a population over 70,000 in villages around Dharampur.

The town lies in close proximity to three cantonments, a Central Research Institute, and five large residential public schools — the Lawrence School of Sanawar, Dagshai Public School, Army Public School, Pine Grove and D.A.V. Public School. There has been a demand for opening up a computerised reservation counter and provision for railway retiring rooms at the local railway station for the convenience of visitors to these institutions and places.

There is an urgent need to pay more attention to the need of bringing the ‘Bangala’ families living on the outskirts of the town into the mainstream. These once nomadic tribal people were rehabilitated by the government with house loans and grants some years ago.

‘Bangalas’ were given to begging, and according to some, even thievery prior to being rehabilitated. Now they have taken to honest and respectable ways of earning their livelihood. Some have also become government servants and taxi drivers and looked fairly prosperous. Sadly, their school-going children continue to be the victims of the typically Indian, home-spun apartheid. Some effort should be made to end this discrimination, at least in schools.

— R.D.