The Raja of Harsil: The Legend of Frederick "Pahari Wilson"

Robert Hutchison

• Publisher: Roli Books
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9789351940920
• eBook ISBN: 9789351940920
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: History

A young British officer deserted during the First Afghan War (1839-42) and went to ground in the wilds of Tehri-Garhwal. Frederick 'Pahari'Wilson changed the face of the region forever and became a Himalayan legend. He played a daring role in the Great Game, was witness to the Anglo-Sikh War of 1845 - when the British nearly lost India - and became a pioneering force in the great Indian Railways adventure. Capturing the humour of the petty world of officers'clubs in Meerut, Mussoorie and Shimla, the chill of stiff winds on the high passes into Tibet, and the hardships of life in the remote valleys of Garhwal, The Raja of Harsil is a thrilling account of that tumultuous and exciting period. Driven by personal ambition, Frederick Wilson introduced commercial timbering to the Himalayas and became India's first timber magnate. An avid hunter, ornithologist and botanist, he settled at Harsil, near the source of the Ganges, and shared the lives and destinies of the Garhwali people. He acquired enormous wealth - becoming the richest man in northern India - and famous as the 'raja'of Harsil before falling into disfavour - termed a pariah for plundering Garhwal of its wildlife and natural resources.

Robert Hutchison studied at McGill University in Montreal, Canada and interrupted his studies to travel and begin a career in journalism. A native of Quebec, he has lived in Switzerland for many years. He is fluent in English and French.

From 1961 to 1976, Hutchison was a correspondent for the Sunday and Daily Telegraph of London. He has also contributed articles to The Sunday Times (London) and The Smithsonian (Washington). His photos have appeared in leading publications around the world. He is the author of the following works: Vesco, Off The Books, Juggernaut, In the Tracks of the Yeti and Their Kingdom Come.

When not writing or photographing his favourite pastimes are ski-touring in the Alps and trekking in the Himalayas. While researching a feature article on the Garhwali activist Sunderlal Bahuguna in 1987 he fell in love with India’s Garhwal region and has visited the area many times since. ‘Mussoorie,’ he says, ‘is my second home.’

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For Lucia and Tamara

Contents

Author’s Note

Christmas Eve, 1841

Camel’s Back Road

Lamkot Mountain

The Degchi Brigade

Umar the Terrible

Captain Apsley’s Report

Up the Country

Nasty Business at Jhala

The Ghostmen

The Pradhan and the Pundit

Mungetu Chand

Murder at Chitkul

Mungetu’s Daughter

The Raja’s Golden Bird

A Visit with Cautley

Medical Deception

Mingdoling Monastery

Simla Safe House

Done for Adultery

Tin Wizard

Shaitan’s Folly

Clean Slate

Brass Rupees

The Beau Colonel’s Story

Dance of Illusions

The Red Lion

Monkshood and Mischief

Seeds of War

Talwandi Junction

India’s Waterloo

Himalaya Club

Wilson’s Bundobust

Markham’s ‘Invaluable Companion’

A Visit to Firozpur

The Monkey Takes Leave

Timber Concession Renewed

Pursuing the Ibex

The Vansittart Investigations

Princess Khaneti

Everything will become Red

Wretchedly Worried

Difficult Contract to Make

Rogue’s March

Upholding the Right

Delhi Falls to the Rebels

Organized Thuggery

Devils in the Doon

Profit Transfer

Prosperity Reigns

Selku Mela at Mukhba

Someshwar’s Curse

The Rape

A Hidden Hand

Torrid Nights at the Charleville

The Sink Asks a Favour

The Kalwa Disconnects

Death at Darkot

Ruffled Feathers

Mountaineer’s Farewell

Ungrateful Son

Epilogue

Glossary

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note

Frederick ‘Pahari’ Wilson is a historical figure. He did exist, although his origins are strangely obscure. He passed through the British hill station of Mussoorie for the first time in the early 1840s, but nobody is quite sure precisely when or why. One thing, however, is certain: within his lifetime he became a legend throughout the North-West Provinces of British India. In Garhwal that legend lives to this day, even if Wilson has been forgotten by historians and is totally unknown in his home country.

He claimed to be from a middle-class Yorkshire family and grew up around Wakefield, near Leeds. At various times he described himself as merchant, cragsman, forester or contractor. Others called him a ‘Ranger of the Himalayas’. His life was adventuresome to say the least. Early in his career he was a deserter on the run. He settled at Harsil, a remote village in the Bhagirathi valley near the source of the Ganges. He became a spy who trained other spies to infiltrate the lands to the north. In this context he knew George Hayward, the headstrong young Englishman who in 1870 was murdered in Dardistan while trying to reach the source of the Oxus.

One of the problems in attempting to discover Wilson is that if you speak to any six persons in Tehri-Garhwal today you are likely to get six different versions of his life, all with some concordant facts but all essentially different. We know that he had two wives, both from Harsil’s neighbouring village of Mukhba. The prettier one was Raimatta, who proved unable to bear children. The more enduring one was her aunt, Sungrami, whose nickname was Gulabi. She was two years younger than her niece and bore Wilson three sons: Nathanial, Charles and Henry. The people of Harsil and Mukhba still tell tales about them, using their local names of Natthu, Charli Sahib and Indri.

A few years after settling in Harsil, Wilson petitioned the raja of Tehri-Garhwal, Sudarshan Shah, for an exclusive concession to hunt musk deer in the Garhwal Himalayas. The raja rejected his plea but recognized Wilson as a future source of revenue for the royal coffers. He asked whether the Englishman might desire something else. Wilson requested a timber concession instead. This was granted against an annual payment of Rs 150, later increased to Rs 400 a year. Wilson introduced commercial timbering to the Himalayas and it made him immensely rich, perhaps the richest man in northern India. With timbering he brought progress to a region that had never known a cash economy until he minted his own coin, the Wilson rupee. The local people called him Hulseyn Sahib, Hulseyn being their transliteration for Wilson.

I believe, and my research tends to confirm, that Rudyard Kipling based his short story ‘The Man Who Would Be King’ on Wilson. Kipling supposedly said of the pioneering timber magnate: ‘He lived a life that would have been the envy of kings.’ Indeed, Wilson became known as the ‘Raja of Harsil’. In the villages of Upper Tangnore – the name then used for the Garhwali hill district where Harsil is located – folk ballads are still sung about the infamous exploits of Wilson’s eldest son, Nathanial.

The Kipling connection remains misty. The writer Ben Macintyre claimed that an American adventurer, Josiah Harlan, was Kipling’s inspiration for the would-be king, Daniel Dravot.¹ In Kipling’s short story, Dravot took over a scruffy village in the Afghan mountains, transforming it and the surrounding valleys into an independent hill state. However, when his subjects discovered that the despotic Dravot was not the god they imagined they cast him to his death from a rickety footbridge into the deep gorge below.

It is true that in 1839 Josiah Harlan, a deserter from the East India Company army, led a ragtag rebel force north from Kabul to the region of Ghor, where he concluded a treaty with the local tribesmen conferring upon him the title of Prince of Ghor. But Harlan’s situation soon became untenable and he was forced to flee. Reaching India in 1842, twenty-four years before Kipling was born, Harlan recounted his tale to the authorities. Soon after, he returned to the United States. He died in San Francisco in 1871, when Kipling was five.

In November 1887, the twenty-two-year-old Kipling joined the staff of the Pioneer in Allahabad, the same newspaper that four years earlier had published a front-page obituary eulogizing Frederick Wilson. In May and June of 1888, Kipling joined his friends, Professor and Mrs S.A. Hill, for a vacation at Mussoorie. They stayed at the Charleville Hotel, in which Wilson was said to have held an interest and had hoped that his middle son, Charles, would take over the management. But when Kipling and the Hills stayed there, Wilson was already five years dead, and Charles had taken up other pursuits.

Nevertheless, the young journalist would have heard tales of Wilson’s many exploits. He would have heard that Wilson played a role in the Great Game, that at first the people of Upper Tangnore respected him, and that he became known as the Raja of Harsil, ruling over the district like a feudal lord. But the views of the local inhabitants changed: the criminal behaviour of Wilson’s deranged son, Nathanial, and a conflict with the high priest of Mukhba made him persona non grata. The people of Upper Tangnore in a sense rebelled against the Raja of Harsil, as the people of Kipling’s Kafiristan rebelled against Daniel Dravot.

According to Kipling’s friend, Mrs Edmonia Hill, the idea for ‘The Man Who Would Be King’ started ‘germinating in R.K.’s mind while lunching with us’ in Allahabad, shortly...

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• The Raja of Harsil: The Legend of Frederick ‘Pahari’ Wilson