A Monument to the Arrogance of Empire (The Viceregal Lodge (Shimla))

Member Name: koshkha

Product:	The Viceregal Lodge (Shimla)
Date:	20/03/08 (136 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very impressive if rather ugly

Disadvantages: Not really set up for tourists

If I were to tell you that one of the top attractions in the Himalayan city of Shimla is the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, a place so rarefied that it takes only a few dozen students, all of them doing post-doctoral studies into esoteric topics that few of us would understand, then you'd probably think:

A - I was wrong
B - I was lying
Or
C - Shimla must be a pretty dull place.

To be fair, I'm being a bit dismissive - the IIAS takes only students who are the best of the best - Burmese Nobel Prize winner Aung San Sun Kyi was a fellow here in 1986 and is just one of many exceptional academics. However it's not what it is today that matters - it's what it was a hundred and some-odd years ago that makes it the major draw that it is.

Today's dull and fusty academic institute was once the place from which one fifth of humanity was ruled for 7 months of the year. The IIAS occupies a building that was built as the summer residence of the Viceroy of India. It was, in short, the Viceregal Lodge.

What's a Viceroy?
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After the Indian Mutiny of 1857-58, the rule of the East India Company came to an end and direct rule by the British Government was introduced. I think most people probably suspect that the Brits ruled India for longer than they actually did - in fact, direct rule lasted less than 90 years (although undoubtedly at times it must have seemed a lot longer for both the rulers and the ruled). With the advent of direct rule, Queen Victoria became the Empress of India and the role that had formerly been called 'Governor General' became known as Viceroy - effectively the Queen's deputy. In the 1860s Shimla became the official summer capital of British India and successive Viceroys and their Vicereines camped out it in different houses trying to find a place that was suitable for their status and need for grandeur.

I'd guess that the only Viceroy that most people have heard of is Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy. But he was just one of many of the great and the good, the not so great and the slightly odd, who held the role.

Why was Shimla in need of a Viceregal Lodge?
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If you've read my other reviews about Shimla a couple of months ago then you'll know all this already but it bears repeating that India was - and still is - a pretty tough place for a lily-livered Englishman and his delicate flower of a wife to spend the summer. In Victorian times there was no air-con and the response to the onset of summer was to 'head for the hills' and take advantage of the cooler conditions. The so-called 'Queen of the Hillstations' was Shimla.

History of the Lodge
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The lodge was built in 1888 on top of 'Observatory Hill' - one of the highest points in the city and an ideal place for the British administration to quite literally look down their noses at India. The style of the building is kindly referred to by guidebooks as "Scottish Baronial" and less kindly by me as "big, grey and ugly" - this is a building that says "stand up straight and pay attention, the people who live and work here are REALLY important". In his book about the Himalayas, Michael Palin suggested that nothing less than a thermonuclear device would shift the Viceregal Lodge and I think he was probably right.

The architect was called Henry Irvin and whilst he designed an impressive and intimidating building, he also put a lot of thought into the design. The Lodge was the first building in Shimla to be fitted for electricity, even though there was no electricity for hundreds of miles around. General Electric fitted all the electrical fittings but I guess nobody could check if they worked for several years. Maples of London supplied all the furnishings and it's said that income tax had to be introduced in India just to pay for all the goodies at the Viceregal Lodge.

Our Visit
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We hired a taxi to take us from our hotel at the opposite end of the city and the driver deposited us outside the gates of the Lodge. A kindly security guy pointed us to a ticket office where we paid something fairly paltry (50 p or so) for tickets which included a free tour. Basically the only way in is with a tour - they don't want you just wandering around. The tour would start about 20 minutes later so in the mean time we were free to wander around the grounds. The VL stands surrounded by very big flat lawns which confused me - it is after all on the top of a steep mountain. Clearly unkind terrain is no barrier to a determined British garden designer. There are lots of grand mature trees and some slightly unkempt flower beds - marigolds and nasturtiums are both popular Indian institutional plants but neither really looks very tidy. We walked to the edge of the grounds to look out over the mountains and it was hard not to be impressed by the view.

We gathered with about 20 other visitors outside the entrance to the Lodge and were collected by the guide. He took us inside to a spectacular lobby with an enormous stone fireplace and walls clad in Burmese teak panelling. Above the fireplace and all along the walls of the corridors were strange blank baize panels with the shadows of guns and swords that had once been displayed there but are now away in Delhi decorating the Presidential Palace. After a brief introduction to the history of the Lodge, we were led to the library which now inhabits the rooms that were previously the dining room and ballroom. It's not hard to believe as they still have grand chandeliers hanging from the ceilings. In the days of the Raj there would have been plenty of grand balls and parties to keep the government, the military and the gentry of Shimla entertained. Indeed it was considered rather a racy place to be with ship-loads of single ladies transported over each 'season' to find themselves suitable husbands and by comparison with the very 'controlled' society back in England, there was a lot of freedom to misbehave in Shimla.

Only a few of the rooms in the Lodge are open to the public because it is, after all, an academic institution and not just a tourist attraction. We went into a morning room hung with silk wall coverings and pictures of Rabindranath Tagore - the Indian Nobel Laureate and author of both the Indian and Bangladeshi national anthems. Tagore was in good company with portraits of Gandhi, Nehru and a chap who chaired the first talks on Indian Independence. The room is now set up as a sort of small lecture room and it's sad to see the old grandeur fading too fast.

Going along the corridor in the opposite direction to the library, two rooms are open to visitors. The first houses the table where the leaders of the Independence movement drafted their proposals for independence and partition. In this room the Burmese teak panelling had been painted black or very dark brown which was less attractive than where it had been left natural. In the adjoining room there was a grand piano and hundreds of framed photographs relating to Indian independence. In my favourite photo we saw Jawaharlal Nehru (father of Indira Gandhi and the man destined to become the first Indian prime minister) standing with Louis Mountbatten and his wife Edwina. Nehru and the Vicereine are doubled up laughing whilst the Viceroy looks on indulgingly and you can't help but believe the oft-repeated rumours that Nehru and Edwina were having an affair during her husband's tenure in India.

In total, 13 different Viceroys stayed at the Lodge, starting with Lord Dufferin and ending with Mountbatten. Some loved it, others found it too big and too drafty and couldn't wait to get away. Lady Curzon thought it looked ludicrous and would be to the taste of a "Minneapolis millionaire" (i.e an American with lots of flash, cash and no taste), Lord Montague said it looked like a "Scottish Hydro" and others thought it resembled Pentonville Prison. After Independence several presidents also used it until it fell out of favour and lay empty until someone proposed it to be used for its current purpose as an academic institution. Today the place must be a hard one to live in and it's notable that during the winter months most of the students head off to warmer cities to do 'research' or just to warm up again. Due to environmental restrictions you can't have open fires or burn wood or coal in Shimla and I doubt that the 120 year old central heating is up to the job of keeping a place of this size warm - after all, it was never designed to be inhabited outside the spring and summer months when the government was based in the city.

What else can you do whilst you are there?
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After our tour we found a small café in the grounds of the Lodge and then decided there must be more to see if we wandered around. To be fair there was no sign of a taxi anywhere near the Lodge and we figured if we wandered around it shouldn't take long before someone tried to get us to go with them. We were wrong. The Lodge is the only building on Observatory Hill and no taxis cruise by for business. In fact there weren't even any people around. We decided to try to find the Shimla State Museum, but being silly tourists who trust road signs, we got totally lost and took a lot of false trails up steep hills before we finally found it. It's a small museum that looks like a village scout hut and contains an eclectic mix of bits and bobs including some of Gandhi's letters, a collection of bizarre 'Dolls of India' and some nice handicrafts. You could attempt to walk back to the city centre afterwards but if - like us - you took a taxi up and didn't pay any attention, it's quite likely you'll get lost on the way. The three-dimensional nature of a city on a mountainside means it's really hard to work out how to get anywhere and, unusually for India, there's nobody around to ask for help. We eventually had to give up, find a hotel - actually one of the previous homes of the Viceroy before the Lodge was built - and get them to call us a taxi.

If you go to Shimla, the Viceregal Lodge really is the Jewel in the Crown of the tourist attractions and well worth a visit.

Summary: A must-see for Shimla visitors