A senior bureaucrat purchased a house with 16 katthas of land in 1969 for the princely sum of Rs 16,000 in The Ganj. It was a picture-postcard village and accessible by both roads and railhead. Forests, birds, open spaces and cheap vegetables in addition to the ?English ambience? made it look like a good investment. The village also attracted two retired generals of the Indian Army, Lt. General Baljit Singh and Lt. General Mayadas, along with a sprinkling of brigadiers, who chose to settle down in what has been described by an imaginative reporter as the ?Chotta London of Jharkhand?. Filmmaker Aparna Sen?s former husband, Mukul Sharma, too had a house there and the Rozarios from Patna decided to set up a school, which they named Don Bosco. The response enthused an Anglo Indian to set up the Highland guesthouse. The Ganj, it appeared, was on its way to revival. But two and a half decades later, the picturesque village made famous by the Anglo-Indian settlement, appears to have languished. Barely 65 kilometres from the state capital, it could have been developed as an excellent spot for excursions. But it remains a poor village sans security, sans electricity and sans activities. What is worse, it is without the most basic of medical facilities, an ambulance or a hospital. Indeed, a newspaper report quotes the nominated Anglo-Indian member of the state Assembly, Joseph Galston, as saying that despite the approval of the Cabinet, a police station is yet to come up at The Ganj. Asked what he achieved during his tenure, the Deoghar based MLA replied that he could only manage a few roads and bridges at The Ganj.
When Ernest Timothy McCluskie, a businessman from Calcutta, purchased a thousand acres of land from the Rajah of Ratu, he planned it as an Anglo-Indian settlement. Archival records indicate that there was a time when as many as 400 Anglo-Indian families lived there. Today, the number has gone down to less than 20 families and almost all of them are struggling for their livelihood and to keep their identity intact. A few newspaper reports, one recalls, have highlighted, off and on, the plight of Kitty ?memsaab? or Kitty Texara, who eked out a living by selling fruits at the railway station. The advent of electric engines apparently has put her out of business. The steam engines, it seems, stopped for a longer duration and enabled passengers to buy the fruits. The electric trains now barely stop.
McCluskieganj is ideally suited to be developed as a heritage site. Anglo-Indians are now spread all over the world with possibly the largest concentration in Australia and Canada. They bring out newsletters, maintain websites, exchange information about eligible bachelors, hold annual conventions and have even published books on ?Anglo-Indian fairy tales?. Last year they met at Melbourne, Australia and deliberated on their history, identity and culture. A similar convention ought to be planned at McCluskieganj, where a museum of Anglo-Indians and a restaurant specialising in English cuisine (fish and chips, caramel pudding and locally made wine), if not Anglo-Indian cuisine, should help attract tourists. A small auditorium to screen films, a youth hostel and a resort are the other facilities which will make The Ganj an attractive destination for both tourists and also for those in the state capital who want to spend a day out in the sun. The rugged area is ideally suited for cycling, horse-riding and camping and both cycling tracks and camping sites need to be developed to attract the youth.
Anglo-Indians, like Parsis, happen to be an inclusive community with natural talent for music, languages, sports and outdoor activities. Not all of them are christians though and there are Anglo-Indians who are practising Hindus and Muslims. Let us also not forget that there must be small Anglo-Indian communities in most of the neighbouring countries like Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Joseph Galston and Alfred Rozario, one hopes, will read this piece and take the initiative to transform The Ganj into a global meeting point for Anglo-Indians. Anglo-Indian MLAs , unfortunately, seldom take an active part in legislative proceedings. They generally prefer backroom activity, calling on secretaries and ministers with petitions and getting petty works done and petty favours granted. This writer does not recall a single speech in any of the state assemblies to highlight the plight of the Anglo-Indians. So small is the community and such is their past that one suspects many of them continue to suffer from a sense of guilt. The community after all had sided with British rulers during the freedom movement.
The burden of history , it would seem, continues to weigh heavily on the community leaders, who are more preoccupied with preserving their cemeteries and old age homes and the inability of the community to pay high fees charged by schools. Nobody denies that they are live and real issues; but at the same time the community needs to do something monumental to leave a more lasting imprint. What better way to do it than reviving the Ganj as a destination that could find employment for hundreds of Anglo-Indians besides others?
