Rupa Ganguly?s horror at McCluskiegunj might soon turn into a haven for tourists. A Telegraph file picture

Ranchi, March 22: With the government showing no interest in the revival of McCluskieganj, the Anglo-Indian settlement 65 km from here, it is the community which has taken the lead.

A retired HEC employee, Noel Gordon, has been busy contacting Anglo-Indians settled abroad, mainly in Australia, Canada, US and the UK. The initial response, he claims, has been encouraging. One of the prominent Anglo-Indians in the US, Blair Williams, who reportedly remits about Rs 1 crore every year for the welfare of Anglo-Indians in and around Calcutta, has also promised help, Gordon said.

It started three years ago with a distant cousin arriving at ?The Gunj? in search of his roots. His parents had lived at McCluskieganj around 1940 before migrating to Australia. The cousin met Gordon and suggested that the settlement be revived. He also offered to contact other Anglo-Indians in Australia, Gordon recalls, and the response has been overwhelming so far.

While the ideas are still being formed, an annual convention is what Gordon plans to organise later this year. He is in touch with members of the community in Calcutta as well as abroad and Anglo-Indians from different parts of the world are expected to attend the convention, possibly towards the year-end, and give a more concrete shape to the proposal.

On Wednesday, secretary, tourism, S.K. Choudhary, told The Telegraph that he was aware of the plan. The government, he said, would be happy to bear the cost of the convention to start with. The department of tourism and culture , he said, already has a corpus of Rs 30 lakhs for developing McCluskieganj and could spend more if a concrete proposal is put up.

The picturesque hamlet was promoted as an Anglo-Indian homeland by a businessman from Calcutta, ET McCluskie. He floated a company, Colonization Society of India Ltd., in 1933 and bought 10,000 acres of land at what was known as Lapra. The company offered agricultural plots at Rs 50 per acre and residential plots at Rs 250 per acre to Anglo-Indians so that they could lead their own life. The place, near Khelari, came to be known as ?Little England?. The plateau nestled at heights ranging from 1,620 feet above sea-level near the railway station to 2,200 feet to the South and had as many as four rivers flowing through it. While McCluskie dreamt of a mooluk for Anglo-Indians, as Muslims dreamt of Pakistan, the dream fell through after India won her independence.

English cottages, green meadows, tall trees and meandering roads nestling next to hills and forests, lent a unique ambience to the place. Even when the Anglo-Indian families began to move out after the world war ended, India won her independence and the railway track declined in importance, other well-heeled Indians moved into the houses that boasted of gardens, orchards and lawns.

Retired IAS officer A.K.M. Hasan bought a house with 16 cottahs of land at McCluskieganj way back in 1969 for the princely sum of Rs 16,000. He lived there happily enough till 2002 or so when absence of good hospitals and medical facilities at Mcluskieganj forced him to leave. Brigadiers and retired generals from the Indian Army, among them Lt Gen. Mayadas and Lt Gen. Baljeet Singh, were among those who made McCluskieganj their home.

But the steady ascendance of Maoists, poor law and order and the beginning of the massive open-cast coal mine project of Piparwar next door, which brought in its wake the mafia, the petty criminal, the transporter and the trader, ruined the place. It touched the nadir when a bunch of goons attacked a house, where a film crew from Calcutta had put up. They were looking for the women members, including actor Rupa Ganguly, who were luckily put up elsewhere.

Gordon is also aware of the problems. ?The conditions are ugly,? he agreed, ?and there is so much of poverty that people are taking to crime for sustenance.? Strangely, despite the cement plans and the coal mining next door, there does not appear enough employment for everybody. Gordon has got in touch with the nominated Anglo-Indian MLA J.P. Gaulstaun, who is keen to initiate development work at the Gunj. They also hope to meet the chief minister and urge him to initiate employment-generating schemes.

McCluskieganj, Gordon is convinced, can be revived. Anglo-Indians are known to be good at imparting education, music lessons, horse-riding, shooting and other outdoor activities ? and with a little encouragement from the government, the settlement can again start throbbing with life, he says. ?Anglo-Indians created McCluskieganj; and we will develop it again,? is his parting shot.