Rickshaws in Shimla and a murder case

Sometime in the early 1980s, we were traveling in cycle rickshaws while returning from a late night movie in Chandigarh’s Sector 17. As we reached Madhya Marg, the main road, on the way to the university campus, someone shouted, “Let’s have a race.” Spontaneously, about half a dozen rickshaws disgorged their passengers. The rickshaw men, who had probably experienced similar situations before, stepped back without a second thought and became customers for the moment. With great noise and loud shouting, hands on the handles, feet on the pedals, it started. Before long, that momentum turned into a whimper, accompanied by a chorus of gasps and coughs.

The question was passed around without an answer: “How do they do it?”

In the hills, until they were banned by court order in the 1960s, due to the terrain, rickshaws were pulled by two men, pushed by two more, and often accompanied by a fifth man to assist or serve as a backup. Since there were no motor vehicles in Shimla, these served as the main means of transport and several houses had their own rickshaws and liveried tugs – jampanis, as they were called.

The story tells of a rather large lady who was thrown up a steep slope, where on the last leg a Jampani shouted: “MacMunn, MacMunn, arma das mun!” (MacMunn, MacMunn, weighs a whopping 10 million). A Mun or Maund weighed about 37 kg. The lady was probably Emily, wife of Lieutenant General Sir George MacMunn, Quartermaster General, whose Jampanis were known as “Faith, Hope and Charity”. “Faith” was the man in the background because “Faith” can move mountains!

Behind the gilded facade of the colonial cities lay another world. This was a dingy, if not dark, underside that polished the surface and gave it its shine. For Shimla, this splendor was the resources of an entire subcontinent and the labor of hundreds of workers. Some came from the neighboring mountain states, others from Ladakh or from areas of the North-West Frontier Province, which is now part of Pakistan.

The Pathans became known for their hardiness and as daring drivers of tongas with their “hard-kept ponies” plying the Kalka-Shimla road until the arrival of the railway in 1903. Kashmiris and Ladakhis did odd jobs. From the surrounding hills, women came to work as aayas and nannies and men as rickshaw drivers. The Ayas and some other domestic workers were doing slightly better than the others. At least for the duration of their employment they had food and a roof over their heads. Rickshaw drivers fared worst, and in 1931 there were 476 rickshaws and 2,863 licensed rickshaw drivers in Shimla – meaning that a significant proportion of the city’s population were rickshaw drivers. They lived in appalling conditions, often on a rack above the rickshaws they rode. There was minimal or no access to clean water or the amenities of basic hygiene.

It was only in the years just before independence that better living conditions were created in the form of “work houses and rickshaw sheds”; Some of these structures survive.

In the same years, in connection with a small house with a grandiose name, a wag remarked that it was “… in keeping with the Shimla practice of calling small things by big names.” The trend seems to have extended even after independence and a house on the way to Barnes’ Court, now Raj Bhavan, has further transformed from ‘Yates’ Place’ to ‘Yates’ Palace’. In 1925 this was occupied by the head of the Army Canteen Administration, Mansel-Pleydell. On September 3 of that year, Mansel-Pleydell hosted a dinner and the rickshaws lined up outside his house while their drivers passed the time waiting for their passengers.

A man named Jageshar was sleeping under a blanket when Mansel-Pleydell came out to call the men. Jageshar tangled up with everything he had over him, and this enraged Mansel-Pleydell, who repeatedly kicked and pushed him around until the man collapsed. Among the frightened and mute witnesses was the unfortunate man’s cousin, who later carried Jageshar to the nearby Chhota Shimla police station and asked to record his statement. Since the man on duty did not do this, their Chaudhri, the chief, ran to the house of Rai Bahadur Mohan Lal – all these places were just a few hundred meters from each other. Mohan Lal was an influential councilor and a close associate of Gandhiji. It was only on Mohan Lal’s insistence that a case was registered at Sadar Thana, the main police station below the Lower Bazaar. Meanwhile, Jageshar died of broken ribs and a ruptured spleen.

Despite pressure to cover up the matter, the matter was brought to court and the press picked up the story, reporting it almost blow by blow. Mansel-Pleydell was found guilty and sentenced to a fine and rigorous imprisonment for one and a half years. In years when all-too-common attacks on “natives” could no longer be swept under the rug, his appeal to the Supreme Court was rejected and he committed suicide in prison.

— The author is a Shimla-based writer