A Reconnaissance Tour in Western India

American Geographical Society

A Reconnaissance Tour in Western IndiaAuthor(s): John Leroy ChristianSource: Geographical Review, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Oct., 1944), pp. 613-620Published by: American Geographical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/210031 .

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A RECONNAISSANCE TOUR IN WESTERN INDIA

JOHN LEROY CHRISTIAN

T-- |HE usual lines of trade and travel in India run east and west between Calcutta and Bombay or northwest from Calcutta. The greatest long-distance traffic flow on the Indian railroads follows the Gan-

getic plain and crosses an almost imperceptible watershed between Delhi and Lahore into the Indus Valley. Since I928 I have made ten round trips across India from east to west. In April, I944, I had occasion to make my first trip the length of India from north to south, while transferring from New Delhi to Ceylon as a member of the staff of Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten. I went from Simla, within sight of the snows of the Tibetan frontier, to Travancore State, within 50 miles of Cape Comorin, and thence to Ceylon by the usual train and ferry route from Dhanushkodi to Talaimanar and on to Colombo. A few informal observations and com- ments on this cross-section reconnaissance may be of interest.

First, travel in wartime India is very different from the comfortable travel of peacetime. Americans now in India find it difficult to realize that before I939 Hindustan had some of the finest trains in the world. The Imperial Mail from Calcutta to Bombay, via the East Indian and the Great Indian Peninsula Railways, compared favorably in speed and comfort with American and British trains. The Frontier Mail of the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway from Bombay to Peshawar, via Delhi, was almost as good. Indian trains today are extremely crowded; equipment is in bad repair; much rolling stock has gone off to war in Africa and the Mid- dle East; and most of the air-conditioned equipment has been converted into hospital trains. Likewise, motor traffic has suffered from shortage of gasoline, scarcity of new vehicles, and chronic overcrowding aggravated by restrictions on civilian traffic on the railroads and by the increased amount of money in circulation. Scarcity of gasoline was evident in all parts of western India. In Cochin, for example, not one taxi was available for hire in the port or in the city. Less than half of the busses used gasoline; the others carried producer gas units. The Indian peasant is an inveterate traveler, and greater earnings mean more bangles and nose rings for his wife and bigger loads for the groaning charcoal busses. Coastal and river shipping has fared no better.

The Frontier Mail was only five hours late in leaving Delhi. We passed the day crossing the generally flat terrain of upper India. The country



6IT THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

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GEOGR. REVIEW, OCT. 1944 .

FIG. I. Location map of the west coast

of peninsular India.

became progressively drier as we skir- ted the edge of the Rajputana desert. In contrast with the Thar, Rajputana is not, of course, a true desert.

SURAT TO KARWAR

My first stop was at Surat, on the Tapti River. Next to the Indus and the Narbada, the Tapti is the largest river flowing into the Arabian Sea. It has been the cause of several disastrous floods. Surat, under the Moguls the "Gateway to Mecca" and the greatest trade emporium of western India, is famed as the home of the first "factory" of the East India Company. It had also an important factory of the rival Dutch East India Company and Portuguese and French trading posts. Along the Tapti, in Surat, is a plot of land about the size of two city blocks known as the "French Gardens," the title to which is still French, though it is under British administration. The Tapti is no longer navigable except to native dhows, one of which was unloading a cargzo of i so tons of

roofing tile brought from Mangalore, 6oo miles to the south on the Malabar Coast. The docks are just below the round tower of the old Abyssinian fort now known as the Mogul's Castle.

A short distance south of Surat the face of the country changes, and

fairly thick mixed jungle is encountered along the coast. One result of the war for India is that heavy inroads are being made on the standing timber. Near Surat, Navsari, Bulsar, and Daman long trains of logs and firewood were being loaded and deforestation was proceeding at a damaging pace. I also saw several dhows being loaded with firewood for Muscat and Per- sian Gulf ports. The same heavy cutting, due to military demands and to the fact that firewood in Bombay and Madras brings triple its prewar price, is general in central and southern India. At Londa Junction I was told



A TOUR IN WESTERN INDIA 6I5

that a trainload of firewood then being made up in the yards was going by meter-gauge railroad to Meerut, some I250 miles away.

A striking feature of much of western India is the fact that for hun- dreds of miles north of the black "cotton soil" of Gujarat, and again south of Bombay, basalt and laterite are nearly everywhere within a few inches of the surface. For miles there seemed to be no more than four to six inches of soil above the rock. This may be the result of deforestation combined with heavy monsoon rains. In addition, the Moslem with his goat appears to be the great enemy of all vegetation in western India.

Only at Karwar, a small port some twenty miles south of Portuguese India, does the forest primeval run down to the sea. Here we met Mr. Thomas R. D. Bell, a retired British forestry officer. This gentleman, who came to Karwar in I884, prohibited the cutting of any firewood within five miles of the municipal limits. As a result, Karwar is said to be the only place between Karachi and Cape Comorin where untouched forest meets the sea.

During the American Civil War, Karwar became a boom town export- ing cotton to New England and Lancashire. The town has a stone wharf built at the time and still in excellent condition. A dhow was tied up to two iron cannon bearing the royal monogram of King George III and sunk on end into the pier. I traveled part of the distance on a coastal patrol vessel of the Royal Indian Navy built in Karachi of teak from Burma and Malabar.

PORTS AND RAILWAYS OF WESTERN INDIA

Western India, with a coast line of I500 miles from Karachi to Cape Comorin, has only four modern ports: Karachi, Bombay, Goa, and Cochin. Of these, Bombay and Karachi are by far the most important. Cochin, however, is growing rapidly in importance by reason of the harbor devel- opment scheme completed in I940. A channel i6,ooo feet long and 450

feet wide has been dredged to an average depth of 3 5 feet. Vessels of 25,000

tons have used the port, which has direct connection with the broad-gauge line of the South Indian Railway.

The Western Ghats are not as formidable from the sea side as is generally believed. The coast is nowhere as rugged, for example, as the Cali- fornia shore line from Monterey to Santa Barbara. The term "Western Ghats" is variously interpreted but is commonly applied to the escarpment that rises somewhat precipitously along the Indian Ocean from the Tapti south through the Bombay Presidency, Coorg, Mysore, and the part of Madras Province on the west coast. Actually, its bold cliffs are on the aver-



6i6 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

age about fifty miles back from the coast and vary greatly in height. The Great Indian Peninsula Railway goes up the Ghats from Bombay through Igatpuri ("the town of difficulties") and Nasik at an elevation of 2000 feet; the Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway ascends southeastward from Bombay through a 3000-foot tunnel to Poona over a slightly higher pass. Farther south, the West of India Portuguese Railway ascends through six- teen tunnels from Goa, over the Braganza Ghat to Londa Junction, also at 2000 feet. But the easiest route across the 600 miles of the Western Ghats is that over Palghat Pass taken by the Mangalore branch of the South Indian Railway at an elevation of less than ioOO feet.

Although there are few good harbors south of Bombay, there is an abundance of good landing beaches. I suggest from personal observation that between Surat and the southern tip of India there is a sizable beach on an average of one in every 25 miles from the Gulf of Cambay to Trav- ancore. Interior exits are not always good, but in most cases there is a road parallel to the beach, and from Mangalore to Cochin (263 miles) and from Quilon to Trivandrum (40 miles) the railroad skirts the beach. Likewise, from Baroda to Bombay the railroad is parallel to the coast and no great distance from it.

A curious feature of the Malabar Coast from Tellicherry to Cochin is the sunken roads, much like those of the loess regions in China, but shal- lower. These would serve as made-to-order anti-tank ditches and would be a serious obstacle to cross-country movement. Tidal ranges on the beaches between Bombay and the head of the Gulf of Cambay are as much as 20 feet, whereas those of the Malabar Coast are normally less than 5 feet. Farther south in Travancore the coast is one long beach with negligi- ble tides.

COCHIN AND TRAVANCORE

Alleppey is in many ways the most curious port in western India. It is not actually a port on the ocean, but rather on the system of canals and backwaters that join Cochin and Travancore States. Alleppey is of some fame as the world's principal market for coir, the coconut fiber of a hundred uses. Several English and Scottish firms have agencies and factories in the town for the purchase and processing of coir. Port facilities on the sea side consist of an iron pier extending for about 6oo feet from a perfectly straight beach without shelter of any sort. The pier, now 6o years old, is of Victorian design, but still sound and usable, a credit to the Scottish engi- neers who erected it. Although devoid of shelter, Alleppey is not, as might be assumed, useless to shipping during the southwest monsoon. Off the




port there is a bank of green, oily mud, which is stirred up by the monsoon sufficiently to break the force of the storms. From this mud bank issue what appear to be mud geysers, caused by water escaping underground from the backwaters, which are about four feet above sea level. The mud bank is migratory from year to year, and as a result the protection to Allep- pey varies from season to season.

Travancore and Cochin States are frequently held up as models of native state government, with the implication that conditions there are much better than in British India. But my short visit left me with the dis- tinct impression that the alleged prosperity of these states is more super- ficial than real. Actually, the density of population is nearly 8cc to the square mile in Travancore and 950 in Cochin,, and the states are not self- supporting in food. The literacy rate of Cochin approached 350 per thousand in I93 I (the highest in India, exclusive of Burma which had 368). However, the percentage of comfortably filled stomachs in Travancore and Cochin is about the lowest in India. One ferryman told me his salary from the government of Cochin State was eight rupees (U. S. $2.75) a month. The swarms of professional beggars in the two states and in southern India along the railroad to Dhanushkodi were appalling.

In the coastal districts of the two states there is much sterile soil, which is devoted almost entirely to coconut growing; rice is raised on the better soil, and diversified crops on the hills. In much of western India there is still a great deal of hoe culture. In Ratnagiri District, one of the poorest in the Bombay Presidency and the home of most of the recruits for the Mahratta regiments of the Indian Army, and in Portuguese India large fields were being broken up by gangs of men and women swinging heavy hoes in unison. They were followed by others with long-handled mallets for breaking up the clods. Along the southern Ghats the fields were first covered with brush and leaves, which were burned for fertilizer and to destroy insect pests in the soil. Very little true fertilization was observed. Under the necessity of war a general shift from export to food crops is noticeable. In the southern Deccan much cotton is being displaced by sugar cane: India has become in recent years the world's largest producer (not exporter) of sugar.

Poverty was almost equally marked in Portuguese India. To strike a balance in the economy of the Portuguese "State of India," between 6o,ooo

' Census of I94I. This represents an extreme increase that has long been in progress. See Arthur Geddes: The Population of India: Variability of Change as a Regional Demographic Index, Geogr. Rev., Vol. 32, I942, Pp. 562-573.-EDIT. NOTE.



6i8 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

and 75,000 men of Goa normally seek employment abroad. Most of them work as stewards, butlers, cooks, and caterers in the cities of British India. Others are in similar services along the east coast of Africa from Cape Town to Port Said and in the ports of the Persian Gulf. Several thousand Goanese work in the galleys and pantries of British naval and merchant ships. The captain and chief engineer of the Indian-owned coastal steamer that took us from Bombay to Ratnagiri were natives of Portuguese Daman, the captain a Moslem, the engineer a half-Portuguese Christian.

PORTUGUESE INDIA

Goa is unique in several ways. A state-owned ferry and launch service

operates on the many waterways of Portuguese India. There are also state- owned distilleries, which make liquor from the toddy palm and from the fruit of the cashew. A state-aided tile factory has been established in an effort to break the virtual monopoly on tilemaking now centered in Man- galore. Although Daman was the cleanest city I have seen in India, Goa also was several steps ahead of the average Indian city.

When the Portuguese republic was proclaimed in I9IO, complete religious freedom was granted to the Portuguese colonies. As a result, a Hindu revival is under way in Goa. Religious and communal friction is almost entirely absent, as compared with the great Hindu-Moslem rivalry that is undoubtedly coming over the horizon in India proper. The essential unity of the Portuguese empire is apparent in Lusitanian India. It was somewhat of a surprise to hear Portuguese, Goanese, and Indian children sing- ing together the praise of President Carmona and Dr. Salazar. At the out- break of the present war the High Court of Goa had jurisdiction over Macao and Timor. Likewise, the archbishop of Goa, as primate of the East Indies, retains ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Timor, Macao, the East Indies, Portuguese East Africa, and parts of India, though there has recently been some reduction in his powers and territory. The present governor general of Portuguese India, Colonel Jose R. P. Cabral, came to the

colony after a term as governor of Mozambique and has a local reputation for energy and enterprise, particularly in fostering agriculture and indus- try in the area under his charge. The old governor's palace, captured by Albuquerque in I5IO, contains remarkable portraits of all the Portuguese viceroys and governors since Vasco da Gama. As the republic came in, governors in I9IO and shortly thereafter were painted in business suits.

Under the present regime of the corporate state in Portugal, more pictur- esque uniforms are back in fashion.




The early Portuguese administrators are not always given proper credit for their ability and astuteness. Alfonso de Albuquerque's "Commen- taries" and his more recently published "Letters" are well worth reading today. The old governor (he never reached the rank of viceroy) observed, for example, that a distinguishing feature of Indian life in his day was the absence of a sense of nationality. That observation is still essentially true. Your average Indian still thinks of himself first as a Moslem, a Sikh, a Hindu (particularly if a Brahman), or a Parsi and secondarily as a citizen of India with certain duties. His loyalties are predominantly to his own segment of the population and not to Mother India as a whole. Among the non-Hindu elements in India there is general and growing fear of Hindu economic and political imperialism. Portuguese India has, in the main, escaped these stresses.

With British assistance the Portuguese have established an excellent modern port at Mormugao Harbor. Economically, Portuguese India is highly dependent on British India. During the present war Indian coinage has largely displaced Portuguese currency in daily use. British Indian currency notes are not, however, generally acceptable. The meter-gauge West of India Portuguese Railway has been operated as an integral part of the Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway, which reverted from a lim- ited company to control by the government of India on April i, I944. The harbor, small but well sheltered during the southwest monsoon, has room for six ocean-going freighters to tie up alongside. Fourteen steam and electric cranes service the piers, which have room for about a hundred freight cars in the yards on the wharves. Peanuts, cotton, coconut prod- ucts, and cashew nuts are the principal exports. One Italian and three Ger- man freighters were scuttled by their crews in the port in November, I943.

Because of the war, an immense amount of traffic is being carried about the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea by native craft of various kinds. Hippalos, an Alexandrian Greek, is generally given credit for the discovery, in the first century of our era, of the regularity of the monsoon winds. At any rate, he noted that the direction of these winds is seasonal in the Arabian Sea and first conceived the idea of using them for commercial voyages. Since that time Arab dhows have made annual round trips from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf to the west coast of India. Many of the skippers and crews are Hindus, though by tradition most of them are Moslems. The Hindu-owned vessels have the word prasad as a part of the name, apparently roughly comparable in usage to the Japanese maru.

Coconut oil, copra, curry stuffs, spices, timber, and coir made up the



6zo THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

principal westbound cargoes. Eastbound cargo included dates, various food grains, iron, and various kinds of manufactured goods of European origin. I saw nearly two hundred dhows in the harbors of Portuguese India, most of them from Basra, Bahrein, Red Sea ports, the Zanzibar coast, and the ports of Kathiawar. They were rugged-looking vessels, all lateen-rigged except the Jaffna brigs from Ceylon, and only lack of time and the approaching monsoon prevented my going aboard for a trip between ports.

For geographers there is much of interest in the archives of Goa. For example, as a result of the Portuguese claim to sovereignty and monopoly of trade in the Indian Ocean, reflected in a title of the king of Portugal, "Lord of the Navigation, Conquest and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia and India," Goa for many years kept detailed records of all shipping that entered the Indian Ocean. This included East African shipping, since Goa was for nearly two hundred years the administrative capital of Portu- guese East Africa. In fact, the annual reports of the governor of the Portu- guese "State of India" were entitled the Monpoes de Reino, so called because they were dispatched annually during the northeast monsoon when the winds were favorable for the voyage aroundthe Cape. I saw 4II volumes of these reports, from I574 to i88o. They contain many references to Brazil and to the British, French, Danish, Dutch, and American interests in the India trade.

In fact, the Portuguese in India had, and still have, a strongly developed historical and geographical sense. Tablets, markers, coats of arms, elabo- rate tombs, all with dates, are very common. The only place where I saw none was Anjidiv Island, the southernmost Portuguese possession in India, off the port of Karwar. Here on two small beaches the great Da Gama twice careened his ships, scraped barnacles, and refitted his tiny vessels.



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A Reconnaissance Tour in Western India