When the British wanted Lalbagh to feed their soldiers

The Lalbagh in Bangalore has always been rated as one of the finest botanical gardens of the world. It is not only the pride of Bangalore but it is a rare repository of  exotic plants and trees, many of which go back to the time of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan.

The credit for the making of Lalbagh goes to both Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan. They started planting the gardens sometime between 1740 and 1760 and they both took keen interest in raising the garden.

Both Hyder and Tipu imported exotic plants, seeds and saplings from countries as far away as Turkey, Persia, Afganisthan and the continent of Africa. They also set up a separate garden department to deal with Lalbagh and other gardens.

The death of  Tipu in 1799 did not put the brakes on the development of Lalbagh. Instead, the British took keen interest in redeveloping and subsequently expanding the Lalbagh. They wanted the Lalbagh to cater to the culinary tastes of the British troops stationed in Srirangapatna.

The troops of  the East India Company were not accustomed to eating native fruits and vegetables and they longed for “good old English” vegetables and fruits. Bangalore was found to be ideal for growing some of the English vegetables and fruits.

The East India Company took over Lalbagh and the then  Governor General, Richard Wellesley, commanded surgeon- naturalist Dr. Benjamin Heyne, to look up Lalbagh.

Heyne was also tasked with the job of  ensuring that the Lalbagh  provided food for the regimental messes of the British troops. He was also encouraged to demonstrated to the native gardeners and growers how English vegetables such as potatoes, cabbage and turnips could be cultivated in Bangalore.

Heyne sent a letter to Fort St George, dated April 27, 1803, proposing the retention of a small spot of ground in Bangalore for the purpose of cultivating the potato, turnip and other culinary vegetables.

Lalbagh, under Heyne, came to be transformed into a European style garden and it was only from this period it also began to serve as a botanical garden.

Heyne, who was the first British keeper of Lalbagh, brought 369 plant species from the Western Ghats in South India to Lalbagh. Since Wellesley had asked Heyne to introduce crops, including fruits and vegetables palatable to the British, the botanist did his best to redevelop Lalbagh and grow alien crops in India.

This experiment of Heyne started in 1800 and continued till 1807. He introduced Apples, cocoa, durian, clove, nutmeg and mangosteen and the fist saplings of all these were planted in the Lalbagh.

When the experiments in Lalbagh succeeded, Heyne prevailed upon growers in and round Bangalore to grow European and  British vegetables.

Heyne was in Lalbagh till 1812 after which he joined Francis Buchanan in his survey work. Though he could not transform Lalbagh into a garden to serve the British belly, he protected it and preserved its plants and trees.  

When the King of Nonsense visited Lalbagh

Lalbagh is called by many names and one among them is Kew of India.

This name was given by Edward Lear (1812-1888) in 1874. Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author and poet. Today, he is known mostly for his “literary nonsense”  in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised.

He came to India in 1874 during which he visited Bangalore. He came to Lalbagh in a dog cart and was stunned by its beauty, variety of  plants and shrubs.

By then, the management of Lalbagh had passed from the hands of the British to the Mysore Maharaja or the Wodeyars. While the British kept Cantonment, they handed over the botanical garden laid out by Hyder and Tipu to the Wodeyars.  

The Garden of Waugh, as it was known a few decades earlier and the Cypress and Rose Gardens much earlier, had acquired the name of Lalbagh.

Lear had a particular reason for visiting Lalbagh. His principal areas of work as an artist were threefold: as a draughtsman employed to illustrate birds and animals; making coloured drawings during his journeys, which he reworked later, sometimes as plates for his travel books; and thirdly as a illustrator of English poet Alfred Tennyson’s poems.

As an author, Lear is known principally for his popular nonsense works, which use real and invented English words.  He wrote his nonsense song, “The Cummerbund”,  while sheltering from the monsoon in India.

However, his description of Lalbagh as Kew was more real than imagined and definitely not “nonsense” he wrote about the delightful time he spent in the gardens.

Lear was born into a middle-class family in Holloway, a small village near London. He was the 20^th of the 21st children of Ann Clark Skerrett and Jeremiah Lear.

Lear began drawing by the time he was 16 and he soon developed into a serious “ornithological draughtsman” employed by the  Zoological Society.

He arrived in Bombay on November 22, 1873 after a 27-day voyage from Naples. It was his first in India and it would be the last expedition of his life.

This was between 1873 and 1875 and while travelling he produced large quantities of coloured wash drawings.

He had come to India as a guest of Evelyn Baring, the Personal Secretary, of the Viceroy of India, Lord Northbrook.

He came to Bangalore in mid August of 1874 by rail and was stunned on seeing the Lalbagh. “Never saw a more beautiful place”, he wrote and called it the “Kew of India”.

Since Lalbagh had always been a repository of exotic plants and shrubs from the times of Hyder and Tipu, the epithet by Lear appears to be more than appropriate. He himself acknowledges that he  “went in a dog cart to Lalbagh ….never saw a more beautiful place, terraces, trellises.”

Lear found “a sort of homely quiet pervades everything” in Bangalore.  

 Lear was one of the first English writers to use Limericks and literary nonsense and helped to make them popular. He travelled in Italy for three years and published two books of illustrations. At one point, Lear taught Queen Victoria how to draw. He, however, had to bow out of Victoria’s presence as he did not know the proper way to behave with her and this led to awkward incidents. Lear painted all his life upto his death.

His writing and sketches of India reflect his nature and his amazement at the variety that India was. But even then, the rigors of Indian roads or rather the lack of it left him exhausted, leaving him to lament,  “O! Hateful Indian travel.”

It was Bangalore and Lalbagh that gave him back his spirit and made his day. This is how the “King of Nonsense” viewed Lalbagh.

When Bangaloreans relished Roman Beauty

Two days ago, there was an article in Deccan Herald about how apples in Bangalore have made a comeback and how the first harvest of apples are being harvested in Lalbagh.

Bangalore had never grown apples and the credit for introducing this fruit must go to the British, particularly the Superintendents who tended to Lalbagh.

Apple was one of the many temperate fruits brought to Bangalore mainly to sustain the demand for such items from European civil and military officials.

The demand for apples and other English and European fruits and vegetables had their beginnings in the establishment of the Cantonment in Bangalore in 1804.

The British had decided to pull our their troops from Srirangapatna as they were unable to face the mosquitoes. They choose Bangalore as their spot for setting up the biggest Cantonment n south India. 
The then Governor-General, Wellesley had asked several botanists and naturalists, including Benjamin Heyne, whop was employed in the Madras Government to take over Lalbagh in 1800 and introduce crops, including fruits and vegetables palatable to the British.
Thus was born the first experiment in India to grow alien crops and this started in 1800 and continued till 1807. Apple was one such fruit. Heyne also introduced cocoa, durian, clove, nutmeg and mangosteen and the fist saplings of these were planted in the Lalbagh.
By 1820, apples were popular in Lalbagh. In the same year, John Sullivan, the Collector of Coimbatore, sent a few Apple saplings to Arthur Hope, the British Resident in Bangalore in 1820.
In 1880, the Superintendent of Lalbagh, John Cameron, introduced Rome beauty Apple to Lalbagh. He actually imported seventeen varieties of apples and grew them in Lalbagh. Of them, he found the Roman Beauty the best to grow in Bangalore. He then introduced the Apple to other parts of Bangalore and its surroundings such as Whitefield.

The seeds of Roman Beauty were then distributed to farmers and owners of estates in Bangalore and Whitefield.. Slowly, the cultivation of Apple became popular and it soon became a commercial crop.
Cameron also introduced a variety of fruits and vegetables in Bangalore, including chow chow, cabbage, cauliflower, beetroot, radish, carrot, garden peas, turnips, rhubarb. Another Superintendent of Lalbagh, Gustav Krumbiegal, introduced Italian olives, Araucarias from Tasmania, and even caraway from France.

Krumbeigel took a series of steps to made the Apple a commercially viable and lucrative crop. 

By the 1920s, Bangalore’s Apple were named Roman Beauty and they had a unique taste. These Apples were grown in more than a thousand acres in and around Bangalore. It was very popular among Bangaloreans and it was sold in the neighbouring districts too. 

Compared to their counterparts in Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, the apples from Namma Bangalore were priced cheap and they had their own taste. Bangaloreans relished it and even the Maharaja of Mysore planted scores of apple trees in what is today Lower Palace orchard, Upper Palace Orchard and Vasanthnagar. 

Several British bungalows and big houses of native Indians, as they were called, had trees that gave these Roman Beauties. People of all walks of life, including the British and large number of foreigners, relished them.
However, the change in the climate, growing urbanisation and depletion of the green cover sounded the death knell for the apples. A disease quickly spread among the apple trees and soon they became history. 

The first drought of Bangalore

It was sometime in 1804 and Bangalore was just a small dot on the map of India. It was not even as big as Mysore, which had become the capital of the Wodeyar Kingdom.

The new king of the Wodeyars, Mumadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar (1794-1868), had gone about in right earnest rebuilding Mysore which had been ransacked and pillaged by Tipu Sultan years ago.

Though Tipu had died in May 1799 at the gates of Srirangapatna and the British had returned the Mysore Kingdom to the Wodeyars, the British were still wary of the south. The British forces in the South were completely exhausted by the four Anglo-Mysore wars that they had fought against Hyder Ali (1721-1781) and his son Tipu Sultan (1750-1799).

Though Tipu’s children and grandchildren had been taken prisoners and kept in the Vellore fort (they were taken to the fort on June 19, 1799), there was still a sense of uneasy among the remaining British troops that had been billeted in Srirangapatna. FSherzada Hyder Ali, the grandson of Hyder Ali and son of Abdul Kareem, had escaped from Vellore Fort and joined the Marathas in 1801.

The Mysore State was on the boil and there were revolts in different parts of the Kingdom. The British managed to suppress them, but they were vary of a backlash. They had wanted to completely destroy the fortification of Srirangapatna but had been asked to desist by the then Governor-General, Wellesley.

Wellesley had also refused to pay heed to the entreaty of  the British officers to shift the Army from Srirangapatna to Bangalore.  

Though the British had appropriated Bangalore to themselves, including the Lalbagh, they had conveniently left out the Pettah or Pete areas or old Bangalore to the Maharaja of Mysore, Mummadi Krishna Raja Wodeyar. Thus, old Bangalore was still in the hands of the Wodeyars, while the fort was in the custody of the British.

The British had a substantial military presence in Srirangapatna and Mysore. The Wodeyars had shifted the capital of Mysore Kingdom from Srirangapatna to Mysore and the boy king, Mummadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar, was assisted among others by Dewan Purnaiah (1746-1812) and Barry Close (1756-1813), the British Resident, in running the kingdom.

The British in Mysore were more uneasy as they for the first time faced a sever drought. In one of the official despatches to the Madras Government, Dr. Heyne, on August 25, 1804, reported on the state of the garden- Lalbagh-under his care, stating that it had suffered due to drought, and requesting permission to purchase around 400 sheep to ensure a supply of manure for the Garden.

The Madras Government replied from its headquarters in Fort St George, on March 23, 1804 and October, 16, 1804. Both these letters were regarding Dr. Benjamin Heyne's report on the Botanical Garden at Bangalore.

It was in 1799 that Hayne had taken charge of the gardens under the order of Lord Wellesley. Dr. Heyne was a naturalist and a medical officer with the Topographical survey of Mysore. During the surveys, economic, demographic, botanical, geographical and cultural data of Mysore was collected.

Botanical data was given particular importance as Wellesley himself had instructed Heyne to take charge of the Sultan's Cypress Gardens, called the Lalbagh, and stressed that it should be turned into a botanical garden and developed “as a depository of useful plants sent from different parts of the country”.

Heyne also sent a letter to Fort St George, dated April 27, 1803, proposing the retention of a small spot of ground in Bangalore for the purpose of cultivating the potato, turnip and other culinary vegetables.

However, the drought of 1804 bothered him and he wanted the permission of the Madras Government to rectify this.

If Heyne was bothered about lack of manure and water to his Lalbagh, the British were concerned about the severe drought in Bellary during 1802-04 and again in 1805-07.

By then, Hayne had collected a large variety of plants and trees, giving special importance to economically useful plants and those that could be used medicinally. He left Lalbagh in 1812 to join and assists Francis Buchanan in his survey of Mysore.

He himself reported sometime in 1812 that some plots of  Lalbagh had all but disappeared and the major part of the garden was under the cultivation of ragi and rice.

At around 1804, the British Residency was just shifted from Mysore to Bangalore and the official residence of the British Resident of Mysore was the old post office building on Madras Bank Road.

Unfortunately, there is not adequate record of this drought though we are told that there was scarcity of water and foodgrains and that the people of the Petta suffered most. The ruling Wodeyars did their best to alleviate the suffering of the people.    

However, this drought was as severe or as painful as the one that struck Mysore Kingdom, including Bangalore, decades later. The drought and famine of 1875 that would sweep through Mysore State led to major changes in lifestyle and economy of Bangalore and Mysore.

Yet, the drought of 1804 is important as it is the first such natural calamity that occurred when the British were ruling the south and they had partitioned the Kingdom of Mysore between themselves, Wodeyars and Nizam of Hyderabad.

Thankfully, the Lalbagh had developed into a world class garden by then and it continues to exist today and the full credit for this goes to the foresightedness of its founders and its many superintendents.  

He introduced apples to Bangalore

The Lalbagh is perhaps the most famous landmark of Bangalore and it is one of the finest botanical gardens in the world. There are many people whose association with the Lalbagh is still recalled with respect and awe.

If Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan are credited with having started the garden and also developed it into the charbagh style, the British subsequently took pains to not only maintain the garden but also develop it.

The names of botanists and Superintendents of Lalbagh like James Cameroon, Krumbeigal, Mari Gowda and others quickly come to the fore but there are a few others whose contribution is as great as that of these men.

One such person is Benjamin Heyne (1770-1819), a surgeon, botanist and naturalist. Heyne nurtured Lalbagh during the early 1800s and it was he who gave the botanical garden its present shape. What is more it is this man who introduced apples into Bangalore along with several other fruits and vegetables.

It was in 1793 that a young Heyne joined the service of the British East India Company. In 1796, he was assigned to the Madras Presidency as Botanist to Samalkot (Samalkot today is s small mandal in Andhra Pradesh and it is about 64 kilometres from Rajamundhry. Samalkot then had a botanical garden and it was part of the Northern Circars that the British ruled).

In 1799, the British alliance defeated Tipu Sultan in the fourth and final Anglo-Mysore war. The British returned the Mysore Kingdom to the Wodeyars and appropriated the Lalbagh Botanical garden in Bangalore.

The British decided to transform Lalbagh as a “depository for useful plants sent from different parts of the country.” They then ordered Dr. Benjamin Heyne, the Company’s botanist at Madras, to take charge of  Lalbagh.

The order to preserve and protect Lalbagh came from the Governor-General of India, Richard Wellesley. The British asked Heyne to accompany the Surveyor, with the following instructions:

“A decided superiority must be given to useful plants over those which are merely recommended by their rarity or their beauty,... to collect with care all that is connected with the arts and manufacturers of this country, or that promises to be useful in our own; to give due attention to the timber employed in the various provinces of his route,... and to collect with particular diligence the valuable plants connected with his own immediate profession, i.e. medicine.”

Heyne was in charge of Lalbagh till 1812. He set about the task he had been assigned with diligence and he collected a lot of plants, shrubs and plants from Bangalore, Mysore, Coimbatore and even the Western Ghats.

A large collection of plant specimens which were forwarded to London. He collected more than 350 species from the Western Ghats and more than 200 species were named by him. He also sent many of his Indian botanical specimens to the German botanist Albreht Roth, whose work “Novae plantarum” ) is largely based on these botanical specimen.

Coming back to the Survey work he had been entrusted with,  Heyne was assistant to Francis Buchanan. Both took up and completed the epoch making Mysore Survey.

Benjamin Heyne died at Madras in 1819 but not before he had been appointed to superintend in 1803 the cultivation of potatoes and other culinary vegetables such as turnip in the Company's garden in Mysore State. The garden, of course, was in Bangalore.

He was also tasked with the job of introducing bread fruit in Mysore State. Bread fruit belongs to the mulberry family, Moraceae. In Karnataka, it is locally called divi Halasu.

It is to him the credit must go of commissioning botanical illustrations though none of them survive today. In the eighteenth century, botanical illustrations had become important and botanists depended on them to identify, classify and publish botanical nomenclature. Heyne was keen to train ‘native' artists in identifying and illustrating characteristics of plants and shrubs that he had collected and planted in Lalbagh.

In 1803, William Bentinck wanted Heyne to  apply his “mineralogical knowledge to the subject of gold sand, collected in the vicinity of Bangalore, and the mode of extracting it from the stones in which it is embedded”.

Bangalore's Van Gogh

He was an artist, freedom fighter, legislator, newspaper editor and he was posthumously conferred the Distinguished Citizen of Bangalore.

Yet, he remains an obscure figure known largely in the field of painting. He was among the first few who loved painting the many trees, flowering plants and the beautiful parks of Bangalore. He loved Cubbon Park and Lalbagh and he immortalized them in colours.   

He excelled in painting landscapes and he had a distinct and unique style of his own so much so that he was often labelled as the Van Gogh of Bangalore.

Though he remembered for his contribution to painting, he took to it only after he was 53. Till then, he was a freedom fighter and politician rolled into one and he actively participated in the Vidhurashwatha Sathyagraha in Gauribidanur taluk where several farmers were killed by the British.

For two decades till his death in a road accident in 1988, he was a familiar figure on the tree lined avenues of Bangalore and its gardens and fountains, who carried his own folding stool, easel and art materials. He set them up wherever his eye caught the fancy and he got the urge to capture it on paint.

Born more than a hundred years ago in Dodaballapur, this man was none other than Rumale Chennabasaviah. He was a man of several vocations and he started out as a freedom fighter. Born in 1910, he was a freedom fighter till 1947 and then till 1963, a politician. He took to painting only in 1963and today he is more remembered for his landscapes of Bangalore than for anything else.
Many of his paintings are in water colours though he was adept at using oil paint.  

It was his elder brother who noticed his talent for art and enrolled him in Kala Mandir, in 1929-30. He then decided to study art at the Chamarajendra Technical Institute (CTI),  but he gave up after he met Mahatma Gandhi in 1934. Strangely, he exhibited 18 water colours at the Dasara Exhibition in Mysore in 1935 before abandoning the profession to jump into the freedom movement..
He participated in the Vidhuraswatha protest near Gauribidanur where ten people were killed in the firing. He spent several months in jail between 1939 and 1940.

It was only after 1947 that he decided to concentrate on his art but it was not until several years later that he again took up painting. Meanwhile, he took over as Editor of Tainadu, a Kannada newspaper, from 1956 to 1960.

In 1960, he went on to found the Chitrakala Parishat and from 1962, he began taking painting seriously.

He soon became famous as Rumale and today the Rumale Art House in 3^rd Block, 45^th Cross, Rajajinagar has a collection of one hundred of his paintings. He loved Cubbon Park and Lalbagh and frequently painted tress and flowers from these two gardens.  

On February 1988 morning, Rumale died in Bangalore when the autorickshaw he was travelling was hit by a factory bus just adjacent to Lalbagh.

The Pyroclasts of Peddapalli

India has a variety of tourism circuits. They include historical, pilgrim, Nature, wildlife and even medical tourism and in Mumbai there is the slum tourism which takes you to Dharavi, the largest slum in Asia and possibly even the world.

However, there is one sector where the tourism potential has not been tapped. This is the Geological sites that are available in plenty in India and Karnataka is fortunate in having four of them. Of them one is right in Bangalore city and another is near the metropolis. The other two are a little far away.

The first is of course the famed rock in Lalbagh botanical gardens and the Bugle rock in Basavanagudi. Both the rock formations are millions of years old and both are of immense geological value.

But did you know that another little known wonder of Bangalore is that it sits atop a rock and this is called gneiss.

Another geological wonder is the Pyroclastic rocks of Peddapalli near Kolar, which is a little more than 75 kilometers from Bangalore.

The third geological wonder is the Pillow lava formations in  Maradihalli near Chitradurga. The fourth geological monument of national importance is the Columnar basaltic lava on St.Mary's Island near Udupi in Arabian Sea.

Since, an earlier post has already dealt with both the rocks at Lalbagh and Bugle Rock, let us go to the geological rock formations in Kolar district.

Kolar district adjoins Bangalore district and from times immemorial it has been known as the land of gold. Kolar and its surroundings are historically important. It is also the district with a large number of pilgrim places.

Today, thousands of people travel through the district on the way to Tirupathi-Tirumala bit few know the jaw-sagging rocky outcrops that we see when we enter the district is more than a picture postcard.

The rock formations at Peddapalli near Kolar have been declared as a natural or geological wonder by the Geological Survey of India (GSI). But apart from budding geologists and Earth scientists, few know of the importance of this unique rock formation.

Peddapalli is a small village  about 700 meters east of the road connecting Kolar Gold Field with the Bangarpet- Betmangala.

There is signboard put up by the Geological Survey of India (GSI) leading to the rock formation and it can be best approached by driving towards the southerly diversion near the 10 km stone for about one kilometer.

The rocky outcrop of pyroclasts is on the north west corner of the village. Pyroclastic Pyroclasts is also called as tepra  (It is a Greek word for ash) and they are nothing but volcanic fragments that was hurled through the air by volcanic activity that took place here several millions of years ago.

The explosions could have been one or many and such rocks would have hardened over a period of several million years. A  pyroclastic rock is a hardened, solidified or compressed version of an originally loose pyroclastic deposit that was thrown up in air and fell in a heap on the ground and subsequently solidified.

The word pyroclastics is derived from a Greek word meaning fire. This is reference to the red hot lava that comes out a volcano. Thus the term pyroclastic means broken by fire.

If the volcanic rocks has been transported and reworked through mechanical action either by wind or water, they are then called volcaniclastic.

By the way, even ash is considered to be pyroclast as even it is a form of  fine dust made up of volcanic rock.

These pyroclast thrown up by a volcano vary in size and composition. However, all these ejected material consolidate to form pyroclastic rocks.

The smaller rocks is known as lapilli, while bigger sized rocks are called as volcanic bombs or blocks. Some of the bigger rocks are known to weigh thousands of pounds. Some rock fragments of granite gneiss found in Peddahali measure upto 80 cm in diameter

The GSI says the Pyroclastic rocks of Peddapalli is a welded rock of large fragments of granite, granite gneiss, basalt and banded ferruginous quartzite which is set in a matrix of ignimbrite. While many rock fragments are angular, some of them are round in shape.

Check out the natural rock formation. It will help us understand the history of the Earth where we all live.

When Rice saw Lalbagh

No visit to Bangalore would be complete without walking around Lalbagh, India’s most famous botanical garden. But did you know that this was almost precisely the same words that BL Rice (1837-1927) wrote when he visited Bangalore and wrote the gazetteer.

Rice was in Bangalore to compile facts for his gazette. He went around the city and he has given us a detailed description of Bangalore and its environs.

He says horticulture in the State and Bangalore in particular received a boost with the establishment of the Agri-Horticultural society in Bangalore in 1839.

Horticulture received a further boost when Lalbagh was declared as a horticultural and botanical garden in 1856.

Rice says the Lalbagh helped growers and horticulturists of Bangalore make a profitable living.

The Lalbagh inspired many Indian and European growers and farmers to take up horticulture and floriculture. Both the Lalbagh and growers imported seeds and plants directly from England and other places.

Rice says Roses were the most favoured flowering plant to be imported into Bangalore. He says the authorities at Lalbagh took care to grow 258 varieties of roses, 160 kinds of ferns, 122 varieties of crotons and a large number of ornamental and flowering plants including orchids and creepers.

The Lalbagh thus took the initiative in introducing several new varieties of plants and fruit bearing trees in the State. Besides, it imported scores of species of plants and trees and encouraged the growth of horticultural crops.

Rice says Lalbagh imported from South America, varieties such as  Achras Sapota (which is widely used in medicine), Eucharis Grandiflora, Allamanda Grandiflora and from north America it imported Magnolia Grandiflora, rubra, phlox paniculata.

Plants and tree such as AgapanthusUmbillatus,  Mellanthus Major, Ganzia Splendens were imported from the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa.

Lalbagh also imported from the South Sea islands, Acalypha tricolour and Crotons, while the Castanospermum funebris, Aslophila latebrosa and coccoloba plotyclada came from Australia.

The Cupressus funebris, farfugium grande, alternathera sessilis all came from China,      

The Anagalis carrulea, viola odorata, myosotis arvenis came from England and from Mexico came Fuchsia fulgens, ageratum mexicanum and agave Americana.

Rice found all these species growing in the Lalbagh. He says no account of Bangalore would be complete without a notice of Lalbagh. “This beautiful garden, situated a mile to the east of the fort, appears to have been first laid out in the time of Hyder Ali and enlarged in the time of Tipu Sultan”.

He then goes on to mention the description of Lalbagh in 1800 by Buchanan.

Rice says that Lalbagh has a rare and valuable collections of tropical, sub-tropical pants together with indigenous and foreign fruit bearing trees, He says this stock is constantly replenished by exchanges and donations. He says the Lalbagh was extended and it covered a little more than 100 acres.

He also mentions that a spacious glass house has been constructed. He then goes on to mention that a native artist has been hired to paint coloured drawing of all plants.

Thus, we see that Lalbagh even a century ago was the center of attraction and people visited it in large numbers even then. It was a cynosure of all eyes then and has continued to remain so even centuries later.

By the way, all the shrubs, plants and trees mentioned by Rice still continue to flourish in Lalbagh. Care to take a look. Then head to Lalbagh.        

The college that never materialised

All of us known that Lalbagh in Bangalore was begun by Hyder Ali and developed by Tipu Sultan. We also know that it was subsequently taken over by the British who raised it into one of the most important botanical gardens in India.

Lalbagh is home to a number of exotic tress, plants and shrubs.  But not many know that the buildings in Lalbagh too have a history of their own and today, they stand as mute spectators to the vast throngs that visit he garden, oblivious to the standing history of the botanical gardens.

Lalbagh is currently managed by the Directorate of Horticulture, Government of Karnataka. The directorate operated from a red building in front of the office of the Director of Horticulture, Karnataka.

This building has a history of its own. It was built in 1920 when Gustav Hermann Krumbiegal (1865-1956) was Director of Horticulture. He  had an ambitious plan of building a horticulture college on the Lalbagh premises.

Krumbiegel, a German botanist and garden designer, spent years dedicating his life and service to the development of Lalbagh. He had also plans of constructing tree lined avenues in Bangalore which would host a variety of plants and shrubs.

Krumbiegel was born in Lohmen near Dresden in Germany and he trained as a horticulturist. In 1884,  he worked in Schwerin and from 1885 to 1887 he worked as a landscape gardener in Hamburg. In 1888, he moved to England, designing flower beds at the Hyde Park and joined the staff at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew. He then came to India and in 1893 was the Curator of the Botanical Garden in Princely  Baroda. He then was with the Government Botanical Garden in Ooty.

It was in 1908 that the reigning Wodeyar monarch, Krishnaraja Wodeyar, the ruler of Mysore, sought his services and persuaded him to succeed John Cameron as economic botanist and superintendent of Lalbagh.

Krumbiegel was solely responsible for introducing numerous plants in Lalbagh. He was also closely associated with the Mysore Horticultural Society that was started in 1912. Although a keen botanist, he was also a well-known architect. Noting his expertise, the then Dewan of Mysore appointed him as an architectural consultant despite protests from the British Resident in Mysore. During the Second World War, Germans in India were declared as enemies and Krumbiegel was along with other Germans kept in an internment camp in Bangalore.

His plan of starting a horticulture college was first shot down by the British and then by the Karnataka Government. Krumbeigal had conceived the red structure as part of the college.

He wanted the college in Lalbagh as he thought such an institution could provide both students and researchers with materials on hand and at short notice. He also saw that the college could become one of its kind in the world as it would be located amidst rare plants, shrubs, trees and seeds.

Since Lalbagh was a botanical garden, he thought a college on horticulture would be ideal. He even prepared designs for the college but since the plan was never accepted, it was destroyed.

Today, it is this very red structure that serves as the office for the Director of Horticulture.

The College of Horticulture did come and it was the first in India but it was not on Lalbagh.

By the way, horticulture accounts for 40 per cent of Karnataka’s  income that is generated from the combined agriculture sector. This state also boasts of the largest area under flower crop cultivation and ranks third in the production of the same across India. In addition, Karnataka is the largest producer of spices, aromatic and medicinal crops.

Karnataka was the first state to have a horticulture department in India and that it was established in 1963.

Coming back to Krumbeigal, he served Karnataka for 25 years and retired in the year 1932. After his retirement, he settled at Bangalore and worked as the Landscape Advisor to the state of Mysore, till his death in 1956.

The flower show

On the way to the glass house: A green welcome

Getting it right in pots 

Vegetables and flowers grown in pots 

Chilly and mint

A floral welcome to the Glass House

Dancing on the lawns  

The cascading flowers

A circle of flowers

National flag

Roses all the way

The floral mixture

I can be circular too

Flowers too can make boats

A thing of beauty is joy forever

The pyramid of flowers

Every year on Independence Day and Republic day, Lalbagh comes alive florally. This is not to say that during other times of the year the beautiful botanical garden is barren.

It is during these two events that flower shows are held and they attract lakhs of visitors both from India and all over the world.

The event is organised jointly by the Department of Horticulture which looks after Lalbagh, Cubbon Park and other parks and  the Mysore Horticulture Society.

Tthe main theme for the flower shows changes for every show and they form the centre of attraction. This year, the floral boat was the main attraction apart from the Ikebana, Indian floral art, Bonsai and vegetable carving competitions.

The floral boat was thirty five foot long  and it was at the centre of the Glass House where the event is held. The boat was made of two lakh roses of different colors.  It took 35 workers several hours to create it.

A vertical garden with more than 5,000 plants was on display at the beautifully landscaped lawns. This painstakingly created garden measured 40 feet in length and 17 feet in height.

The other major attractions include a 13-foot floral boat, floral pots, demonstration of roof garden concept and Bonsai plants. The flower show also showcased hundreds of orchids, zinnia, nastardium, crysantamums, daisies, marigold, cacti, fuchsia, jasmine, geranium single roses, dahlias and several other species.

The show opened on August 7 and concluded on August 15. This was the 198^th flower show.

Apart from the stalls selling a variety of products such as  wooden toys, jute bags, toolkits for gardening, plant seeds and books, a large collection of bottled grape wine  prepared by the Karnataka Wine Board was also on display. As many as 14 wine brands were be on display till August 15 but they were not for sale.

This year drew huge crowds and there was no place for parking inside Lalbagh. Instead, the police had designated several areas and roads around the garden for parking.

As can be expected, the crowds littered Lalbagh, leaving behind plastic, cups, containers, filth and rubbish. The geological rock bore the brunt of Bangalorean’s insensitivity as the many eatable stalls there did roaring business. Yet, none of them had the sense to clean up the area and it was left to the Horticulture Department to clean it up.    

An amendment to install statues

When Governments and authorities all over the world are trying to regenerate the forests that have vanished and taken upon themselves the task to preserve and protect the existing parks and lung spaces, the Karnataka Government recently came up with a dubious decision to delete several buildings from the Cubbon Park limits. The reason-it wanted to install more statues and the Cubbon Park Act was coming in the way.

The Cubbon Park is the second oldest park in Bangalore after the Lalbagh. While the credit for founding Lalbagh goes to Hyder Ali and its subsequent development to Tipu Sultan, it was the British who were responsible for development of Cubbon Park which was conceived in 1870.

This park has always been in the eye of controversy, be it the decision to denotify its boundaries or allow development inside the park. This time around, the very Government that passed a law to protect the park and its environs has passed another law to allow it to install more statues in front of Vidhana Soudha and Vikasa Soudha and other buildings which it has taken out of the purview of the Preservation of Parks Act.

When the park was initially laid out on 91 acres, it was only conceived as an extension of the magnificent Residency (Raj Bhavan today) that Mark Cubbon built for himself. The park then faced the Residency and behind the park was vast open ground which sloped towards the Sampangi tank to one side and Siddikatte tank on the other side (Ulsoor Gate side).

After Cubbon left for England by ship, Bowring purchased the bungalow from Government funds and decided to permanently convert it into the official quarters of the Chief Commissioners of Mysore. Even as Bowring stayed in the Residency, Col. John Meade developed the park on 100 acres on land which originally belonged to the Vanniyars.

The Residency was located then at the highest point in Bangalore, High Grounds (3031 feet above sea level), and it was built between 1840 and 1842. The garden below was a perfect contrast to the white bungalow.

Later, the High Court or Attara Katcheri was constructed around the lawns of the park and this was sometime in 1881. By then, the park had extended to 325 acres and it was the buffer between the Pete or old Bangalore and the Cantonment or the Civil and Military Station.

The park was expanded in 1910, 1917 and 1930 and at the time of Independence it sprawled over 325 acres.  

Today, the park has shrunk to just 190 acres and yet it is home to 6000 species of plants and trees apart from playing a perfect host to at least 50 of the 153 species of butterflies found in Bangalore. The park area near the Karnataka State Lawn Tennis Association has the City’s biggest casuarina and the oldest Silver oak trees in Bangalore. The silver oaks were brought in from Australia.

Today, the Cubbon Park is being looked after by the Horticulture Department. When it was initially planned and in the decades later, it was the Bangalore Municipality which zealously guarded the parka and other public places of Bangalore.

The regulations relating to construction of houses, protection of  trees and parks and playgrounds and other acts relating to town planning were in force much before the Town and Country Planning Act, Municipal law, Outline Development Plan and Comprehensive Development Plan (old and new) came to be written and passed.

The earliest zoning regulations in Bangalore came into being on July 2, 1892 when Arcot Srinivasachar was the President of the Bangalore Municipality. Then, Sir K. Seshadri Iyer was Dewan of Mysore and Sir T.R.A. Thumboochetty (later officiating Dewan) was Chief Judge of Mysore.  

The building regulations were enshrined in the then revenue manual called Mysore Revenue Manual and they had sections where house building was prohibited. One such prohibited area was Sidney Road which is today known as Kasturba Road.

The manual has delineated the boundary along several areas where building activity, sinking of wells and excavations are prohibited. This is issued in the July 1892 copy of the manual.

The only buildings permitted on Sydney Road was the Government Museum in 1876 and the Cubbon Park police station building in 1910. However, this rule was relaxed during the Forties and Fifties and the municipal authorities permitted the construction of bungalows on Kasturba Road opposite the Museum in what was then called MacIver Town.

The real threat to the once pristine park was after Indian attained Independence in 1947. Buildings began coming up on all sides of the park and the extent of the park also began whittling down.

Public outcry forced the State Government to enact the Parks Preservation Act.

One of  the forgotten institutions of Bangalore, the Bangalore Urban Arts Commission (BUAC) headed by M.A. Parthasarthy which was set up in the late 1970s, was the first to spearhead a movement to beautify Bangalore and also to save Cubbon Park from further onslaught.

The BUAC was against allowing demonstrations, protests, rallies and strikes in the park and in 1993 a committee to suggest ways to beautify Bangalore also called for banning all types of  agitations within the park premises.

The committee was called the High-Powered Committee for the beautfication of Bangalore and it was a natural corollary of the Lakshman Rau Committee which reported on the status of tans and lakes in and around Bangalore.

From the 1980s onwards, the police slowly began clamping down on protests in the park and urged the protesters to organize their agitations in other areas such as Jakkarayana Kere, K. R. Circle, Mysore Bank Circle. They also restricted the protests in Cubbon Park to the Gopala Gowda Circle.

In 1983, the Government included the Raj Bhavan, the Vidhana Soudha, the LRDE (the junction of Ali Askar Road and Infantry Road) and the Legislators’ Home (Basaveshwara Circle), totalling 76 acres, in the area of the park.

When the Government sought to denotify these areas from the park land, the first agitation to protect the park was launched. There were demonstrations, dharnas, public protests and even court cases to preserve the park.

In 1995, the High Court admitted a public interest litigation (PIL)   petition by N.H. Desai against the failure of the authorities to remove construction debris from the park. He also wanted the Government to ban rallies in the area.

In 1997 the Government bowed in to public demands and banned public rallies in the park. Subsequently, on July 30, 1998, the then Government of Karnataka revised the boundaries of Cubbon Park and specified the new limits by deleting 32 acres from its limits. This was done to ensure that the  that land on which it planned to construct an annexe to the Legislators’ Home that was being built since 1996 would not face any legal hurdle.

The Parks Act was amended a few years ago to permit the use of land belonging to both Cubbon Park and  Lalbagh by Namma Metro. When the Government carried out the amendment, we were told that it was only a one time measure and that it was for a good public cause. This was the argument that the Advocate-General advanced before the Karnataka High Court when it was hearing the case relating to Cubbon Park and Namma Metro.   

Now comes another amendment and this is to give a free-all to the Government to install statues. The Government gave this reason while introducing this amendment in the Legislative Council.

The Council, in turn, unanimously adopted a legislation deleting Vidhana Soudha, Vikasa Soudha, Raj Bhavan and Multi-Storyed buildings from the limits of Cubbon Park.

Thus a revised Karnataka Government Parks (Preservation) (Amendment) Bill, 2013 was passed deleting these buildings from its ambit. Presently all these buildings come under Cubbon Park notified area and, hence, any construction and even renovation is strictly governed under the ambit of the act.

The Government said it wanted to install statues of  Mahatma Gandhi and Lal Bahadur Shastri  in front of the Vidhana Soudha.  As the Vidhana Soudha and Vikasa Soudha are within the limits of Cubbon Park, the existing law does not allow for installation of statues anymore.

The Government therefore brought in the amendment to facilitate construction of  statues for Mahatma Gandhi on the land between Vidhana and Vikasa Soudha.

An interesting aside is that though the bill was approved, the Leader of the Opposition in the House, D V Sadananda Gowda, expressed concern over the misuse of the amended law or rather Act.

He said, “Our concern is that in future statues of father, son, brother, mother who were in politics should not come up.”  When some Congress members sought to know whom he was referring to as father-son, the BJP leader said his statement was simple that everyone can guess.

Another BJP member B J Puttaswamy urged the Government not to convert Vidhana Soudha and Vikasa Soudha complex to a graveyard by installing statues.

Well, two members of the Legislature have already foretold what happens in the future. Unfortunately, Bangaloreans this time around have remained quiet over the amendment. They are yet to wake up to the dangers of the amended Act.    

Now these clubs can breath easy

In an earlier post, the blog had an article on the many facets of Cubbon Park and how even today it is a living park. It not only houses the centre of governance but also plays a gracious host to highest judicial body of Karnataka.

Incidentally, Cubbon Park and the Karnataka High Court whose premises is situated on the premises of the park share a strong bond and each is known because of the other.

Coincidentally, the first public interest litigation (PIL) ever filed in the Karnataka High Court related to the demolition of the iconic High Court building. The case gathered widespread attention as many aspects of Cubbon Park too was highlighted during the hearing.

The strong public sentiment against the demolition forced the then Ramakrishna Hegde Government to drop the move to demolish the High Court building. Instead, it was compelled to repair and renovate the old building, while adding an look-alike annexe.

Since then, Cubbon Park has always been the focus of  attention. One of the sitting judges of the Karnataka High Court, Justice M.F. Saldhana, first took on a batch of cases singlehandedly and ordered the Government and the authorities to protect the park.

Though this order was later set aside by a Division Bench, citing lack of jurisdiction, the train of movements, agitations, citizens’ initiative and public protests for the preservation of the park received a shot in the arm.

When the Government proved unequal to the task of protecting the boundaries of the park, the High court took it upon itself to regularly monitor the upkeep of the vast stretch of green. When the Government decided to barricade itself in the Vidhana Soudha and came up with a slew of measures, including construction of grilled compound, enhanced security, the High Court too sought similar measures for the park and itself.

The Government then passed the Preservation Act, 1979 under the  provision of Karnataka Government Park (Preservation) Act, 1975.

This act specifies that no land should be granted to nor any further constructions be permitted whether temporary or permanent by any organization or individuals in the Cubbon Park and Lalbagh areas except the constructions taken up by the Horticulture Department in furtherance of the objectives of the department.

Subsequently, several NGOs, environmentalists, nature lovers and even citizens of Bangalore filed cases in the High court demanding steps to protect the park. One of the first to file a case was Bimal Desai who had sought eviction of several clubs located on the premises.

Desai said all the clubs - Century Club, Secretariat Club, Press Club and Karnataka State Lawn Tennis Stadium and Club were located with the precincts of the Cubbon Park. He had petitioned the High Court seeking a direction to the authorities to evict the clubs so that the park could be protected.
He had said that Cubbon Park, which extended over 300 acres in 1873, had been systematically reduced to less than 190 acres. He also said that the State Government enacted Karnataka Government Parks (Preservation) Act, 1975 for saving parks, including the Cubbon Park, from further shrinkage. The Act makes it statutory for the State to maintain and preserve all parks.

He said even after the Act was passed, the clubs had come up and that they had constructed buildings in violation of this order  (prohibiting construction of any temporary or permanent structure). However all these cases which were clubbed together and were being heard by the First court or the court headed by the Chief Justice  were dismissed on December 15,  2011 for non appearance of the counsel for the petitioner (Mr. Desai).
However, the case was restored after the petitioner filed an application for restoration of the case. When the case came up for hearing, a Division Bench comprising Chief Justice D H Waghela and Justice B V Nagarathna dismissed the petition on May 28, 2013 following a submission made by Advocate General Ravivarma Kumar.

The Advocate General had contended that there is  no ground made out for recalling order of dismissal for default. With the dismissal of this petition, the clubs can now breath easy. However, what remains unspoken and unsaid is that not only the clubs but all other outlets and establishments in and around the park have a responsibility to save, protect, preserve the park.

The Government alone cannot be expected to do everything. It is the duty of Bangaloreans to take the lead in making the elected representatives and authorities aware of the need to retain the present boundaries of the park.

By the way, a 2003 case relating to Cubbon Park contains an injunction against any construction or alienation of land in Cubbon Park of any kind and also a direction to the authorities to  adhere to section 4(2) of Karnataka Government Parks Preservation Act.

The Act bars any kind of alienation of park land, including by way of licencing. Despite this order, there have been reports of  organizations blatantly going ahead with construction without either seeking permission of the court or the Horticulture Department, which is the custodian of the park.

There were reports of the KSLTA trying to build a new wing and also the Secretariat Club constricting a small room to house its generator. Both did not deem it necessary to take the permission.

Now let us see what the Act says. The act is reproduced from the Gazette. It is self explanatory. The act was amended to allow certain constructions for Namma Metro only. So here goes……

 KARNATAKA ACT NO. 21 OF 2010

THE KARNATAKA GOVERNMENT PARKS (PRESERVATION)

(AMENDMENT) ACT, 2009

Arrangement of Sections

Sections:

1. Short title and commencement

2. Insertion of new section 5

3. Repeal and savings

STATEMENT OF OBJECTS AND REASONS

Amending Act 21 of 2010.- It is considered necessary to amend the Karnataka Government Parks (Preservation) Act, 1975 to provide for alienation of certain area of Indira Gandhi Musical Foundation Park to Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike and Lalbagh to the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd., for the following purposes; namely:-

(i) for widening of the roads by the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike, and

(ii) for construction of elevated station for Metro Rail Project of Bangalore.

As the matter was urgent and both the Houses of the Karnataka State Legislature were not in session, the Government of Karnataka promulgated the Karnataka Government Parks (Preservation) (Amendment) Ordinance, 2008. (Karnataka Ordinance 4 of 2008)

This Bill seeks to replace the said Ordinance.

Hence the Bill.

[L.A.Bill No. 11 of 2009, File No.DPAL 28 Shasana 2008]

[Entry 18 of List II of the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution of India.]

---

KARNATAKA ACT NO. 21 OF 2010

(First Published in the Karnataka Gazette Extra-ordinary on the Seventeenth day of May, 2010)

THE KARNATAKA GOVERNMENT PARKS (PRESERVATION)

(AMENDMENT) ACT, 2009

(Received the assent of the Governor on the Seventh day of May, 2010)

An Act, further to amend the Karnataka Government Parks (preservation) Act, 1975.

Whereas, it is expedient further to amend the Karnataka Government parks (Preservation) Act 1975 (Karnataka Act 23 of 1975), for the purposes hereinafter appearing;

Be it enacted by the Karnataka State Legislature in the fifty-ninth year of the Republic of India as follows:-

1. Short title and commencement :- (1) This Act may be called the Karnataka Government Parks (Preservation) (Amendment) Act, 2009. 2

(2) Clause 2 and 3 except clause (c) and (d) of section 5 to be inserted shall be deemed to have come into force with effect from 22^nd day of November 2008 and clause (c) and (d) of section 5 shall come into force with immediate effect.

2. Insertion of new section 5 :- After Section 4 of the Karnataka Government Parks (Preservation) Act, 1975 (Karnataka Act 23 of 1975) the following new section shall be inserted namely:-

“5. Permission in certain cases :- Notwithstanding anything contained in section 4, the State Government may subject to such conditions and restrictions as it may impose as regards construction, maintenance, management use and like matters alienate an area of,-

(a) 1223 sq. mtrs at Indira Gandhi Musical Fountain Park to the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike for the purpose of widening of roads; and

(b) 1135. 18 sq. mtrs at Lalbagh gardens along the compound wall of west gate towards western side of the park (presently called R.V. Road) to Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited for the purpose of construction of elevated Station for Metro Rail Project of Bangalore”

(c) 2126.71 sq.mtrs area of Cubbon Park located between Vidhana Soudha and Karnataka High Court Building, East: Park area of survey No. 1284; West: Survey No. 570; North: Park area in survey No. 1284 linking to the nursery and South: Park area of survey No. 1284 opposite to High Court ;

(d) 11,160 sq.mtrs area of Cubbon Park located between East: High Court of Karnataka in survey No. 1284; West: Existing Road between Vidhana Soudha, and High Court in the Cubbon Park area of survey No. 1284; North: General Post Office and South: Cubbon Park area of survey No. 1284.

3. Repeal and savings.- (1) The Karnataka Government Parks (Preservation) (Amendment) Ordinance, 2008 (Karnataka Ordinance No. 4 of 2008) is hereby repealed.

(2) Notwithstanding such repeal anything done or any action taken under the principal Act as amended by the said ordinance shall be deemed to have been done or taken under the principal Act as amended by this Act.

By Order and in the name of the Governor of Karnataka

G.K. BOREGOWDA

Secretary to Government,

Department of Parliamentary Affairs and Legislation