Darjeeling is situated in the Indian state of West Bengal. The town lies close to the Himalayas, an area opened up to the British following their defeat of the kingdom of Nepal in 1815 (Kennedy, 1996, 12). Located in the cool air of the hillside, Darjeeling’s climate was suited to the British. The town was built up around a sanatorium, constructed originally for British soldiers in 1839. It was one of the ‘hill stations’, towns to which British officials retreated during the hot Indian summers. Dave Kennedy has described the European-based design of hill towns, with their meandering roads, parks with English trees and flowers, cottages, Tudor mansions and Anglican churches (Kennedy, 1996, 3-4). He summarises their appeal for expatriates as that they ‘seemed a part of England and apart from India’ (Kennedy, 1996, 8).

Darjeeling expanded in size throughout nineteenth century. It was made more accessible due to the opening of a narrow gauge railway in 1879, and the introduction of the tea plantations in the mid-nineteenth century brought new workers to the area. Like other hill stations, the population of Darjeeling became more mixed. Aboriginal tribesmen, such as the Bhutias and the Lepcha, were attracted to the city for work, as were Nepalese, Bhutias and Tibetans. In addition, wealthy Indians were drawn to hill stations, seeking to replicate the lifestyles of the British Raj (Kennedy, 1996, 8-9).

As well as serving as retreats, the hill stations were also places from which British officials undertook government business. Kennedy has stated that ‘nearly every branch of officialdom that had access to a hill station endeavored to spend more of its time and transfer more of its operations there’ (Kennedy, 1996, 4). He claims that conducting operations from such remote seats was widely criticised, and that ‘Indian nationalists pointed to the practice as evidence of the aloofness and arrogance of British rule’ (Kennedy, 1996, 5).

In this film Sir Stanley Jackson, Governor of Bengal from 1927-1932, can be seen arriving at Darjeeling’s Government House. Jackson was governor during a period of nationalist uprising in the area, and had responded to terrorist threats by putting in place a number of severe ordinances (Time, 14 December 1931). It was over these measures that Gandhi clashed with the Viceroy Lord Willingdon, leading to Gandhi’s endorsement of a further period of civil disobedience and to his own subsequent incarceration (Time, 11 January 1932). On 6 February 1932, Jackson survived an assassination attempt from the nationalist revolutionary Bina Das. She justified her actions on the grounds that ‘the Governor of Bengal represents a system of repression which has kept enslaved three hundred millions of my countrymen and countrywomen’ (Kumar, 1993, 91). Jackson’s measures were enforced and ratified by his successor, Sir John Anderson. This film features scenes shot at Lebong racecourse, later to be the location of an assassination attempt on Anderson’s life.

William Meiklejohn shot this amateur footage of Darjeeling and the surrounding area during the early 1930s. Meiklejohn worked with the Imperial Forestry Service in various parts of the sub-continent (Baker). Darjeeling had been a large forest area, but much of the land had been stripped for tea plantations. A contemporary travel guide described the work of the forestry service as ‘preservation of the existing forest and the supply of fuel and timber’ (Newman’s Guide to Darjeeling and Neighbourhood, 193-, 78).