Lucknow cantonment embodies melancholy beauty

For many of us, it is a goosebump-inducing sight to drive by the gun-mounted jeep named after Param Vir Chakra awardee Abdul Hamid. The jeep was used by infantry troops to destroy the enemy’s Patton tanks in the 1965 India-Pakistan war. ‘Vir’, the sobriquet Hamid earned, destroyed eight of these.

It is equally pride-inducing to read the billboard about Lieutenant Premindra Singh Bhagat, the Victoria Cross recipient, named the ‘saviour of Lucknow’ for his brilliant plan to plunge boulder-laden trucks into the Gomti when it flooded in 1971, thus plugging a potential highly destructive breach.

The Lucknow Cantonment, which holds these and many other reminders of the country’s bravest and finest, is so located that no one en route to the airport (from most parts of the city) can miss it. The Lucknow Gazetteer puts the area of this settlement at 6,700 acres. Among its many distinctions is India’s longest racecourse (3.5km) and the Kothi Bibiapur (a country residence built by Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula), which has the country’s first serpentine wooden staircase. There are features it shares with other cities―such as the Top Khana (a place for storing artillery) bazaar and a quaint club named Mohammed Bagh, where little bells are still used to summon servers. It also includes some head scratchers―among them, a Gun Factory area, despite the fact that no such factory existed in the cantonment.

Bhavana Singh, principal director, Directorate Defence Estates, Central Command, speaks about the rich history of the cantonment, harking back to the time of India’s First War of Independence. It was after that war that the British established their new cantonment in the Dilkusha area―a plateau that overlooks the Gomti.

The earlier cantonment, at Mandiyaon, was on the north of the Gomti. It posed a challenge of access from the residency―the residence of the British Resident General in Awadh―as the river had to be crossed, by what one text (History of Cantonment produced by the Headquarters Central Command) describes as a “crazy” bridge of boats. It was also perilously placed as it put the European population in close proximity to the ‘natives’, thus making them vulnerable in case of an attack.

Dilkusha―meaning alluring or enchanting in Urdu―was a hunting lodge-cum-retreat built by Nawab Saadat Ali Khan. It lies to the east of the city. It was from here that General Colin Campbell would launch an operation for the recapture of the settlements held by the ‘rebels’ in 1857.

The ruins of Dilkusha and the well-laid gardens around it still whisper the sounds of the shells fired at it. What remains of the lodge, modelled on the Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland, England, from the rebellion and later neglect are some pierced walls and crumbling edifices. It was only in 1862 that the entire cantonment around it would be laid out and notified. To Singh, in its ruins, is a melancholy beauty that offers one the opportunity to reconnect with oneself. Its expansive parks―among them Kasturba and Dilkusha―provide “respite to the weary urbanite”, she says.

Singh, who joined the Indian Defence Estate Service in 1993, has been posted at various cantonments in different capacities. (The Central Command, the estates of which she holds charge now, covers seven Indian states.) But it is in Lucknow, where she is posted currently, that she finds a “beautiful symmetry” unlike others. “It is a very well-laid-out cantonment, be it the roads or crossings,” she says. “There is a clear distinction between civil and military areas, which makes it convenient for us to administer it.”

The administration of the cantonment has changed with the demands of time, says Singh. “The cantonment board is comprised of both officers of the armed forces and representatives of civilians,” she says. “The administration thus protects the interests of both the populations in the correct perspective.”

Lucknow Cantonment is also an assembly constituency. In 2017, Aparna Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s younger daughter-in-law, had contested the election from here, losing by a small margin to BJP’s Rita Bahuguna Joshi.

Yadav, who is now with the BJP, believes that the government’s decision to sever military areas from their civilian parts, and merging the latter with urban local bodies is a much-needed “good change”.

“It will be difficult to believe that there are no sewer lines in the civilian areas of the cantonment,” she says. “How will the prime minister’s vision of Swacch Bharat ever reach these places?”

During her vigorous campaign and much after that as Yadav researched and built connections across the constituency, she concluded that depriving cantonment areas of basic facilities was akin to an abandonment of “moral responsibility”. “No one is saying let us build multistorey buildings in the area and jeopardise the security of the armed forces. No one is in favour of killing the green cover,” says Yadav. “Our contention is that civilians have just as much right to basic facilities like roads, street lights and drinking water. On paper, the cantonment board might offer balanced representation, but decisions invariably get stalled due to resistance by the armed forces.”

Till cantonments continue to function in their present manner, Yadav believes it shall be like being under a double-edged sword. “And that can never be a good thing,” she says.