I'm in India,
with a 1913 Bradshaw's Handbook To Indian, Colonial And Foreign Travel.
Published at the height of the British Raj,
my 100-year-old guidebook will lead me on
a spectacular railway adventure
through a land of majestic mountains and holy rivers,
where magnificent beasts roam
and epic stories are told.
I'll encounter maharajahs, explore ornate palaces,
witness the technology of modern India
and ride some of the most exhilarating trains in the world.
I'll discover how imperial railways and the English language
inadvertently spread ideas of independence
among hundreds of millions of Indians,
who today live in the largest democracy in the world.
My Bradshaw's has lured me to what it calls
"the region of India that lies to the south
"of the Indo-Gangetic Plain,
"and includes the great triangular peninsula
"that projects into the Indian Ocean."
It was here that the British involvement with India began,
based on trade and greed,
here that maharajahs, left in power by the British,
governed most successfully,
and here that science and industry that flourished 100 years ago
bred the information technology revolution of modern India.
HORN HONKS
My journey takes me through the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu,
beginning in the palatial city of Mysuru,
formerly known as Mysore.
I then travel to the hi-tech state capital of Bengaluru,
previously Bangalore,
before journeying further east to the mining region around Bangarapet.
My route will end where the story began for the British in India -
then Madras, today Chennai.
On my travels, I try to keep up with south India's tech revolution...
Your food is ready.
Please turn off your burner.
Thank you very much. I will.
Your food is ready... OK, OK!
..discover the lengths that the workers go to
in India's silk industry...
How long may the yarn be, then, from a single silkworm?
Each silkworm produces about 1,000 metres of silk.
1,000 metres? 1,000 metres of silk, yes.
That's absolutely extraordinary.
..and learn how the British managed to colonise this nation
where other foreigners failed.
I think they schemed a lot better than anyone else.
They understood the Indian psyche exceedingly well,
and so they managed to get their hands on what they wanted.
Bradshaw's comments that, "Every native state acknowledges
"the supremacy of the British government.
"Some are defined by treaty.
"The majority are bound to follow British advice and to govern their
"subjects with justice."
At my first stop, Mysore,
I want to investigate the maharajahs who handled the British
with canny diplomacy,
won the love of their subjects by respecting their traditions
and culture, yet recognised that western technology
could bring prosperity to both monarch and people.
Mysuru was the regal capital of the ancient kingdom of Mysore,
which, since 1973, has been known as the state of Karnataka.
The anglicised names have changed,
but, strolling through the city on a Sunday morning,
I encounter other British legacies.
Cricket is India's most popular sport,
played in every park and open space across the nation.
You play. I can play?
Yeah. Thank you very much.
You're welcome. Don't bowl as fast as that, though.
Oh, thank you. Thank you very much.
THEY CHEER
It's been a long while since I played
but, thanks to some generous bowling,
I don't think I'm doing too badly.
THEY CHEER
Take it in!
Thank you very much, indeed! You're welcome.
Thank you. Well played!
In this enchanting city of spectacular monuments
and tranquil green spaces, my Bradshaw's leads me to the best,
beginning with a very special visit.
The magnificent Mysore Palace.
Bradshaw's says, "The native state of Mysore is one of
"the best governed in the Indian Empire,
"being now in a highly prosperous condition."
That would be a reference to Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV.
Who better to tell me about him than the present maharajah?
Which explains why, in the sultry heat of this pre-monsoon period,
I've put on a jacket and tie to enter the palace.
This Indo-Saracenic masterpiece was built by British architect
Henry Irwin for the Wadiyar family dynasty
who'd ruled Mysore for centuries.
At the time of my guide, the ruling monarch was Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV,
revered by many for sowing the seeds of prosperity in this region.
I'm meeting Yaduveer Wadiyar, who became maharajah in 2015.
Your Highness. Pleasure to meet you.
Thank you so much for inviting me to the palace.
It is our pleasure to have you here.
This is a stunning room full of artefacts.
What do you call this room? Well, it's called the Green Room,
basically because it was my grandfather's study,
and he had the green desk,
and all of the furniture upholstery as well coordinated with it,
and it was all green so it's, sort of, a name that stuck.
And it's the monarch Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV that
I particularly wanted to talk to you about -
a most exceptional monarch.
He truly was.
He in many ways symbolised the ideal ruler of the time.
He balanced the modernity of the British, which they brought along,
as well as our ancient culture and tradition.
Born in 1884, Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV was taught by Indian and British
tutors, who educated him in both Indian and western studies.
With British permission, he ruled the princely state of Mysore
as an independent entity from 1902 to 1940,
and is celebrated for his progressive policies.
Give me an example of his modernisation.
I think the best example of his modernisation was in the fact that
he realised that electricity and power generation
would be the unit which would power his economy, and so he actively
looked to hydroelectric power plants across Karnataka,
the first one being at Shivanasamudra,
which powered the...gave electricity to the gold mines in Kolar,
as well as to the streets of Bangalore and to the palace here,
and eventually the whole state.
What were his notable social policies?
The most notable to me is definitely when he included women
into education and made it compulsory.
It was brought about, I think, by seeing his very strong mother,
who reigned as regent when his father
passed away at a very young age.
Truly, in Mysore, that equality was a sort of policy move,
social policy move from day one.
The women of Mysore State were the first in India to be
allowed to vote in 1923.
Wadiyar IV established schools, universities and hospitals,
and developed manufactories of silk and soap
that continue to this day.
I believe that Mahatma Gandhi referred to his reign
as some kind of ideal monarchy, didn't he?
True. He called it the Rama Rajya, which is, I suppose,
our utopia for the ideal kingdom.
He did come down to Mysore,
and he found it to be extremely well-organised,
extremely well-run.
The melding of the tradition and culture with the modernity was
so well done that he truly called it what was the ideal for India.
This was a golden age for Mysore,
since Wadiyar IV was an accomplished musician,
and a great patron of the arts.
I'm visiting the Lalitha Mahal Palace.
With its dome inspired by St Paul's Cathedral in London,
it was built by Wadiyar IV for the visiting British Viceroy.
Here I'm being treated to a performance of Carnatic music,
the distinctive classical genre of the region.
MAN SINGS IN OWN LANGUAGE
Thank you so much.
HORNS HONK
The legacy of Krishna Wadiyar IV is widespread,
and I've been told his favourite treat was Mysore pak,
which I find in the city's sweet shops.
Is that Mysore pak over there? Yeah, sure.
And what's that made of, sir?
Yeah, it's made out of gram flour and sugar with ghee.
Ghee? Ghee. That's like clarified butter, yes?
Yeah, butter. So, sugar and butter, basically.
Yeah, butter. Very slimming?
Erm... Maybe.
I think not! Now, look, I just want a little piece to try. Yeah, yeah.
Is that all right? Is that OK? Yeah, sure, sure.
OK, let me try this fantastic thing. Sure.
In Britain we have a thing called fudge,
which may be a bit like this.
Yes.
Mmm.
It is a bit like fudge, but it's warm and it's very, very soft. Yeah.
It's really, really good. Thank you so much.
Nice to meet you, sir. I'm a bit sticky, I'm afraid.
Yeah, sir. Nice to meet you, sir. Nice to meet you. Thank you.
HORN HONKS
These solid iron posts are to prevent cows
from entering the market.
Devaraja Market is open from sunrise till well beyond sunset
and sells fruits, flowers, food,
and some of the most colourful powders that I've ever seen.
Beautiful.
Amazing colours. Absolutely beautiful.
You mark your head with those.
Shall I put it on my head? Yes.
Fine, fine.
Is that... Is that right? Is that right?
Thank you very much indeed. Thank you.
Hello. Excuse me, sir.
This is a watermelon essential oil, seed oil.
It's a very nice fragrance.
It's a wonderful fragrance.
Made from watermelon?
Yes, watermelon. Men or women?
For both.
Absolutely beautiful. Thank you so much. Yes, sir.
Sir, I thought it was soap.
I thought it was soap. No soap. This is sugar cane jaggery.
Sugar cane? Very sweet.
Mmm. It's incredibly sweet. Yeah.
Amazing. I was going to take it in the bath with me.
No, no, no! Not a good idea!
Yes.
MAN SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE
I've picked up sweet-smelling things and an adornment for my hat.
My Bradshaw's refers to Mysore as a great silk-producing province,
and today that remains a thriving industry.
I'm visiting the Chamundi Silk Factory,
located in an industrial area to the north-west of the city.
They've been making this most luxurious of fabrics here
for 70 years.
Mr Muthiah is the son of the company's founder.
Good morning. Very good to see you.
Very nice meeting you. When does silk production begin in India?
Erm...
The production started in India because Tipu Sultan
was the leader of Mysore State.
He became interested because one of the Chinese ambassadors brought him
a silk shawl as a gift, and that created passion in him
that he should produce silk here in his kingdom.
Tipu Sultan ruled from 1782 to 1799, after his father
had overthrown the Wadiyar king in a coup.
Famed for his bravery and brutality while fighting
the East India Company, Tipu Sultan is also credited with
starting the silk industry in Mysore.
Today, it produces around 10,000 tonnes of silk, making it one of the
largest producers in India.
How do we get silk from a silkworm?
Well, see, the silkworm produces the silk from the saliva of the worm.
See, it twists round the cocoon,
and the saliva has got the fibre inside,
and over that we have a protein called gum,
so that gives the strength for the yarn,
but we have to remove this to get the lustre inside for the silk.
Well, someone has taken the cocoons of the silkworms... Yes.
..and undone them to make this thread.
That's right. You see, the cocoons are put into hot water,
and the silk becomes soft,
and then they start reeling the silk,
and that's how the silk yarn is produced.
And how long may the yarn be, then, from a single silkworm?
Silkworm... Each silkworm produces about 1,000m of silk.
1,000m? 1,000m of silk, yes.
That's absolutely extraordinary. Yes, and...
It's a very clever little creature, isn't it, the silkworm?
Yeah, it's very good. Very interesting.
The factory turns this silk into a number of products.
Saris are hand-dyed using an age-old technique.
It's fashionable to have two or three blocks of colour
in the same piece of fabric.
Preventing the dyes from bleeding into each other
requires a precise skill.
He's now going to clamp it,
so that the colour doesn't penetrate the body.
That's what he does, so it's very difficult.
So he's got to go and press it and clamp it.
And the force of the clamp... Yes, the force of the clamp...
..can stop the dye passing.
Yeah, it can stop the dye passing, going up. Wow. It must.
The silk is soaked in the dye for around 20 minutes,
and carefully tended to ensure an even colour.
The dye is sealed with an acid wash, and finally rinsed clean.
Well, with that deep, deep red and that vivid yellow, that's going
to make a beautiful garment. That's a beautiful garment, isn't it?
These saris are valued pieces and sell for up to 30,000 rupees -
around £400.
Of course, not everything is done by hand,
and one of the reasons that south India has prospered so much was the
early adoption of machinery.
These looms are used to weave silk fabrics for clothing
and furnishings.
Well, these are glorious colours.
How long have you been in the silk business?
Well, I have been in the silk business for the last 60 years now.
Where do you think the Indian silk industry will be in 60 years' time?
The sari business is slowly going down
because people are now changing to western dress.
India is the biggest market, but then, apart from it,
we are now shifting towards furnishing fabrics
and then we are exporting it.
Most of it is exported.
And even silk fabrics, also, are being exported to Italy.
So, saris are going down and sofas are coming up?
Yeah, that's right. Yes, correct.
It's near the end of the day and, before I retire for the night,
I'm retracing my steps back to Mysore Palace.
Wadiyar IV electrified Mysore Palace,
and now the illumination of the exterior of the building on
Sunday evenings is one of the great tourist events in southern India.
The palace was one of the first buildings in the state
to have electricity, and since 1909 it's been illuminated at night
by around 100,000 light bulbs.
Very nice, very nice, very nice...
Paneer!
Cheese!
Nice!
Beautiful colours. You're all in such beautiful colours. Excuse me.
Yes? Would you like to have one photo, please? Yes.
CAMERAS CLICK
That's nice. Thank you very much.
Very nice. Thank you. Thank you.
India must be the selfie capital of the world.
Really, everyone is just killing time before the big moment.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Oh!
Oh, that was so exciting and so spectacular.
Every detail of the palace lit up.
The wealth of the maharajahs and the memory of Wadiyar IV,
commemorated in lights.
PEOPLE CHANTING
I've risen early to take part, against my better judgment,
in an ancient practice whose origins are here in India.
Inhale, upward dog.
Exhale, downward dog.
Mysuru has a reputation as one of the best places in India for yoga.
Inhale, look front.
Jump forward.
The practice dates back 5,000 years in India,
and began to spread to the west at around the time of my guidebook.
And exhale, downward dog.
Inhale, upward dog.
And as you exhale, downward dog.
The introduction of yoga to the west is often credited to a social
and religious reformer named Swami Vivekananda,
who in 1893 travelled to the World Fair in Chicago
and began the global spread of Indian spiritual traditions.
Push your hips back.
That's you. Good.
Open your shoulders.
Three, look at your nail.
Good. Very good.
Great. MICHAEL EXHALES
I'm leaving Mysuru to take a three-hour train ride north-east
to the state capital of Karnataka, Bengaluru,
a modern international phenomenon.
My next stop will be the city known in Bradshaw's time as Bangalore.
"District headquarters, British territory in Mysore.
"Highest summer temperature 89 degrees.
"Good English society and shops. Race meeting in July.
"Fine botanical and zoological gardens with floral hall."
The British who were posted here,
relieved to be in moderate temperatures,
brought with them the indispensable institutions of the Raj,
and built for themselves in India a home from home,
except with many more servants.
Hello. Hi.
I see you have a T-shirt that says Bangalore. Yeah.
But the modern name of the city is Bengaluru. Bengaluru, yeah. Yeah.
Does it matter to you what the name of the city is?
It kind of does because Bengaluru is more traditional,
so I prefer that,
and I couldn't get Bengaluru written on this, unfortunately.
Describe the city to me today. What is it like?
Today, the city is known as the Silicon Valley of India,
and the rise in start-ups have just increased, like, exponentially
over the past ten years.
Even people like me are getting into start-ups.
I feel like I'm in LA or San Francisco.
HORN HONKS
Even from the first moment that you arrive at the railway station,
Bengaluru is overwhelming.
It is big and it is busy
and, despite what Bradshaw's says, it's hot!
Home to 12 million people,
Bengaluru is one of the fastest-growing cities in the world.
Whilst the skyline is ever-changing,
some peaceful green spaces and colonial-era buildings remain.
I'm on the hunt for some much-needed refreshment.
Hello, guys. Are the mangoes good here?
Yeah. Lovely. Lovely mangoes?
Just one mango, please. One, yeah.
Lovely. Thank you very much indeed.
These mangoes are incredibly juicy.
Really, you should, kind of, eat them in the bath,
otherwise you'll get covered in juice.
Mmm! That's lovely.
And they're very difficult to peel.
He had to cut either side of the long, thin stone
but it's really worth it.
Fine? They're really nice. Thank you.
Making my way around this city,
I'm struck by the contrast between old and new.
This is the bold architecture of India's new technology revolution.
In the new areas of Bengaluru, in technology parts like this,
each morning, thousands of young minds who make it happen
pour in on motorbikes and in buses.
This is the new India that would have been inconceivable to the
most imaginative of Bradshaw travellers.
Bengaluru is now a world leader in IT, with many of the world's biggest
businesses based in the city's numerous tech parks.
To find out about the origins of this phenomenon,
I'm meeting Kiran Jonnalagadda,
who has been part of the Bengaluru IT boom since the 1990s.
Kiran, why do you think, of all places, Bengaluru becomes the place
where the technological revolution in India happens?
I think it's a story that goes back at least 100 years.
A lot of times people will tell you the technology revolution started in
the '80s or the '90s.
I think it really goes back much longer.
Bengaluru's current technology economy
has been built on the foundation of a previous industrial economy
that the Mysore kingdom, being independent of the British Empire,
was able to establish industries,
create a base of people who were reasonably better educated
than the rest of the country, more secure in their lives,
had stable employment, had property,
lived in this neighbourhood, and their children could in turn
go on and do something slightly more risky.
The Indian government, I'm afraid, is famously bureaucratic.
Yes. How is it the software industry manages to
escape the clutches of the bureaucracy?
I suspect, one, by being a long distance from Delhi,
and, second, by operating in an industry
that the bureaucrats don't understand.
I mean, people sitting in front of computers,
nobody knows what the heck they are up to,
but they seem to be making money, so let them do it.
And that's really how it built.
This educated middle-class workforce has encouraged 40% of India's
IT industry to locate in Bengaluru,
and along with the international IT giants
are countless local entrepreneurs hot-desking in work spaces
across the city.
So, this here is the start-up warehouse,
and this is the Innovation Lab.
It's a bunch of fairly early-stage start-ups, literally one per table.
So, what's cooking today? What's this invention about?
We are a connected cooking platform company.
We can actually monitor what's happening in cooking
and help the cook to cook better.
OK, now, I'm not much of a cook,
so can I try something simple to begin with?
Yeah. Hi, there.
What are you cooking?
Boiled eggs.
Do you want it to be soft-boiled or hard-boiled?
Soft-boiled.
Based on your input, it will take approximately three minutes to
cook soft-boiled eggs.
I will remind you after three minutes of cooking.
And for, say, a complicated recipe, can it guide me through that?
Say, for example, you want to cook some chicken dish,
you can ask, "How do I cook that?"
And then it'll start telling you step-by-step.
So, it's a bit like driving a car -
instead of telling me to turn left or turn right,
it tells me to add salt or add sugar,
or turn it down or turn it up.
You've got it. Very good.
PHONE CHIMES
Your food is ready. Please turn off your burner.
Thank you very much. I will.
Your food is ready. Please turn off your burner. OK, OK.
I will, I will! Your food is ready.
OK, OK! Please turn off your burner.
I turned it the wrong way.
You can't eliminate human error.
In this one building alone, there are over 100 start-ups.
Among them is a med-tech company, which is developing a DIY heart scan
for patients who live in remote villages
that will connect them directly with a cardiologist.
At this moment, the device is capturing the data,
displaying it, analysing it,
and also pushing it over the cloud using the data network,
so any doctor in the city can see the data, real-time.
Your heart rate has stabilised to 70, right now.
71, 72 is a normal heart rate.
One successful app-based taxi and delivery company
has even achieved unicorn status,
the term for a start-up which is valued at over 1 billion.
When was the company founded?
Go-Jek was founded in 2011.
And how fast have you grown since then?
So, January 2015 to August 2016 saw us growing by 900-fold.
900-fold?
900 fold.
That is extraordinary. Is that some kind of record?
It does definitely put us among the fastest-growing
companies in history.
I suppose these people could be employed now anywhere on the globe -
that must impact on their salaries.
Yes, absolutely it does,
and from 2015 to 2016, it went up 80% in one year.
So, what's the impact of all this income being
poured out into Bengaluru?
So, we're seeing an explosion of what used to be a very sleepy
retirement town into something that's slowly growing into a true
metropolis, which would have been unimaginable without
this kind of money coming into the ecosystem.
And I plan to explore the impact of that expanding metropolis tomorrow.
BIRDSONG
This morning, I'm staying in Bengaluru,
but I'm travelling to the suburbs
on one of the city's commuter trains.
HORN HONKS
Urban sprawl has engulfed the surrounding
countryside and villages.
I'm on my way to what was once a remote rural community,
16km from the city centre.
My next stop will be Whitefield, which Bradshaw's tells me
is the station for the Anglo-Indian colony.
At a time when society was generally socially segregated
between the races, there were nonetheless some people
with one Indian and one British parent.
They were too dusky to be acceptable in the British community,
and, being very likely Christian and with an English accent,
they were equally rejected in indigenous circles.
The discrimination was enough to drive them into
their own Anglo-Indian colony.
The Whitefield colony was set up in 1882 by David Starkenburgh White,
an Anglo-Indian who envisaged a self-sustaining
agricultural community.
A development of English-style houses was built around
a central green, designed to evoke a typical English village.
GOAT BLEATS
But as modern-day developers move in,
only one habitable bungalow from Bradshaw's time remains.
It's been home for the last 30 years to Merlyn D'Souza,
who I'm meeting with her son, Paul.
Nice to meet you. How very good to see you.
And, erm, well, thank you for your hospitality. Yes.
Tell me about the house.
Well, we always longed for an old house, but I told my husband,
when we settle down, after he retires from the Army,
I said, "I'd like a nice old place."
What was Whitefield like when you first came to it?
Very nice. Very peaceful.
Everyone knew everyone.
The architecture was this old, traditional British architecture.
Most of the buildings had this... A very...
A sort of sameness about them, in a sense.
They all had high roofs.
They all had Burma teak, which was used for the rafters,
tiled roofs...
Every house had its own garden,
its fruit trees and its little vegetable garden at the back.
Then we had vendors who used to come to the door.
We had a butcher, who'd come with choice cuts of beef.
And the vegetables would also come to the door.
Vegetables would come to the door.
There was a flower man who used to come and sell flowers.
Were there are lots of older houses still left when you got here?
All, all. There was not a...
Mike, there was not a single apartment.
I have nothing good to say about apartment blocks.
Many people have offered us because they just view this land now
in so many square feet is worth so much.
So, they say, "Name your price. You know, you will be a rich lady."
I say, "Thank you. I am rich already.
"If I give this up, I'll have nothing.
"I'll be like everyone else."
That's why I feel that we should make it available
for anyone who wants to look around,
because they'll never see anything like this,
and very soon this also will be gone.
The 19th-century bungalows of Whitefield have all but vanished,
but Anglo-Indian culture has left an enduring legacy.
I'm going to the Taj Hotel,
built in 1887 and mentioned in my Bradshaw's,
to meet chef Sandip Narang to investigate the culinary heritage
of the Anglo-Indians.
Chef, good evening. Hi. Good evening.
I'm Michael. Hello, Michael. What an honour to meet you.
Thank you. What an extraordinary display of food.
This is all Anglo-Indian, is it?
That's correct. These are the signature Anglo-Indian dishes
from the kitchens of this hotel.
I bet I recognise this one, because it's the most famous
Anglo-Indian dish, mulligatawny. Mulligatawny. That's correct.
And mulligatawny is made of what?
It's basically lentils and apples and coconut cream.
One of the spices is the curry powder... Yes.
..which is a mixture of coriander, cumin, etc.
That is delicious. Now, these look like croquettes.
Is that right? That's correct.
Also known as beef chops.
Now, beef in a Hindu country...
It's not cow - it's buffalo.
This is called the devil's sauce, which was... Devil?
So, the croquette was the Anglo bit
and the devil's sauce was the Indian bit
because Indians found it tough to eat it just like that
without the spicy sauce.
Mmm!
You devil, that is a lovely spicy sauce.
Do you think most of these dishes were invented by people who had
an Indian and a British parent,
or by British people who lived here for a long time, or what?
They were mainly done by Indian cooks who learned how to make
British recipes, and then, since they couldn't eat the British food
because of its blandness, they have spiked it up a little bit.
The Brits also started appreciating that food,
so, strictly speaking, it is one step lower in spice levels
compared to the regular Indian food
and slightly spicier than British food.
This is a very famous curry known as the Railway Mutton Curry.
So, rail travel at the turn of the 19th century was a luxury,
so this was made by the Indian cooks for their British masters
at the time.
And is it really mutton these days or is it still lamb?
It's in fact goat.
It's in fact goat!
MICHAEL CHUCKLES
Choo-choo! That's very good.
After all that, I think it's time for pudding.
The bread-and-butter pudding spiked up a little bit.
Mmm! That is brilliant.
That is the definition of Anglo-Indian, isn't it?
Because it is a completely recognisable British pudding
and suddenly it has that spicy edge to it.
Yes, sir. Thank you, Chef.
Today, I'm moving on from Bengaluru and making my way back to the rails.
My travels here in the southern state of Karnataka
continue due east to the city of Bangarapet,
where riches were once in abundance.
From there, I'll make my final journey into state of Tamil Nadu
to the port city of Chennai.
I will finish where British India began.
HORN HONKS
Morning. Good morning.
My Bradshaw's tells me that the first important station
on this branch is Bowringpet, now known as Bangarapet,
the junction for the lucrative gold mines.
They produced in their time about 950 tonnes of gold,
which doesn't sound an awful lot,
but, actually, I calculate it would be worth today
about 60 billion US dollars.
Bye. Bye. Thank you.
Gold is important to Indians,
and they are amongst its biggest buyers,
but, today, the country produces very little
and relies instead on importing 800 tonnes per year.
At the time of my guidebook, however, India had important mines
here at the Kolar Gold Fields, known as KGF.
I'm meeting historian Gayatri Chandrashekar,
whose husband worked at the mines, which closed in 2001.
Gayatri, an impressive piece of heritage here,
this massive winding gear.
When did mining start here?
Modern mining actually started in 1880.
That was when this company called John Taylor and Sons established the
first mine at the Mysore mines.
From a single mine, it became a multi-mine, multilevel,
big industrial operation.
Now, who was the client for this gold? Where was it being sent to?
They sent it to England,
and they were getting the gold standard price -
that is something like 3 pounds and 17 shillings per ounce.
Was the production very significant here?
What was significant in KGF was they were technological leaders.
From 1911 to 1956,
they were the deepest mines in the world.
How deep did they go?
First it was something like 3,000-odd feet.
Then, by the 1950s, they had gone as deep as 8,000 feet.
Extraordinary. We're talking about a mile and a half.
Yes, actually 3.2km down.
Bringing the ore up from such depths was a Herculean task,
especially as it needs to be mined in vast quantities.
Extracting just 10g of gold from one tonne of material was
considered a very good yield.
What an enormous room.
Isn't it?
This is a brilliant shaft,
and this at one point of time was the deepest shaft in the world.
That was in 1954.
And here is the winder on which beautifully well-oiled wire ropes,
miles and miles of them, were bound, and these wire ropes used to go up
through a system of pulleys
and take the people and material in a huge cage
which can carry 15 men.
How was this place powered?
Electric power came as early as 1902.
KGF was the first industrial undertaking in the whole of Asia,
not just India, to get electric power,
even before it came to big cities like Delhi, Bombay,
Calcutta or Chennai or even Bangalore.
The early adoption of electricity was possible thanks to Mysore's
forward-thinking ruler, Wadiyar IV,
who commissioned one of Asia's first hydroelectric dams
at Shivanasamudra Falls in 1889.
Located over 140km from the gold mine,
the challenge of generating and transporting the electricity
was given to General Electric of America,
who imported machinery from the United States and Britain.
They brought all this machinery, landed them in Goa,
and then brought them by 600 elephants to Shivanasamudra,
where the electric power station was built,
and from Shivanasamudra, they brought the transmission lines
all the way to KGF,
and GE said, "We have never drawn this length of power line
"anywhere in the world, and therefore it is at your risk
"you are building this.
"We give no guarantee that power would actually flow."
Sensationally, power did flow along the 140km of cables.
The electrified mines were modern and efficient,
and put India on the map as a leading producer of gold.
The company built houses, hospitals, churches and shops for its workers.
The miners were mostly Tamils from the surrounding area,
middle managers were generally Anglo-Indians
and the bosses were Europeans.
This clubhouse was built for the two upper echelons to relax
and to socialise.
What is the attitude of Indian people to gold today?
Oh, they just love it.
No matter what religion they belong to,
they trust in gold as a store of value.
They trust in its appreciation,
that gold can never go down in value,
and gold can easily be converted into hard cash,
and gold has a certain spiritual aura in India.
They almost worship the gold they have.
It's a very, very auspicious thing.
The next five-hour leg of my journey will be in
an air-conditioned, superfast, double-decker express.
This modern service was inaugurated in 2013,
and links the cities of Bengaluru and Chennai,
but the line on which the trains run was built in 1864,
and unusually it connected a princely state, Mysore,
with a British presidency, Madras.
This railway was a sign of their special relationship,
and provided transport links for all that gold.
As evening falls, my train approaches Chennai,
which used to be known as Madras.
Bradshaw's tells me, "It's the oldest British possession in India,
"and so has set the pace in education and public works.
"The province is one of the best administered in India.
"It has the largest proportion of English-speaking
"and university-educated inhabitants."
In 1639, Madras became the first Indian property
of the London-based East India company,
a bunch of adventurers who sailed here under the flag of trade,
hoping to export into British hands some of the vast wealth
of the subcontinent.
It's been a long journey,
so I'll be exploring this most historic city in the morning.
On my final day, I awake in Chennai.
It's the commercial and cultural capital of south India
and home to over 10 million people.
HORN HONKS
"Madras," says my Bradshaw's,
"was formerly known as Fort St George
"and formed the nucleus of British India.
"The Black Town, renamed George Town in commemoration of the visit of
"the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1906, is the chief business quarter.
"A drive through will well repay."
The great epic history of the British Raj,
with all its ups and downs, and all its pros and cons, began here.
The strip of land purchased by the British in 1639
amounted to just a few square miles.
Today, Chennai spreads massively along the coast.
Because of its important automobile industry,
it was dubbed the Detroit of Asia.
ENGINES RUMBLE
MICHAEL LAUGHS
I'm keen to find out about India's most famous motorbike.
Hi, I'm Michael. Hi, Walter.
Walter, good to see you, sir. What wonderful, wonderful bikes.
So, these are Royal Enfields. Royal Enfields.
And why is this such a special bike in India?
Ah, it's more of it because of its history,
and more of it to do with the Indian army used to ride it,
and then it was with the police also all over India,
and that's when the whole legendary thing started off,
back from the '50s,
and then it carried on over the years.
And it has, doesn't it, a particular noise to it?
Yes. Oh, yeah. It's compared to the heartbeat, is what people say.
It's like our hearts and our bikes' engines synchronise as one.
The Bullet is the iconic model.
Yes, the iconic model.
It started way back in the '50s, and ran the production line
all the way to right now.
Established in the 1890s,
Royal Enfield is one of the oldest motorcycle companies in existence.
British operations ceased in 1978, but the Indian subsidiary in Chennai
is going strong and still manufactures the iconic Bullet.
So, every engine has this thing that you've got to decomp it first.
Yeah. So that's your decomper.
You kick it in slowly, and soothe it in,
and then after you have a thump...
ENGINE RUMBLES ..and this is how you start the motorcycle.
I can't hear it. ENGINE RUMBLES LOUDER
I can't hear it!
ENGINE ROARS
Still can't hear it?!
That's good.
Any chance of a ride? Oh, yeah, sure.
Wahey! Off we go.
ENGINE RUMBLES, HORN HONKS
Oh, I'm hearing that roar now.
ENGINE ROARS
HORN HONKS
In post-independence India,
Royal Enfields were ridden by the military,
the police and heads of villages.
They came to symbolise prestige,
and today they retain an enduring cool.
ENGINES RUMBLE
When the British ruled in India,
they aimed to create a home from home,
and brought with them a favourite institution, the gentlemen's club.
The Madras Club was founded in 1832 as a men-only, white-only
establishment for civil servants and officers.
Today, it is open to Indian and female members.
I'm meeting historian Sriram Venkatakrishnan
to learn about the East India Company's beginnings in India.
Nice to meet you. Good to see you.
Sriram, what did the East India Company do here in 1639?
Very little.
In fact, when they came here, they were pretty unsure about
what is it that they were going to do.
All that they knew was this was a location where there was
cloth to be had.
This was a centre for weaving and sourcing textiles for export.
Was Madras a spectacular natural harbour?
It wasn't. The closest that any ship could come was two miles in the sea,
and then a set of rafts rowing over,
and every English man and woman off-loaded onto the backs of these
oarsmen, who were wearing nothing other than a loincloth,
and then get onto that raft, and then being rowed ashore.
It was said that, you know, if you survived the six-month journey,
it was still hazardous to travel the last two miles
between where the ship stopped and to Madras,
so, you know, anything could happen even then.
So, you imagine struggling all the way for six months
and then dying at the last bit. THEY LAUGH
But, even so, thousands of tonnes of freight must have travelled
by that route. Absolutely.
And what is very interesting is that in 1856 when the first railway
engines came, each one weighing 13 tonnes
and being off-loaded from a ship by using a mechanical crane
onto these rafts, and then getting the raftsmen
to bring the engines onto shore, and there was a public holiday to
watch the way the engines were being off-loaded and brought onto shore.
Now, that is spectacular.
So, from such modest starts, then,
how can one explain that the East India Company becomes
a private organisation that virtually runs a country... Mm-hmm.
..that deposes rulers, that has an enormous army and a navy?
How can one account for this?
You have to thank the French for that.
The French taught the English that, apart from trade,
you could also get onto managing kingdoms on behalf of rulers
and things and people like that,
and, at that time, we had a singularly inept
set of rulers over here,
and all our rulers had 300 wives, 450 concubines
so every one of them had two children,
so, by the time the ruler died,
there were 900 claimants to the throne
and so they were easy pickings.
The French could back one, the British could back the other,
and that's how the whole thing started.
And from then on came Dalhousie's doctrine of lapse,
which said that if a king dies intestate,
and if he doesn't have an heir,
the kingdom goes to the East India Company.
The kingdom goes to the East India Company?
I have never understood the logic of this,
but it did happen.
Quite amazing.
Trading in commodities such as cotton, silk, dye, salt,
tea and opium, the East India Company's business grew
to account for half of the world's trade,
and rewarded handsomely the wealthy merchants and aristocrats
who were its shareholders.
Its dominance came to an end in 1858,
when the British Crown assumed direct control of India
in the new British Raj.
The East India Company has been said to surpass
the most rapacious of modern multinationals.
How do you look back on it?
I would agree with that statement.
It was an exceedingly exploitative system
that somehow gave a few benefits in the process of being exploited -
that's how I would classify it.
The Portuguese had been here, the Dutch, the French and the British.
Why did the British succeed where the others had not?
One, they were more tenacious.
Secondly, I think they schemed a lot better than anyone else.
They understood the Indian psyche exceedingly well,
and so they managed to get their hands on what they wanted.
Thirdly, they did not interfere with the local practices
and the religion.
They were here for commerce,
and the way they schemed and the way they organised themselves,
they had the right man at every moment,
till somewhere in 1920 or so,
when you find that we had the right man, Gandhi,
and then things moved in a different direction.
My rail journey across the south has shown me a modern India.
British-built railways and the English language itself
helped to unify this vast, multicultural,
multilingual subcontinent, but, from the start of the
East India Company here in Madras, Britain's interest was to export
India's wealth and to import British machinery.
The seeds of the new hi-tech India were sown not by the colonial Raj
but by a forward-looking Maharajah of Mysore.
Hello.
Next time, I'll learn about 19th-century drug dealing...
The amount of opium almost made it impossible
for people to not be addicts.
..explore an enormous locomotive factory...
You could run a perfectly decent horse race in here.
..discover how British cotton led to conflict...
They were flooding the market,
and making us lose the handloom industry.
..and get a lesson in meditation.
Focus all your mind on the tip of your nose.