Shimla, a city founded as a hill station. The city's urban planning and architecture, as seen here on the south side ofthe Ridge, were designed to foster a European experience for homesick colonial officials and executives.
Ahill station is a type ofhill town, mostly incolonial Asia, but also incolonial Africa (albeit rarely), founded by European colonialists as a refuge from the summer heat. As historian Dane Kennedy observes about the Indian context, "the hill station (...) was seen as an exclusive British preserve: here it was possible to render the Indian into an outsider".[1][2] The term is still used in present day, particularly in India, which has the largest number of hill stations; most are situated at an altitude of approximately 1,000 to 2,500 metres (3,300 to 8,200 ft).
Hill stations inBritish India were established for a variety of reasons. One of the first reasons in the early 1800s was to act assanitoria for the ailing family members of British officials.[6] After therebellion of 1857, the British "sought further distance from what they saw as adisease-ridden land by [escaping] to theHimalayas in the north". Other factors included anxieties about the dangers of life in India, among them "fear of degeneration brought on by too long residence in a debilitating land". The hill stations were meant to reproduce the home country, illustrated inLord Lytton's statement aboutOotacamund in the 1870s as having "such beautiful English rain, such delicious English mud."[7]Shimla was officially made the "summer capital of India" in the 1860s and hill stations "served as vital centres of political and military power, especially after the 1857 revolt."[8][9]
As noted by Indian historianVinay Lal, hill stations in India also served "as spaces for the colonial structuring of a segregational and ontological divide between Indians and Europeans, and as institutional sites of imperial power."[10][11][12][13][14]William Dalrymple wrote that "[t]he viceroy was the spider at the heart of Simla's web: From his chambers in the Viceregal Lodge, he pulled the strings of an empire that stretched from Rangoon in the east to Aden in the west."[15] Meanwhile Judith T Kenny observed that the hill station was "a landscape type tied to nineteenth-century discourses of imperialism and climate. Both discourses serve as evidence of a belief in racial difference and, thereby, the imperial hill station reflected and reinforced a framework of meaning that influenced European views of the non-western world in general."[16] Speaking about the development of hill stations likeMussoorie,Shekhar Pathak, historian of Himalayan cultures, noted that "the needs of this (European) elite created colonies in Dehradun of Indians to cater to them."[17] This "exclusive, clean, and secure social space – known as an enclave – for white Europeans ... evolved to become the seats of government and foci of elite social activity", and created racial distinctions which perpetuated British colonial power and oppression, as Nandini Bhattacharya notes.[18][19] Dane Kennedy observed that "the hill station, then, was seen as an exclusive British preserve: here it was possible to render the Indian into an outsider".[1]
Kennedy, following Monika Bührlein, identifies three stages in the evolution of hill stations in India: high refuge, high refuge to hill station, and hill station to town. The first settlements started in the 1820s, primarily as sanitoria. In the 1840s and 1850s, there was a wave of new hill stations, with the main impetus being "places to rest and recuperate from the arduous life on the plains". In the second half of the 19th century, there was a period of consolidation, with few new hill stations. In the final phase, "hill stations reached their zenith in the late nineteenth century. The political importance of the official stations was underscored by the inauguration of large and costly public-building projects."[8]: 14
The term "hill station" has been used loosely in India (and more broadly South Asia) since the mid-20th century to describe any town or settlement in a mountainous area which attempts to expand its local economy toward tourism, or has been invested by recent mass tourism practices.Kullu andManali in the Indian state ofHimachal Pradesh are two examples of that shift in the meaning of"hill station". These two historical settlements existed prior to the British, and have not been extensively modified or shaped by them, or even particularly frequented by them. However, the rise of internal domestictourism in India from the eighties and the subsequent growth in hill station practice by urban middle-class Indians contributed to the labelling of these two localities as hill stations.Munnar, a settlement in the state ofKerala whose economy is primarily based ontea cultivation andprocessing as well as plantation agriculture, is another example of a hill town transformed by modern tourism into a hill station.
Hundreds of hill stations are located in India. The most popular hill stations in India include:
A summer evening view on theNainital Lake andtown, in the state ofUttarakhand, India. Hill stations are often created or shaped according to European aesthetics. Here, the naturallakes of the Kumaon hills echo the lakes of theSwiss Alps, celebrated at the same time in Western Europe. InOoty andKodaikanal, the lack of water bodies has been compensated by the creation of artificial lakes.Tea plantations inDarjeeling, West Bengal, IndiaThe Stone House atOoty, the first colonial mansion built in theNilgiris
Booknotes interview with Barbara Crossette onThe Great Hill Stations of Asia, August 23, 1998,C-SPAN
Media related toHill stations at Wikimedia Commons
The dictionary definition ofhill station at Wiktionary
