The story of the Grand Trunk Road

WHEN the British annexed the Punjab in 1849, the Shalimar Gardens and the GT Road were not the same as they are now. There was no thoroughfare running in front of the present main entrance to the Shalimar. This area was part of a vast garden and related structures spread to where now the Angoori Bagh scheme is located.

The most authentic evidence of these structures was the 30-foot high three-tier hydraulic system which was a landmark of the engineering skill of the Mughals. This system was damaged beyond repair by the Shahbaz Sharif government to widen the road in front of the Shalimar. Only a podium has survived and is being protected. In addition, there are a few turrets in the middle of the locality.

As for the GT Road, some historians believe it ran in Lahore beyond the Shalimar Gardens’ third terrace through the passage which is now known as the Ghoray Shah Road. There is evidence to establish that the two higher terraces were reserved for royalty and the common people had no access to them.

That a road passes north-south just outside the gate (now closed permanently by a wall) in the parapets of the third terrace, gives credence to the general belief that the people travelling between Kashmir and Lahore had access to the Shalimar Gardens and were usually treated as royal guests.

Some evidence regarding which is the original GT Road, may be found in the location of the Mughal period Naqqar Khana on the southern periphery of the Shalimar Gardens. Some historians are of the view that this place was meant for the announcement of the arriving of caravans for which drum beaters and buglists were appointed on the turrets above the gates in the northern and the southern parapets.

The present GT Road outside the Shalimar Gardens was built around AD 1854. There is evidence to suggest that the garden had been damaged and its irrigation system had developed a major fault.

Since the parapet was there, the British found it easy to give us the new GT Road. Some historians understand that the condition of the original track had deteriorated so much that laying a new path was thought to be an easier job.

But the new path could not be given finishing touches before 1868. Lt-Col McGragor supervised the job as the city’s top functionary in the administration (on a par with deputy commissioners of later years).

Interestingly, the main gate of the Shalimar Gardens was the same as was used for the office-cum-residence of Mr McGragor inside the Mughal monument.

No monument was open to the public till the British set up the Department of Archaeology in 1913. All the monuments were used by the British primarily for military purposes and served as cantonments between 1849 and 1913.

The GT Road predates Emperor Sher Shah Suri who later restored it. Sher Shah and the Mughals added to the road’s importance by setting up inns (serais) and hostelries, digging wells, raising minarets at regular intervals, planting trees and establishing posts (chaukis) for the maintenance of law and order.

There have always been changes by successive rulers to provide loop roads en-route. Some of these roads constructed during the Suri and the Mughal period still survive. The triangular loop which connects Wazirabad to Sialkot and then to Gujranwala was built during the early days of the British rule in the Punjab during which a new cantonment was opened at Sialkot.

Sher Shah Suri diverted the road to connect it to the Rohtas Fort. The embankments in the Margalla Pass were built by the Mughals.

By the time the British annexed the Punjab in 1849, GT Road and other communication networks were a shambles. The Sikh rulers not only paid almost no attention to the upkeep of roads, but Mahraja Ranjit Singh had also levied heavy transit tolls and custom duties which, together with insecurity, more or less paralysed communication.

The construction and repair of GT Road became the British government’ primary concern for political reasons. According to a 1935 report, the Raj feared a consistent uprising of Sikhs whom it had ousted from the Lahore Darbar. As such, it was purely out of military considerations that the construction of GT Road was undertaken at top priority by the Punjab’s Board of Administration, which ran the administration of the newly annexed province before the appointment of lieutenant governors.

What strategic importance the road had for India’s British government may be assessed from the fact that a military board was set up to take up the construction. The board was answerable to governor-general Dalhousie who “took keen interest in this work of principal importance.”

Col Napier, a civil engineer in the service of the East India Company, was appointed the first chief engineer for the Punjab. He was selected for the job because he had served the Council of Regency of young Maharaja Dilip Singh for two years since 1847 and had a fairly good idea of the premier road in the Punjab.

Napier had under him about 250 engineers and sub-engineers. This staff, according to an administrative report, “constitutes perhaps the most extensive and certainly the most varied and arduous engineering charge in India.” Napier’s engineers were to build 563 miles of metalled road from Peshawar to Delhi which then was part of the Punjab.

The road was to be 40 feet wide and was to be built in three phases. The first section between Peshawar and Lahore was 265 miles in length. “This portion of the road was considered by Lord Dalhousie to be the most important.”

Lt Taylor surveyed the section and decided to follow generally the direction of the already existing road and deviated from it only in places where a more favourable course could be selected. The scheme approved for the work said that “numerous small rivers and nullahs were to be crossed by timber bridges while across the four great rivers — the Ravi, the Chenab, the Jhelum and the Indus — bridges of boats were to be thrown.”

The section was more or less completed by October, 1854, but work on the “difficult” Peshawar-Rawalpindi track continued till May 1856 when the Lahore-Peshawar road was opened for traffic.

This part of the road was excavated at six “cardinal points” — Kharian Pass, the Sohawa-Hatti ranges on the banks of the Bakrala river, the Margalla Pass near Kala Serai, Haro, Geedar Gali and the embankments of the Chenbab and Jhelum.

Two tracks were laid between Lahore and Ludhiana in the second section. The first ran from Lahore to Amritsar, Waziraghat, Jullunder, Phagwara, Phillour and Ludhiana and the second touched Kasur and Ferozepur en route.

The third section ran between Ludhiana and Delhi via Sirhind Sharif, Rajpur, Ambala, Shahabad, Karnal and Panipat. The GT Road passed through the princely state of Patiala whose Raja was paid no money despite his demand.

The cost per mile came to be Rs23,076. Nearly half of it was spent on the construction of bridges.

The GT Road was not fully completed when the mutiny broke out in 1857, yet it served the British rulers greatly in capturing Delhi. Its importance during the tumultuous period cannot be over-estimated when the “British statesmanship was strained in every timber to the last degree of tension.”

The British government always thought of the GT Road as an important means of military communication. During the mutiny all cantonments were connected to this road and rapid movement of troops, stores and ammunition was possible. This gave the British immense advantage over mutineers. “Along with telegraph, this road saved India for the British,” says a Punjab government report of the time.

The mutiny was put down and the British gained militarily from this road during the first and second world wars and expeditions against the Sikhs.

Rudyard Kipling has explained the importance this road had for the British:

Were marchin’ on relief over India’s coral strand,

Eight ‘undred fightin’ Englishmen, the Colonel and the Band.

Ho! get away you bullock-man, you’ve ‘eard the bugle blowed,

There’s a regiment a comin’ down the Grand Truck Road.