Every Lahori knows about McLeod Road, the road that leads from The Mall at GPO right up to the railway station. Named after Sir Donald Friell McLeod, this road was built to lay the foundations of the new British expanded Lahore.

People pronounce his name as ‘Mclod’, a sound devoid of English grammatical voids and sounds. But he is to my reckoning not only the most known name, he also has contributed the most to the city he loved. “Lahore lives in my heart,” he used to say. Yet sadly he is the least recognised. If our communal-minded rulers have changed the road’s name, no one, thankfully, remembers it.

Let us start by recalling a few places that he started off. The Lahore Zoo, the Lawrence Gardens, and the National College of Arts are among major projects he got off the ground. Then the Oriental College he got started with Prof Leitner to become part of the Punjab University. He set off building most of the houses on both sides of McLeod Road, with his Lakshmi Chowk being an important meeting point.

For this he built the roads leading to and from this crossing. He had an important role in the building of the railway station. Mind you this Scot had a major role to play in the terrible 1857 War of Independence. It is important that we learn more about this amazing Scotsman, a man we know so little about yet for Lahore he was very important.

His full name was Donald Friell McLeod, with the McLeod clan being a Highland clan with strong ties to the Isle of Skye. According to experts, the McLeod warriors are without doubt the toughest highland fighters, yet they are kind and understanding. This trait we see in the way Donald McLeod treated Lahore.

Born in 1810 in Fort William, Calcutta, he was the son of Duncan McLeod, the Lt. Gen. of the Bengal Engineers, who designed and built the Murshidabad’s famous ‘Hazarduari Palace’ – the palace with a thousand doors. At the age of four he was sent to live in Scotland with his grandfather to study in Edinburgh. He also studied in Dulwich and then in London where he got to know John Lawrence.

At the age of 16 he enrolled in the East India Company College in Hertfordshire, England. Two years later in 1828 he returned to Bengal to join the EIC’s administrative service, and at Munger Fort in 1831 he joined the famous Col. William Sleeman in his campaign against the ‘Thugs’ of India. In this role he travelled in disguise and spoke several languages learnt from the thugs. One source (K. Dutta, 1963 MacMillian) claims he even participated in Kali ceremonies after victims were killed. In the end he was part of a campaign that killed over 3,000 thugs.

His success saw him being posted to several position with a ‘special’ role in Jabbalpur. In 1843, he was appointed as a Magistrate of Benares, where crime soon was controlled. He made sure the police force was known for its honesty.

In 1849, he was made the Commissioner of Jullundur and in 1854 rose to become the financial commissioner of the then British Punjab. As chance would have it he was in Lahore when the 1857 War of Independence broke out. Here two different sources – RC Majumdar and The EIC Review 1860, pp34 – claim that the Lahore cannon ‘blowing up’ tactic which claimed 1,426 lives of Lahore residents was his idea. “Scare the hell out of them” was the claim. McLeod in his official report denied ever saying this.

After the dreadful events of 1857, McLeod was immediately sent back to England, only to return in 1861 when famine broke out. He was made the President of the Famine Relief Committee, and on the strong recommendation of John Lawrence, his old friend, was made the Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab.

Once appointed as a Lt. Governor, he set off on his strategy of rebuilding Lahore and the Punjab. In Lahore, he took a special interest in building excellent roads with pavements, he cleared the ways for the building of the railway tracts and the building of the Lahore Railway Station, and in the Punjab he set off on an elaborate canal construction plan.

It goes without saying that what basic infrastructure McLeod put in place was what in later years saw the emergence of the post-1857 era. His emphasis on education as the basis of all progress saw Lahore emerge as a city of learning, of gardens and literature.

To make Lahore ‘greener’ as was famous in the Mughal era, he set up the Horticultural Society of the Punjab and imported plants from all over the world from his own pocket. The Lawrence Garden and the Lahore Zoo which we see today has its foundations in the work of McLeod.

We also must mention that the very first ‘Local Government’ were established under his orders and an estimated 300 local governments were put in place. It is a sad story that after 1947 they all slowly began to disintegrate. In a way our current ‘democratic failure’ is because of the collapse of local government.

McLeod’s famous saying: “True leaders emerge from local government, only crooks jump onto thrones”, is an indicator of our problems today.

On the educational front, he was a supporter of learning Oriental languages. He had a major hand in the setting up of the Oriental College in Lahore in 1866. He had a major hand in the setting up of English-language schools in Lahore and in the Punjab. He retired in 1870 and was immediately appointed chairman of the Scinde, Punjab and Delhi Railway. In a way his hand in building the basic infrastructure of Lahore and the Punjab is outstanding.

Once back in England, he set up a fund to feed the poor starving people of East London. Sadly, in November 1872 while trying to board a moving train at the Gloucester Road station he was run over. He was buried in the Kensal Green Cemetery of London.

After his death it was found out that besides his salary and pension, he had very little wealth. It was at that point that the University College of Lahore, now the University of the Punjab, purchased his impressive collection of over 2,000 books. So the very foundations of Punjab University Library of Lahore were with his books. Till the end and even after, he served Lahore.

John Lawrence claimed that “morally and intellectually he had no superior in the Punjab”. After his death the road that he built as the ‘cornerstone’ of the new Lahore was named after him.

But the fact that we all never recollect is that after 1857 when the walls of the fort and the walled city were restored, it was on the direction of Donald Friell McLeod. What we have today in a way is because of this amazing Scotsman. That an effort is today being made to restore what the carnage of 1947 did to the walled city, is a compliment to what he stood for.

Published in Dawn, May 4th, 2025