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In 635 AD the Huien Tsang,
the Chinese monk recorded fifty monasteries
with around 2,000 monks in the
Kangra valley. The
Kangra Valley is rich in unexplored archaeological sites of Indian Buddhism.
A century later, Buddhism and all its sites were
eliminated from the valley during an upsurge of
Brahminical revivalism. The
original tribes in the Kangra valley
were the Dasas, a warrior people, later
assimilated by Aryans. In 1849 the British posted a
regiment in Dharamshala, but the place doesn't remained
as a
military cantonment. By 1855 it
becomes as a small but flourishing hill
station and the
administrative headquarters of Kangra
district, which had been
annexed by the British in 1848.
The two main areas at that time were Mcleodgunj,
named after Lieutenant
Governor of Punjab, David McLeod, and Forsyth Gunj,
named after a divisional commissioner. Lord Elgin,
the Viceroy of British India and a former Governor-General of
Canada, loved the forests of Dharamshala so much that, before dying here in 1863,
he asked to be buried in the graveyard of St. John's
Church in the Wilderness. In
1905 a severe earthquake changed the face of
Dharamshala. Many buildings collapsed and the whole
settlement was never
reoccupied. The local
officials advised residents to move to the Lower
Dharamshala. The pine-clad hillsides continued to
flourish as a quiet health resort for the
people of British India
but the visits was ended soon
when India achieved independence. Mcleodgunj
then quickly became a sleepy, undistinguished
village until His Holiness the Dalai Lama
made it his home in exile and moved the
Central Tibetan Administration from Mussoorie to Dharamshala in 1960. Today,
more than 8,000 Tibetan refugees consider Dharamshala
their second home. In 1960, the
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime
minister of India, offered this
place to Tibetan exiles. |
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