Place · viceregal summer residence · India
Viceregal Lodge, Shimla
Also known as IIAS, Shimla, Viceregal Lodge, Viceregal Lodge / IIAS, Viceregal Lodge — Shimla
Henry Irwin's Scottish baronial house on Observatory Hill at Shimla, finished in 1888, from which half of every year's government of India was conducted until the summer migration ended in 1939. It had electric light before Buckingham Palace did, and a self-contained water and sewage system.
- Date
- 1888
- Function
- Military & resistance
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 31.107, 77.160
Worth knowing
The 1945 Simla Conference and the 1946 Cabinet Mission talks were held in it, and the table on which the partition of the subcontinent was discussed is still in the room. It became the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in 1965, so the building where the empire negotiated its withdrawal is now a humanities research centre.
Connections (4)
- Route adjacencyKalka–Shimla Railway
The Kalka–Shimla line was built because the government of India spent half of each year on the ridge above it; before 1903 files, furniture and clerks went up by tonga and mule. Viceregal Lodge and the railway are one administrative fact in two forms, and both are now World Heritage or national property rather than working government.
- Contemporary capital withNew Delhi, Lutyens' plan
British India had two capitals at once for most of its life: a winter seat in the plains and a summer seat at seven thousand feet. New Delhi was finished in 1931 and the Shimla migration continued until 1939. The 1945 Simla Conference and the Cabinet Mission's 1946 talks were held uphill, which is why partition was largely negotiated in a hill station.
- Route adjacencyMountain railways: Darjeeling
The hill stations and the mountain railways are one policy in two forms. Shimla, Darjeeling and Ooty existed because the administration and the planters moved uphill in summer; the Kalka-Shimla, Darjeeling and Nilgiri lines were built to carry them and their files. All three railways are now World Heritage and none of them is a commercially viable service.
- Site withinShimla
The Viceregal Lodge on Observatory Hill, designed by Henry Irwin and completed in 1888 as the summer residence of the Viceroys of India, now houses the Indian Institute of Advanced Study. Observatory Hill is one of the seven hills of Shimla and sits at the west end of the Ridge-and-Mall spine. The 1945 Simla Conference between the Raj and the Congress-League was held in its council chamber.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Indian Institute of Advanced Study”. Pamela Kanwar, Imperial Simla (1990); the Transfer of Power papers, vols V–VI.
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