Shimla, summer capital of British India

For about eighty years, the government of the world's largest empire spent half of each year in a small hill town in Himachal. From Shimla, the Viceroy of India ran a territory that stretched from Aden to Burma, and decisions taken on its ridge shaped the borders of several modern countries.

From retreat to capital

After the Anglo-Gurkha War the British acquired the Shimla ridge from the local hill states. The first permanent British house went up in 1822, and the cool climate made the place popular with officials escaping the plains. In 1864 the Government of India formally began moving to Shimla for the summer; from then until 1939 the entire administration — secretariat, army headquarters, treasury — migrated up the Kalka–Shimla line every year.

The imperial town

Shimla filled with the institutions of a capital: Christ Church on the Ridge, the Gaiety Theatre, the Town Hall, the Foreign Office at Gorton Castle, and — completed in 1888 on Observatory Hill — the Viceregal Lodge, a grey stone house with its own electric light and internal telephones. Indian access to the Mall and the Ridge was restricted for much of this period.

History made at Shimla

The 1914 Simla Convention drew the McMahon Line between India and Tibet. The 1945 Simla Conference between the Viceroy and Indian leaders tried and failed to agree a path to self-government. After Independence the Viceregal Lodge became Rashtrapati Niwas and, from 1965, the Indian Institute of Advanced Study. The 1972 Simla Agreement between India and Pakistan was signed in the town after the 1971 war.

Sources

• Wikipedia — Shimla
• Wikipedia — Rashtrapati Niwas, Shimla
• Wikipedia — Kalka–Shimla Railway