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| La Martinière family of schools was founded by the French adventurer Major General Claude Martin who was an officer in the French and later the British East India Company |
From the capital city Lucknow to the little known townships, the state of Uttar Pradesh has a wealth of colonial heritage legacy that have immense tourism potential. The erstwhile United Province was considered a rich buffer state by the British with the successive Nawabs of Awadh little interested in confrontation, but all that changed after the First War of Independence in 1857. After taking over the whole area in 1858, they set about to transform the skyline. “The areas that became sort of British sub-colonies were Lucknow, Kanpur, Jhansi, Meerut, Fatehgarh, Allahabad and Agra, though all of this was quite a British inhabited state, even small places like Bina, Sitapur, Mirzapur, Lakhipur, Mau and Azamgarh were inhabited by the British as district headquarters,” says Prateek Hira, president and CEO, Tornos Destinations. Hira offers niche tourism products like the well researched Victorian Walk in Lucknow and India Mutiny Tour covering a few places in Uttar Pradesh. “Apart from this we also locate old houses and trails of the British during the Raj and then tailor-make tours for them to cover these,” he mentions.
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| The Residency still has within its walls, the graves of British soldiers who died in the Revolt of 1857 |
Lucknow has some of the most iconic colonial heritage landmarks including La Martiniere College, Council House, the stretch of Hazrat Ganj, Christ Church, Charbagh Railway Station, The Residency and General Post Office building. Tourists from UK are among the top source markets and have a natural interest and connect with this segment of tourism. “There is a bit of built-in curiosity among the British to see the place that once was their colony, language is not a barrier and there are convenient flights from UK and a substantially less or let’s call it comfortable flight hours to India,” says Hira.
Colonial heritage tourism fits into the experiential tourism segment – to explore the era of Raj, Indian Mutiny, British cemeteries, World War- I and II and other themes. “There is a huge market for such products in UK, but there are certain gaps that exist. The state tourism department though has understood the circuit tourism development, yet in my opinion they need to develop theme based circuit rather than basing their tourism circuits on geography of the state. This is actually how we as a tour company plan our products and sell them quite well,” states Hira, adding that another area of concern is a perception that still exists in the British markets that India has not forgiven them for all that happened before 1947 and they may not be welcoming or receptive of the British doing this trail. “We ought to understand that today when the British tourist travels in search of the grave of his forefathers or follow the trail where his parents served while in military or the East Indian Railways, it is only out of curiosity, to discover the family roots, and family affection and definitely not intended to insult the feelings of Indians,” he concedes.
Developing the circuit
Many UK tour companies have colonial heritage included in their portfolio of products and are doing good business, but a lot needs to be done to promote this knowledge based thematic tour, specially in the UK market. “As a company our focus since the last 20 years of our being, remains on colonial heritage and this theme happens to be our main source of income to the tune of 50 per cent that comes from such tours. We have a strong research base, our own library and research team that helps us design the products that are specially aimed as this cluster of the market. Special emphasis is on locating old residential quarters, British graves, researching British family history and roots as the main product from our portfolio,” informs Hira. He is hopeful that if this circuit is developed and opened for tourists a lot can happen in the state. “The state government needs to look beyond the Taj and the Ghats in the state, so why not project this theme, which is quite research based, intellectually invigorating and requires no huge infrastructure,” mentions Hira. Pointing out that the government of Uttar Pradesh owns many colonial bungalows that can be converted into boutique colonial hotels on PPP model where tourists can stay while taking the circuit, he adds, “There sure is no need of huge investments, just a will to transform existing infrastructure, package it into a product and market it as a thematic colonial trail.”
