By C.P. Belliappa
Courtesy our friends Pemmanda Jepu and Jemy Ganapathy, we spent four wonderful days at the Ooty Club, a place steeped in colonial history. The trophies, the silverware, the honour lists and the photographs of the ‘Masters of the Fox Hunt’ date back to early 1840s. During our stay, I got an opportunity to read a well-documented book titled ‘Ootacamund - A History,’ written by Sir Frederick Price in 1908, which is otherwise kept in the safe locker. Only two copies of this book exist. I was particularly interested in the visit of Governor-General Lord Dalhousie to Ooty in 1856, few details of which I had gathered while writing about Victoria Gowramma. However, what I stumbled upon was even more interesting — Governor-General William Bentinck’s journey to Bangalore, Mysore and Ooty in 1834. This trip was primarily to coordinate the attack on the ‘problematic’ Raja of Coorg: Chikka Veerarajendra. Chikka Veerarajendra and the East India Company were at loggerheads since 1830. Governor-General William Bentinck, who was more interested in reforming India than in annexing new territories, had to finally deal with the Raja of Coorg who had dared the British by keeping in custody one of their emissaries — Kullapalli Karunakaran Menon.
