With the closure of the Kolar Gold Field (KGF) mines in 2001, a thriving and populous city – second only to Bangalore city through the first half of the 20th century – is a lush and overgrown wasteland of mining infrastructure that barely manages to keep shaft head above bush. Only the lightest of traces remain of the labours of mining, undertaken for nearly a century by three or four generations of people who staked their lives in bringing the lustrous ore to the surface. It is not – and, perhaps, will never become – a museumised relic, since too much of its earlier, bustling life has been drained away.
At the New Golconda Shaft where, in 1997, we had shot the casual busy-ness of miners descending in cages into the pits, we are allowed only a glimpse, over the tops of trees, of the shaft head with its winding gear. The big gates are firmly shut and the gathering rust is thus secured. The cables which would have made the shaft work appear to have been removed. In the same way, the stillness and the obsolescence of the mills attached to the Mysore mines, on whose conveyor belts the ore was once carried to the crusher and finally, to the smelting room, have been well secured.
The same goes for the other shaft heads: Edgar’s, Henry’s, Gifford’s (once among the deepest mines in KGF and, indeed, the world) and so on. All that remains of that period of extraction and treatment of ore lies behind the locked gates. For what purpose, to what end has this security been put in place?
Yet this derelict industry town defiantly preserves its memories in stone, stubbornly undecayed; a sepulchral structure in the arched water works. Other buildings have been adapted to new uses: an HP Gas distribution unit has rendered old Bullen’s Shaft useful again; the porch of the Freemason’s Hall, established in 1905, serves as a shelter for a tribe of copiously shitting goats.
The Freemasons’ Hall, with goats tethered in the Tuscan-columned porch. Photo: Clare Arni.
The Vocational Training Institute, established in 1899, now addresses the triangular message of ‘knowledge, caution and discipline’ to adjoining buildings, equally deserted except for a few puppies. Robbed of its windows and doors and now protected by bramble, it allows the glimpse of an accident chart; a record of tragedies which occurred in the mine.
The Circular shaft is a splendid tower in yellowing granite, now fiercely guarded by the thick undergrowth.
A part of the Circular shaft that remains, now unapproachable due to the dense protective undergrowth. Photo: Clare Arni.
Even the fine structure that commemorated a century of South Indian Buddhism in KGF between 1907-2007, carefully nurtured by M.Y. Murugesan and several others, now stands locked and barricaded behind multiple gates, unused even for special occasions. KGF is no longer the heart of South Indian Buddhism but it is still the home of an Ambedkarite movement, of which there is ample evidence.
The former Spencer’s store, a largely abandoned but partially occupied Italian miners’ quarters and an unapproachable smelting house also contribute to this stony silence. It is as if John Taylor and Sons, armed with the knowledge of the gold mines as a diminishing resource, defiantly built their structures with an eye on permanence.
That illusion of permanence was amply aided by Mysore’s abundant granite. The structures define the landscape, yet do little to coax elected councillors or entrepreneurs into rethinking other kinds of industry and enterprise. The dream is still of restarting mining; of making KGF the mining centre it once was, again.
Even the centrepiece of the KGF township, the clubhouse, one of the official buildings still in use, stands as a collapsed reminder of a centre of power. The stones still stand firm, tiles in place, but the collapse is written everywhere in its neglect. Its windows are barred; its grand piano hobbled; its furniture decaying or looted.
A bar room remains, with peg measures, tables, chairs and reminders of dead white pioneers on the walls. The conference room, skirted by a huge array of moulding books, has become a badminton court; the transition from European to Indian management is marked in the line up of the portraits of chief general managers.
The conference hall in the clubhouse, once the meeting place of the engineers and managers who ran the profitable gold mines for nearly 80 years, now doubles as a badminton court and play space. A solid shelf of books containing mining and metallurgical journals is neglected, as is the adjoining library. Photo: Clare Arni.
But the most visible neglect is that of the history of mining. In the archive and library, voluminous records of engineering experiments, equally meticulous records of accidents underground, shared experiences between KGF and South Africa, where the deepest gold mines lay and more are now the monopoly of termites.
The frozen linguistic topos of these gold fields serves as another reminder of that other time: we are welcomed to Henry’s Lines by a smart little park, built by the current MLA. The Andhra lines, Henry and Company, Edgar’s, Bullen’s, Tennant’s, Gifford’s, Hancock’s shafts, all commemorate British engineers and buccaneers who single-mindedly and systematically exploited every gleaming seam of gold ore.
An imperial bakery, in existence since 1880, sells its famous dilpasand as ‘muffins’ to preserve, in name at least, the aura of Anglo-Indian culinary cultures. Its ancient wood-fired stove remains useful, producing from its dark belly the magical warm, textured mouthfuls of pastry and coconut, a lingering pleasure. The current owner, Ismail, has proudly hung his grandfather’s picture over the entrance to the oven.
After more than a century of use, the bakery oven still turns out a fresh batch of ‘muffins’. Photo: Clare Arni.
Another kind of linguistic topos at the Champion and Mysore mines serves as a reminder of times past. It is marked by remnants of a Communist Party-led movement of workers; a time of workers’ struggles for better wages and working conditions. A triptych that honours Marx, Engels and Lenin, equally honours K.S. Vasan, V.M.Govindan and T.S. Mani on the other side.
Remains of a Left linguistic topos: a triptych of V.M.Govindan, T.S Mani, and K.S.Vasan, members of the Communist Party of India which had organised one of the most successful trade unions in the KGF area in the 1940s and 50s. The obverse has the triptych of Karl Marx, V.I.Lenin, and Frederick Engels. Photo: Clare Arni.
A row of six red graves, in the part of the Roger’s Camp graveyard reserved for the Reds, commemorates the men who were killed in police firing in 1946 . However, it is in the small, well-kept library, frequented by workers, that honours its early leadership not just on the walls, but in the papers and books that litter the reading tables. Vasan and Govindan have even been put in suits and ties, which they might never have worn, as a sign of workers’ pride in their leaders.
A section of the Rogers’ Camp graveyard which commemorates Communist leaders and workers of the area, including the six who fell to police firing in 1946: Kanniappan, Subramani, Chinnappan, Ramaswamy, Kannan and Ramaiah. Photo: Clare Arni.
And KGF was, of course, the site of multiple Ambedkar statues, especially in the Nandydroog and Champion mines areas. Ambedkar gives up his customary blue suit for an overall gold. In this city of gold, he remains a beacon, hand aloft, pointing the way to a future of educated, proud Dalits. A statue of KGF’s long-time MLA, C.M.Armugham (also known as KGF’s Ambedkar) in Ambedkar Park, Robertsonpet, may have poached Ambedkar’s pose (with an upraised finger and a book in hand) but he cannot be decoupled from the original’s greatness.
KGF as a continuing field of symbols. One of many ‘Golden’ Ambedkar statues that came up in the 1980s and 90s, a symbol of hope for the overwhelmingly Dalit population of KGF mining camps. Photo: Clare Arni.
KGF’s ‘Ambedkar’: Longtime MLA C.M.Armugham, also in gold, installed in Ambedkar Park, Robertsonpet. Photo: Clare Arni.
What remains, unprotected by the state, are the squatters from all classes and backgrounds. There are those, frozen in the positions they had enjoyed in 2001, who have turned their loss into an advantage. They have captured for themselves a fine piece of real estate – colonial bungalows no less – since possession is nine-tenths of the law. Politicians lay claim to community resources – such as the famous Mysore Hall – in forms of land grabbing that have become indistinguishable from the practice of Indian politics.
‘Occupancy claims’ on mining housing: mining officials houses, which have been ‘occupied’ by squatters awaiting a final settlement, have been given a face lift, if only in one part. A stone wall divides the house between two claimants. Photo: Clare Arni.
Ex-mine workers and their families also cling to the soil on which their ancestors lived and died, hoping for a ‘regularisation’ of their claims. They have painted their quarters, given them a new and defiant aesthetic so that they bear no resemblance to the old time ‘aeroplane’ huts of the workers. Some of them also enjoy their little gardens, built with the new-found resources of the multiple earning members in their homes.
Building a new aesthetic: a miner’s house in the Champion Reefs area which has been thoroughly remodelled to include a Christian shrine, an elegant trellis and tasteful colour coding of benches and exterior. Small fruit and flower bearing plants also aid in fashioning this new aesthetic. Photo: Clare Arni.
In a site which contains not even a little flicker of industry, this ‘occupancy’ is a bizarre sign of the singular logic of speculative capital. Having laid waste to the landscape, stripped it of its mineral resources, capital now powers the hope that the space that will increase in value on its own.
The vandalised European graves are a different kind of testimony to the sordid triumph of desperation over respect for the dead. Did the ‘dear departed’ wear jewellery on her way to being interred? Heaving away granite headstones is but a small challenge if her remains can be mined for an easier kind of gold, or a gem.
It would be a mistake to see this town as only the detritus of mining. For an area that has seen studied neglect by the state, it has an extraordinary resilience. There are even signs of a rebirth that might be overlooked by those haunted by the memory of ‘better days’. A slow, truncated life pulses through the veins and arteries of this dormitory town. The young – and even the not so young – on whom this history lightly sits, reveal a capacity to continue life in a myriad of ways.
Also read: Once Resplendent With Fields of Gold, Kolar Is Now a Dust Bowl
The string of trains that depart from Marikuppam, Champion, Oorgaum, Coromandel and BEML Nagar spill over with these daily migrants and the chorus rises for more trains and stops to this area. They chug past the labour lines, the cyanide heaps and the ghostly shafts to destinations that offer hope, such as Bengaluru, Kolar, or at least Bangarapet, where work is found as garment workers, painters, domestic workers, delivery boys, BPO back office work and so on. But each day they also return, to the idyllically quiet, restful space away from the big city – a bonus after all.
KGF boasts of a range of educational institutions: an engineering college, a Government degree college, a pre-university (PU) college, four or five private colleges, 15 private schools and some aided schools. In addition, there is one government industrial training institute (ITI) and as many as six private ITIs in KGF. There are also five nursing colleges and even a few lab technician training centres.
For a population of about 1.5 lakh, that is educational enterprise on a large scale. It is also the fulfilment of Ambedkar’s dream of education as the key to a better future. The Siddhartha Press, which once printed the lively and caustic critique of Brahminism, the Oru Paisa Tamizhan, is no more, with more practical training taking its place.
Others, such as Mohan Kumar, a former winding driver of Tenants’ Shaft, have taken advantage of the lush grass of KGF to nurture a flock of goats, on which he hopes to earns a tidy packet over time.
From mining labour to part time ‘shepherding’: Mohan Kumar, a former winding driver at Hancock’s and Tenant’s shaft, now tends to a small flock of goats, as do many residents of KGF. Photo: Clare Arni.
Human rights groups and Dalit organisations, with national and international links, have also flourished. There is even a small cottage industry of churches, prayer halls, shrines and the like which are bright, well kept and offer a different sort of solace and strength. In the older, established churches – as in the Mother of Mines church – Mary continues to keep her benign watch on the mining population, if only in miniaturised effigy.
Signs of solace and healing: the ‘Mother of Mines’, whose shrine was among the oldest in KGF, now keeps a benign watch on the memory of the mines, blessing a miner in full gear, in a tableau positioned behind the main altar of the church. Photo: Clare Arni.
Enterprises have flourished and disappeared, like mushrooms in a storm, such as in the case of a little garment factory started by Anbazhagan, the leader of the Bharat Gold Mines Employees’ Union (BGMEU), the only recognised trade union in KGF at the time of closure. It is now closed, but remains a small sign of workers’ attempts at filling in the huge gaps left by the state. The vocational training centre which invokes Gorky’s name also belongs to that other memory; of the hopes that were kindled of a brave new socialist world.
Turning an ending into a new beginning: an attempt was made by the last recognised union at the time of the closure in 2001, the Bharat Gold Mines Employee’s Union, to start up small enterprises in the area. Other kinds of activities have since taken the place of the Thangavayel Shirt Manufacturing unit, which put one of the large halls near the Oorgaum Railway Station, to new use. Photo: Clare Arni.
‘Path breaking’ neutrino experiments by the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research (TIFR) in the 1950s, 60s and then again in the 80s attempted to put KGF’s underground to new use. Proton decay was measured in KGF at depths from 2 – 2.3 kms, but has left no trace.
There was even a top-secret BARC venture to dump nuclear waste in the labyrinthine galleys underground. Nothing came of the this, fortunately, or the cyanide dumps/tailings that surround KGF would have vied with new and unknowable underground terrors.
The detritus of a nearly a century of mining: Edgar’s Shaft in the distance, with mined rock and cyanide dumps or ‘tailings’ in the foreground, which have been ‘greened’ to prevent erosion and water contamination in the area. Photo: Clare Arni.
In a township that has left the burden of memory, more or less entirely, to its enduring stonework, it should come as no surprise that the long heritage of labouring itself is usually interred with the workers in their graves. But in the Rogers’ Camp graveyard, there are small signs of committing this memory to stone in a more purposeful, agential way. Thus is Chithirai, declaring with pride his place as the ‘Edgar’s Shaft Winding Driver’, a craft pride that is etched in stone.
Alongside the Italian miners quarters, with its precarious, rotting balconies, a game of Kattabat is in progress. Young men on both sides of the net volley a ball back and forth, quite like badminton, except that the short handled ‘bats’ are made of plywood and the ball is a small, hard globe of twine. This thoroughly KGF invention is not taken lightly, with teams, tournaments and trophies to sustain the deadly seriousness of this mid-morning game.
A young KGF resident poses with his KGF-made ‘kattabat’ on the steps of the Italian miners’ quarters for a wholly indigenous game that follows badminton rules and uses a ball made of twine. Photo: Clare Arni.
The library at Mysore Mines and visual reminders of international, national and local leaders who had dreamed of a new and better future. Photo: Clare Arni.
It is a fitting reminder of how irrepressible life in KGF remains, quite like the voluptuous pink of the coral Antigone that spills across the landscape. You could easily mistake the flowers for the rust and rocks.