4th after Epiphany. Sunday 3
Went out in Guru Das’s car to Dad’s last camp. Tried to see the Rajah of Narayanger’s palace but he wasn’t there. Came back to Khargpur and went to church. On the way home we were challenged 4 times and had to stop the car. One fellow would challenge and the other would stand by with his gun pointed at us. There was some hefty puja at the River. Everybody was bathing. It rained awfully hard this night, everything is a puddle. Sure cooled things off.
[Yikes! Dad never talked about having had a gun pointed at him at this age.
I Googled Rajah of Narayanger and only ONE thing came up, a paper about community forest management in Eastern India. Here’s an excerpt:
According to Lokhun Sahu, a sixty-five-year-old Chandana Villager, the surrounding forest was once comprised primarily of first-growth sal (Shorea robusta) trees. During the years of British colonial rule, a zamindar named Bhuwan Chandra pal, who lived 20 km away in Hundla, near Narayanger, controlled the forest tracts of Chandana. In part to pay his taxes to the British raj, the zamindar periodically leased tracts of jungle to contractors for logging. During the felling, local villagers were allowed to purchase lops and tops for fuelwood at the rate of Rs1 or 2(US.$.03 to $.06)per cartload. The Zamindar didn’t allow villagers to cut poles or logs and posted guards to protect the forest against local users. Periodically, the zamindar sent his men into the village to see if they had hidden poles or timber. The guards beat anyone found to have stolen wood, sometimes fatally. After a contractor finished logging his concession, the sal tree sent up coppice growth, and the forest reestablished itself. Older tress, including sal, mahua, and cashew were left to act as seed and fruit sources.]
Dad's 1935 Diary 