India
McCluskieganj
A crumbling utopian Anglo-Indian settlement being slowly swallowed by the dense forests of Jharkhand.
The bungalow name reads 'Rose Villa'. The roses are gone. The walls are cracking. Sal trees push through the roof. In the 1930s, this was supposed to be a homeland — a place where Anglo-Indians could live as themselves. Ninety years later, the jungle is winning.
McCluskieganj in Jharkhand was founded in 1933 by Ernest Timothy McCluskie, an Anglo-Indian businessman who purchased 10,000 acres of land to create a self-governing settlement for the Anglo-Indian community — a people of mixed British and Indian heritage who felt they belonged fully to neither nation. At its peak, the settlement had several hundred families, a church, a tennis club, and bungalows with names like 'The Retreat' and 'Doreen Villa'. By the end of the 20th century, most families had emigrated to Australia, the UK, or Indian cities, leaving fewer than a dozen Anglo-Indian households. The bungalows now rot beneath creeping sal forest, their English-language plaques and colonial verandahs dissolving into the Jharkhand undergrowth. The story of McCluskieganj — a community's attempt to create a homeland, and its quiet failure — is one of India's most poignant postcolonial narratives.
Solo
Walking through crumbling bungalows with English names, piecing together a community's story from architectural decay — McCluskieganj is solo exploration at its most reflective.
- Founded in 1933 as a homeland for Anglo-Indians — the community bought 10,000 acres to build their own country.
- Crumbling bungalows with English names — Rose Villa, The Retreat — rot slowly beneath creeping sal forest.
- Fewer than a dozen Anglo-Indian families remain — the rest left for Australia, the UK, or city anonymity.
- The jungle has reclaimed most of the settlement — tennis courts and churches dissolve into undergrowth.
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