KGF: The El Dorado Of India

Priyanka Rout

KGF: The El Dorado Of India

For ages, El Dorado, the famous hidden city of riches, served as a lighthouse for millions of explorers and gold-seekers. Desperate men from all over the world tried their best to reach out to this location for the bountiful gold that it has to offer. But did you know that India too had its El Dorado, where gold was buried in the depths of the black soil?

India's El Dorado; Image Source: The Hindustan Gazette

El Dorado has been that hidden treasure, studded with mysteries and myths of its existence. Desperate men from all over the world flocked to South America with the "hopeless" goal of discovering El Dorado, and many died in the rough plains, sweltering jungles, and frigid mountains of the continent's vast, unknown interior. El Dorado has never been located, despite numerous men who claimed to know where it is. Little did these power-thirsty men know of an El Dorado in India. Let's get under the blackest and nastiest soil of India's El Dorado and find out the gold that hides somewhere in the depths of the land.

A recently directed film by Prashanth Neel named K.G.F. took the people by surprise due to its fantastic plotline, action sequence, and Yash's incredible performance as Rocky Bhai. Divided into two parts as of now, this film has taken the box office by a vast sweep. However, little do we know that K.G.F. is based on a place called Kolar Gold Fields, also called the "El Dorado of India". Sounds interesting, isn't it?

"Wherever we are on earth, K.G.F. is an inseparable part of our soul! We, the citizens of this Golden city, have all reasons to be proud of, for we are the children of K.G.F.- 'The Land of Proudness'- and our hearts always beat for it"- K.G.F. citizens quoted from 'Kolar Gold Field-Unfolding the Untold' by Dr. S.Srikumar.

Situated in the Kolar district of Karnataka, the Kolar Gold Fields are spread over a humongous area. Famous for gold mines buried under the depths of black sand, the mine was active till 2001. However, after 2001 the mine was shut down due to a fall in the gold price. It is believed that gold is still present underneath the land, but it remains unextracted to date. The journey of K.G.F. from the golden bowl of India to the dust bowl is phenomenal. Let's mine the secrets of this place and find out what inspired Prashanth to direct a movie based on this place

Stay tuned for the next part, where Lavelle goes on a gold hunt to find one of the most mythical places in India that once flooded with gold.

One can find the entire history of K.G.F. in Fred Goodwill's articles published in the Quarterly Journal of the Mythic Society. Fred Goodwill was a superintendent of Police, Maldives, and Kolar Gold Fields. The history of this gold-laden land starts way back in the 2nd century when the Western Ganga dynasty discovered it. They monikered themselves as "Kuvalala-Puravareshwara" or the Lord of Kolar.

In the year 1004, Kolar came under the rule of the Cholas, who named the place Nikarilichola-mandala. However, Kolar did not stay with the Cholas for long as they were soon driven away by the Hoysalas, who captured the Kolar and Talakadu districts. Vira Someshwara, the famous king of the Hoysala dynasty, divided the acquired areas between his two sons, and Kolar again went into the hands of Ramanatha.

From 1336 to 1664, the Vijayanagara rulers controlled Kolar. By the seventeenth century, the Marathas took over the Kolar region. Ruled by Shahaji for over fifty years, Kolar was again transferred into the hands of Muslims, who ruled over it for seventy years. It was then the time for the Britishers to acquire the land of gold and exploit it for their benefit. John Taylor III acquired some of the mines in K.G.F. in 1880 and operated them till 1956. The Government of Mysore finally took over the land in 1956, and the K.G.F. was solely India's property by then.

While Fred Goodwill did his best to trace the history of K.G.F., there is yet another person who contributed equally to discovering this gold-laden land. In 1871, Michael Fitzgerald Lavelle, a retired Irish soldier from the British army, came to live in the Bangalore cantonment.

Although he wanted to make it big after retirement, Lavelle spent a lot of time reading. A four-page piece from the 1804 Asiatic Journal he stumbled upon launched Lavelle on a quest that eventually gave birth to the world's second most bottomless goldmine – the Kolar Gold Fields.

While the 2018 film 'K.G.F.,' billed as the most significant Kannada film of the year, has sparked interest in this abandoned mining town and India's gold rush, the filmmakers concede the film is a work of fiction rather than a historical depiction. However, the real-life narrative of the Kolar Gold Fields dwarfs this.