The Pundits: Spies, Explorers and Scholars during the Great Game
“Now I shall go far and far into the North, playing the Great Game”
- Rudyard Kipling, Kim
Galwan Valley, Pangong Lake, Karakoram Pass, Doklam Plateau, Mishmi Hills. These obscure geographical features and landmarks in the high Himalayas separating India from China have suddenly made their way back into the public consciousness.
The catalyst this time is the increased friction between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of India. I use the phrases “way back” and “this time” deliberately. To scholars and enthusiasts of the Great Game, these names and the surrounding context are eerily familiar: shadow boxing between an ascendant, assertive superpower (Tsarist Russia) trying to throw its weight around in its immediate neighborhood and an ostensibly weaker but rising middling power (British India) trying to protect its interest in its backyard.
The original Great Game, which played out over the course of the nineteenth century between the British Indian and Russian Empires in South and Central Asia, had all the characteristics of a bestselling novel, filled with action, adventure and intrigue. It also had its set of glamorous characters: Sir Alexander ‘Sikunder’ Burnes- the famous British spy with oodles of charm and dashing good looks to boot- was the James Bond of his era.
He was matched on the Russian side by Captain Yan Vitkevich, the enigmatic Polish-Lithuanian orientalist and explorer. Mercifully, there was very little by way of direct bloodshed between the principal protagonists, although things did come close to getting out of hand on a few occasions. No wonder the Russians evocatively called the contest “The Tournament of Shadows.”
It was compelling drama and the public- in Britain, India, Russia and beyond- lapped it up. The romance and zeitgeist of the times was captured by the great Victorian author Rudyard Kipling in his famous novel, Kim.
It is said that history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. As India and China metaphorically battle it out in old familiar haunts from Gilgit to Tawang, journalists and scholars are already labelling the contest the “New Great Game.”
These are just the throes of a new struggle for access, control and domination of South and Central Asia- one that is likely to go on for a while and provide us with its own epics, fables and heroes. As analysts and commentators look forward to the New Great Game, it is also worth turning our gaze backward, to both seek inspiration and draw lessons from the history of the old Great Game.
A lot of the literature on the Great Game is from a Western- predominantly British- perspective. This essay seeks to examine the era from an Indian perspective- focusing on the Pundits- a remarkable set of Indian spies, explorers and scholars whose significant achievements and contributions have sadly been largely forgotten, including in their own homeland. It examines their role and legacy through the lives of three Pundits- Mohan Lal Kashmiri, Nain Singh Rawat and Sarat Chandra Das- spy, explorer and scholar respectively- who epitomized the spirit of their cohort.
Captain Thomas George Montgomerie, a 35-year old British officer of the Survey of India, would undoubtedly have looked back at the year 1865 with more than a tinge of satisfaction.
The Royal Geographical Society of London had awarded him with its prestigious Founder’s Gold Medal for his role in leading and concluding the Kashmir Survey. This was part of the larger Great Trigonometrical Survey of India (GTS).
Commencing in 1802, the GTS had assiduously and methodically carried out the task of precisely mapping the Indian subcontinent. The GTS was a scientific project of a size and scope not previously attempted. By 1865, it was already recognized as one of the great scientific achievements of the nineteenth century.
It was carried on the shoulders of giants such as William Lambton and George Everest- men who personified the heroic spirit of Victorian England- amidst incredible hardship and against near impossible odds. It was a mathematical as well as logistical nightmare.
The GTS’ precise and detailed trigonometrical computations could have filled a library. Instruments such as theodolites (weighing over 50kgs) and chains (measuring 100ft) were dragged across the length and breadth of India to complete the survey.
By mapping the northernmost reaches of the subcontinent amidst the Himalayas, Captain Montgomerie was overseeing the culmination- putting feathers on the cap as it were- to a decades’ long project. Montgomerie is remembered by the history books as the man who named K2 (or Karakoram 2), the second highest peak in the world, joining his illustrious GTS colleague George Everest, of the eponymous Mount Everest fame.
The progress of the GTS was in lockstep with the progress of British power- colloquially known as the British Raj- in India. In 1802 when the GTS started, Britain under the aegis of the British East India Company was just one of the several native and European powers in India, with a particularly strong presence in Eastern India around Bengal and Southern India around Madras.
The Maratha Confederacy, the predominant power in Western and Central India was decisively defeated after the third Anglo-Maratha war in 1818. Further North West, the Sikh Empire was brought to heel and the Punjab came under British control following the death of the formidable Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
That together with Charles Napier’s conquest of Sind in 1843 brought all of the Indus, along the western frontiers of Hindustan, under British rule. Maharaja Gulab Singh, the Hindu Dogra ruler of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh had accepted British suzerainty in return for nominal independence.
This vassal state- also known as a Princely State- secured the northern flank of India for the British, allowing them to carry out and complete the aforementioned Kashmir Survey. Towards the North East, the thrusting Kingdom of the Gurkhas were subdued and confined to Nepal.
With the decisive British victory over the Burmese Empire in 1826, Assam and Manipur at the Eastern extremities of India were secured. Thus, step by methodical step, the British East India Company, a buccaneering private enterprise which operated out of one small office, five windows wide with 35 permanent employees in London, came to control the destiny of India.
From Kashmir in the North to Kanyakumari in the South, from the Indus in the West to the Brahmaputra in the East, the Union Jack was paramount. In 1858, following the failed Indian Rebellion, the nominal Mughal ruler in Delhi was deposed, any pretence of Indian independence was done away with, and India was brought under direct control of the British Crown.
With India mapped and secured, the British gaze turned outward to survey potential threats to their prized imperial possession, the jewel in the crown of their Empire.
Clockwise from the left were Afghanistan- already a theatre of British misadventure; the wild steppe of West Turkestan (present day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan); East Turkestan (present day Xinjiang- literally “New Frontier”- in Mandarin); and Tibet. It encompassed an arc of high mountain ranges- the Hindu Kush, the Pamirs, the Karakoram, the Kunlun, and of course the Himalayas- that separated India from its neighbours.
This part of High Asia was literally the Roof of the World (Bam-i-Dunya in Persian). Much of it was also terra incognita- a cartographic blank slate waiting to be filled. Wherever the British looked, one threat loomed larger than the rest.
The Russian Bear had left its redoubts in Orenburg and Astrakhan (modern day Southern Russia) and was on the prowl. Over the course of the nineteenth century, Tsarist Russia carried out a relentless expansion into Central Asian lands adding over 1.5 million square miles of territory to the Tsar’s domains.
To British eyes, Russia was moving slowly and inexorably towards India. It therefore became of utmost importance for the British to survey and map India’s neighborhood: to understand its terrain, peoples and cultures, so as to be able to better defend against any incursions.
This was the backdrop in which Captain Montgomerie made his momentous proposal in 1862, one that would prove even more consequential than his contribution to the Kashmir Survey.
During his survey work in Ladakh, Montgomerie observed that locals used to cross the frontier between Leh (in Ladakh) and Yarkand (in East Turkestan) quite freely. The British were acutely aware that using Europeans to carry out the survey work beyond India’s borders would almost certainly be met with hostility, even resistance from local rulers.
Montgomerie therefore wrote to Major James Walker, the superintendent of the GTS, proposing that Indian explorers be trained to carry out survey operations and sent beyond India’s frontiers disguised as pilgrims and traders, with surveying instruments concealed amongst their possessions.
Major Walker and other senior British officials readily supported the idea. A training program for native explorers was set up at the Survey of India headquarters in Dehra Dun in 1863. In 1865, the first alumni of the program, Nain Singh Rawat amongst them, were ready to carry out their first mission. A journey to Lhasa, the isolated, enigmatic capital of the Tibetans and the residence of their spiritual and temporal ruler, the Dalai Lama. A place that had hitherto jealously guarded itself and was officially closed to the outside world. The year 1865 had therefore proven doubly sweet to Captain Montgomerie.
While the mission to Lhasa in 1865 was the first systematic use of native explorers outside India, it was not the first. Native surveyors were, of course, used extensively by the GTS in India.
Many of them made lasting contributions, including Radhanath Sikdar, the Bengali mathematician who helped calculate the height of Mount Everest. Native explorers and secretaries (munshis) had also been used outside India, including by William Moorcroft, the early nineteenth century British explorer of Central Asia and the first European to see the famous Bamiyan Buddha statues of Afghanistan.
Nain Singh and the other trained pundits were therefore standing of the shoulders of previous Indian explorers. The decision made by the British to formally train them would have been informed by the valuable assistance provided by Indians on various previous missions. In the annals of Pundits before Nain Singh, one name stood out from the rest: Mohan Lal Kashmiri.
The Kashmiri Pandits- an itinerant community of Brahmins from the Vale of Kashmir- were much sought after as bureaucrats and court officials by rulers across Northern India.
Their felicity with languages, including Persian and Sanskrit, natural intellectual bent and industriousness were valued by rulers- Hindu and Muslim alike. They were duly rewarded with high status and large estates. Mohan Lal came from such a family.
His great grandfather was a high ranking official in the court of the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II (1759–1806). His family had since suffered a reversal of fortunes and fallen on hard times. Growing up in Delhi in the early nineteenth century- a city that was still very much defined by Mughal etiquette and décor (adab-o-tehzeeb) — Mohan Lal was acutely aware of his family legacy.
By the 1820s, British influence over Delhi was growing. They were literally making a mark on the city. The Delhi English College was set up to provide English language education to Delhi wallas. Sensing the direction of the wind, Mohan Lal’s father enrolled him at the school. It would prove to be a remarkably prescient and consequential move, allowing Mohan Lal to leave his mark on history.
Mohan Lal distinguished himself at school, impressing the British both with his intellect and his impeccable manners. In 1831, he was introduced to Alexander Burnes, a 26-year-old polyglot Scot, who had been in India for a decade and served the East India Company in various capacities. Burnes, who was about to make his epic journey through Central Asia, got along with Mohan Lal instantly. He was appointed as Burnes’ Persian interpreter for his Central Asian mission.
The journey to Bukhara- by way of the Punjab and Afghanistan- was extremely successful. Burnes’ travelogue Travels into Bukhara became a sensation across Europe, providing a peek into hitherto wild and unknown Muslim lands.
Burnes became a celebrity and the toast of London’s high society. Mohan Lal was with Burnes every step of the way and wrote his own memoirs- Travels in the Punjab, Afghanistan and Turkistan- which provide fascinating snippets of his encounters with, amongst others, Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab, Abbas Mirza, the Prince of Iran, and Dost Mohammad Khan, the Emir of Kabul, with whom he would go on to have a long history.
He published a monograph on Greek antiquities the mission discovered in Afghanistan, which contributed to the understanding of the Greco-Bactrian period of Afghan history. Mohan Lal also possessed a glad eye and an appreciation of the feminine.
His memoirs are peppered with observations of ordinary people he encountered and their lifestyle. He left a deep impression on Burnes who wrote “…the most remarkable was Mohan Lal, the Hindoo lad from Delhi, who exhibited a buoyancy of spirit and interest in the undertaking most rare in an Indian.” Their association was not over yet.
Armed with glowing recommendations from British officials from the Bukhara mission, Mohan Lal was given training in surveying techniques and appointed as a political agent (nineteenth century lingua for a diplomat cum spy) in Khorasan (roughly modern day Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan).
He joined Alexander Burnes as part of the British mission to Kabul to the court of Emir Dost Mohammad Khan. The Emir, who was being courted by the Russians (led by Captain Yan Viktevich) at the same time, put forward some tough conditions in return for cooperation with the British, including their assistance in the return of Peshawar, the erstwhile winter capital of the Afghans, from the Sikh Empire.
Burnes had a very favourable assessment of the Emir and wanted the British to sign a treaty of friendship with him. His views were not shared by other British officials. Negotiations did not succeed and the mission returned empty handed to India. As a direct fallout of this event, the British decided to embark upon the first attempt by a Western power at regime change in Afghanistan in 1839.
In order to keep Afghanistan out of Russia’s orbit, the British planned and led an operation to replace Dost Mohammad Khan with Shuja Shah Durrani, a descendant of the legendary Afghan emperor Ahmad Shah Durrani. Shah Shuja had been deposed as Emir three decades ago and had been lobbying the British for a while to assist him in returning to the throne.
The mammoth expedition to Afghanistan by way of Punjab and Baluchistan- the so called Army of the Indus- included 21,000 British and Indian troops, 38,000 camp followers and adequate provisioning of goods and livestock for a long haul. One regiment even took its pack of foxhounds.
The image of a bunch of Englishmen fox hunting in Baluchistan is somewhat difficult to conjure. The recently knighted Sir Alexander Burnes and Mohan Lal were part of this virtual township in motion.
The mission faced difficulties from the beginning, particularly around the mountain passes connecting India with Baluchistan and Afghanistan.
It took some casualties on the chin and battled on, managing to storm and conquer the famous fortress of Ghazni. The Afghans considered the fortress to be impregnable. Its loss was a rude shock to them.
The success at Ghazni was thanks in no small part to the crucial intelligence secured by Mohan Lal on the weak ramparts of the fort, together with securing the defection of one of the fortress’ key defenders. The mission fought its way to Kabul and managed to install Shah Shuja in place of Dost Mohammad, who escaped to Bukhara and lived to fight another day.
Having engineered the regime change, the British set up a cantonment near Kabul, signaling they were in no hurry to leave. Burnes and Mohan Lal took up residence in the heart of Kabul city, amongst the locals, becoming the mission’s eyes and ears in the city.
From the start, the British were deeply unpopular with the independent spirited and conservative Afghans. Their haughty behavior, machinations and interference in Shah Shuja’s government, and most controversially- womanizing- did not help. Mohan Lal himself identified the philandering as a key source of Afghan resentment: “stealing” of wives and mistresses was never going to be taken kindly in a society steeped in honor culture.
His warnings of brewing Afghan dissatisfaction were not taken seriously by the powers that be. Things eventually reached a boiling point. Within two years of their entry, there was a full scale rebellion against the British led by Akbar Khan, the son of Dost Mohammad.
At the beginning of the uprising, Sir Alexander Burnes, a particular target of Afghan ire on account of his philandering, was slaughtered by an angry mob. From the terrace of his house, Mohan Lal was a first-hand witness to Burnes’ decapitation and recorded the events in gory detail.
Due to the intervention of some friendly locals, Mohan Lal barely escaped the same fate himself. The failure of the mission to prevent Burnes’ death greatly emboldened the rebels, who then went on to violently uproot the British from Kabul. Mohan Lal tried to assist the mission by paying (and promising even more) bribes to some tribal chieftains, but this was too little, too late.
He also sent several missives to the nearest British garrison in Jalalabad near the Indo-Afghan border, but no help was forthcoming. The subsequent retreat of the mission from Afghanistan to India was bloody and sordid- the army was constantly plundered and harassed, and was almost to a man either killed or captured and imprisoned or sold into slavery.
Mohan Lal himself was captured and imprisoned by Akbar Khan. While in captivity, he was tortured and forcibly converted to Islam. Following the withdrawal of the British, Shah Shuja’s reign at Bala Hissar (the seat of government in Kabul) was short lived.
The humiliation of the British mission at the hands of the Afghans caused a sensation in the world of geopolitics. The shockwaves were felt far beyond India and Britain.
The British immediately began plotting their revenge. An “army of retribution” led by General George Pollock made their way back to Kabul and exacted savage vengeance on the Afghans. One of the key objectives of General Pollock’s expedition was to secure the release of British and Indian prisoners left behind during the retreat.
Here again, Mohan Lal used his knowledge and acquaintance with the key local players and played a crucial role in negotiating and securing their release. Having achieved their objectives, the British did not repeat their earlier mistake of turning the expedition into a permanent occupation.
They also did not try and engineer a regime change this time. The entourage returned back to India swiftly, Mohan Lal amongst them. In 1845, Afghan power politics completed a full circle and Dost Mohammad Khan returned to the throne.
The failed Afghan adventure ended Mohan Lal’s career as a political agent at the nascent age of thirty four. He had incurred various debts from Kabul merchants and chieftains in aid of the British effort.
His petitions to the authorities for reimbursement were rejected. These debts plagued him for the rest of his life. He did, however, get a generous pension from the East India Company, which helped him send his daughters to boarding school in England- another pioneering achievement in his day and age. It also enabled him to travel to Europe.
He sailed to England in 1844 and travelled across the British Isles. On account of the friendships made and references provided by his colleagues from the Afghan mission, he was treated with great hospitality and warmth wherever he travelled.
He adopted the role of a flâneur- acutely observing British society and culture and recording his observations for posterity. Highlights included an emotional meeting with the late Sir Alexander Burnes’ family at Montrose in Scotland and an audience with Queen Victoria at the Buckingham Palace.
This was followed by a trip to Germany and dinner with the King of Prussia. He managed to publish a travelogue- Travels in the Punjab, Afghanistan & Turkistan and a two volume biography of the Afghan Emir Dost Mohammad Khan around this period.
The years after the trip to Europe- the final three decades of his life- were spent in relative obscurity. A dramatic escape during the Indian Rebellion in 1857; marriage to a Shia Muslim lady Hyderi Begum- one of the many women in his life- and the adoption of the Shiite moniker Agha Hasan Jan; and generally uneventful twilight years that were far removed from the action packed earlier years of his life.
Mohan Lal was a pioneer in many ways. A polyglot, philomath and bon vivant, one cannot help but think that fate did not allow him to fulfil his early potential. As a famous admirer, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (who would go on to become independent India’s first Prime Minister) observed: “in a free India, a man like Mohan Lal would have risen to the topmost rungs of the political ladder. Under early British rule… he could not rise higher than the position of… a munshi (secretary).”
For the British, the first half of the nineteenth century would provide valuable lessons and insights into the societies, polities and cultures of the peoples beyond the western frontiers of India- principally Afghanistan and West Turkestan.
People such as Mohan Lal played a critical role in this process. During the second half of the nineteenth century, British eyes and attention turned eastward- to East Turkestan and the hitherto completely unexplored, isolated and hermit like kingdom of Tibet. By 1865, Nain Singh and the other Survey of India explorers were ready for their mission.
Geology has provided Tibet with the most spectacular natural defences. It is walled off from the world by the Kun Lun mountain ranges in the north, the mighty Karakoram to the west, and the no less imposing Himalayas to the south.
A people determined to isolate themselves from the rest of the world- and the Tibetans were determined- could not have asked for a better geography. They were largely successful in their efforts for much of the nineteenth century.
Between the English explorer Thomas Manning in 1811 and Sir Francis Younghusband’s famous military expedition in 1904- a span of nearly a hundred years- no European managed to set foot in Lhasa.
A white man trying to cross over from India to Tibet in the nineteenth century would be easily spotted and immediately arrested. Tibet was officially closed to Europeans and imprisonment- or a worse fate- would await anyone who tried.
The more inaccessible Tibet became, the more it piqued European interest. For British cartographers and military planners, Tibet was of special interest. Large parts of it were literally terra blanca- blank slates on a map- as late as the 1860s. Without the requisite intelligence, it would be very difficult to properly defend India against an invasion from the north east.
The problem of access was less insurmountable for locals living along the Indo-Tibet border. Although journeys were extremely arduous, at least they were possible. Indian traders and pilgrims, particularly from border communities, crossed over into Tibet fairly regularly.
Lake Mansarovar and Mount Kailash- the abode of Lord Shiva- in Western Tibet had deep religious significance for Buddhists and Hindus alike. Nain Singh belonged to one such community. A Bhotiya from the Kumaon Hills bordering Western Tibet, he was already familiar with the Tibetan language.
The Bhotiyas were Hindu Kshatriyas (landowning communities steeped in martial traditions), but with ancestral roots in Tibet. To British eyes, their familiarity with the mountainous landscape and natural hardiness made them ideally suited for the Tibet mission.
With that in mind, Nain Singh and his cousin Mani Singh were trained in surveying techniques at the Survey of India in Dehra Dun. They were to penetrate Tibet disguised as trader-pilgrims, carrying with them the Tibetan prayer wheel and a Buddhist rosary, each adapted for survey use.
The prayer wheels were fitted with a compass. The drum of the prayer wheel was detachable. Instead of Buddhist prayers, the long strips of paper were to record the calculations and other observations. The rosary had 100 beads (instead of the traditional 108), with every tenth bead larger than the rest.
This would assist the explorers in counting paces and mapping their route. They were also armed with sextants (instruments to measure altitudes), chronometers (instruments to measure time) and thermometers.
In 1865, Nain Singh and Mani Singh made their attempt to cross over using the most direct route from Kumaon to Lake Mansarovar. They were rebuffed by Tibetan border officials.
They then decided to try a different route via Nepal. Once again, they were stopped by the Tibetans at the border town of Kirong and had to make their way back to Kathmandu. At this stage, Mani Singh and some of the servants accompanying them lost hope and decided to abandon their efforts.
Nain Singh would, however, not be deterred. He changed his disguise again (this time as a Ladakhi going to buy horses). Accompanied by a servant, he managed to cross over, but not before signing a bond (under penalty of death) that he would not proceed to Lhasa.
The route from Kirong to Lhasa was extremely inhospitable. Besides the high altitude environment that causes its own set of challenges, the cold desert was not amenable to much vegetation. To top things off, there was always the lurking danger of bandits who roamed the highways.
He took around three months to reach the Tradom monastery, where he first sighted the mighty Tsangpo river of Tibet. One of the key geographical debates of that period was whether the Tsangpo and the Brahmaputra which flowed from Tibet into Assam and Bengal were the same river. The Pundits’ explorations and discovery of the common source of the two rivers would go on to play a key role in solving that mystery.
From Tradom, Nain Singh travelled a further 500 miles over three months to reach Lhasa in January 1866. Nain Singh’s reports from the city provided crucial intelligence on Lhasa’s culture, economy and geography, including an accurate recording of its longitude.
He returned to the GTS headquarters in October 1866, almost 17 months after his departure. The mission yielded crucial information on the geography, topography and culture of Tibet and won Nain Singh the first of many accolades, including a gold watch from the Royal Geographical Society.
In May 1867, Nain Singh departed on his second major mission to Tibet, this time accompanied by his brother Kalian Singh. His target was the famous gold mines of Thok Jalung. Reports of Tibetan gold mines had tantalised the European world.
Their knowledge of these mines was fairly limited, relying on sporadic reports from Christian missionaries working in China. It took Nain Singh over three arduous months to reach his destination.
His reports provided the British with detailed first-hand information into the extent of Tibet’s gold mines, as well as their production capabilities, operational and other technical aspects. A European would not see Thok Jalung for nearly four decades after Nain Singh’s visit.
Nain Singh surpassed himself on his third substantive mission to Tibet in 1874, which would also be his swansong. The objective of the mission was even more ambitious: to take a more northerly hitherto uncharted path from Leh to Lhasa, and then make their way further east to Peking (Beijing).
From Peking, Nain Singh was to return back to Calcutta by sea. Crossing Ladakh via Lake Pangong, Nain Singh mapped a chain of lakes in Central Tibet, all at an altitude of over 14,000 feet. He eventually reached Tengri Nor (80 miles northeast of Lhasa), the largest of these lakes.
The entourage met hardly a soul in their trek across this desolate region. By the time they reached Lhasa, he had been on the road for over four months and covered a distance of nearly 1,100 miles.
Once in Lhasa, the mission was expecting to receive funds from a clandestine source so as to enable it to carry onward to Peking (Beijing). Those funds were not forthcoming and the mission was in imminent danger of being outed. Nain Singh therefore made the decision to leave Lhasa and head back to India.
On his return journey, Nain Singh took a southerly route along the Tsangpo towards India, charting the course of the river downstream. He crossed the Himalayas into Tawang (then a frontier trading town between Lhasa and Assam, now a part of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh) via the Karkang pass.
All of his goods were confiscated by the Tawangese authorities due to ongoing trade disputes between Lhasa and Tawang. The entourage finally reached Assam in March 1875, having traversed a distance of over 1,400 miles, including over 1,200 miles of unexplored terrain.
After over two decades of service to the Survey of India, which included missions to East Turkestan as well as Tibet, Nain Singh was worn out. The baton of Tibetan exploration was passed to his cousin Kishen Singh, who would go on to become a distinguished and illustrious Pundit in his own right.
He continued to remain a Survey of India a man, becoming a trainer and passing on his knowledge and skills to the next generation of explorers. His exploits were recognized by the British as well as the wider European geographical exploration community.
He won a gold watch from the Paris Geographical Society as well as the ultimate recognition in nineteenth century exploration: a gold medal from the Royal Geographical Society.
Even the British, famous for their stiff upper lip, could not help but be effusive about the Pundit.
Sir Henry Yule, the famous Scottish orientalist and geographer called Nain Singh “the Pundit of Pundits” and observed that “either of his great journeys in Tibet would have brought this reward to any European explorer; to have made two such journeys adding so enormously to accurate knowledge… is what no European but the first rank of travellers like [David] Livingstone or [James Augustus] Grant have done… His observations have added a larger amount of important knowledge to the map of Asia then those of any other living man”.
Following several years as an instructor at the Survey of India (including as a tutor to our next protagonist, Sarat Chandra Das, in 1879), Nain Singh retired to his village. He was not idle in retirement and wrote two books in Hindi: Akshaansh Darpan (Mirror of Latitudes) recording his survey work and Itihas Rawat Kaum (History of the Rawat Community). A sense of his retired life is provided by the observations of a British official on his cousin Kishen Singh:
“He was very spry in retirement in his 70s, and I used to go and see him when I was on tour. He had a number of large deodar wood chests in the fine stone tea-plantation house, 50 miles over a bridle road from anywhere, that he had bought from a European. The chests were full of maps, blue books and gold medals from many of the world’s geographical societies. He was most unassuming for all that, but we had great fun. He kept handy a large map of Central Asia. I used to pinpoint X or Y or Z and ask if he had ever been there. ‘Oh, yes, [he would respond] I was there in 1876.”
One suspects the words would have applied equally to Nain Singh.
Nineteenth century Bengal was the crucible of the Indian Renaissance- more accurately the Bengal Renaissance. A period of unparalleled intellectual curiosity and an efflorescence of the arts, sciences, literature, philosophy and music, amongst other disciplines.
This great intellectual churning was driven by Bengali Hindus- numerically a slight minority, but culturally the dominant force within the province of Bengal. More specifically, the vanguard of this renaissance were the bhadralok- literally gentlefolk- upper caste Hindu Bengalis who made the most of the opportunities provided by colonial rule, particularly in Calcutta, which was then the capital of British India. Access to Western education led to a quest for knowledge and a deeper understanding of the outside world, as well as of India’s semi-forgotten past.
Sarat Chandra Das exemplified the bhadralok. He was born in Chittagong in East Bengal (present day Bangladesh) in 1849 and attended the prestigious Presidency College in Calcutta, training to be a civil engineer. Das may have spent his life as a babu- the mid-level bureaucrats that were vital cogs in the wheels of the colonial machinery.
Fate had other, grander plans in store. A bout of malaria and a chance meeting with a British official led to Das taking up the position of headmaster at the newly founded Bhutia Boarding School in Darjeeling. He was just twenty five.
Darjeeling had become a summer retreat for British officials looking to escape the tropical heat of the Indian plains. Its proximity to Tibet (as well as other Tibeto-Buddhist principalities such as Bhutan and Sikkim) and its status as a “hill station” for colonial officials attracted economic migrants from these regions.
The school was meant to provide a good European education to Bhutanese, Sikkimese and Tibetan boys. It had another, clandestine purpose: to act as a training school and staging post for intelligence operations in Tibet.
This was Das’ introduction to the world of the Pundits. He learnt Tibetan and read travelogues published by previous English travellers such as Thomas Manning. It sparked a love affair that was to last the rest of his life. In Das’ words, these initial experiences “kindled in my mind a burning desire for visiting Tibet and for exploring its unknown tracts.”
His first forays into the Tibeto-Buddhist world were to Sikkim, where he was accompanied by the Sikkimese Lama Ugyen Gyatso, his Tibetan language teacher and companion. His first trip to Tibet proper was to the monastery at Tashilhunpo in the summer of 1879.
He travelled there at the invitation of the Panchen Lama, whose prime minister was interested in learning the native language of the Buddha. The entourage made its way into Tibet via Sikkim and Nepal, carrying on survey work and taking measurements as they went along. Das struggled to acclimatise to the high altitude and the cold, but made it to Tashilhunpo after a month long journey.
He spent around two months at the monastery, examining Tibetan manuscripts and teaching the prime minister Hindi and Sanskrit. As a gesture of appreciation for his efforts, Das was gifted forty volumes of Tibetan manuscripts.
The mission made its way back to Darjeeling by winter, around five months after their departure. Apart from the survey work, Das’ report contained useful intelligence on Tibetan culture and language.
Das made his second foray into Tibet in 1881. This time, the destination was the city of his dreams: Lhasa. Dressed as a Tibetan Lama, he was accompanied once again by Ugyen Gyatso and took the same route to Tashilhunpo, where he met his old acquaintance, the prime minister.
Smallpox had ravaged Lhasa at the time, but Das decides to press on regardless. En route, he became so sick with fever that he summoned his companions to his bedside and wrote his will.
In May 1882, over a month after they left Tashilhunpo, Das finally gets his first sight of Lhasa in the form of the Potala- the palace of the Dalai Lama with thirteen storeys of buildings on top of Marpo Ri (the Red Hill) rising over 300 meters above the valley floor. ‘‘It was a superb sight, the like of which I have never seen”, Das reported:
“On our left was Potala with its lofty buildings and gilt roofs; before us, surrounded by a green meadow, lay the town with its tower-like, whitewashed houses and Chinese buildings with roofs of blue glazed tiles. Long festoons of inscribed and painted rags hung from one building to another, waving in the breeze.’’
Das set about exploring every nook and cranny of Lhasa, as well as the surrounding countryside. Highlights included a visit to the millennium old Jokhang Temple- the iconic temple of Lhasa, as well as the Potala, where he had an audience with a cherubic, eight year old Dalai Lama.
Das’ visit at Lhasa was short- with the threat of smallpox lurking, the company left within two weeks. The mission made its way back to Darjeeling in December 1882, nearly fourteen months after its departure.
By all accounts it was a huge success. In addition to cultural, geographical and religious information, Das returned with over two hundred volumes of manuscripts, many of them in Sanskrit, which had been lost to India over the centuries of Islamic invasions. Das was first and foremost a scholar- a Tibetologist before the term was invented.
His knowledge of the Tibetan language and religious rituals gave him access and insights that would not have been available to an ordinary explorer. His Indian ethnicity helped him gain access to and the trust of some of Tibet’s highest ranking monks and officials. The maps, sketches and other intelligence he provided were invaluable to Sir Francis Younghusband’s military expedition to Tibet in 1903.
There was an unfortunate price paid by those Tibetans who had unwittingly helped Das’ mission. When Das’ identity was discovered, the Tibetan authorities publicly executed the prime minister of Tashilhunpo. Another important official, the governor of Gyantse, was imprisoned and would only be released twenty years hence by the Younghusband expedition.
Following his epic 1881–2 journey, Das would never set foot in Tibet again. But Tibet did not leave him for the rest of his life. He published several scholarly papers, an authoritative Tibetan-English dictionary and books, including his travelogue Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet. His home in Darjeeling- Lhasa Villa- stands to this day. A testament to a bygone era.
“When everyone is dead, the Great Game is finished. Not before.”
Rudyard Kipling, Kim
The Younghusband expedition and the ensuing British occupation of Tibet marked, in some senses, the culmination of the Great Game.
From the beginning of the nineteenth century to the turn of the twentieth, the British had significantly expanded their understanding of the entire arc surrounding India, from Afghanistan to Tibet. They had also learnt lessons- some bitterer than the rest- along the way. With the Russian Revolution and World War I, British and Russian attention turned to other pressing matters.
The Great Game may feel like ancient history in 2020, but there is a sense of déjà vu. The actors may be different, but the underlying geopolitical tensions feel similar.
A bout of frenetic road construction, bridge building and tunneling by both China and India, aided by cutting-edge engineering has led to the Great Wall of the Himalayas- that eternal barrier separating India from China- appear shakier than ever.
Yet geography still matters. The sheer ruggedness and remoteness of the terrain requires physical patrolling, as was evident in the Galwan Valley at the eastern edge of Ladakh / western edge of Aksai Chin (literally “white desert”) earlier this year, where Indian and Chinese troops engaged in fatal hand-to-hand combat that reportedly resulted in the deaths of over 40 soldiers.
This barren, desolate area at a height of over 17,000 feet, right at the intersection of Xinjiang, Ladakh and Tibet is old hunting ground for Great Game enthusiasts. By a twist of fate, even the name Galwan Valley- an eponym of the Ladakhi Pundit Ghulam Rasool Galwan- owes its origins to the Great Game.
The human element- both in terms of knowledge of the terrain, as well as a deep and intimate understanding of the cultures- would be critical in order to succeed in the New Great Game. India would need a new generation of spies, explorers and scholars to follow in the footsteps of Mohan Lal Kashmiri, Nain Singh Rawat and Sarat Chandra Das.
It is tragic that the exploits and feats of the Pundits have been largely forgotten in the land of their birth. Nain Singh Rawat is perhaps the most remembered, largely due to the institutional memory of the Survey of India. The other two, like countless others besides them, are largely forgotten.
There are several reasons for this. The British did give some recognition- not as much as Europeans who achieved even half as much- but still better than nothing- while they ruled India. Since then, British accounts have largely focused on their own heroes and personalities, with the Pundits playing ancillary roles.
The nationalist sentiment in independent India tends to taint anyone who worked with the British colonial authorities as “collaborators”, regardless of their individual merits or qualities. The only ones glorified as heroes are the freedom fighters who fought against colonial rule.
Such attitudes are a mistake. While the freedom fighters deserve due admiration and respect, the Pundits are equally worthy of admiration. Their love for adventure and thirst of knowledge can kindle a spark in a new generation as it gears up for the New Great Game. They are heroes who deserve to be remembered.
[The writer works in the financial sector in London and tweets @paragsayta. Views expressed are strictly personal].
