Himalaya – Exploring the Roof of the World

Title: Himalaya – Exploring the Roof of the World

Author: John Keay

Publisher: Bloomsbury Circus, 2022 (First)

ISBN: 9781526660527

Pages: 377

 

The Himalayan mountain range is as prominent as a global geographical unit as the Pacific Ocean, Australian continent or the Sahara Desert. Science deduces that this mountain range was formed several billions of years ago when the Indian tectonic plate rammed into the Asian plate causing the impact edges to bend upward as the Himalayas. The compression on the line of contact is so huge that the earth’s crust thickened near the mountains and it became the Tibetan plateau. Whatever may be the nitty-gritty of its formation, Himalaya is sacred to Hindus, Buddhists and other tribal religions alike as the abode of gods. When India succumbed to colonial expansionism in the nineteenth century, the British officials were intrigued by the sheer presence of the Himalaya mainly because of its high peaks which are unparalleled in the world, the indigenous people who valued exclusionism and the prospects of trade. The notion of Himalaya as a halfway haven to the stars blessed with idyllic valleys and other-worldly values took root in Western minds as a result of early explorations. This book offers a mishmash of facts and legends, mainly about Tibet and the Pamirs. It talks about early explorations, invasions, arm-twisting of native Tibetans both by the British earlier and later by the Chinese, mountaineering and how the region became a point of contention in the Great Game of colonial expansion sought by the British and the Russians. John Keay is a noted British historian whose style is very elegant. Reviews of several of his works such as India – A History, The Honourable Company and The Spice Route can be found in this series and can be accessed by clicking on the titles.

 

Keay begins by establishing Himalaya’s immense significance to dictating geography in this part of the world. The fragility of this eco-zone needs hardly to be explained. Himalaya is here compared to continents like Australia or Antarctica, where the latter is demilitarised and apportioned into national study zones by universal agreement. Himalaya also is as fragile and globally significant and would benefit from such a consensus. Towards the end of the book, the author laments that Himalaya cannot be protected by treaties due to political causes, but the concerns of the indigenous people ‘should not be allowed to deter global anxieties’ (p.337). This is a serious assertion and implies a colonial mindset expressed variously as White Man’s Burden. This long-discarded racial theory implies that the coloured people does not know how to mind their affairs in modern societies and it was the white man’s duty to civilize them. This implied suggestion to override national boundaries and bring the region into a supra-national protectorate administered by international bureaucracy is an outrageous one. As part of the history of the origin of Himalaya, this book explains the development of the concepts of plate tectonics and the contributions of Alfred Wegener whose ideas were ridiculed, discredited at first and then grudgingly accommodated. However, plate tectonics conveys such profound knowledge and is comparable to what evolution was to natural sciences and what relativity and quantum mechanics were to physics. The Himalayan peaks were once ocean floor. The uplifting of all this rock was the result of tectonic collisions at extremely low speed.

 

Keay often exhibits an unnecessarily accommodative posture to local beliefs and myths which may sometimes run counter to established scientific wisdom or even common sense. The reasons which prompt him to do so are flimsy and unconvincing for general readers. Palaeontologists discovered fossils of an enormous tortoise called Colossochelys atlas in the nineteenth century from Sivalik mountains. This species is speculated to have gone extinct after humans colonized the region and is stretched as an explanation to a similar concept in Hindu myths which suppose a giant tortoise on whose carapace the earth rests. There is a similar tale in native American societies too. The author drives the point a little too far and makes the earlier claim vulnerable to critical scrutiny when he suggests that the ogres and ogresses referred in Tibetan myths may represent an ancestral memory of contact with Neanderthals or other hominins (p.73). To scientifically buttress this point, he postulates that the genes adapted to oxygen deficiency in the high altitudes were obtained by mixing with Denisovan Man – another hominid. Another curious piece of folk wisdom relates to Hunza whose people believe that the glaciers are gendered and if ice from a male and female glacier is mixed together and is covered in snow at a suitable place and if certain ceremonies are gone through, then a baby glacier will grow there. Though the author does not back it unhesitatingly, he gives a nuanced description which hints that it is likely to happen or that he has met at least a few people who had seen it happen.

 

Most of the narrative revolves around Tibet and its geographical and political landscapes. Explorations into Tibet’s prehistory are narrated and concludes that prehistoric archaeology of the region is still in its infancy. China forcefully annexed Tibet and reconfigured it in the 1960s and prevented any meaningful enquiries. The Tibetan autonomous region was renamed Xizang and roughly corresponded to Outer Tibet. Most of Inner Tibet is now not recognized as Tibetan at all and is incorporated into neighbouring Chinese provinces. Tibet was being dismantled just as its name was being erased. China is brutally exploiting its resources. The ores and aggregates of the plateau all flow east into China. Those benefitting from all this bounty are Han Chinese plus a few foreign investors. The machinery, the expertise and most of the labour come from China. Stories of several Western explorers who travelled in Tibet are given in the book. They got into different regions of the Himalaya after 1850 and exposed several aspects of the geography or culture. While acknowledging Chinese aggression in Tibet, the author is extremely reluctant to admit the cultural ties that exist between that country and India. He insinuates that Indian pilgrimage to Kailas Manasarovar originated only in the 1930s because there are no ashrams, dharmasalas or statuary nearby or at least the British patronage in the 1920s led to a dramatic increase in the number of Indian pilgrims to Kailas region (p.215). The object of this British ploy was to impress on the Chinese that India too had a legitimate interest in Tibet – a case of pilgrimage serving politics. When China invaded and occupied Tibet, Indian pilgrimage was abruptly terminated which was resumed only in the late-1970s. The book also harps on the inconclusive character of the border line separating India and Tibet and called the McMahon Line. The wriggling course taken by the McMahon Line through the eastern Himalayas match exactly with the explorations of Bailey and Morshead in 1913. The 1914 Simla conference between Britain, China and Tibet would formalise the line, but it remained a dead letter as the convention was never ratified because the World War I intervened before any progress could be marked.

 

The book provides many curious bits of information that may challenge the incredulity of readers. It talks about a welcome piece of news regarding climate change and global warming called the Karakoram Anomaly. When the basic postulate of the warming gang is that glaciers are melting away to extinction, the glaciers in Karakoram are said to be actually growing! Compare this with the ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland where it is shrinking. The travels of Swami 1108 Pranavananda Maharaj prove very interesting. The number 1108 in his honorific corresponds to a sacred numeral in Hindu and Buddhist thinking. He semi-resided in Kailas Manasarovar region for 23 years and made 25 circuits around both on foot. He compiled a record enveloping everything that could pertain to the region even including ornithology, mineralogy, cultivation and zoology. Keay also mentions about a historical event that defined Tibet’s cultural affinity towards India, at the cost of China. A religious conclave was held there in the eighth century CE, to decide and choose between Zen Buddhism of China and the orthodox Indian variety. The reigning Tibetan monarch made a clincher that only the doctrine maintained by Indians was to be recognized in Tibet. Thereafter, it was to India that Tibet looked for religious inspiration and direction. Even then, the author makes a crafty observation later that Ladakh is ethnically and culturally Tibetan and virtually regrets its annexation in the nineteenth century to Kashmir under the Dogra king Gulab Singh (p.272).

 

The author is a colonial apologist of the milder variety. A faint astonishment is clearly discernible in the narrative which confounds the author as to why today’s Indians are not properly ‘grateful’ for the services rendered by their British taskmasters in the nineteenth century by opening up the Himalayan hinterland. He conclusively disregards Indian efforts in this direction. To the British explorers and possibly to Keay also, those Indians hired for the explorative journeys counted little more than cattle they collected as pack animals for the trip. In some places, the book unfortunately smacks of colonial hangover. It is as if the Europeans had not come and ‘prised up’ the mountain fastness, the Chinese and Indians would not have known that Himalaya existed! Keay’s disdain about Indians is exceeded only by his near-contemptuous disregard for Nepal and its people whom he likens to a destitute, failed state. The author does not consider Kashmir to be a part of India in his wily observation that ‘Nanda Devi was the highest peak wholly within India because Kangchenjunga being half in Sikkim and Nanga Parbat in Kashmir’ (p.305). He also accuses India of stripping Kashmir of its autonomy, isolated it by all manner of restrictions and subjected to occupation by half-a-million troops (p.267). Through this blatantly hostile comment, he is referring to the abrogation of Article 370 in the Indian constitution.

 

The book seems to lack a structure or a solid timeline of narration. Sometimes the author opts for a flashback going a century or two in the past and then fast-forwards to late-twentieth century with equal gusto. A large part of the book is concentrated on Tibet but this occupied country does not elicit the much-needed sympathy and support. The author of course notes ruefully that China is exploiting Tibet by robbing it of precious minerals, but it is timid and does not heats up the argument to such a level that can lead to a refusal of a visa to China in the future. Author’s research for the work seems limited to the historical material compiled by colonial explorers. Even though the Himalaya is the subject matter of the book, it does not disclose how the mountain is known to local people in the Chinese, Tibetan or Burmese languages. Keay has simply not bothered to look. What shines through the entirety of the text is the unbreakable linkage of local religions to the sacred geography of the Himalayas, whether it is Buddhist, Hindu or the tribal Bon religion. But in the western regions of the mountain range which straddles Pakistan and Afghanistan, no such bondage is witnessed which may probably be due to the strict form of Islamic monotheism practised in these parts. The author has obviously not visited the Afghan part of Himalaya possibly due to security concerns, but limits his criticism to those regions which actually permitted him to visit them safely. The irony and ingratitude is glaring.

 

The book is recommended.

 

Rating: 2 Star