by Ed Douglas
The answer usually offered is communist China’s occupation of Tibet, the Dalai Lama’s flight in 1959 to a sympathetic India and most of all the border war that India and China fought in 1962. Chairman Mao attacked on two fronts, west and east, timing his order to coincide with the Cuban missile crisis, which he knew of in advance from the Soviet premier Khrushchev. India’s prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru soon discovered that potential allies were preoccupied with the prospect of nuclear war. He had underestimated China’s threat and the Indian army was ill prepared. Over the next few decades, while testing each other’s resolve, Beijing and Delhi would bury the Himalayan region’s deep history under the aggregate of modern geopolitics. In the aftermath of the 1962 war, patterns of trade and strong cross-border cultural links that had endured for centuries were abruptly severed. A space became a line.
There are half-deserted villages in valleys either side of Milam and across the whole Himalaya that tell a similar story of dereliction and sudden loss of purpose. For many people living close to Tibet, it had always been easier to head north to the Tibetan plateau to travel east or west, rather than tack against the corrugated grain of the mountains, climbing and descending endless ridges: after 1962 that option became either impossible or fraught with regulation. It’s also true that people were already drifting south anyway. The village of Milam had been built on trade: salt, borax and wool from Tibet in exchange for grain, a hazardous business with high passes to cross and bandits to fight, but it made the Johar valley the richest in the immediate region. By the twentieth century, cheaper sources of goods from overseas were undermining margins on these trade routes. Reforms brought in after India’s independence also changed Himalayan society as land was redistributed. But China’s hard new border was a violent coup de grâce.
Recognising the economic hardship the conflict provoked, in 1967 the Indian government added the people of Milam and other Himalayan ethnic groups to the list of ‘scheduled tribes’ established in India’s new constitution. This guaranteed political representation and government jobs to marginalised groups. In the aftermath of China’s aggression, the Himalaya became more heavily militarised and the Indian army was revamped. A new security force, the Indo-Tibet Border Police, was set up: a few are still stationed in Milam. They have bulldozed a short section of vehicle track downstream to the next village along the valley, Burfu, but porters, many of them poor Nepalis, are still needed to bring food from the closest main road up an ancient drover’s road, known as a khrancha. Underemployed men in Kumaon and Garhwal took advantage of their new status as scheduled tribes to join the military, often serving in the Indo-Tibet Border Police, mountain troops who train as skiers and mountaineers and are used to the cold and altitiude. In 1962, both Chinese and Indian troops suffered more casualties from the environment than the enemy. Recruiting from the hardy mountain communities of the Himalaya made sense.
For the people of Milam, becoming caught up in the dramas of powerful nations was a familiar story. They had found themselves in a similar predicament a century earlier as the British Empire tried to fathom the unknown depths of the country on its northern frontier beyond the Himalaya, Tibet. In 1967 the people of Milam were scheduled as Bhotias, meaning simply people from Bhot, the word used commonly for Tibet by Tibetans. In doing so, the Indian government used a designation that was a legacy of the colonial British, who tended to lump together all ethnic Tibetan groups south of the Himalayan chain as Bhotias. After they acquired Garhwal and the upper part of Kumaon, where Milam is situated, they referred to it as ‘Bhotia Mahal’, meaning simply ‘where the Bhotia live’. As a consequence, there are now ‘Bhotia’ throughout the Himalaya, from Ladakh in the west all the way to Arunachal Pradesh in the east. Similarly, when Indian diplomats were negotiating with the Chinese to settle their border dispute after the 1962 war, they would use as evidence to support their cause the work of George Traill, the so-called king of the Kumaon, who arrived at Milam after the British defeated the Gorkhas in 1816. As we saw, Traill recognised at once the damage done to the people of the Johar valley by the excessive demands of their Gorkhali masters and lightened their tax burden, in the process creating detailed records of the region’s economic activity. In other words, India’s argument with the Chinese relied on British India’s attempts to administer a group of independent mountain people and define its limits against those of an earlier Chinese empire: the Qing.
At the time of British rule, the people of Milam didn’t call themselves Bhotias and they didn’t regard themselves as ethnically Tibetan either. Inhabitants of the Johar valley called themselves Shaukas, and also Rawat, the first an ethnic description, the latter more political. They saw their origins in the diaspora of Hindu warrior Rajputs that migrated east through the middle hills of the Himalaya as Muslim control spread from the west. This gloss of aristocratic bearing is reflected in the use of Hindu names like Singh among the people of the valley. There is a story about a seventeenth-century Rawat leader called Hiru Dham Singh, a fighter from Garhwal who helped local Tibetan forces drive out Chinese marauders from the Kailas area, just across the border. As reward, he was given trading privileges by the Tibetans and settled here, in the upper Johar valley. That’s one version of Milam’s origin. Yet there are stories that are far older, like Kumaoni folk tales that tell of the fearless heroine Ranjuli and her father, the magician trader Sunapati Shauka, whose spells lift him over the mountains. One legend tells how the chela or disciples of Sakya Buddha settled the valley first, hence the name Shauka. Archaeological evidence certainly supports a more ancient story; Kumaon was known for its gold smelting as far back as the sixth century, an industry that requires borax as a flux, borax which came from Tibet: Milam most likely existed because of its location on the supply route for this material. By the time of the Chand dynasty, firmly established as rulers of Kumaon by the fifteenth century, we know such trade with Tibet existed because it is recorded in tax records.
The hazy outlines of Milam’s past aren’t merely coincidental; they are an integral part of its story. Different cultures met and fused here. Just as in western Nepal, close by on the other side of the Mahakali river, Khas migrants to Milam encountered indigenous populations, creating new hierarchies and new ways of living. As trade grew, Tibetan and Turkic raiders saw easy pickings along the Kumaon frontier. Traders needed good relations on both sides of the mountains to defend their business and so the ability to blur cultural allegiances could prove useful. Summers were spent going back and forth across high passes in and out of Tibet, buying borax, salt, wool and gold dust, chiefly at Gartok, the dusty main town of western Tibet, and selling grain and manufactured goods. Rawat women would sometimes join the caravans of sheep, goats, ponies and yaks, crossing the border on pilgrimage to Kailas, in reverence to Shiva and Shakti. Winters were spent at established trade fairs in villages closer to the plains, while families stayed at second homes away from the frozen high valleys.
Religion in Milam is ostensibly Hindu but manages to cover many traditions. The contemporary Indian traveller Chinmoy Chakrabarti observed how the Rawat’s
natural surroundings made them pantheist and animist. In most of their temples that I have visited, there are no idols but stones on which rudimentary sketches are made to bring in a resemblance of the Hindu divinities. On my way to the higher valleys, I have also seen prayer flags tied to trees, which are treated as sacred groves. Natural objects like mountain peaks, rocks, rivulets [and] trees also represent deities.
The Johar valley in particular was a favoured route from the south over the mountains to Kailas, another reason the Rawats embraced their Hindu identity so strongly: it brought tolerance from the Chand kings and allowed them to prosper. Yet as the British colonial official Edmund Smyth, who spent many years in Kumaon, observed:
they have Hindu names, and call themselves Hindus, but they are not recognised as such by the orthodox Hindus of the plains or the hills. While in Tibet they seem glad enough to shake off their Hi
nduism and become Buddhists, or anything you like.
Cultural versatility was key; the Rawat could fill the different spaces they entered like water in a bowl and yet always be themselves. As traders they were capable linguists, fluent in Tibetan and Hindustani as well as more regional languages like Garhwali. Their own distinct dialects were of Tibetan origin, which gave them an advantage with Tibetan traders, said to do business only with those who would sit down and eat and drink with them. This caused suspicion among higher-caste Hindus in the middle hills who ostracised the Rawat as beef-eaters, ascribing their prosperity not to courage or business acumen but a willingness to compromise caste boundaries. There were immense risks in Tibet as well; the region was infested with bandits. But it was the Milam traders who held the advantage. Each had their own seal, or thachia, and a Tibetan counterpart, known as a mitra, with whom they dealt directly: the two would split a stone and each kept half. Only Rawat from the Johar valley could sell grain into this corner of Tibet, Ngari Khorsum or the upper Sutlej valley. Only Rawat could dissolve the relationship. They built up immense wealth and used bonded labour to farm their fields. One Rawat trader was said to be so rich that his bags of gold could block the Gori river. There are still a few old stallholders in the town of Munsyari who can remember the thrill of their first caravan, shaking hands with old Tibetan friends arriving at market, sheep laden with salt, gold jewellery flashing in the relentless sun of high altitude.
The British had a relationship with these Rawat, or Bhotias as they called them, even before the East India Company took control in 1816. Eight years earlier the surveyor William Webb, accompanied by Captain Felix Raper and their minder Hyder Jung Hearsey, encountered Bhotias in Garhwal at the village of Mana in the Alaknanda valley, on the west side of the mountain Nanda Devi, during their search for the source of the Ganges. Captain Raper was enchanted with this markedly different ethnic group.
As soon as we entered the town, all the inhabitants came out to welcome us; and we observed a greater display of female and juvenile beauty, than we recollect to have seen in an Indian village. [He liked the] ruddiness in their complexions, of which the children partook in a very great degree; many of them approaching to the floridness of the European.
Raper also noted how Bhotias ‘profess the Hindu religion, and call themselves Rajputs’, even though
they scruple not to perform the most menial offices; and in the article of food are less nice than the lower class of sweepers. Like most inhabitants of cold climates, the Manah people are much addicted to drinking; and even consider it necessary for their health.
He described the Bhotias’ yaks at length and was, like most travellers since, in terror of their dogs.
One of them was a remarkably fine animal, as large as a good sized Newfoundland dog, with very long hair, and a head resembling a mastiff’s. His tail was of an amazing length, like the brush of a fox, and curled half way over his back. He was however so fierce, that he would allow no stranger to approach him.
As they turned south from the Garhwal towards Kumaon, Webb, Raper and Hearsey found themselves hustled out of what was then Gorkhali territory: the authorities, having got wind the British were asking too many questions, were determined to make sure they left swiftly. There was only enough time to notice that Kumaoni farms were more prosperous than those in Garhwal and to see the mountains from a distance. Otherwise their impressions were fleeting. Yet for much of their journey, the trio, two British and an Anglo-Indian, had enjoyed the company of a man born in Kumaon: a Brahmin called Har-Balam, whom they’d hired as a fixer at the start of their journey. This man had proved his value many times over and left them well disposed towards Kumaonis in general. It was most probably Har-Balam whom Webb meant when he told his superior in Calcutta about an ‘intelligent native’ who had visited the Tibetan borderlands and described
two great Lakes, only one of which is laid down in any Map extant, viz. Lake Mansurwar [Manasarovar] . . . The other, by far the largest and most important, named Rown Rudh [Rakshas Tal] remains unnoticed.
Webb’s information was somewhat awry, but the prospect of these great lakes was irresistible. The source of the Ganges might now be clearer but a new prospect for exploration now arose: what might be discovered on the far side of the mountains?
Crossing these mountains demanded a lot from Europeans who took on the challenge, but they couldn’t do it alone. Their efforts would have been wholly in vain without the mediation of a select group of local people, usually traders, who had the skills and access to move between different Himalayan worlds. From the moment the British arrived at the foot of the Himalaya and began investigating Tibet for the purposes of trade and geographic knowledge, they relied heavily on such people, who were as often as not written out or down in published accounts. By the end of the nineteenth century, with the British still kept out of a large proportion of the Himalaya, these quick-witted, courageous intermediaries would be crucial in gathering intelligence on behalf of their imperial masters. The greatest of these would come from the Johar valley.
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The broad narrative arc of nineteenth century European exploration in Central Asia could be summed up as a process of creeping institutionalisation. In the eighteenth century, the East India Company was more or less run by adventurers. Forty years later, the free and easy spirit that had sent George Bogle to Tibet in 1774 had evaporated. British control of India had expanded rapidly under the governors general Cornwallis and Wellesley, but the Company was much reformed and under tighter bureaucratic control. With more to lose, it moved cautiously and by increments. At the same time, scientific exploration was becoming hugely popular across Europe. Alexander von Humboldt was among the most famous men of his day and Charles Darwin was circling the world in the Beagle. Public appetite for their tales of adventure and discovery sold books and filled lecture halls. In 1830 the Geographical Society would be founded as a London dining club, receiving its royal charter in 1859. The reputation of an explorer could now be made or broken in London committee rooms. After the 1857 rebellion, alongside Anglican hegemony and racial arrogance, political and institutional control of exploration would also harden. Yet in the first half of the century there was still enough space for mercenaries, mavericks and freelancers to prosper.
Hyder Hearsey had certainly been one of these. After the journey in Garhwal and Kumaon, he had returned to the family estates near Bareilly. As raids from Gorkhali troops increased through 1811, Hearsey acted on his own initiative, raising troops and laying in weapons and ammunition in early 1812 to take the fight to the Nepalis. This infuriated the East India Company agent in Bareilly, as the British were at this point reluctant to provoke the Gorkha regime. The official had the governor general revoke that portion of Hearsey’s property that was leased from the Company. Another such character was Alexander Gardner, known as Gordana Khan, whose adventures and travels in Central Asia and the Oxus valley in the 1820s were so outlandish that the Scottish orientalist Henry Yule refused to believe them. Born in Wisconsin in 1785 to a Scottish father and a Spanish mother, he later became a mercenary in the Sikh Khalsa, or army. But it was another travelling companion of Hyder Hearsey, a man called William Moorcroft, who, though not at all romantic himself, led the way in the wildest, most romantic phase of Europe’s encounter with the Himalaya.
Moorcroft was, in the historian John Keay’s phrase, an ‘erratic genius’. ‘He still gets described as a horse-dealer, a spy or an adventurer,’ Keay wrote, ‘each of which possess a grain of truth while sadly understating his real standing.’ The only portrait that exists, assuming that it is in fact of Moorcroft, is poorly done, showing him, in the words of the writer Charles Allen, ‘perched uneasily on a rickety chair, a trim, slight man with the face of a spiv – small eyes, long nose, hairline moustache’. He was certainly short and slight, with fair hair and a florid complexion: far from the image of a rugged explorer. But it tells little of the drama of his life, his immense resilience and determina
tion, and more than anything his insatiable curiosity.
The most startling thing about Moorcroft was his age. When he set out with Hearsey for Tibet in May 1812, he was at least forty-five or so, having already worked for several years in India, a country where life expectancy for Europeans was short even for those who didn’t stray far from their desks. That made him more a contemporary of Bogle than Webb or Raper. Born around 1765, he had started as a medical student at Liverpool Infirmary when he became involved in battling an epidemic among livestock in his native Lancashire. He then followed the suggestion of pioneering surgeon John Hunter to switch to the new discipline of veterinary science, and the only place to study that was France. Having qualified, he set up practice in London and made a fortune that he then lost after investing in the manufacture of cast-iron horseshoes, an investment that soured over patents. For the rest of his life, it seems, there was always a part of him searching for a scheme that would redeem this failure. In the meantime, he needed a job. Moorcroft had served as a volunteer in the citizen army that was raised to meet the threat of French invasion and in the process had got to know Edward Parry, a director of the East India Company. Parry now offered him the job of improving the military stud in Calcutta. The salary was vast and tax free, but it wasn’t simply a question of restoring his fortunes: the older Moorcroft got, the more restless he became.
Arriving in India in 1808, Moorcroft discovered the scale of his task. His job was to provide the Bengal army with eight hundred horses a year. Given the corrupted and feeble stock he inherited, Moorcroft knew immediately he needed better animals, ‘an infusion of the bone and blood of the Turkman steed’. During the eighteenth century, India had been plugged into Central Asian horse breeding markets, largely thanks to the Rohilla, ethnic Pashtun tribesmen who had migrated from Afghanistan to serve in the Mughal army, settling in northern India. The hills of Rohilkhand, the region they inhabited around the towns of Bareilly and Rampur, had just the right grasses for good horse-breeding. The Lavi fair at Rampur, founded in the eighteenth century to boost trade with Tibet, also included a horse market where traders could buy the famous Chamurthi ponies from the Himalayan region of Spiti. With the decline of the Rohillas, access to Central Asian stock became more difficult and the quality of local breeding declined. Moorcroft also needed a different kind of horse. The weight of a Bengal army dragoon with field equipment was 252 lb (115 kilograms), much heavier than a Mughal cavalryman, requiring a bigger, taller horse. He decided he needed to visit the source of the best bloodstock: the horse fairs of Central Asia, particularly that in the Uzbek city of Bukhara. Moorcroft had a second motive. Having sorted out the day-to-day administration of the Company’s stud, he was bored and looking for an adventure.