In October 2021 we welcomed Himani Upadhyaya to Landscape Surgery. Himani is a visiting PhD student from Ashoka University. Her research examines surveying and map-making in British Kumaon in the central Himalayan region of Northern India and investigates knowledge-production under 19th century colonial rule.
Himani began by introducing us to Pundit Nain Singh, named on the walls of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) Kensington Grove entrance as a recipient of the Society’s Gold Medal in 1877. This demonstrates a rare case of the medal going to a non-European awardee. Nain Singh was a Bhotiya (a tribal community living in the Himalayan belt) from the Kumaon region and received the award for his success in completing the secret surveys of trans-Himalayan routes to Tibet. Singh was trained by military officials of the Great Trigonometrical Survey (GTS) of India, and British geographers and surveyors have held his surveys in high regard. Nain Singh’s nephew, Pundit Kishen Singh, was also a surveyor and their busts are displayed at the Survey of India HQ in Dehradun to remind visitors of their extraordinary achievements.
Bhotiyas from Kumaon, Mani Singh and his cousin Nain Singh, were among the local inhabitants selected for training in surveying technologies at the Survey of India’s HQ in 1863. When geopolitical tensions arose in central Asia, the GTS turned to local inhabitants and employed them as ‘native surveyors’ to secretly survey areas outside of British territory. Himani stated that with a few exceptions, scholarly discussion on Bhotiyas has mostly centred around Pundits Nain and Kishen Singh.
For this seminar, Himani focused on the route surveys of Kumaon in the 1840s before Bhotiyas were formally trained by the officials of the GTS. Scholars have argued that there was a gradual move away from exploratory and observational modes of doing science in the 19th century and that by the 1860s and 70s travelling modes of conducting science were almost over. However, Himani’s ongoing work suggests that even though there might have been a shift in knowledge producing technologies and institutions of the colonial state as the 19th century progressed, reliance on local networks in this Himalayan frontier continued throughout this period.
Surveyors in the Himalayas were routinely assisted by the patwari (a local official with multifarious duties including land revenue) for his knowledge of the boundaries, names of villages and other information essential for the surveys. The British surveyor, Captain Montgomerie, indicated that the office of the patwari helped maintain British influence in the high-altitude villages of the Himalayas where there was little permanent European presence. Mani Singh was patwari between 1851 and 1863 which made him a suitable candidate to be trained as a surveyor. As patwari, he frequently assisted civil officials, military officials and scientific explorers who arrived in Kumaon en route to Tibet and central Asia. Mani’s influence on colonial officials led to Nain Singh securing a place to assist surveyors, and subsequently later being employed as a surveyor too.
Himani positioned the Strachey brothers as important individuals in explorations in the Himalayas in the 19th century. Henry Strachey, who was a military official of the Bengal Infantry, visited the region in 1846. His brother, Richard Strachey, had an influential imperial career, holding powerful positions in India and as a member of the imperial council. Richard conducted route surveys in Kumaon between 1846 and 1849, collecting scientific specimens and producing essays and maps on the geology and physical geography of the Himalayas, which were then presented to the Geological Society and RGS in London.
In 1848, Richard, alongside the botanist J.E. Winterbottom, was ordered by the government of the north-western provinces to conduct an official mission of scientific research in the Himalayas. They spent two months in the Himalayas and Tibet collecting a range of botanical and geological specimens. These specimens were compared to named specimens in the botanical collections in Europe and between 1852-53, the Herbarium was distributed in Europe. A plant catalogue of this herbarium was later edited and published, and interestingly, many species were associated with the Strachey family name. Colonial power shaped the order and arrangement of the plant specimens in the mountainous Himalayan regions. Vernacular names were ignored and absent from the catalogue as the plant specimens were placed within the Linnaean system of scientific names, often dedicated to European personalities. However, unlike Richard, Henry was more attentive to the vernacular local terminologies.
The Catalogue based on Strachey and Winterbottom’s collections can be found here.
Himani argued that a lack of attention given to regions where famous geographers and surgeon-naturalists did not travel to has resulted in little research into the interactions between local and European knowledge systems. There was a large reliance on the resources, influence and networks of local communities, such as the Bhotiyas, by influential military officials during the travels to the Himalayan frontiers of the East India Company’s territory. Despite this, little is known about these communities who are only partially visible in travel accounts. For example, of the sixteen Bhotiyas accompanying Strachey and Winterbottom on their travels, only two were named by Richard in his account.
Although Bhotiyas were characterized as ‘intelligent’, ‘loyal’ and ‘civilised’ colonial subjects, not all surveyors developed the same relationships with the Bhotiyas. Some Bhotiyas were simply indifferent towards the English officials. Locally posted colonial officials of Kumaon often observed that many of those who were described as Bhotiyas did not self-identify with this term, and resented this extraneous identity label. Himani argues that histories of scientific knowledge production in the Himalayas in the 19th century need to pay closer attention to such complexities, with new histories of 19th century science and exploration requiring investigations into more local and regional founded sources.
We would like to thank Himani for sharing her inspiring research and look forward to hearing about the discoveries she makes during her time researching in the archives in London.
Written by Beth Williamson
Edited by Cynthia Nkiruka Anyadi
Landscape Surgery 