Pundit of Pundits

Nain Singh's diaries were considered lost to collectors but a husband-wife team put together a collection which is now out.

The year 1830 holds special significance in the history of the Survey of India. That was the year when George Everest came to head the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India, the Royal Geographical Survey was set up in London and, last but not the least, Pundit Nain Singh was born in a remote village of the Kumaon Himalayas.

The Pundit's story is fairly well-known "" he undertook three long journeys to Tibet between 1865 and 1874 to carry out field studies for the Survey of India and gather vital intelligence for his British masters. He travelled under disguise, twice as a holy man and once as a trader, with special survey equipment concealed in his baggage and prayer wheel. His observations were found to be spot on in 1903 when Francis Younghusband, the last great British adventurer, launched a military expedition to Lhasa. The only known picture of him shows a sturdy man with very resolute eyes.

The Pundit was also an avid writer and kept detailed accounts of his travels. He even wrote a book when he was finally relieved by the Survey. For long, his diaries were considered lost to private collectors. Those keen to know about him had to make do with brief descriptions in a dozen-odd books.

The good news is that the diaries have been published once again by an organisation called Pahar (Hindi for mountain). Working painstakingly for almost 15 years, the husband-wife team of Shekhar Pathak and Uma Bhatt has put together a collection that is a collector's fantasy: the diaries Pundit kept, the maps he drew, the notings he took as well as the book he wrote. (Ramachandra Guha had dedicated his bestseller, A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport, to Pathak and "his" Pahar.)

The book is in Hindi and it retains the original flavour of the Pundit's writings in Hindustani, though articles written on his travels have been reproduced in English. Asia Ki Peeth Par (On Asia's Back) makes fascinating reading for anybody who wants to know how The Great Game was played out in the wilderness lying between India and Russia.

For Pathak, a history professor who was among the Padma Shri awardees this year, the compilation is his homage to an idol. Pathak has undertaken four journeys on foot from one end of Uttarakhand to the other "" Askot in the border with Nepal to Arakot where the state ends and Himachal Pradesh starts "" discovering something startling every time. He came across a signboard that says you are in Tehri Riyasat, a bodyguard of Subhas Chandra Bose and homes of cave dwellers during his last journey in 2004.

In academic circles, Pathak has the reputation of presenting facts as they are, without any exaggeration or "twist" and without mincing words. Uttarakhand officials were conspicuously absent when Pathak made a visual presentation on his 2004 journey as he was expected to criticise the Congress-led government for neglecting the developmental needs of the people. At the launch of his latest book in the capital, Pathak told minister of state for external affairs Anand Sharma, the chief guest, that he still needed a permit to go to the Pundit's native village, Milam. Or that the Pundit's diaries suggest that Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh was not under Tibet's rule in the 1870s "" a group of lamas controlled the area. The minister looked visibly shocked.

Pathak has an impressive list of research work under his name, including a study on the coolie-beggar (unpaid labour) system in Kumaon in the pre-independence days. But it is the current work which is sure to win him accolades.

Being an Indian, the Pundit's work had to struggle hard to get its due recognition, Pathak says. In 1876, the Royal Geographical Society had more or less made up its mind not to give its gold medal to him. It was left for Henry Yule (the author of Hobson-Jobson) to lobby hard for the highlander. "He is the pundit of pundits," he told the audience. This one remark turned the tide in his favour. The Pundit remains the only recipient of the honour to get it in absentia.

After his third trip, the Pundit was a physical wreck. He was in no position to undertake any more of these arduous journeys. Though he trained some other Pundits in Dehra Dun for a while on survey tactics, he soon retired to his village. The invaluable Pundit was soon lost for the Britishers. In 1882, they published his obituary on getting news that he had died. The Pundit died a full 15 years later, in 1897.

The final challenge for historians is to get hold of the diaries of another great Pundit, Kishen Singh (code name: AK), who walked to Mongolia. These diaries have never been seen. His descendants claim the diaries are under the government's lock and key. The reason: he found Chinese at all the border posts; this could shatter India's claim that Tibet was never a part of China.