The Ready Materials for Another World: Frontier, Security, and the Hindustan-Tibet Road in the 19Th Century Northwestern Himalaya

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies Volume 33 Number 1 Article 11 March 2014 The Ready Materials for Another World: Frontier, Security, and the Hindustan-Tibet Road in the 19th century Northwestern Himalaya Kyle J. Gardner University of Chicago, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya Recommended Citation Gardner, Kyle J.. 2014. The Ready Materials for Another World: Frontier, Security, and the Hindustan-Tibet Road in the 19th century Northwestern Himalaya. HIMALAYA 33(1). Available at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol33/iss1/11 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. This Research Article is brought to you for free and open access by the DigitalCommons@Macalester College at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Ready Materials for Another World: Frontier, Security, and the Hindustan- Tibet Road in the 19th century Northwestern Himalaya Acknowledgements I would like to thank Professors James L. Hevia and Mark Philip Bradley as well as the anonymous reviewers for providing insightful comments and suggestions on drafts of this article. I would also like to thank Dr. Elena Bashir for introducing me to the journal. This research article is available in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol33/iss1/11 The Ready Materials for Another World: Frontier, Security, and the Hindustan-Tibet Road in the 19th-Century Northwestern Himalaya Kyle J. Gardner This article examines the different ways Upon reaching the crest of the ridge at Semla1, the vastness of the in which the British conceived of and scene became oppressive. The lofty snowy range shone from the configured the northwestern Himalaya dense azure of the heavens… Below was heaped a shattered mass of mountains, peaks and glens, ridges and valleys, some aridly in the mid-19th century. It focuses on the bare, others luxuriantly rich. The ready materials for another proposal, construction, and justification world. [Lloyd 1840: 140] of the Hindustan-Tibet Road from the late —Major Sir William Lloyd, 1821 1840s through to the 1860s. By examining this particular episode in British frontier formation, Our policy is to keep clear of intrusion all the approaches to India, I hope to show that the pacific perception and to hold in our hands the keys of all its gates. […] The outer of this “natural frontier” region allowed for a frontier of the British dominion that our policy now requires us to plurality of configurations that would not be defend, has immense circumstance. […] The consequence of this possible on the more contested and violent expansion of our sphere of political influence far beyond the area of our actual dominion is that the frontiers of the British Empire imperial fronts. Only when this region was are changing their character. [Lyall 1911: 375] integrated into a conceptually unified frontier —Sir Alfred Lyall, 1911 did it become subsumed into a larger imperial security rubric—and once again became Introduction considered insecure. For those concerned with the geo-political expansion of British India, the nine decades stretching between these Keywords: Hindustan-Tibet Road, Northwestern Himalaya, two authors presented a variety of frontier configurations British, environment, frontier, security. on the subcontinent. Besides demarcating the often-vague limits of territorial expansion, frontiers represented a variety of imperial ambitions, fears, and technological realities. As British India’s northern boundaries were mapped and information about them was compiled to HIMALAYA Volume 33, Numbers 1 & 2 | 71 produce more detailed systems of knowledge, the concept and politically engage with Tibet. The episode of the of frontier space became solidly tied to imperial security. Hindustan-Tibet Road is notable, in part, for the absence Paradoxically, the more that became known about this of any mention of establishing communication with Lhasa, frontier, the less “secure” it would become. By the close which was, as Alastair Lamb has argued, a dominant 19th of the 19th century, this need for security beyond the century British rationale for expansion into the broader Himalaya induced Britain to invade Tibet in order to Himalayan region. forcibly establish diplomatic and commercial relations. By examining this particular episode in British frontier The northwestern Himalayan border established by the formation, I hope to show that the pacific perception of British at the end of the first half of the 19th century this “natural frontier” region allowed for a plurality of still remains mostly intact today. Its’ exact location and configurations that would not be possible on the more ownership, however, remain contentious in several places. contested and violent imperial fronts. Only when this The post-independence Government of India classified its region was integrated into a conceptually unified frontier easternmost regions as part of the “inner line,” a space did it become subsumed into a larger imperial security deemed off-limits to visitors (and in some cases, non-local rubric—and once again became considered insecure. I also Indians) for much of the 20th century, on the grounds of hope to challenge a dominant strain found in political national security. Security has thus been at the forefront histories of the broader Himalayan region that suggests of British and Indian government policies regarding the British interest in the western Himalaya was driven region for well over a century. However, this was not almost exclusively by security concerns.6 Instead, I would always and exclusively so. Initially acquired through like to suggest that the logics behind early to mid 19th expansionistic wars, the region became—for several century British interventions in the region were also decades at least—a kind of laboratory for experiments in concerned with commercial gains, securing recreational commercial and technological endeavors. and residential space for colonists, and the technological This article aims to examine the different ways in practices that accompanied exploration and territorial which British administrators viewed the northwestern solidification. Himalayan frontier from their early encounters with While the basic causes of the British East India Company’s the region in the beginning of the 19th century up to expansion into the Himalaya may be explained in the the (partial) construction of the Hindustan-Tibet Road broader context of European colonialism in South Asia, (1850s) and its immediate aftermath. Geographically the specifics of British extension into the northwestern speaking, this paper focuses on the western side of the Himalaya present us with interesting and exceptional northwestern Himalaya, which encompasses the modern particulars. Prior to the 19th century, the northwestern Indian districts of Kinnaur, Kullu, Lahaul and Spiti, and Himalayan region had existed as a collection of small Leh. As its’ primary sources are largely official and British, mountainous polities, at times highly autonomous, at its’ perspective is accordingly constricted. Materials that other times contained within the political, economic, and could give us crucial and contradictory local perspectives cultural spheres of neighboring states. At no time till the on this particular intrusion into the region do not, to my British began solidifying their control of the region in the knowledge, exist.2 It is important for readers to note that late 1840s, however, were these regions brought together while the project of building the Hindustan-Tibet Road— under a unified border. The northwestern Himalaya—by the focus of this paper—required the labor of hundreds of the latter half of the 19th century—was incorporated into thousands of human beings, their voices remain silent. a single surveyed, mapped, and defended international Furthermore, as the British had very limited knowledge of, frontier. That this frontier increasingly became an and interaction with the eastern side of the northwestern “international” one reflects the simultaneous processes of Himalaya on the Tibetan plateau during the period under scientifically determining its location and diplomatically consideration3 this paper will omit any substantive configuring those regions that lay beyond it. discussion of Tibetan and Chinese political history in the Recently, Kapil Raj has extended C. A. Bayly’s studies of early to mid 19th century.4 The perception of the region information flows in late 18th and 19th century British as being commercially tied to Central Asia (and thus India to examine the complex circulation of technologies within the expanding commercial and political sphere of around South Asia—technologies partially derived from Russia5) prevented British administrators from articulating indigenous British or South Asian sources and partially the a “backdoor to China” argument for regional expansion, result of hybrid colonial formations on the subcontinent a common reason given for attempting to commercially 72 | HIMALAYA Fall 2013 (Raj 2007). On the edges of the empire, the distribution advanced and varied surveying techniques, in particular,

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