The Great Game,

Holy Spies
&
Clandestine
mapping of
Himalayas

The Great game

For nearly a century
the two most
powerful nations on
earth, Victorian
Britain and Tsarist
Russia, fought a
secret war in the
lonely passes and
deserts of Central
Asia for supremacy
over the access
routes leading upto
India to eventually
possess the Jewel in
the Crown for
themselves. Those

 Napoleons plan which

died with his defeat was
that a French army of
50,000 should march
across Persia and
Afghanistan, and there
join forces with the
Cossacks for the final
thrust across the Indus
River into India
Napoleons plan, though
abortive, necessitated an
investigation into the
interior of the Indian
subcontinent. For if the
East India Company didnt
know where the overland
lines of attack were, then

Threat

Threat

There remained a
singular problem with
this plan: Napoleon had
no idea of the geography
of India. For that matter,
the British realized,
neither did they.
More than two centuries
of involvement in the
nation of India hadnt
garnered any knowledge
of the internal geography
of the landscape; the
British had previously
confined themselves to

AFGHANISTAN, THE CHESSBOARD OF THE GREAT GAME

In the 1830s, with the Russians subduing one khanate after another in
Central Asia, the British feared for their sovereignty in India.
The Russian advance had already prompted a disastrous British
occupation of Afghanistan in 183941 and by 1860 was exercising British
minds as to the security of the Himalayas themselves. They were anxious
to know more about the high passes and the lands that lay beyond them.

William Brydon, the only survivor of a

16,500 strong British Army, First

Russia comes knocking

By 1865, the Russian Empire

had formally annexed Tashkent.
Within a few years,Russian
forces would move through
Uzbekistan & the mountainous
Central Asian khanates
subduing one after another
with ease.

With the conquest of

Bukhara,Russian
controlled territory
extended to the
northern bank of the
Amu Darya the
river that forms part
of the northern

For 100 years Russia had been expanding east and

south at a rate, it has been estimated, of 55 square miles
a day. When play first began the two rival empires lay
nearly 2,000 miles apart. By the end, some Russian

As the British Empire expanded across the Indian

subcontinent during the 19th century, concerns about the
threat from Imperial Russia to the north created a pressing
need for detailed cartographic knowledge of the vast, littleknown Trans- Himalayan region.
Viceroy had put a
strict ban on British
officers venturing
there. Because of this
the Survey of India,
which had the task of
providing the
government with
maps of the entire
sub-continent and the
surrounding regions,
found itself greatly
hampered when it

Arthshashtra in Action Enter the

pundits
A young officer working for the
Kashmir Survey, Captain Thomas
Montgomerie of the Royal Bengal
Engineers, hit upon the solution.
Why not, send native explorers
trained in secret surveying
techniques into these forbidden
regions?
They were far less likely to be
detected than a European, however
good the latter's disguise.
If they were unfortunate enough to
be discovered moreover, it would be
less politically embarrassing to the
authorities than if a British officer
was caught red-handed making
maps in these sensitive and
dangerous parts.

Spies in Monks' Clothing

Equipping and training Tibetan-looking

Indians so that they could explore and
survey beyond the mountains on
Britains behalf disguised as Holy Men.
These men, recruited in regions of the
mountains already under British control,
were known as pundits (from the Hindi
pandit, teacher, for the profession of
the first of their number, Nain Singh).
Because discovery, or even suspicion,
would have spelt instant death, their
existence and activities had to be kept
as secret as possible. Even within the
Survey of India they were known merely
by a number or cryptonym.
They were trained personally by
Montgomerie at Dehra Dun, the
Survey's headquarters in the Himalayan
foothills.

Training

Montgomerie wanted his fledgling pundits to

be competent in reconnaissance work, which
entailed using a sextant to determine latitude
and a compass to take bearings.
The basics of astronomy for night navigation,
the use of a thermometer for measuring
elevation (by reading the temperature of
boiling water) and how to keep accurate
They
were
taught
surveying
and covered.
how to do it covertly in an
records
of the
terrain
and distance
intense, 2 year long course at the Dehra Dun spy school.
Surveying requires that distances are measured to a high degree
of accuracy, so the pundits spent months learning to take a pace
of the same distance, regardless of the terrain.
Montgomerie had their feet tied with a cord measuring what he
considered to be the ideal stride for each pundit. In the case of
Nain Singh, this worked out to 33 inches (84 centimetres), so that
1,920 paces would equal one mile.
In addition to surveying, they were taught tradecraft, developed

Holy Spies

The pundit Sarat Chandra Das, traveling incognito

on a yak, crosses the Donkhya Pass at 18,000 feet
(5490 m) in 1879. The information that Chandra
Das and the pundit codenamed M H recorded was
all that was known about the approaches to Everest
in the early years of the twentieth century.

KinthupaSikkimese
punditexploredTibet
inthelate19th
century

Kishen Singh (Top)

Nain Singh Rawat,CIE,No.
1 (Left)

Holy Spies

Abdul Hameed (MahomedI-Hameed)(MH)

Nem Singh (G.M.N.)

Ata Mahomed (The Mullah)
Kinthup (K.P.)
Kalian Singh (G.K.)
Rinzin Namgyal (R.N.)
Hari Ram (M.H., No 9)
Lama Ugyen Gyatso (U.G.)
Ata Ram Sarat Chandra Das
(S.C.D.)
Mukhtar Shah (M.S.)
Kishen Singh
(A-K,
AlagaAbdul
Subhan
(A-S)
Krishna)
Nain Singh (The Pundit,
No 1)
Sukh Darshan Singh
(G.S.S.)
Mani Singh (G.M., The

Intelligence Equipment
Special sextants hidden in secret
compartments of boxes.
Thermometers hidden in walking sticks.
Disguised compasses.
A prayer wheel that the pundit could
pretend to be praying with, caused other
travellers to politely ignore them but the
prayer wheel, they found, was never
searched or examined so could contain all
the notes to record the mission in a long
sheet of paper.
Liquid mercury carried in a cowrie shell to
allow the creation of a level when poured
into a wooden bowl. The level was needed
to establish certain trigonometric readings
with their secret theodolites.
Perhaps at times they would have
memorised their observations as mantras,

Intelligence Equipment
Concealed pockets were added to the Pundit's
clothing False bottoms, in which the sextants
could be hidden, were built into the chests
which most native travellers carried.
The Pundits had been trained to march at
even and exact pace and calculate distance
accordingly, over all terrain. They would count
their paces all day in order to determine
distance travelled.
To count them,
they used what
looked like
aBuddhist
rosary, called
amala, but
instead of the
usual 108 beads
had 100, every
tenth being

As the Great Trigonometrical

Survey continued to extend east
and west, pundits were used to
obtain vital information in
forbidden territories.Nain Singh
used this compass and prayer
wheel to record survey information
for a map of the Yarlung Zangbo
region in Tibet, published in 1874
in the Journal of the RGS.

Achievements
Nain Singh located the altitude of Lhasa, eastern extremity of Lake
Pangong, provided additional details of the Tibetan goldfields,
mapped a large number of new lakes and rivers, and confirmed the
existence of a chain of snow peaks to the north of the Tsangpo. More
information on the course of this river through Tibet had been
discovered. The route through Tawang to Assam had been charted
for the first time.
1865-66 :Kathmandu Lhasa
Mansarovar Lake.
1867 :Origin of Sutlej and Indus
rivers, and Thok Jalung (Tibet).
1870 :Douglas Forsyths First
Yarkand Kashgar Mission.
1873 :Douglas Forsyths Second
Yarkand Kashgar Mission.
1874-75 :Leh Lhasa Tawang
(Assam).
For Singh, this turned out to be a journey of 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometres),
or about 2.5 million paces. By the time he returned to India, he had surveyed
some 1,200 miles, and

Recognition
Sir Clements Markham, then president of the Royal Geographical Society,
praised Singh as the greatest scientific traveller that India has produced. He
was awarded the RGS Patrons Medal and was hailed as a hero in scientific
circles in Britain and India. He said this was as all fine and well, but he would
have preferred a gold watch to replace the one stolen by a Pathan merchant.
In 1868, Nain Singh was presented with an inscribedgold
chronometer/watchby theRoyal Geographic Society(RGS), London.
In 1876, Nain Singhs achievements were announced in the Geographical
Magzine.
In 1877, Nain Singh was awarded with the Victoria / Patrons Gold Medal by
theRoyal Geographic Society (RGS), London.
In 1877, Nain Singh was presented with an inscribedgold
chronometer/watchby theSociety of Geographers of Paris.
In 1877, the British government awarded him with the title ofCompanion of
the Indian Empire(C.I.E.)!
In 1877, the British government honoured him with a grant of a village
inRohilkhand (Bareilly)asJagir, and 1000 rupees inrevenue.
On 27th June 2004, anIndian postage stampfeaturing Nain Singh was issued
commemorating his role in theGreat Trigonometrical Surveyby
theIndiangovernment,after about 139 years since his achievement!

Aftermath
At least two pundits never returned, whilst a third was
sold into slavery, although he eventually escaped. In all,
their clandestine journeys were to provide a wealth of
geographical intelligence over twenty years which
Montgomerie and his fellow cartographers at Dehra Dun
used to fill in many of the no-go areas on the British maps
of Central Asia.
The arduous work of the pundits continued long after the
death of Montgomerie.
By the time of the final expedition in 1892-93 the pundits
had travelled more than 25,000 miles across a number of
territories including Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim,
Burma, Chinese Turkestan and Tibet.
Their successes in Tibet inspired many non-native
explorers, who travelled from Britain, Russia and

References
Panditon ka pandit :Nain Singh Rawat ,National BookTrust
Asia ki Peeth Par: Pandit Nain Singh Rawated. Uma Bhatt &
Shekhar Pathak, Naini Tal, 2006
Peter Hopkirk,Trespassers on the Roof of the World
Jules Stewart, Spying for the Raj: The Pundits and the Mapping
of the Himalaya
Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia,
OUP
Matthew Edney ,Mapping an Empire - The Geographical Construction
of British India, 1765-1843
Report of a Route-Survey Made by Pundit__, from Nepal to Lhasa, and
Thence Through the Upper Valley of the Brahmaputra to Its Source T.G.
MontgomerieandPunditJournal of the Royal Geographical Society of
LondonVol.38(1868),pp.129-219
Geographical Magazine, Spies in monks clothing , September
2011.