The Indian Spy in Kashgar – Part 1/3

Around the 1860s, when Thomas Montgomerie of the Royal Engineers noticed that Indians traveled freely from Ladakh to Yarkand in Chinese Turkestan (modern Xinjiang), he came up with the idea of sending some of them with concealed surveying equipment. He hired and trained Indians in the art of surveying and sent them outside the borders to gather topographical data clandestinely. Publicly called “pundits” or “native explorers”, they were designated as spies in secret files.
During Montgomerie’s time, this region was part of the Great Game — the strategic rivalry between the British and the Russians for supremacy in Central Asia — and one episode involved an Indian spy, a British tea merchant, an Uzbek dancing boy turned King and a British explorer-adventurer. The spy, the merchant and the explorer reached Kashgar in Western China through different routes with different motives, but ended up as captives of a paranoid and wily king. Their fate would depend on how Russia would play in the Great Game.
It was a time when everyone suspected everyone else. It was the time of Rudyard Kipling’s Kim.
The Great Game
In 1800, there was a big geographical buffer between Russia and India, but over the next sixty years that buffer almost vanished. Following the Russo-Persian War (1826-1828), Russia became a dominant player in the region and after the two Sikh wars much of the Afghan territory came under the British. The Russians soon moved against the Khanates at Khiva and Bokhara and by 1853 they were near Kokhand (Uzbekistan).
As the buffer narrowed, the British were worried that the Russians would invade India. This was not a misplaced worry since Napoleon and Czar Alexander discussed a plan for land invasion of India when they met in 1807. But then in the immortal words of ABBA, “My my, at Waterloo Napoleon did surrender.” Following Napoleon’s death, the Russians never followed on with the plan, but the British feared that even if the Russians did not invade, they could create trouble in the neighborhood.
Hence there was an urgent need to map the routes outside the Indian border, especially those passes through which the Russians could arrive. British knew where Yarkand and Kashgar were, but nothing more than that. These places, which saw heavy traffic during the zenith of the Silk Road, were now like Radiator Springs. The mountains on one side and the Taklamakan desert on the other side now isolated this place that the British had almost no political, commercial or military intelligence; a Great Blank in the Great Game.
To rectify this situation, the British could not send their spies to this region; it would provoke the Russians. Also it was not safe. If an Englishman was harmed, the British could not retaliate. That is when Montgomerie, who had spent a decade surveying Kashmir, came up with his brilliant plan to send Indian travelers trained as surveyors. Even if the travelers were caught, the British had deniability.
Mirza
It was hard to get a good spy. Montgomerie had once sent a trained Pathan to Chitral. What Montgomerie did not know was there was blood feud in the family and the Pathan was killed. In 1865 one Pundit Munphool went to Badakshan (northeastern Afghanistan and southeastern Tajikistan) and returned alive to submit a report. But he was not a trained surveyor and without precise information, maps could not be made.
The spy had to be educated, speak Pushtu or Persian, and learn surveying techniques.One person who met the requirements was Mirza Shuja, known simply as Mirza. Mirza’s father was Turkish and mother Persian. Though he was born in Persia, he traveled with his father to Herat where he was noticed by a few British officers. Following the second Sikh War — which resulted in the annexation of Punjab and North West Frontier Province — Mirza worked in Peshawar as a surveyor. There he learned to measure latitude and longitude, distance, angles and temperature: skills which would come handy on his dangerous trip later. He also met a Sikh gunner by the name of Nubbi Buksh whom he would meet again a decade later in less desirable circumstances.
In the year of the rebellion of 1857, Mirza left Peshawar for Kabul and ended up teaching English to the sons of Dost Mohammed, the ruler of Afghanistan. A decade back he returned and joined Great Trigonometrical Society in Dehra Dun. After attending a training course at Roorkee, he left for Peshawar; his directive was to cross the Hindu Kush and the Pamir and reach Kashgar and Yarkand.
Kashgar or Kashi in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is the western most city in China. From here you can cross the Torugart Pass or Irkeshtam pass into Kyrgyzstan or the Khunjerab Pass into Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. The Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang passed through this oasis town on his way back from India to Xian in 644 C.E so did Marco Polo and various Jesuits.
For the journey, he was dressed as a merchant. He shaved the the top of his head and had hair only on the sides. He also wore turban to blend in without arousing any suspicion. Since surveying had to be done discreetly, Montgomerie came up with clever ways. Often Buddhist travelers walked with a rosary of beads and a prayer wheel. Montgomerie came up with a rosary of 100 beads; after hundred paces, the surveyor was to move one bead and thus one loop of the rosary meant 10,000 paces. The log book was hidden in the copper cylinder of the prayer wheel; thermometers were hidden in walking sticks and sextants in false pockets.
Mirza left for Badakhshan on October 10, 1868. A major item of trade during that time in Fayzabad, the capital of Badakhshan was Chitral slave girls who were bartered for horses and goods. In December, he started again along the Kokcha River valley, famous for lapis lazuli mining where around 2000 B.C.E, the Harappans had a colony.
(To be continued)






Recent Comments