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Kathmandu,Wednesday February 16, 2000 Fagun 04, 2056.
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Misleading caption
The caption for the picture showing Prof Toni Hagen with the king of Mustang,
Jigme Parbal Bista, in The Kathmandu Post of 9 February was misleading. The caption
mistakenly credited Prof Hagen with being the first foreigner to visit Mustang, which is
not true. Long before Prof Hagen, Ekai Kawaguchi had spent almost a year there around the
turn of the century, and even earlier, Hari Ram, one of the intrepid ‘Pundits’
with the Survey of India had travelled via Mustang, on his way to and from Tibet.
Kawaguchi was a Japanese monk and the ‘surveyor’ Ram an Indian, both of whom
certainly qualify as foreigners. The caption did not make a distinction between what today
constitutes the district of Mustang and what historically has been Mustang, i.e.
‘Upper Mustang’. In case, the caption encompassed the entire Mustang district,
there were also the French Annapurna Expedition and Robert Fleming Sr (of Birds of Nepal
fame) and his companions who had reached the Thak Khola region before Prof Hagen. What the
caption probably meant was that Prof Hagen was the first Westerner (or ‘white
man’, as he himself puts it) to travel to Upper Mustang. Such distinctions need to be
maintained, at least when writing about one’s own country.
Deepak Thapa,
Baneswor, Kathmandu |
