Radhanath Sickdhar and Sagarmatha: A Genius Undermined, A Name Misappropriated

The Fourth Anglo-Mysore War resulted in the killing of Tipu Sultan. It considerably added to the territory and influence of the British India. Ambition and greed knows no bound. The British had their eyes now set on other parts beyond their control. However, a better knowledge of native geography was a prerequisite of conquering or ruling it. The British infantry officer William Lambton was tasked with mapping the length and breadth of India. This was the beginning of what would eventually come to be known as Great Trignometric Survey (GTS) that would continue for the next 7 decades, and would survey and map the entire Indian subcontinent as will undertake geodesy (study of earth’s shape). George Everest succeeded William Lambton as superintendent of the Survey.

In 1931, Everest was on the lookout for a sharp young mathematician who could help him in carrying out the unfinished business of Great Trignometric Survey (GTS). John Tytler, the professor at Hindu College, recommended him the name of Radhanath Sickdhar (the spelling Radhanath himself used for his name) who was particularly proficient in spherical trigonometry. Another anecdote says that he was recruited by officer de Penning for computational work in Calcutta and later “poached” by Everest for his number-crunching ability. In any case, he was the first Indian in the survey department and would discover something which will be the most crowning achievement in 70 years lifespan of the GTS. He has been called GTS’ ‘undoubted mathematical star’.

Born 207 years ago at Jorasanko (more famous as the birthplace of Rabindranath Tagore), Radhanath Sickdhar belonged to Young Bengal movement which had opposed various social injustices and superstitions under the leadership of Louis Vivian Derozio. He was among the first two Indians to have gone through Newton’s Principia. As a college student, he devised a new method for drawing common tangent to two circles, which was published in the research journal Gleanings in Science (volume III, 1931).

Soon after joining the Survey dept., he would master the science of geodetic surveying besides adding to it his own process innovations. He became favourite of Everest so much so that Everest on one occassion barred his transfer to another department. His loving affection towards Sickdhar was such that, Everest wrote to Sickdhar’s father, “I wish I could have persuaded you to come to Dehra Dun for not only would it have given me the greatest pleasure to see you personally how much I honour you for having such a son as Radhanath, but you would yourself have, I am sure, been infinitely gratified at witnessing the high esteem in which he is held by his superiors and equals”.

Even after his retirement, Everest remembered Sickdhar. When he authored the book An Account of the Measurements of Two Sections of Meridional Arc of India after his retirement, he sent a copy of it from England to Radhanath Sickdhar with a handwritten note, “Babu Radhanath…in acknowledgement of his active participation in the survey”.

Not everyone enjoyed affection of Everest though. Everest was not at all what his predecessor Lambton was: tactful, patient, disinterested researcher “without ever having had to thrash any of its teeming peoples”. On the other hand, Everest has been documented as irascible, with no compunction in violating privacy of native women or sacredness of abodes of local deities. Once a fellow officer called him a ‘Compass Walah’ as the surveyors were usually called and Everest made him apologise for his grave mistake. The government once chastised Everest “for assuming diplomatic status, wasting valuable time (its as well as his), and insulting one of its senior dignitaries.”

Everest was followed by Andrew Waugh as the Surveyor General. He had suspected that Peak XV (also known as ‘gamma’ and ‘b’) might be taller than Kanchenjunga which then had reputation of being the highest. Andrew asked Radhanath, now the Master Computer, to devise formulae for calculating the heights of the faraway Himalayan peaks. Collecting necessary data from 6 different locations, Sikdar found out that the height of a particular peak, then known as Peak XV, was 29000 ft, thus tentatively rendering it the tallest peak in the world.

“Sir, I have discovered the highest mountain of the world,” were the anecdotal words with which Sikdhar barged into the room of Sir Andrew Waugh. It was Sickdhar’s Eureka movement that would bring him as well as GTS the everlasting fame as the discoverer of the highest peak in the world. He would add 2 ft to the height, rendering its height as 29002 so that a round figure like 29000 should not be dismissed as a mere approximation.

Of course, like any big achievement, this discovery was not exclusively Sickdhar’s alone. Almost 50 years back before Sikdhar’s discovery, a surveyor named Charles Crawford had made the first serious attempt at measuring the Himalayas though his drawings and readings were lost. Sickdar had used the data of surveyors J. O. Nicholson and John Henesy so as to calculate its height. “So, in true sense, all the three persons, viz., Nicholson, Henesy and Radhanath, had played some role in the discovery. But, since accurate calculations, physical interpretation, strong conclusion, etc., are essential parts of a scientific discovery, lion’s share of the credit must go to Radhanath.” Yet, this peak would be named after George Everest, a man who had utter contempt for the local customs and native sensibilities.

This article is not an attempt to discredit Everest’s work but only a protest against the misappropriation. Everest, for his part, had faithfully carried out the legacy of Lambton and carried forward the mapping The Great Arc. Their attempts would result in the most accurate land measurement of Indian subcontinent, surpassed in diligence only by surveys of Britain and France. The work involved in GTS was quite tedious too. It was an interplay of trial and error and continual adjustments. As one writer explains that the trigonometrical surveying of India involved 9,230 unknowns and produced unwieldy equations exceeding anything of the kind ever attempted. It involved a lot of manpower too. For instance, as John Kaey says when Everest started from Hathipaon, his caravan comprised of two assistants, three sub-assistants, four elephants, forty-two camels, thirty horses and ‘about 700 natives’ – in that order. Tigers, martial tribes, dacoits, hitherto unchartered terrain and jungles awaited them at every corner. Thousands of surveyors and their assistants perished. Clements Markham of the Royal Geographical Society wrote that the danger was ‘’greater than that encountered on a battle-field [and] the per-centage of deaths larger; while the sort of courage … required was of a far higher order’’. And how did they do it? John Kaey answers: by razing whole villages, appropriating sacred hills, exhausting local supplies, antagonizing protective husbands and facilitating the assessment of the dreaded land revenue, the surveyors had probably done as much to advertise the realities of British rule and so alienate grassroots opinion as had any branch of the administration… to Everest and his generation devotional customs and immemorial lore were just evidence of ‘the suspicious native mind’.

However, the question is why was the highest peak —and this is very important—was singled out to be named after an Englishman, disregarding available local names, or other illustrious people like Sickdhar himself who actually discovered it. Everest himself seems to have objected to its naming after him— not because of any in-principle objection to it but because an eccentric Everest thought his name was not as pronounced as others did*. It was pronounced as EEV-rest (like ‘cleave-rest’) not the usual Everest (like ‘cleverest’). Furthermore, Everest had utter disregard for the local customs and places as we have seen in last pararaph. Local sensibilities never came in his way as he trampled across the places of veneration and abodes of deity. His contempt for the natives is well-documented. Yet it is the fate of natives that they would have to address their peaks after such Britishers.

Furthermore, the local names of Peak XV were available at that time yet Waugh dismissed them with a poor excuse that the peak is “without any local name that we can discover, whose native appellation, if it has any, will not very likely be ascertained before we are allowed to penetrate into Nepal and to approach close to this stupendous snowy mass.” It is a blatant lie because the local names like Chomungala, Devadhanga, etc. were available and known to the British. In fact, immediately after the announcement, Brian Hodgson, an eminent Buddhist scholar who had resided at Kathmandu for some years, immediately came up with Devadhanga as the tentative name. The Asiatic Society even agreed to it. But Waugh objected to it, and declared Devadhanga as “unacceptable” and “indeterminate”.

In letter, No. 29 B, Waugh says, “I was taught by my respected chief and predecessor Colonel Sir Geo. Everest to assign to every geographical object its true local or native appellation. I have always scrupulously adhered to this rule as I have in fact to all other principles laid down by that eminent geodesist.” It clearly betrays the defensive mechanism adopted by him so as to pre-empt the most obvious argument against the choice of name.

He was very much conscious what task he had in hand: the naming of the highest peak of the world. And he did it with shrewdness. In the same letter, he says, “the duty devolves on me to assign to this lofty pinnacle of our globe a name whereby it may be known among geographers and become a household word among civilized nations.” Of course, a local name could not become a ‘household word’ among civilised nations. For it to become so, it had to be a Western word only. If the argument is that an Eastern name like Chomungala or Nepali Sagarmatha couldn’t become a household name among civilized nations then the subalterns can turn the tables and argue the name Everest cannot become a household name in presumed non-civilised nations. History is a proof to it. Rarely does anyone in this world correctly pronounces the Mount Everest as the man after whose name it is named, would have wanted it to be pronounced.

Waugh seemingly was not even interested in moral scruples. The clear precept was that History (with a capital H) belongs to victor and why to leave this when it came to naming the most glorious and the highest mountain peak of the world. He himself adds the rationale behind naming so: “…to perpetuate the memory of that illustrious master of accurate geographical research, I have determined to name this noble peak of the Himalayas Mont [sic] Everest.”

Let’s imagine, for argument’s sake, that Waugh in particular and western scientific community in general were not aware of the local names then why could not they correct it when they later found out the local names as and when the British raj’s conquests expanded and it got access to Tibet and Nepal. For instance, high peaks in Kashmir were named as K1, K2, etc. because K stood for Karakoram, the local name. And K1 became Masherbrum when this local name came to public knowledge. Thanks to the height of these lesser peaks, their names were not misappropriated! Why the local names were not accepted even when they came to public knowledge is, as Keay argues, the fact that XV was the world’s highest, that Waugh had already named it, and that ‘Mount Everest’ was indeed rapidly becoming ‘a household word among civilized nations’ militated against change.

My last argument is if there were really no local names available (a blatant lie though) and a novel name had to be invented, then why should it not be named after the person who had finally calculated its height? Could not “Sickdhar” become a household word or acceptable amongst civilised nations or both? Is Sickdhar really more difficult to pronounce than Everest (pronounced incorrectly for the eternity)? Waugh was just an initiator. The scientific world as a whole conspired to deny a local geographical feature its local name.

Good work is temporary but recognition belongs to victors alone. Radhanath was appreciated for his mathematical wizardry by the Britishers who had seen his work first-hand. But the legacy couldn’t not belong to the colored skinned for long. Radhanath’s spirit must have realised this.

Manual of Surveying, an authentic book on surveying, was published in 1851. A major part of that book was written by Radhanath Sikdar. Preface acknowledges the same: “In Parts III (On Surveying) and V, the computers have been largely assisted by Babu Radhanath Sikdar, distinguished head of the computing department of the GTSI. The Chapters 15, 17 up to 21 inclusive of Part III, and the whole of Part V are entirely by his own. Besides he compiled a set of auxiliary tables for the surveying department which were found to be greatly useful”. Although Radhanath’s contribution was admitted in the first and second (published in 1855) editions of the book, that acknowledgement was removed in the third edition when Radhanath was already dead. Omission of acknowledgement was criticised in various newspapers. Even Lieutenant Colonel Macdonald, Deputy Superintendent of GTS, strongly criticized this in the daily Friend of India as ‘robbery of the dead’. For this crime of conscience, Macdonald was first suspended from service for three months and later demoted as a 2nd class Deputy Superintendent.

Also termed as the first scientist of modern India, Radhanath was also involved in social works. Along with fellow Derozian Peary Chand Mitra, he started journal Masik Patrika, for the empowerment of women. He also contributed immensely in metereology and some of his methods and precedents are followed to this date. Such a karmayogi was not just neglected during his lifetime but after his death too—not just by the Britishers but by his fellow countrymen too. Instead of focusing exclusively on the Britishers and Mughals, time is to teach students about such karmayogis too who brought their own despite the various barriers put in by the oppressor class.

* Though in words of John Kaey: “Yet of his [Everest’s] reaction to having the world’s highest mountain named in his honour there is no record at all. Perhaps he rightly judged that any intervention on his part might be counter-productive.”