Deconstructing Discourses of Representation: Situating Local Agency in Imperial History

By

Shafqat Hussain

Critical Scholarship & Practice in Conservation & Development

FES 759

School of Forestry & Environmental StudiesYale University

May, 2003

Table of Contents

1. INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................................1

2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK.......................................................................................................3

3. RECONSTRUCTION OF HISTORY OF HUNZA IN LATE 19TH CENTURY.............................8

3.1 HISTORY OF HUNZA IN THE GREAT GAME..........................................................................................83.2 RECONSTRUCTING THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF HUNZA.................................................................12

3.2.1 Mythical Trade Caravans.........................................................................................................123.2.2 Kirghiz and Hunza in the Russo-Sino-Anglo Imperial context................................................143.2.3 Raiding of Kirghiz Camps: Political Economy of Pasture Control.........................................163.2.4 Misreading the Land use..........................................................................................................203.2.5 The Kashmir Factor.................................................................................................................21

4. MIR’S AGENCY AND POWER PLAY............................................................................................22

5. COLONIAL DISCOURSE OF MISREPRESENTATION.............................................................26

5.1 VICTORIAN LANGUAGE OF CATEGORIZATION...................................................................................265.2 COLONIAL IMAGINATION...................................................................................................................29

6. CONCLUSION....................................................................................................................................31

1. Introduction

Late afternoon in the autumn of year 1889, a small party of weather beaten travelers descended

into a cold, rugged valley of the Pamirs – arguably one of the most remote places on earth. The

party was led by Francis Younghusband, then a young captain in the British Indian army, and one

of the greatest players of the Great Game1. Coming over from Chinese Turkestan and

accompanied by a handful of Gurkha soldiers and Balti porters, the valley he cautiously

descended into was called Shimshal, which was a frontier village of an independent state of

Hunza. During this period the reputation of the inhabitants of Hunza among the British colonial

officers was that of ruthless raiders and plunderers of Kirghiz nomads encampments and caravans

of traders, who traveled on a tributary trade route to India from the main east-west artery of the

silk route. Upon arriving in Shimshal valley, Younghusband and his party encountered the

“wildest looking men” (1896: 260). Located between the fast expanding Russian empire to the

north and British India to the south, Hunza was an independent princely state which was still

outside the influence of either of the two empires, and was ruled by a fiercely independent local

ruler, the Mir. In the context of the Great Game, Younghusband’s visit to this frontier region was

aimed at winning the allegiance of the belligerent Mir of Hunza, and stopping the southward

expansion of the Russian empire.

Almost one hundred years later, in 1991, another small party of weather beaten travelers arrived

in the village of Shimshal. The leader of this party was an American student of Asian Studies at

the University of California at Berkeley, whom I will call J. J arrived in a Shimshal whose people

were no longer feared for their barbarianism and caravan raiding, rather, he described the

1 Great Game refers to the Anglo-Russo rivalry during the latter part of the 19th century in country surrounding the Northern borders of the British Indian Empire. During this period northern India’s independent states occupied the most strategic positions, and later found themselves being invaded and conquered by the British Empire to form a buffer zone between British and Russian Empires. For more detail See Peter Hopkirk “The Great Game”.

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Shimshal he found as an isolated, self contained, self sufficient, egalitarian community that had

lived in harmony with nature for “centuries,” eking out a sustainable living. The description of

the Shimshal visited by J fits that of the lost city of Shangrila. J’s purpose of visiting this remote

paradise was to help resolve a conflict between the Shimshalis and the local government Forest

Department. The conflict had arisen in 1975 when, upon the recommendation of an American

naturalist, George Schaller, the Khunjerab National Park (KNP) was established on the traditional

grazing pastures of the Shimshalis.

Obviously much has changed between the times of Younghusband and J. The indirect and loose

control of the British empire over Hunza has been replaced by the equally incomplete control and

tenuous authority of the modern state of Pakistan. But the more important change that has

occurred is in the image of the Hunza community. From being frontier savages, the Hunza people

have now become a community of ecological noble savages, who have traditional wisdom,

communal harmony and environmental knowledge, all of which make their culture move in sync

with the environment. Yet both the representations have one thing in common which is the use of

essentalizing powerful discourse that attempts to render these communities as people without

history and agency.

2. Theoretical Framework

Both the colonial and the modern environmental discourses involve the cultural and political

construction of identity of marginal communities. The fact that these discourses ignore the

agency of the marginal groups came under scrutiny in current social sciences debates, especially

in the disciplines of anthropology, history, political science, social ecology. At the forefront of

this discussion were historians and political scientists who argued that marginal groups actively

resist and subvert the dominant discursive powers and practices through various cultural practices

and political strategies (Scott, 1985, Guha 1982). In the early 1980s a group of Indian historians,

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started to rewrite the history of the colonized people of South Asia by giving them the center

stage in the narratives. The work of this group, which came to be known as the Subaltern Studies

series, was aimed at retrieving the history of subaltern groups from the dominant discourses such

as colonial and nation state histories. As Ludden states, “the originality of Subaltern Studies came

to be its striving to rewrite the nation outside the state-centered national discourse.” (2002: 19)

Subaltern Studies projected the subalterns as people who were engaged in a clash of unequal

cultures under colonialism or oppressive nationalism and people who resisted colonial and

national modernity and preferred resistance in order to preserve their indigenous culture.

(Ludden, 2002).

A major theoretical shortcoming of Subaltern Studies series was that in its efforts to rescue the

histories of the subaltern groups from the dominant colonial or nation state version of history it

ended up excluding the history of the dominant group and its interaction with the subaltern

groups. Critics argued that the implication of representing the subalterns as opposing and

resisting dominant power is to show “that there is an autonomous domain of peasant politics

exemplified by peasant insurgency”(Sivaramankrishnan, 2002: 220) and that this domain is

outside the influence of power (Mitchell, 1990). Masselos (1999 cited in Ludden, 2002) argues

that the representation of subordinate social status with mentalities of resistance is a product of

the activist’s world of the late 60s and 70s. In his view, any theory of subaltern autonomy would

tend to erase real subalterns from history. Furthermore, scholars disagreed with the practice of

extracting the subaltern consciousness through the use of historical sources as a prelude to

establishing the subaltern as the agent of change. (Sivaramakrishnan, 2002; Ferguson, 1999,

Spivak 1985). Spivak states that Subaltern Studies scholars are concerned with theorizing the

consciousness of the subaltern and in doing so they “generally perceive their task as making a

theory of consciousness or culture rather than specifically a theory of change.” (1985: 4)

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In order to provide an alternative explanation for cultural change in general and providing agency

to the marginal groups scholars looked towards French philosophers for explaining how power

operates in cultural forms. Scholars cast a new look at resistance, as a “diagnostic of power”

(Abu-Laghod, 1990; Sivaramankrishnan, 1995). Looking at resistance in order to understand

power comes mainly from the conception of power as put forward by Foucault {(1978) cited in

in Abu-Loghid, (1990)}, who stated “where there is power is there is resistance” {(Foucault

1978: 96 – 96 cited in Abu-Loghod, 1990)}. Later Foucault {(1982) cited in Abu-Loghod,

(1990)} inverted this relation to state that resistance is a sign of existence of power, so when we

notice resistance being put up to something, we can also be sure that there is another form of

power that is operating from somewhere else. It is this way of understanding power (and

resistance) that provides the central tenet of post-structuralist critique that rejects dichotomous

and binary version of cultural reality and argues that there is no autonomous domain of (marginal

group’s) consciousness. It asserts that we should view the cultural production of marginal and

subaltern groups within its interaction with the dominant cultural power.

The need to write a history from a local perspective, especially one in which the agency of the

marginal people occupies a center stage is part of a growing practice in the field of cultural

anthropology (Tsing, 1993, Li, 1996, 2000; Ferguson, 1990, Brosius, 1997, Abu-Laghod, 1990;

Sivaramakrishnan, 1999). In her study of interaction between the powerful state of Indonesia and

the marginal tribal groups of Meratus Dayak, Tsing shows “Meratus both bend to state power and

evade it as they point to the violence of administration and ritual order of development. Meratus

men search out the opportunities within state rule and ethnic asymmetry to create charismatic

leadership and enhanced mobility… these are some of the issues through which I have explored

the particularities of Meratus positionings within the region and the nation.” (1993: 289). Tsing

suggests that arenas of deployment of representation are also arenas for its production; thus

resonating with Ferguson that expression or style is the identity/representation, but one which is

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changing and in a state of flux, within certain structural limits. Brosius (1997) in his study of

Penan in Malaysia uses the concept of “Plokinization” to reveal their complicity in taking upon

themselves the representation that the discourse environmental has constructed of them.

Sivaramakrishnan (1999) in his study of British colonial forest policy in Bengal criticizes the post

colonial theory of binary opposition, and through a historical contingency approach shows how

the colonial administrative and discursive power was negotiated and strategically complied.

The way the marginal groups comply and negotiate power is described very well by Ferguson.

Writing about gender roles, he states, “{…these subjectivities} emerge not simply as a

mechanical effect of structures (the old “sex roles” of functionalist sociology) but as a form of

self fashioning in which there is room for subversion, ambiguity and play.” (1999: 96). Ferguson

calls this self-fashioning a cultural style, which he argues is not about what is done, but how it is

done. But he warns that style must not be perceived as an “expression” of underlying “real”

identity, nor as something that the actor merely slips into as the situation demands. (1999: 97)

Rather, he calls the act of expression of style as the moment of “performances” that are

“motivated, and intentional but not simply chosen.” ( 1999: 97). Other post-structuralist scholars

have also stressed that the enactment of a certain performance or deployment of identity is not to

be considered as simply a matter of conjuring up an image, as this implies that deployment of

representation is ‘opportunistic and inauthentic”. Neither does it imply that deployment of a

particular image is a consequence of and facilitated by “naturalness” of communities (Brosius,

1997; Li 1996, 2000; Tsing 1999; Zerner, 1994). According to Li, the deployment of identities

must be seen as a case of “positioning” and articulation of that “positioning” in a particular

context (Li, 2000: 150). Central to this argument is the premise that certain communities have

histories that are more likely to fit with the prevailing discourse than others. Li in a quintessential

post modern way asserts that this “positioning” is not deterministic, rather contingent and based

on chance.

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The theoretical position of this tradition is that marginal groups engage with discursive and real

structures of power, that emanate from the center, to exert their agency in order to rework those

structures to their advantage. By doing so, marginal people constantly shape and get shaped by

the social structures of power to create cultural meaning and new structures around them.

My doctoral research is focused on this issue. I am interested in looking at how marginal groups

interact with the dominant discourses of representations, and rework, negotiate and comply with

them to create meaning and create new structures. My research can broadly be divided into two

parts. In the first part, I will focus on the experiences of interactions of the Hunza community

during the late 19th century with the British travelers. In the second part I will look at the

interaction between the Hunza community and the 20th century agents of modern environmental

movements. I will then juxtapose the two parts to analyze how the pattern of interaction between

the Hunza community and the British Empire in the late nineteenth century compares with that of

today’s experience of Hunza people’s interaction with modern environmental discourse. This

proposal focuses on the first part of my doctoral research. I intend to explore the issue of

representation in detail by focusing on the late 19th century encounters between the Hunza

community and the British empire.

In this paper, I argue that the colonial representation of the Hunza community as caravan raiders

was a misrepresentation of the political economy of Hunza which was driven by its conflict with

the Kirghiz over control of grazing areas. This misrepresentation was however not simply due to

the British conjuring up an image of Hunza in order to justify their invasion, although in the end

it did do exactly that. Rather, there were two separate but mutually reinforcing factors that led to

this misrepresentation. The first factor was the active role played by the frontier communities of

Hunza and Kirghiz in asserting their agency on the imperial process of control, conquest and

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subjugation to turn it to their advantage. The second factor was the use of the colonial discourse

of representation, and its particular form of categorisation and imagination of the frontier region.

This discourse was driven by colonial administrative practices that needed to understand and

make sense of the complex social landscape of India (and also of course justify actions to defend

the empire), and present this understanding to English readers back home in England. Through

looking at these two factors, I explore how marginal groups experienced colonial power,

especially in its discursive form.

In my attempt to reconstruct a history of the encounters of the Hunza community with the British

Empire, I will be drawing mostly on primary accounts of British travellers and administrators,

and some secondary sources dealing with the history of Hunza and Kirghiz communities. No

written records of the encounters between the Hunza and the British, written by the Hunza people

themselves, exist. I will therefore be drawing as much as possible on references that exist within

the colonial texts to the local history of Hunza and its neighbouring states, and reinterpreting

references to cultural practices, based on my own personal experiences of modern day Hunza.

3. Reconstruction of History of Hunza in late 19th century

3.1 History of Hunza in the Great Game

Today Hunza lies in the north of the modern state of Pakistan among the high mountain chains of

the Karakoram and the Pamir (See Map 1). It is bounded to the south by Gilgit district, to the east

by Baltistan district, to the north by the Chinese Autonomous Province of Xinkiang and

Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor, and to the west by Chitral district of North West Frontier

Province of Pakistan. It is the watershed between Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Most

of the region lies above 2,000 meters, with several peaks over 7,000 meters. Farming

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communities are settled between 2,500 and 3,000 meters. The region falls outside the monsoon

rainfall system, in a partial rain shadow area, and receives annual precipitation of approximately

200 mm. The people of Hunza belong to the Ismailia sect of Shia Islam, practising irrigated

agriculture on terraced lands. They also keep livestock and engage in seasonal migration to high

alpine pastures, between 3000 to 4500 meters, where they remain in temporary pasture dwellings

for the entire summer months. While on the pastures, they also engage in catch crop production.

The high pasture dwellings are abandoned at the end of the summer till the onset of the following

summer when the same pattern is repeated. Due to climatic conditions pastures are generally of

poor quality and unable to sustain the desired number of livestock. Villages often have centuries

old usufruct rights over pastures, which are heavily guarded and frequently contested.

During the 19th century Hunza was a little known state between Kashmir and China. Cursory

reference to Hunza first appeared in Moorcroft and Trebeck’s (1841) and Vigne (1844). During

the middle of the 19th century, Hunza, however, did not feature in the official colonial documents

such as the Gazetteers of the Countries Adjacent to India (1844), or A Gazetteer of the Territories

Under the Government of the East India Company (1854). By 1890 (Gazetteer of Kashmir and

Ladak) Hunza was part of the official document of British India and featured as an independent

state on Kashmir border.

The state of Kashmir was created when, after defeating the Sikh army of Punjab in 1845, the

British sold part of its territory, the northern Himalayan district, to the area’s former governor,

Golab Singh, as a reward for his loyalty to the British during the war. Before becoming the ruler

of the independent state of Kashmir in 1846, Golab Singh had clandestinely engaged in

increasing the size of his district by raiding the independent states north of Kashmir (Drew,

1875). He had conquered Gilgit in 1842 and occupied the fort of Chalt, about 30 miles south of

Hunza. This then became the established boundary of his newly acquired state of Kashmir (Drew,

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1875). Golab Singh had an ambivalent relationship with the Empire. Through the Treaty of

Amritsar (1846) Kashmir became a vassal state of British India and accepted British control of its

borders (Hassnain, 1974). In practice, however, Golab Singh produced obstacles to the smooth

running of British operations in Kashmir and the states beyond it. During this period, Golab

Singh was pursuing his own version of “forward policy” and saw the British presence on the

Kashmiri borders as a constraint to his policy (Keay, 1996).

The first attempt by the British to make contact with Hunza was made in 1847 when British

Lieutenants Vans-Agnew and Young were sent to Hunza (Drew, 1875; Biddulph, 1880,)2. The

then Mir of Hunza, Ghazanfur Khan refused them entry into Hunza and a long spell of hostilities

ensued between the British and the state of Hunza. Between 1848 and 1869, Kashmiri forces on

behalf of the British made three attempts to subjugate Hunza, however, on each occasion they

were badly routed and suffered heavy losses (Drew, 1875; Biddulph, 1880). In 1869, Ghazan

Khan, son of Ghazunfar Khan, became the Mir and recognized the suzerainty of Kashmir and

started paying its ruler, Golab Singh, an annual tribute. In 1879, prompted by the recent fall of the

Central Asian Khanets of Khiva and Merv at the hands of advancing Russians, the British

established the Gilgit Agency, a British frontier post, and Major Biddulph became the first

Political Agent. Three years later, the Agency was abandoned mainly because Biddulph and some

liberals in the government back in England did not believe in the Russian threat. By 1886, with

the coming to power of a hawkish government in England, the frontier policy shifted again

(Keay, 1996). Also in the same year, Ghazan Khan refused permission to pass through a mission

of British Officer from Hunza territory. In 1886, Ghazan Khan was murdered by his son Safdar

Ali Khan who then became Mir.

2 Their report was never made public and was believed to have been lost when van Agnew was murdered in Multan after his return (Biddulph, 1880: 8)

8

In 1888, there was a rumour of presence of a Russian party in Hunza. This resulted in British

plans to re-establish the Gilgit Agency to keep a check on Hunza. The British believed that Safdar

Ali was in communication with the Russians (Curzon, 1926; Quarter Master General in India,

1890). It is interesting to note, however, that the primary justification given by the British was not

the Russian threat. Rather it was to stop the Hunza raiders from plundering the caravans of the

Kirghiz nomads. Younghusband writes, “In autumn of 1888 these robbers (Hunza people) had

made an unusually daring attack upon a large caravan, and had carried off a number of Kirghiz to

Shahidula, on the Yarkand road. The Kirghiz had applied to Chinese for protection against such

raids, but had been refused it, and thereupon, in the spring of 1889, made a similar petition to the

British authorities. It was to inquire into and report upon the circumstances of this raid, and to

examine all the country between the trade route and Hunza, with a view to stopping such raids for

the future, that I was now to be sent by the Government of India.” (1896: 215). On his 1889

mission to the region, Younghusband met a party from the Russian army in Hunza territory, that

for him confirmed the threats of a Russian invasion of British India through the north. In 1889,

the British Political Agency in Gilgit was reinstated and Colonel Durand, an overly ambitious

man, motivated by desire to rise up the ranks, became the Political Agent. In the fall of 1889,

Durand signed a treaty with Safdar Ali who, in exchange for a subsidy, agreed to acknowledge

the suzerainty of Great Britain (as the overlord of Kashmir) and open its territory to the free

passage of officers deputed by the British Government. (Curzon, 1926). By this time the Russians

had effectively extended their border to the north of Hunza and the threat of an invasion of British

India was looming in the minds of the British officers. In 1891, Durand sent Younghusband to

survey the passes to the north of Hunza to look for the presence of Russians on the Hunza

Chinese Turkestan border. The threat of a Russian invasion was validated when on his mission to

the Pamir region in 1891, Younghusband was expelled by Colonol Yanoff of the Russian Army

from the Pamir territory on the border with Hunza, that according to the British was under

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Chinese jurisdiction3. Younghusband clearly saw this as a first step towards Russian invasion of

India. The threat was further validated when Safdar Ali, the Mir of Hunza, “began to speak of the

White Monarch, as he called the Tsar of Russia, as his friend, and in his correspondence and

conversation to allude himself as the equal of that Sovereign, of the Emperor of China, and of the

Empress of India – a quartet of potentates who, in his opinion, divide the globe.” (1926: 185).4

Matters did not change until 1891 when Hunza (in collaboration with Nagar) took control of the

fort at Chalt, which had until then been occupied by Kashmiri forces. The same year Safdar Ali

intercepted and refused to pass on correspondence to the Indian Government of Younghusband

who was on an official mission to the Pamirs. The British saw these acts as violation of the 1889

agreement between Hunza and British India. `Curzon states “it was in these circumstances that

Colonel Durand decided to build a new fort at Chalt and told the chiefs that a military road would

be constructed to Hunza on one side of the river…so to give freedom of access to the frontier,

which the Indian Government had determined to hold” (1926: 187). In December of 1891, the

British forces acting on a possible threat of invasion from Hunza pre-empted the attack by

invading Hunza and in a matter of three weeks took over the state and established the British

frontier post to check any forward movement of the Russians. The Mir, Safdar Ali, fled to

Kashghar where he was reported to be made an official guest of the state. The British made his

nine year old brother the new Mir. This phase of the Great Game ended in 1896 when Russia and

Great Britain sat down together under the Pamir Boundary Commission and jointly demarcated

the official boundaries between the two Empires, divided by a narrow strip of Afghan territory,

the Wakhan corridor, acting as a buffer zone. For the next half a century Hunza became the

northern most frontier post of the British Empire.

3 Keay (1996: 485) describes the incidence as a case of a secretive Sino-Russain friendship that the British officers were unaware of. 4 Younghusband writes, “Safdar Ali was under the impression that the Empress of India, the Czar of Russia, and the Emperor of China were chiefs of Neighbouring tribes.” (1896:285)

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3.2 Reconstructing the Political Economy of Hunza

3.2.1 Mythical Trade Caravans

According to the British sources, raiders from Hunza were involved in plundering the trade

caravans and the Kirghiz nomads. It is important to separate out the two “victims” of the raids for

historical purposes. When Younghusband met with Safdar Ali in 1889 he “reminded him that the

raids were committed by his subjects upon the subjects of the British Government, and if he

wished to retain the friendship of the British Government, as he professed to do, he should

restrain his subjects from carrying on such practices” (1896: 285). Here Younghusband is clearly

alluding to the Indian merchants and traders, who were considered British subjects.

In contrast to several first hand accounts of Kirghiz nomads in the colonial texts as evidence of

Hunza raids5, there is not a single recorded account of a trader. This is despite the easy access of

traders to the British Officers in Leh and other parts of northern India where these traders often

travelled. Although Central Asian and Indian traders had requested the British authorities to help

to bring down the import taxes levied by the Kashmir and Chinese governments on their items

(Shaw, 1871), they had never complained to the British about the Hunza raiders.

The claim made by Younghusband that “the raids were committed by his subjects upon the

subjects of the British Government (the Indian traders)” therefore remains unsubstantiated.

Younghusband may however have been referring to the Kirghiz as British subjects. There is some

evidence that the British did consider the Kirghiz to be under their authority. However, the

Kirghiz did not see themselves as such, as Younghusband himself mentioned they first appealed

5 There is evidence that Hunza “robbers” were also looting the other local people, such as Baltis who traveled in this region (Drew, 1875: 371), but this was perhaps the case of inter-state rivalry between the state of Hunza and Baltistan (Vigne, 1835).

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to the Chinese for protection from raiders (see quote above on page 4). Reports from earlier

British travelers also questioned the claim. Shaw who traveled through the region in 1868 writes,

“In reality the Maharaja (of Kashmir) has no more right to Shahidoolla than I have. He has never

had any rights on a river which flows northward through Toorkistan, nor over the pastures of the

Kirghiz who pay taxes to Yarkand. It is the more astonishing that our most recent maps have

given effect to his now abandoned claim, and have included within his frontiers a tract where he

does not possess a square yard of ground, and whose only inhabitants are subject of another state”

(1871: 107). Such was the nature of British forward policy towards this region that it

incorporated a whole region in the map of the area that they had wished to control.

The British claim that raiders from Hunza were raiding the trade caravans can also be questioned

on the basis of evidence of use of the trade route well before the 19th century and continuously on

into the middle of the 20th century (Rizvi 1999). There probably was some raiding on the route,

but if this raiding was so severe and frequent that it required the British empire to send a special

officer to look into the matter, then the raids would have probably stopped, at least temporarily,

the use of this road. We do not, however, see any evidence that the trade stopped during this

period because of a threat from Hunza raiders. Also, from the economic point of view, the trans-

Himalayan trade was of no significant value to the Empire, mainly because the volume and the

value of goods traded were low (Rizvi, 1999)6. This in turn was due to the precarious terrain

through which the trade routes had to pass. Although some British Officers had exaggerated the

importance of this trade to the empire, such claims were mainly driven by motives for exploration

and expansion of British control (Keay, 1996). Therefore the justification of bringing Hunza

under British control because of its attacks on trade caravans does not hold much weight even

when it is viewed in the light of its economic significance to the Empire.

6 For a details on the volume and type of goods traded on this road see “Trans-Himalayan Caravans: Merchant Princes and Peasant Traders” by Janet Rizvi (1999).

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3.2.2 Kirghiz and Hunza in the Russo-Sino-Anglo Imperial context

The raiding of Kirghiz camps by people from Hunza must be seen in the light of the historical

relationship between the Kirghiz and Hunza. The Kirghiz are a central Asian group of nomadic

people who had occupied the Central Asian valleys of Ferghana, Andijan, Kashghar and

Taghudumbush and Kirghizia (Koldys, 2002). During the latter half of the 19th century a part of

their region fell to the advancing Russians, which resulted in a large part of their population being

displaced to the Chinese controlled region of Turkestan. This population gave allegiance to the

rulers of Kashghar, which was at the time under the Chinese empire which itself saw the

advancing Russians as a threat to its territorial sovereignty (Koldys, 2002). The Kirghiz’s

relationship with China had been a bloody one. The Chinese saw them as “predators and hard to

control” people (Lipmann, 1997: xxx). The relationship was also strained when in the year 1862,

under the leadership of Yakub Beg, the Kirghiz became temporarily independent when they

wrestled the control of Kashghar from the Chinese and established an independent Muslim state

of Kashgharia. At this stage the Kirghiz enjoyed a considerable amount of liberty and power in

the region (Shahrani, 2002).

In 1868 Shaw looked towards the Leh Yarkand trade route for increasing trade between Britain

and Central Asia. He also saw the opportunity for dealing with the newly independent state of

Kashgharia, Shaw writes, “Now that the exclusive Chinese are expelled, I believe that intercourse

(with the Kirghiz) is possible, and would be welcomed. I am sending presents and a letter to

Yakub Beg, the king of the country, asking him permission to come.” (1871: 68). In 1870 the

British sent a political mission to Kashghar under the leadership of Douglas Forsythe. The

mission was of great significance because the British wanted to thwart the influence of Russia on

the ruler of Kashghar (Keay, 1996). However during the same year the Russians moved to the

western parts of Kashgaria and took control, thus thwarting the British designs on the region. By

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1878, the Chinese retook control of Kashghar from Yaqub Beg and also expelled the Russians

from the territory that they had occupied (Lipmann, 1997).

By the early 1880s China was at war with France in its southern part in the Gulf of Tonking.

France at that time was a staunch ally of Russia, and in the context of the Anglo-Russian rivalry,

an enemy of England, thus making China a natural ally of England. During this time, rumors of a

Russian backed Kirghiz uprising in Kashghar were coming from the region (Kiernan, 1970).

China saw the Kirghiz as a threat to its imperial integrity, thus needed to control them. It found a

mutual interest in controlling the Kirghiz with Hunza, which considered the Kirghiz as their

subjects because of their use of Hunza’s grazing areas. In the past Hunza had helped China in

squashing Kirghiz rebellions7, for which it had earned financial rewards and land grants from the

Chinese (Biddulph, 1880). Curzon later suggests that by the same token the caravans became fair

game for the Hunza. He writes, “By a clandestine arrangement with China, to whom they paid

some sort of allegiance, the caravan between Yarkand and Leh were recognised as their special

prequiste.” (1926:181)8

3.2.3 Raiding of Kirghiz Camps: Political Economy of Pasture Control

As mentioned earlier, in 1889 the British had sent Younghusband on a special mission to inquire

about the raids by Hunza people on the “gentle Kirghiz” (Durand, 1900: 139). Giving 7 As Biddulph writes, “At the time of the insurrection of the seven Khojas (Kirgiz) of Yarkand in 1847, Shah Ghazanfur Khan of Hunza rendered services to the Chinese in overcoming the rebellion. In recognition of this service a jagheer was granted to him close to Yarkand, and a brass tablet inscribed with a record of the friendship of Hunza towards Peking, and its reward was placed on the gates of the city. A fixed subsidy was paid by the Chinese to the Thum of Hunza, who in return gave nominal allegiance (1880: 28).8 Although China during the late 19th century was allied with the British, it however viewed the British-Kirghiz relationship with suspicion. It is important to note that the representation of caravan raiding parties of the Hunza men lived beyond the conquest and subjugation of Hunza in 1891. Dunmore who traveled through this route in 1892 and wanted to cross the through the Hunza valley into Yarkand, writes, “this all sounded very plausible to us, but when the project reached the ears of Ching Dolai (the Chinese official who controlled the fort in the Kirghiz territory) he threw the iciest of cold water upon it at once, by telling us that the Sanju route to Yarkand was closed by the strict orders of the Emperor of China himself, owing to the certain murderous attacks upon caravans having been made by those marauders, the Kanjutis (Kanjutis is a local word for Hunza people), who had slain a few Yarkandi traders on their way to Kashmir and India, and sold their caravan men as slaves.” (1894:228).

14

justification for his trip Yunghusband further writes, “they (the Hunza people) had attacked a

caravan and carried off a quantity of goods, and had captured, to take away as slaves, some stray

Kirghiz, whom they had found about the valley tending their flocks and herds.” (1896: 227). It is

important to note here that it was the Kirghiz who in 1889 had “brought the petition to the British

authorities.” (Younghusband, 1896: 222).

The conflict between the people of Hunza and Kirghiz during the 19th century can also be

understood in the light of the recent movement of the Kirghiz to the Yarkand, Karakash and

Sanju valleys9 – the area that Hunza considered part of its territory (Shaw 1871). It was not

surprising that there was a conflict between them and Hunza. Sidky, who carried out extensive

research in Hunza during the late 1970s, states that during the first half of the 19th century the

state of Hunza was undergoing a major consolidation of its political and territorial authority.

During this period the Mir of Hunza, Silim Khan, “decided to bring under his control the areas

that lay at the headwaters of Hunza river (the same valley where caravan raiding takes place)

occupied at the time by Kirghiz nomads from China’s Taghdumbash Pamirs. Silim Khan

launched a successful military campaign against the Kirghiz, establishing sovereignty over

Shimshall Valley and Taghdumbash Pamirs. The Kirghiz were obliged to become Silim’s Vassals

and to pay regular tribute to him.” (1996: 66).

In the colonial literature, the evidence of the Hunza-Kirghiz relationship of conflict comes from

Biddulph, the first British Political Agent. He writes, “On the Pamir dwell a number of Kirghiz,

who pay tribute to the Thum10 of Hunza.”(1880: 26). Biddulph further writes that there were two

more communities which were settled to the northeast of Raskum and on the different tributaries

of the Yarkand river. These two communities also paid tribute to Hunza. (1880). Paying tribute in

9 “the main mass of nomads are Kirghiz proper in their various hordes…they have occupied the territory of the Sarikol, and a small advance part of them have for some years frequented the pastured of Sarikeea on the Karakash river near Sanjo, the most southernly point reached by these nomads.” (Shaw, 1871: 31) 10 Thum is a local (Brushiski) word for ruler.

15

exchange for use of pasture was a common practice throughout the region during the late 19th

century. Biddulph mentions this being practiced between two other states in the region. He writes,

“In return for permission to graze, they (People from Tangir) pay to the ruler of Yassin a fixed

tribute of salt and tobacco from each village. Besides this tribute, they give sheep and goats in

varying numbers as free gifts” (1880: 13).

The relationship is evident from remarks made by Safdar Ali when he was asked by

Younghusband to put an end to his raids. Younghusband writes, “Safdar Ali replied, in a most

unabashed manner, that he considered he had a perfect right to make raids; that the profit he

obtained from them formed his principle revenue, and if the Government of India wished then

stopped, they must make up a subsidy for the loss of revenue.” (1896: 285). The mention of the

word “revenue” here is illuminating. It is clear here that for Safdar Ali the Kirghiz were on his

state grazing their livestock and according to the custom of the region, they should be paying

some tribute to him, which he duly considers his right.

The thesis that the people of Hunza and the Kirgiz were engaged in a struggle for control over

pasture resources can be further supported by an anecdote from Younghusband. In 1889 when he

was sent to the mission to look into the issue of Hunza raids on Kirghiz, he took along with him

Kirghiz men as local guides. Younghusband writes, “Another difficulty was in regard to Turdi

Kol, the Kirghiz chief, who was standing with us round the fire. The Kanjutis11, not knowing who

he was, said to me that their chief, Safdar Ali, particularly wanted to get hold of Turdi Kol, as he

had shot one of the Kanjutis in the raid of the previous year and they asked me where he was.”

(1896:261). So the fact that the Kirghiz had shot a Hunza man shows that the Kirghiz were not as

“gentle” as Durand states they were. Neither were they passive recipients of the agression of the

people of Hunza. They were also fighting back and contesting the power of Hunza. In some of

11 Kanjutis is a local word to describe people from Hunza.

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the earlier colonial writings, the Kirghiz were even represented as carrying out the caravan

raiding. For example, Shaw writes, “all we knew was that certain nomads, calling themselves

Kirghiz, had formerly rendered the more westerly road to Yarkand unsafe by their depredations

(the name of Kirghiz Jungle is still retained by the spot which they haunted), and that tribes of the

same name occasionally brought their sheep up the valley of the Karakash.” (1871:104).

The stake of Kirghiz in the pasture areas can be assessed from the following remarks of

Dumnore; “they (Kirghiz) live in felt tents and wander about from place to place with their yaks,

camel, sheep and goats, cultivating here and there. As a rule they are tolerably well off, as they

pay no rent to the Government for their grazing.” (1894:239). Moreover, the area of Karakash,

Raskam, Yarkand river and Hunza river valleys near Shimshal were those few valleys where the

pastures were extremely good.12 Younghusband, 1896; Shaw, 1871, Visser-hooft, 1926). During

the 18th and the 19th centuries, Shimshal was a place that was exclusively set aside for the grazing

of royal flocks13 (Lorimer, 1939). The most important feature of Shimshal was its luxuriant

pastures. Writing about Shimshal, Lorimer states, “Food and pasturage are plentiful, and life in

some respects more luxurious than in lower Hunza…” (1939: 121). This signifies the importance

that the rulers of Hunza attached to this region. The rulers of these small states derived their

power through personal wealth such as livestock and their ability to provide protection to their

inhabitants from outsiders (Emerson, 1996). The rulers of Hunza saw the unabated use of their

pastures by Kirghiz nomads as not only a threat to their economic position but also to their

political authority. It is therefore plausible that the rulers of Hunza in order to consolidate their

control over the Kirghiz and to maintain their authority with their subjects, asked for tribute and

perhaps did raid their caravans when tribute was not forthcoming.

12 Even today, many communities from upper Hunza graze their livestock there, and they recently contested the establishment of a National Park in that area.13 Lorimer (1939) states that the rulers of Hunza sent people to Shimshal to graze their herds as a punishment for petty crimes.

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As the Kirghiz were nomads, relying entirely on having access to grazing areas, the control and

use of pastures was of utmost importance to them. They seemed to have been losing out in the

conflict with Hunza, and so sought the assistance of the British Government who showed their

willingness to help because the conquest of Hunza in the late nineteenth century had become of

“strategic interest” to them. In this way we notice that there were parallels between the

relationship between Hunza and Chinese, and between the Kirghiz and the British. In both cases,

the imperial powers had engaged the subordinate groups for their own respective interests, while

the subordinate groups also viewed benefits for themselves in engaging with the imperial powers.

3.2.4 Misreading the Land use

British colonial officers of late 19th century, while traveling to the Hunza region, frequently

described what they thought was abandoned land due to Hunza raids (Dunmore, 1894;

Younghusband, 1896, Biddulph, 1880). In fact the abandoned land was seen not only as a sign of

Hunza raids, it was generally perceived as a characteristic of barbarian and uncivilized people.

Biddulph, describing the country around Gilgit states, “no natural feature marks the boundary

(between Kashmir and Yaghistan), but the difference in the appearance of the country is at once

evident – fewer villages, less cultivation, more cultivable ground lying idle.” (1880: 3)

When Younghusband visited Hunza in 1892, after it had been subjugated, he writes, “There were

too, the remains of houses, and the spot had been inhabited and cultivated at one time, and, now

that the raids from Hunza have been put an end to by the Indian Government, there is no reason

why it should not be so again.” (1896:245)

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However, Visserhooft, who went to the region almost 30 years later when raiding was supposed

to have long stopped, found the same situation with respect to abandoned field. She writes, “there

were signs that shepherds with their flocks had visited the valley at some time, probably coming

over from Chinese Turkestan in late Autumn.” (1926:64). Now we know that the Kirghiz live in

Chinese Turkestan and it is they who used to come over the Pamir mountains to graze their large

herds of livestock. Visser-hooft further writes, “We also found patches which showed that the

ground had been cultivated, but there were no signs of people.” (1926:70).

The abandoned cultivation signs or human settlement in these pastures are actually the traditional

transhumance cycle of livestock grazing among the Kirghiz and the Hunza shepherds. Under this

system the shepherds take their livestock to high alpine pastures in early summer and remain

there for the entire summer. They also engage in small-scale cultivation and stay in small stone

huts. These dwellings are vacated in autumn thus appearing to be abandoned. Moreover, the

climatic condition also affects the pattern of migration. Migration to high pastures is carried out

in stages starting in early spring, and the first pasture settlements are at relatively lower altitudes.

As the summer sets in, the herders move their stock gradually upwards, timing their movement

with the availability of best pasture areas. As they move upwards, the pasture dwellings at the

lower altitudes are abandoned, till they reach the highest pasture during the peak of summer

season. This kind of vertical migration is practiced to this day and I have visited such pasture huts

throughout the region. Even today these pastures are used intensively and even today, in late

autumn, these pasture settlements present a deserted and abandoned look.

3.2.5 The Kashmir Factor

As mentioned earlier, Kashmir had made several attempts, arguably on behalf of the British, to

control Hunza. But it had also done so because of its own interest in expanding the size of its

territory. Indeed the rulers of Kashmir exploited the British paranoia of Russian invasion and

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gained a substantial amount of subsidy and financial support from the British empire in the name

of controlling the northern tribes (Husnain, 1974). In the earlier days of the Great Game, the

British relied heavily on the information given to them by the Kashmiri soldiers and officials

about the Russian threat. Though Kashmir was a vassal state of British India, it resented the direct

involvement and encroachment of British “travellers” and political officers in its frontier regions.

Kashmir could not openly stop British intrusion to the region, so it is very likely that it used

subversive tactics to keep the British out. One of the strategies that they had used was the

construction of representation of the northern tribal people as savages and barbarians, to scare the

British away.

Keay writing about the perception among the Kashmir soldiers of Hunza people during the 1850s

states, “naturally, the Yaghis were credited with an awesome ferocity. In Hunza captured soldiers

of the Maharaja of Kashmir were used as human fireworks and in Yasin (a valley west of Hunza)

the natives were said to pluck out their hearts and eat them raw. Other tribes were devil

worshippers who offered human sacrifices. Any caravan that ventured into their valleys was

immediately plundered and the only trade that could be said to flourish was the slave trade.”

(1996: 289). Hopkirk states that the Kashmiri soldiers and Indians travellers held a view that

“Any trespasser in this mountainous badland was regarded as fair game by local tribesmen. This

lawlessness was to cost several Europeans travellers their lives.” (1980: 13)

By suggesting the agency of the Kashmiri rulers in the construction of the Hunza people, I do not

mean to infer that the Hunza people were a peace loving and friendly community. There might

indeed be some truth to the myths, but to present them as devil worshippers and cannibals had a

specific purpose. The situation can be compared with current development discourse in which

development agencies, exploiting the “white man’s burden” and the historical guilt associated

with colonialism, present local rural communities as under or undeveloped. By presenting them

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as undeveloped the development discourse justifies its interventions and perhaps the perpetuation

of a neo-colonial style relationship.

4. Mir’s Agency and Power Play

It is important to explore some of the rhetoric and deployment of images of Hunza by the Mir

during the days leading up to the invasion of Hunza in 1891. A year earlier, in 1890, the British

had attempted to sign a treaty with the Mir of Hunza. The British offered the Mir 20,000 rupees

per year as subsidy in returns for his promise of stopping caravan raiding and “entertaining no

Russian” (Keay 1996: 476). The British agent who communicated this offer was initially treated

harshly by the Mir, who threatened him with execution. The Mir soon resorted to conciliatory

tactics when the British agent offered to raise the subsidy by 5,000 rupees. It is also reported that

during the talks the Mir repeatedly mentioned reports of a Russian party being dispatched from

Saint Petersburg, carrying a message and gifts from the Czar for the Mir (Hopkirk 1994). Just

before the invasion of 1891, Safdar Ali started sending insolent messages to the Durand telling

him, “he cared nothing for the womanly English, as he hung upon the skirts of the manly

Russains, and had given orders to his followers to bring him the Gilgit Agent’s head on a platter”.

(Curzon, 1926:187). In another letter he wrote, “ I will withstand you even though I have to use

bullets of gold. We will cut off your head, Colonel Durand, and then report you to the Indian

Government.” (Curzon, 1926:188). The Mir is also reported to have warned the agent that in case

of an attack on Hunza, he would defend Hunza as it “was more precious to us than the strings of

our wives pyjamas.” (Hopkirk 1994: 473).

So far, in this paper we have seen how the British and the other used the discourse of (Hunza

people’s) representation to marginalize and subjugate Hunza. A look from the margins, however,

shows that the discourse was heavily challenged, negotiated, complied with and ignored by the

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people of Hunza. We notice that at the margins, the discourse is encountered either through

subversive acts such as deployment of identity, or outright ignorance of hegemonic discourse.

The example of the former, given in the previous paragraph, is the tactic deployed by the Mir of

Hunza in his dealing with the British negotiaters to get a raise in his annual subsidy. This was

achieved through playing on the British fears of a Russian invasion. The Mir challenged the

British power by deploying a discourse in which he positioned the British against the powerful

Russians and aligned himself with the latter. The example of the latter can also be seen in the

Mir’s dealings with the various British officers, but in these the Mir uses his own positioning to

counter the British power

During his visit to Hunza in 1889, when Younghusband put the question of raids to the Mir of

Hunza and asked him to put an end to such practices, the Mir refused. At this point

Younghusband asked him if he had ever been to India. This was of course a very important

question, and actually a kind of warning to the Mir about the power of the British Empire. The

British Government regularly sent the rulers and leaders of petty tribal states to India to show

them and “naturalize” them to the might of the imperial military power, and thus impress upon

them their political objectives14. Younghusband writes that the Mir, in answer to this question,

stated, “Great kings like himself and Alexander never left their own country!” (1896:286). At this

point Younghusband’s frustration becomes evident as he does not know how to deal with a

person who could not be engaged in a discussion in which the dominance of the British was

almost a naturalized and unquestioned assumption. Younghusband writes, “The difficulty was

therefore, to know how to deal with such a man as this.” (1896: 286). Younghusband’s frustration

was also obvious when he stated that “there was no diplomatic mincing of matters with Safdar

14 After the fall of Hunza in 1891, Dunmore met rulers of Hunza and other tribal states in RawalPindi, a military garrison town in British India. He writes, “the Government had sent them (the tribal leaders from Hunza and Nagar) down into India to give them some sort of idea of England’s power in that country, with a view to their returning to their native states and informing the hill tribes how absolutely futile it would be on their parts to ever attempt to measure strength with such a power as that of Great Britain.” (1894: 3)

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Ali, his outspokenness did not come from any innate strength of character, but simply because he

was entirely ignorant of his real place in the universe.” (emphasis added) (1896: 285).

It is this positioning of the self and the Other in their discourses through which the British had

built a relationship of power between them and the Other. The Mir, who ignored such

positioning, made the British power ineffective, as its power laid in the subject being aware of the

structural features of the discourse. The Mir’s response to Younghusband’s question regarding

whether or not if he had ever been India suggests that the Mir was perhaps aware of the subtexts

implicit in this question. By stating ““Great kings like himself and Alexander never left their own

country!” Safdar Ali implied that he did not think there was anything worth seeing outside his

own domain; for him Hunza was the centre of power and political authority, around which all

three imperial forces were revolving. Ignoring Younghusband’s warning about British power in

India and deployment of a counter discourse inverted the positioning of colonial discourse and

rendered the British as the marginal group.

There is no reason to believe that Safdar Ali, did not genuinely believe in his own importance.

Therefore, I argue that his outright disregard for the British power was not necessarily a

deliberate strategic act, or an act of sheer bravery, rather it was due to the particular history and

circumstances in the later 19th century in which he found himself. As mentioned earlier, the

Kashmiri forces on the behest of the British Empire had tried on three occasions to subdue

Hunza, on each occasion they suffered heavy defeat at the hands of Hunza. The British had

established Gilgit Agency in 1879, but then abandoned just after three years. There were also

incidences of British explorers and travellers murdered by other local tribes without any

retaliatory action from the British. All these events would have likely given the rulers of Hunza

an air of confidence and built up a perception of their own importance. Moreover, frequent visits

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by Russian and Chinese officials, aimed at winning the allegiances of Hunza’s rulers would have

also had an impact on Hunza’s disregard for the British forces.

5. Colonial Discourse of Misrepresentation

5.1 Victorian Language of Categorization

In studies of colonial administrative systems it has often been stated that colonial officers often

used local knowledge and often misinterpreted it, often unintentionally, for their own

administrative purposes. Studies of the Indian legal system by Cohen (1996), of the caste system

by Dirks (1992) and of colonial forest policy by Sivaramakrishan (1999), all suggest that the

British used pre-existing local knowledge to categorize and understand Indian society, albeit

within their own Euro-centric frameworks. The representation of the people of Hunza, and other

frontier communities of British India, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as robbers and

thieves was part of this colonial administrative practice of categorising and identifying the Indian

society in general.

The people of Hunza were consistently described as thieves and robbers in the British colonial

travel literature. Duncan writes, “…there is a political officer at Hunza which, with its neighbour

Nagar, has since 1892 settled down peacefully under our rule, after a long career of fighting,

robbery and murder.” (1906:3) Roberston, who served under Durand during the invasion of

Hunza and later went to Kafiristan, a small state west of Hunza describes a typical Kafir as

follows: “He has the appearance of a gypsy king, and though darker than average of the tribe, is

wonderfully picturesque. In his gloomy eyes there is a world of pathos. They belie him utterly.

He is at heart a howling savage. In short Kafirs are born thieves.” (1896:194), He also writes

24

“civilisation abruptly fell asleep centuries ago in Kafirstan…they have degenerated until their

headquarters are merely robbers nest.” (1896:162).

Biddulph, during his stay in Gilgit as the first Political Agent, carried out an “ethnographical”

study of the northern frontier tribes, including Hunza. His book “Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh”

was the first official imperial commentary on the northern frontiers tribes of British India. He

however disputed the representation of Hunza as robbers, he writes, “the people of these two

states (Hunza and Nagar) of whom so little is known, have been counted as mere robber tribes,

who have brought themselves into notice by their depredations on the caravans between Yarkand

and Leh. This is however scarcely a just estimation of them. They are of the same stock as the

people of Yassin, Ponyal, and the majority of the people of Gilgit and the neighboring valleys. So

far from being mere robber tribe, they are settled agricultural communities.” (1880:23).

Biddulph later writing about another community in the region states, “Exception must be made in

favour of the Khos of the “Fakir Mushkin” class in Chitral, who show certain physical

peculiarities not shared by the other Dard tribes. In person they are Indo-Aryans of a high type,

not unlike the Shins of the Indus Valley about Koli, but more handsome, with oval faces and

finely-cut features, which would compare favourably with the highest types of beauty in Europe.

The most striking feature about them, and one that distinguishes them from all other Dard tribes,

is their large and beautiful eyes, which remind one of English gypsies, with whom they share the

reputation of being expert thieves” (1880:73).

Schomberg, who traveled in the area in 1930s also tries to dispel the notion of Hunza people as

caravan raiders. He writes, “Writers have referred to Hunza as a robber state, to the Mir as a

robber chief, and to the people as bandits; and Knight has been a particular offender in this

inaccurate and slovenly description. The people were accustomed to foray and to raid, much as

25

the Pathan is, for both in Hunza and on the North-West Frontier economic conditions compel

them to do so. But it is childish to call these industrious peasants a race of mere robbers. That

they never were.” (1935:129).

Notice that both Biddulph and Schomberg in disputing the representation of Hunza people as

robbers and thieves used the same colonial logic which rendered them as robbers and thieves in

first place. According to this logic a people can be “robbers” or “thieves” according to certain

physical features. This logic was implemented through the use of anthropometric studies by the

colonial “anthropologists” who categorized people into different strictly demarcated “professional

classes”, such as “robbers” or “agriculturists”15 based on measurements of their body parts.

Both Biddulph and Schomberg dispute the representation of Hunza on these grounds. Schomberg

states that they were “industrious peasants” and they robbed because of economic pressures. Also

notice Schomberg compares the Hunza people with the Pathans - people considered as belonging

to the “warrior race” by the British colonial administrators – thus using the race factor to justify

his claim. Perhaps because he was writing more than half a century after Biddulph he does not

explicitly use physical features as a criterion to determine the identity of the Hunza people.

Biddulph, however, clearly uses physical features as a criterion for determining the identity of the

Hunza people. Notice that earlier both Biddulph and Roberston had referred to groups, other than

the people of Hunza, as robbers because their physical features – large eyes, dark complexion and

generally handsome, and beautiful – had similarities with the gypsies in England, who were

considered as thieves. It is evident from this parallel that like the people of Hunza in British India,

15 This logic was one of the bases of “Orientalism”. During the Ninth International Congress of Orientalists in London in 1892, a proposal submitted under the Anthropological Section” by Willam Crooke of Bengal Civil Service read as follows: “That the Anthroplogical Section of the Oriental Congress desire to express their senses of the political as well as scientific importance of the anthropometric and descriptive information collected under the orders of the Government of Bengal, and note their satisfaction that the Government of North-west provinces and Oudh has taken steps to promote ethnographic studies within its jurisdiction, and trust that this line of research may receive throughout India the countenance and support of other local governments and administration. (Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, 1892).

26

the gypsies were a marginal group in Victorian England, subjected to same discursive powers.

What is interesting, however is the import of this idea of a representation of a marginal

community in England and its application to another marginal group in India. This application of

representation suggest that the imperial England, in addition to using, and misinterpreting the

local knowledge also used Victorian morality to make India legible and open to control.

It may be argued that British in mainland India were able to use local knowledge because of their

knowledge of the local languages. In the case of the frontier regions, not only did the British not

know the language, they also had no direct communication with the native speakers, they mostly

traveled with Kashmiri and Indian associates. In all the travel writings, the authors did not speak

a word of the local language; they either spoke Hindustani or Persian, which were then used

through an Indian interpreter to communicate with the native people.

5.2 Colonial Imagination

Cohen writing about the colonial traveler to India states, “it was a matter of finding themselves in

a place that could be made to seem familiar by following predetermined itineraries and seeing the

sights in a predictable way.” (1996:6). It was this “predictable way” of looking at the natives that

gave the travel literature a remarkably uniformity in its dealing with the issue of abandoned

fields.

It is evident from the travel literature that not all travellers were just “travellers”. In fact most of

them were employees of the British Indian Government who, within the context of the Great

Game, were interested in gathering intelligence about the geographical, political and economic

conditions of the frontier regions. The British Government relied heavily on the accounts of these

27

travellers as evident from the references to sources of information in the various Gazetteers that

were published in the colonial India. Gazetteers are detailed encyclopedic documents about

different geographical regions of colonial India and formed the basis of almost all administrative

work of the British Indian Government. So in this sense there is a direct link between how the

text of colonial “travel writers” is transformed into knowledge that becomes the basis of practice

of rule.

The travelers were heavily engaged in the project of colonial administration of describing and

categorizing the far-flung and distant communities. As they traveled they opened up new areas

for colonization; for the spread of British colonial administration. The traveling culminated in the

production of narratives that were written within the framework of colonial fact production

schemes. The categorization, cataloging and labeling of frontier societies was done in a manner

that amounted to production of facts, that could readily be transformed into official reports,

government gazetteers, and surveys.

There was a use of particular language in which the meaning moved from “enlightenment

mentality to Victorian morality” (Dirks, 1992: 57). Giroux and McCaren write, “ …language

constitutes reality rather than merely reflecting it. Language is not conceptualized as a transparent

window to the world but rather as a symbolic medium that actively shapes and transforms the

world” (1992: 12). It is also through language and the configuration of words in the texts that

cultural meaning is made, which in turn organises and regulates social practices that influence our

conduct and consequently have real and practical effect (Hall, 1997). The use of the words

“thieves,” “robbers”, “pictueresque” had a particular meaning in the Victorian England. The use

of these words gave the authors the power to generate a reality in which the British were a

naturally superior and had the innate right to rule. Such use of language and subsequent

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construction of reality was for the consumption of general public back home in England, whose

political support was needed for the continuation of the project of imperialism.

It is also in the context of writing for the general public in England that we must see the changing

of the identity of the victim of the caravan raiders, which oscillated between Kirghiz nomads and

traders and travelers. If the story of caravan raiding was presented, as I have shown in this paper,

as two ethinc groups fighting in inner Asia over control for pastures, it would not have been a

very exciting story for the audience in England, and secondly, the British would not have any

pretext to invade Hunza. The identity of the victims changed dramatically during the first half of

the twentieth century when Hunza was subjugated, because the story began to be romanticized in

the British travel literature. Notice how the expectations about the local people started to change

once they were brought under the colonial rule. Jenny Visser-hooft writing about the eldest son of

the Mir of Hunza who came to escort the party states, “…far from having the romantic look that

one imagines the descendant of a line of wild, Asiatic robber chieftains must possess, he

reminded us of a certain type of a Dutch farmer.” (1926: 32). This reflects how the idea of the

frontier people in peacetime is already beginning to be romanticized. The fact that Visser-hooft

was expecting a romantic frontier man tells us that this notion was widespread in Europe by the

first quarter of 20th C. Notice the anti-climax and comparing the wild Asiatic expectation with the

reality of a farmer. The wild being the opposite of a tame and domesticated farmer.

6. Conclusion

The link between the representation of frontier people as savages and the structures of political

powers that impinge upon them is a lived reality that is experienced by them in everyday life. The

process of characterisation and representation is dynamic and has an instrumental value in social,

economic and political relations between two groups of asymmetrical powers. It is important to

29

chart the politico-historical terrain through which the categories of representation and

characterisation traverse.

A major thread that runs through colonial administration is the deliberate atomisation of local

communities into mutually exclusive categories. Cohen writes, “In India the British entered a new

world that they tried to comprehend using their own forms of knowledge and thinking.” (1996:

4). Nowhere does this assertion makes more sense than when one reads the colonial travel

literature. The contrived and real misunderstandings on the part of the British about the identity

of northern frontier communities of India resulted in the construction of a new history, and

identity of those communities that privileged the Europeans over them.

Biddulph, the first British Officer to come in contact with the Hunza community in 1876, wrote,

“aided by nature in preserving their independence, and partially isolated from one another, the

people of the country have formed themselves into a number of separate communities which have

existed for generations within the same narrow limits. Living the same life and following the

same customs as their forefathers did hundreds of years ago, they have remained unaffected by

the changes that have taken place around them.” (1880: 2). This paper shows that Biddulph could

not have been more wrong. As we saw, the people of Hunza were integrally connected, at

multiple hierarchical levels with the imperial politics around them. They actively engaged in that

politics, negotiating and collaborating with the power around them. As Wolf, in his satirically

titled book “Europe and the People Without History” writes, “Rather than thinking of social

alignments as self-determining, we need – from the start of our inquiries – to visualize them in

their multiple external connections.” (1982: 387) Appadurai making the same criticism, states,

“Natives, people confined to and by places to which they belong, groups unsullied by contact

with a larger world, have probably never existed. ” (1988: 39). I have shown that beneath the

seemingly simplistic and self serving construction of the identity of the Hunza people, as caravan

30

raiders and slave traders, was a complex set of intersecting historical processes. By focusing on

the local histories of power and inter-tribal conflicts, and how they were spun into and deflected

by regional and imperial histories, I have reconstructed a history of the Hunza people that is

informed both by the local and colonial history.

The paper also shows how marginalised groups can provide us with a new and alternative way of

looking at things. In order to reveal the power of the underlying structures that holds a narrative,

literary critics have often used the concept of marginal areas to launch their criticism. They have

used the marginal areas particularly to criticize western humanism as they argue that marginal

areas are “sites of exclusion from this tradition from which its categories and assumption can be

seen more clearly” (Tsing, 1993: 14). Scholars started to see marginal areas not only in terms of

deprivation and oppression but also as sites of resistance, collaboration and contestation. As

Cullen and Pretes write, “marginality and marginal areas offer us access to other points of

references that the center has denied us. This post-modern perspective seeks to dethrone the

single reference point of Western culture, thus weakening the power relationship that bind all

marginalized groups to the center.” (2000: 217).

Ferguson writing about the power implication of representation states that defining others as

marginal enables one to have power over them. He writes, “when we say marginal, we must

always ask, marginal to what? The place from where power is exercised is often a hidden place...

Yet we know that this phantom center, elusive as it is, exerts a real, undeniable power over the

whole social framework of our culture, and over the ways we think about it.” (Ferguson, 1990:9).

Derrida, describing the discursive power of our dominant social frameworks of thoughts in

narratives and texts, states that such “structures immobilise the play of meaning in a text and

reduce it to a manageable compass” {(Derrida 1977 cited in Norris, 1996: 2)}. This criticism

highlights the power dimensions of the discourse as it reflects how discourses based on certain

31

structures of thought (frame of reference) tend to project their particular meaning onto the social

reality through narrative in the text.

In the case of Hunza, I suggest that its rulers, by ignoring the colonial frame of reference also

positioned themselves, at least discursively, outside the discursive powers of the colonials. The

Mir had a very different perception, or at least gave a very different perception of “his real place

in the universe.” From his perspective, the whole notion of his marginality, which was

constructed by the British, is thrown out of window. He clearly did not see himself as on the

margins of the British Indian empire, rather he saw himself in the center of three empires, thus

considering himself as powerful as the heads of the British, Chinese and Russian empires.

The British Empire tried to enforce its rule on Hunza through the symbolic power of its discourse

of representation. The rulers of Hunza interacted with this symbolic power to exercise a particular

degree of control and agency in shaping historical processes, often through their own culturally

driven symbolic acts. These symbolic acts are of paramount importance in deciphering or

locating their agency in the play of power in marginal areas. But we see that in their efforts to

maintain their independence and deal with the colonial powers, the various strategies applied by

the rulers of Hunza, such as negotiation, contestation, and downright disregard, gave the British

more, not less, reasons to come into Hunza. The British Empire tolerated the strategies of the

leaders of Hunza, allowing them to limit its symbolic power to a certain extent. After a while,

however, the same strategies that kept the British out of Hunza until 1891, ended up providing the

justification to the British Empire to bring Hunza under its control through military power. This

paper shows that Empires rule the marginal areas through symbolic power, however when this

symbolic power is rendered ineffective by strategies of the marginal people, it is proceeded by

enforcement of dominance through material power such a military invasion.

32

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