Neel Kamal Chapagain
Opening of the Upper Mustang region to foreign visitors since 1992 has not only made it a popular trekking destination, but also a complex laboratory for research into various socio-cultural aspects of historic and contemporary lives in Upper Mustang as well as field site for a number of conservation and development projects. In the same context, various literatures have emerged to cover a broad spectrum of knowledge and practices. The region, most of which was known as the kingdom of Lo or Lso Tshyo Dhun, has been discussed in oral literature, including the religious stories, as well as recording of oral histories, through what is called karchyags. While the earlier or pre-modern literatures deal with religious and political matters, the latter or modern literatures primarily attempt to explore and understand cultures and environment in order to produce new knowledge for the larger world. Through such processes of producing knowledges and representations of culture and context of Upper Mustang, there seem to be multiple ways of understanding and seeing Upper Mustang. This paper will attempt to explore the modern literatures produced in different formats as a way to understand and problematise this process of producing formal knowledge about Upper Mustang.
Following the opening of Nepal to the world after the political change of 1951, a few foreigners were granted permission to travel outside of the Kathmandu valley into the remote regions like that of Mustang. However occasionally, there have been attempts to enter and account Upper Mustang prior to 1951 as well, for example – Sven Heden published a brief account of Upper Mustang in a 1909 publication related to his exploration of Tibet. Well known literatures came after the 1951 political change – starting with Giuseppe Tucci and Snellgrove in 1950s, Tony Hagen as well as Michel Peissel in 1960s, and so on. Perhaps the first Nepali to formally publish an account of people of Upper Mustang was Dor Bahadur Bista whose brief account of people of Mustang adds a Nepali contributor in this series. 1970s and onwards saw a gradual rise in the exploration and research on Upper Mustang – both from Nepali and foreign authors. The post-1990s opening of the ‘hidden kingdom’ contributed to the exponential growth of literature as well as media coverage on environment and culture of Upper Mustang. These publications included different media forms such as books, journals, newspapers, audio visual materials, and recently in digital formats. However, some of the accounts published have been problematic and inaccurate, and have triggered some controversies as well. This paper will review the literatures and media publications on Upper Mustang, and will attempt to analyse the trends and nature of knowledge thus produced, as well as its consequences.