Should Mount Everest be Re-named Mount Sikdar?

Recently I happened to read an interesting article on TOI. It pertained to the proposed renaming of the gargantuan Mount Everest.

Did you know that the mountain is named after Colonel George Everest, Surveyor-General between 1830 and 1843?

The mountain’s height was measured as part of the great Trigonometrical Survey of India, another “excuse” for the colonizers to gloat over the vastness and grandeur of “their” dominion.

His successor, Andrew Waugh callously overlooked the peak’s existing names, Tibetan Chomolungma, and the Nepali Sagarmatha, and hence the name Everest stuck, to this day.

The irony about this whole story is the Colonel on behalf of whom the highest peak in the world got its name has nothing to do with the mountain. In fact, he has never even set his foot or eyes, for that matter, on the mighty Himalayas.

Then who measured it?

This is where the story gets interesting, if not tragic.

A 19-year-old Radhanath Sikdar was the Colonel’s “right arm” and “computer”. Sikdar painstakingly underwent the arduous process of measuring the peak. So, should we name Everest Mount Sikdar?

Sikdar is just one among the umpteen Indians who are destined to live in obscurity for all of history, forgotten by the people, discarded by our history textbooks, and buried by the sands of time.

But the real question is should we indulge in a re-naming spree of historical aspects of our country? If yes, will any amount of re-naming ever be enough to rescind the damage the Colonizers and invaders have wrought on this land?

Like the author of the article, Sandip Roy points aptly in his article, British and Mughals are part of our history, whether we like it or not. He exhorts his readers to think that unlike toppling of statues can be justified at least with “out of sight, out of mind” theory, the same theory doesn’t hold water with names.

Names live on. They are eternal in an eerie way.

But this policy of renaming to atone for sins committed eons ago is not unprecedented. It seems that President Barack Obama renamed the highest peak in North America, Mount Denali to the indigenous people to whom it once belonged. Although it may still be Mt McKinley to the outsiders, it was a great gesture for the wounded indigenous tribe of Latin America.

Towards the end of the article, the author ruefully questions if we should correct one cultural appropriation with another.

The basis for such a question is that the peak belongs to India inasmuch as it belongs to Tibet, China, and Nepal.

Deserved or not, in all likelihood the name Everest is here to stay, and the fact that much of India is as unaware about Colonel George Everest as is about the Indian mathematician Radhanath Sikdar is probably the peak’s revenge against mankind who think that we have conquered it!