Live. Observe. Experience. Don’t dramatise. Draw.

The drawings quietly resist romantic ideas of untouched beauty. The Himalaya   is not removed from life; it is part of our lived history.

By Suresh Nautiyal Greenananda

There was a time when the Himalaya existed not as a pristine site, but as a space of infinite imagination. Long before roads, maps, and tourism, these mountains lived in the thought process of distant minds. In the philosophical world of Immanuel Kant, the Himalaya was not a physical landscape but an idea—a remote cradle of human history and knowledge.

This early, young, sublime, geologically fragile Himalaya was not empty. It was filled with metaphysical and mythical speculation, curiosity, and projection. It entered European thinking not through experience, but through abstraction. Yet, such imagination, powerful as it was, also created a desire—to see, to measure, and to define.

By the nineteenth century, that desire took a scientific turn. Thinkers like Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Ritter began shaping geography into a discipline based on observation and measurement. The world was no longer only to be imagined; it was to be studied. Still, the Himalaya remained distant—difficult to reach, unfamiliar in language and culture, and resistant to easy understanding.

It was in this context that the Schlagintweit brothers arrived in India, supported by the East India Company. Their mission, presented as a scientific survey, carried a larger purpose: to explore and document the Himalaya. Between 1854 and 1858, they created a remarkable set of drawings that now form the core of the exhibition Himalayan Encounters: Hidden Views from 170 Years Ago—now travelling to Dehradun and Nainital after a successful show in Delhi.

These drawings are striking for their simplicity. They do not overwhelm the viewer. They do not dramatise the mountains. Instead, they observe carefully.

Valleys appear as places where people live and work, not as empty spectacles. Unwinding paths wind through the difficult and fascinating terrain as routes of survival, not as symbols of mystery. The Himalaya here is not distant or sacred—it is an immediate, tangible, lived experience.

In this sense, the drawings quietly resist romantic ideas of untouched beauty. They show a landscape shaped by human presence—by labour, movement, evolution, and adaptation. The mountains are not removed from life; they are part of it.

However, this realism should not be mistaken for neutrality. These works were created at a time when the British Empire was expanding its control. Mapping and documenting landscapes were not innocent activities. To draw a place was also to make it known in a way that could be governed and exploited. Knowledge, in this context, was closely linked to power and colonialism.

The Himalaya, then, was not only being observed—it was being brought into a system of control.

At the same time, these drawings were not created by the Europeans alone. They depended deeply on local knowledge. Figures such as Pundit Nain Singh Rawat and others guided routes, interpreted terrain, and made the journey possible. Without them, the expeditions would have failed.

This shared effort challenges the idea of a single author. What we see in these drawings is a layered vision—shaped by both outsider curiosity and insider understanding.

When we place these works alongside the later paintings of Nicholas Roerich, the contrast becomes clear. Roerich’s Himalaya is glowing, spiritual, almost otherworldly. His mountains rise beyond time and history.

The Schlagintweits, in contrast, keep the mountains grounded. Their work asks us not to worship the Himalaya, but to look at it closely and study its integral reality.

Both approaches reveal something—but also leave something out.

With time, the meaning of these drawings have changed. What was once documentation has become evidence. A scene like Kedarnath in the mid-nineteenth century is no longer just a picture; it is a record against which we can measure change.

Forests have thinned, settlements have expanded, and the balance between humans and nature has shifted.

In this way, the drawings begin to speak to present concerns. They connect with ecological movements such as the Chipko, which reminded us that the relationship between people and forests is not symbolic, but essential. The Himalaya is not a distant object of admiration—it is a living system under tremendous pressure.

The exhibition, therefore, works on many levels. It is art, but also history. It is documentation, but also critique.

It brings together different ways of seeing—from Kant’s imagination to scientific observation, from colonial mapping to spiritual painting. It also echoes older traditions like Pahari paintings, where the Himalaya is not observed from afar but experienced from within, as part of everyday life.

The Himalaya has never been a single, fixed image. It has been continuously reinterpreted. Each way of seeing adds depth, but also creates its own distortions.

The Himalaya cannot remain an untouched ideal—whether in philosophy, art, or spirituality. It must be understood as a living, changing, and contested space. Its beauty is real, but it is not separate from human action. Its silence is powerful, but it carries history within it.

To see the Himalaya today is not just to admire it. It is to recognise its fragility, its complexity, and our connection to it.

Not as an image, but as a responsibility.

The presence of organisations like PAHAR, Alpine Museum, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung Munchen, Free University Berlin, Eanst-Reuter-Gesellschaft, and India International Centre, Delhi, in organising this travelling exhibition extends this dialogue. By connecting historical archives with contemporary ecological concerns, such initiatives remind us that the act of seeing is never complete. It evolves, just as the landscape evolves.

And perhaps this is the most profound insight the exhibition offers: that the Himalaya is not a fixed image, but an evolving narrative.

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Suresh Nautiyal is Contributing Editor, independentink.in