Tintin in Tibet: A Friendly Evocation

When Tintin traveled to Tibet through Nepal in the comic book pages, he caught the fancy of not just the visitor but the visited.

In the shortlived freak magazine Flow, published in Kathmandu in the early seventies, the Darjeeling Nepali author Parijat wrote: "I am not among those who sell their Mongolian face to the third-class tourist's camera." In her own forceful way, writer Parijat here expressed the gist of much of the discussion in "The Shangri-La Myth" (Himal Jan/Feb 1990): To what extent do we perpetuate for tourist consumption a stereotype image of ourselves, borrowed from Western exotica seekers in the first place, and perhaps detrimental to our self-image and cultural identity. On the other hand, we do, with an equal degree of misinformation, create our own stereotypes, evident in P. Kharel's "The Dalai Lama's proposed Visit: Neither the Clime nor the Time," in The Rising Nepal, 3 Feb 1991: "It would be wrong to assume that the Dalai Lama has (a) considerable (number of) followers in Nepal. Of the various Buddhist sects in the Kingdom the Yellow Hats, represented by the Dalai Lama, constitute barely two percent."

During the recent Kalachakra initiation in Sarnath, the number of adherents that came from Nepal was significant enough for the Dalai Larna to honour them with a special address. Furthermore, though himself ordained in the Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) tradition, the Dalai Lama, in no way, "represents" that school (he is not even the Throne Holder); and as recent research has borne out, one of his lineages, received during the time of the Fifth Dalai Lama, came to him via a line of incarnation of Nyingma lamas from Helambu, closely connected with the history and successive restorations of the Baudha stupa.

In fact, contrary to Kharel's insinuation, the connection between Nepal and Tibet is historically sufficiently close for us to expect, over the coming years, an avalanche of fresh findings on the history of Nepal, drawn from the as-yet little explored Tibetan sources.

Seen from this perspective, it comes as an agreeable surprise to (re)discover how un-Shangri-La-ing the most widely read book on Nepal (an estimated half-million sold!) is. I am of course referring to the evergreen Tintin in Tibet by the Belgian Herge, in which most of the action takes place in Nepal, and only a tiny bit around the Gosainthan massif, across the border in the Shishapagma area of Tibet.

Why did the artist not call his album "Tintin in Nepal. The answer is two-fold: not only was Tibet at the time, in popular European imagination, the land of greater mystery (with the mixed-bag of Alexander David-Neel's accounts a principal source), but Nepal was then just appearing in the map of a similar imagination, of all things, through the accounts of expeditions searching for the Yeti which appeared as sensational serials in major newspapers. "Nepal, Land of the Yeti": it is a stereotype we ourselves have been perpetuating, among other ways, in the form of that sculpted copper beast serving drinks in front of the Royal Nepal Airlines building, in terms of kitsch one of the dumbest monuments on earth.

For Herge's purposes, the distinction between Nepal and Tibet had to remain vague. Only by having his heroes cross an ill-defined border "in a remote and dangerous area" could he let them wander about in the all too well defined "Forbidden Land". Tibetans in exile have often accused Herge here of political blindness. While Herge may not have evoked the grim happenings in Tibet in that period, to the charge that he was apolitical, he is not completely guilty.

In the Nepal tale, the stereotypes are few, and the dominant mood and nuance may be considered "environment-friendly". After the khursani (chilli pepper) episode in Bhaktapur, and a quick scene in Patan's Mangal Bazaar, the trekkers are seen walking all the way to Baudha: there was no road then, and the stupa was surrounded by fields. As they head north, the only disturbing element is the continuous use of the term "Sahib"; we may safely assume that the artist was unaware of its colonial overtones.

For his documentation, Herge had to rely on tales of the rare traveller to Nepal and on secondary sources since he travelled mostly in his imagination. But Herge was resolutely anti-colonialist in attitude, so much so that he never allowed the translation of his Tintin in Congo into English.

If it was Herge's aim to bring out the essence of the Tibetan Buddhist culture his heroes encounter, he could hardly have done better. Sure, the words of the rinpoche echo almost verbatim what the earliest Everest climbers were asked: "Yes, it seems that you men from other lands have a strange, uncontrollable desire to climb the highest mountains at all costs even at the risk of your lives. Why is this?"

The point of the entire Tintin in Tibet, however, is precisely that they have not come with such an intention. Their goal is a more lofty one, one that makes total sense to the monastic community. The same Rinpoche later praises them for having risked their lives to save a friend, and put another's welfare before their own. If in doing that, the High Lama "bows in deference" to them, we may overlook that as an exaggeration of manners. The enduring success of the Tibet album among the Tibetan community shows that this poetic liberty was overlooked.

The one odd quote that might suggest the Shangri-La tendency: "You must know, noble stranger, that many things occur in Tibet which seem unbelievable to you men of the West." But it is neutralised by Herge's strong realism when it comes to depicting the heart-rending poverty in the hills. He might have missed on the detail of dresses in the (Sherpa? Tibetan?) children, but his compassion for the material misery of these children comes across loud and clear between his lines of story-telling.

Yes, all in all, the real grandeur of Herge's pictorial tale resides perhaps in that he achieved, long before the formula was ever put to words, and what anthropologists have only recently dared to attempt: an account that makes sense to both communities, visitor and the visited, the outside reporter and the subject. This was what anthropologist Alexander Macdonald attempted in his "The Tamang as Seen by One of Themselves" and his subsequent co-authorship (in Tibetan) of a Sherpa history.

Nyo Lotsa (a pseudonym) has been working as an anonymous translator in Central Asia.

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