In 2017, when the Survey of India was celebrating its 250th birthday, it proposed to Nepal that the two countries jointly re-measure the height of Mount Everest, the world's tallest peak.
“India was the first country under Sir George Everest’s leadership as Surveyor General of India to have declared the height of Mount Everest and establish it as the highest peak in the world in the year 1855. Subsequently, India once again carried out the exercise and declared the height of Mount Everest in the year 1956,” said the Survey of India.
After the Gorkha earthquake in 2015, there was much speculation that the upheaval could have raised the height of the peak. The Himalayas are young fold mountains that are still growing. The Survey of India thought that the re-measuring exercise was a good jubilee event and sent the proposal to Kathmandu through the diplomatic channel, confident that the scientific exercise would start soon, Nepal only having to give a formal nod to the proposal.
Nepal, however, was in no mood to do science together. In fact, ever since K.P. Sharma Oli took over affairs in Kathmandu, Nepal hasn't been in much of a mood to do anything together with India. The smarting over the Indian talk-down to the then Nepal government over its brand new constitution and the subsequent blockage of supply vehicles into Kathmandu was still rankling. Meanwhile, Nepal was happily forging stronger ties with its other big brother, China.
So, as India waited for the assent from Kathmandu, the Nepalese realised the newsworthiness of such an expedition, but decided to join forces with China, instead. Interestingly, the acknowledged height of Mt Everest then was 8,848 metres, which was what had been concluded by the Survey of India's third measurement in 1954. The earlier two measurements in 1855 and 1883 had put the height at 8,829.8 m and 8,882.2 m respectively. Nepal and China have disagreed since a 2005 Chinese survey claimed the peak was three metres shorter than the Survey of India reading that Nepal went by.
Yesterday, both countries announced the new height of the peak, and the Chinese president called Mount Everest a symbol of friendship between the two countries for generations.
The timing of the survey, too, is interesting. It began last summer, when Nepali surveyors scaled the peak. Nepal took third party help from New Zealand for cutting edge technology—a global positioning system, while keeping India out of the process. Sir Edmund Hillary, who was the first to scale the peak with Tenzing Norgay, was a New Zealander. China did its field surveys this summer, bang in the middle of the pandemic lockdowns. Theirs were the only teams on the peak this summer—Mt Everest otherwise has become a crowded place, with hundreds of mountaineers scaling it during the season, and leaving behind tonnes of trash.
So, while China was involved in a border clash with India in Galwan, and Nepal was busy changing its map to include territory in dispute with India as its own, their surveyors and scientists were busy compiling and tallying readings to arrive at a consensus height.
It certainly is a moment of pride for Nepal to have done its field surveys itself on a peak that has given it identity and remuneration. But, the move has also been a Himalayan snub to India. After all, ties were only gradually returning to some sort of normalcy over the last few weeks. How will India respond to this development?