Lifting the Veil
Lifting the Veil
The Sacred and Political Geography of Hunza
This chapter looks into the construction of Hunza's remoteness in the socio-spatial domain of geographical exploration. It describes how the explorations and surveys performed in the region resulted not only in acquisition of geopolitical information, including descriptions and cataloguing of people and space but also in an exaggerated sense of uniqueness. In the British Empire's account, the region was the origin of sacred rivers and of people who were the ancestors of both Indians and Europeans. That is, the British viewed the inhabitants as the ancestors of the Aryan race. They discovered similarities in Latin, Greek, Persian, and Sanskrit texts and languages as proof of the existence of a proto-language spoken by the people of Hunza. In their explorations, the British Empire deployed the discourse of “lifting the veil” to construct the region as full of mystery and mystique and, hence, an appropriate and suitable candidate for exploration.
Keywords: Hunza, remoteness, geographical exploration, British Empire, sacred rivers, ancestors, Aryan Race, Indians, Europeans
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