Memoirs
The twilight years of Tibet
ZAC O'YEAH
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At no point in this mesmerising narrative does Harrer reflect over the implications of his being a Nazi on the run.
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Seven Years in Tibet, Heinrich Harrer, translated from the German by Richard Graves, with an introductory message by the Dalai Lama and a new epilogue, HarperCollins India, 2005, p. 293, price not stated (originally published in 1953).
THIS book is a rare account of the twilight years of autonomous Tibet — the "seven years" in the title being the years leading up to the Chinese invasion, when the author was one of a few foreigners staying in Lhasa. To review this book, which during the 50-odd years of its existence has been critically acclaimed, made into a Hollywood film starring Brad Pitt, and holds the dubious distinction of being the most stolen book from the Royal Geographical Library in London, is therefore a task that one goes about with some trepidation.
Disturbing association
Equally inescapable is the fact that the author was closely associated with the Nazi movement (this reissue contains a "PS"-section at the end, which briefly mentions that Harrer expressed "deep regret" over this connection). Harrer became one of the great mountaineers of the Third Reich after scaling Mount Eiger, mountaineering being seen as something of a "Nazi sport", and was the archetypal Aryan super-male celebrated in the propaganda films made by the party in-house filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl.
The Führer sent him to conquer the Himalayan peak of Nanga Parbat, which at 26,660 feet is one of the world's highest mountains and had already claimed some 30 lives, especially those of German climbers. Nanga Parbat seems to have been regarded by the Nazis as "their mountain". The Second World War, however, came in the way, and Harrer was taken into custody, and put in a British prison camp outside Dehra Dun.
Delightful romp
In 1944, Harrer pulled off a near-impossible escape across the Himalayas into Tibet, planning to reach German allies in Japan. The story of the escape itself is a delightful romp of hide-and-seek in the Himalayas, complete with impersonations of British officials and turban-clad Indian pilgrims. Trekking across the Tibetan plateau in sub-zero blizzards (-30 was the freezing point of the thermometer), keeping warm by burning yak dung and huddling up with his escapee companion Aufschnaiter, bluffing Tibetan officials, being challenged by murderous bandits, sustaining on what food could be caught or bought along the road, Harrer reached Lhasa after a journey of some 1000 kilometres. He writes with hindsight, "It is certainly a good thing that we did not know what lay before us. Had we had even a faint idea of it, we would certainly have turned back. We were setting out into terra incognita, marked only by blank spaces on the maps, drawn by the magnet of our ambition as explorers". Even I, as a reviewer, felt frostbite killing off my toes one by one.
Hitler has by this time lost the war (and Harrer's wife taken out a divorce), so not having much to return to, Harrer stays in Lhasa to work for the Tibetans. He becomes a private tutor to the teenaged Dalai Lama and installs a cinema theatre in the Norbulingka summer palace. His task is to familiarise the Lama with Western culture and civilisation, and Harrer played a perhaps not insignificant part in laying the foundation for the spiritual leader's cosmopolitan outlook. Harrer became one of the P3 people of Lhasa, being seen at parties in town, staying at the Potala at times, and in general enjoying the comforts in a town where "provision stores contain, as well as local produce, American corned beef, Australian butter and Scotch whisky. There is nothing one cannot buy, or at least order".
Still going strong
In 1950, ahead of the Chinese invasion, Harrer escapes from Lhasa, realising that no amount of religious ceremonies and powerful amulets will keep the Chinese off. He settles in Europe from where he continues to go for exploratory trips to Alaska, New Guinea, Borneo (at the age of 61!) and so on. Today he is nearly a hundred years old and has his own museum (www.harrermuseum.at) in Kärnten. Although he has written some 20 other books, including a new one on Bhutan appearing in 2005, it is Seven Years in Tibet that remains his claim to fame. It has been translated into 60 languages (including Tibetan) and sold four million copies.
Glaring omission
His friendship with Dalai Lama seems to have affected Harrer, since he is today better known for his advocacy of human rights — especially when it comes to the Tibetan issue — than for being a Nazi. But at no point in this mesmerising narrative does Harrer reflect over the implications of his being a Nazi on the run (which is especially bothersome since the epilogue was written recently for this edition). In Harrer's defence, one might point out that he was never in Europe during the war, though reading Seven Years in Tibet nevertheless can be an uncomfortable experience. After all, the author was close to the centre of historically significant events — posing with Hitler in photographs at the beginning of the so-called Third Reich and, a few years later, tutoring the Dalai Lama at the end of Tibetan freedom.
So Harrer abuses the Chinese for having exiled the Tibetans, while his own comrades in arms exterminated 57 lakh Jews in a six-year war that left six crore people dead. Since this is a book about a war prisoner on the run, shouldn't he have said something about the obvious parallels here? Although the book stays clear of extreme racist remarks — it was originally published in post-war Europe when admitting to being a follower of the Nazi ideology would amount to intellectual harakiri — the bad taste remains.
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