BEYOND HEAVENLY
Milan Moudgill’s photo project gives KailashMansarovar an identity mythology cannot
Milan Moudgill didn’t feel too overwhelmed when he first saw Mount Kailash in 2002. It was only during later trips to the area that the graphic designer began using words like “special” and “beautiful” to describe his experiences. “It’s hard to put my finger on it,” says Moudgill, “but I think what happens is that the natural beauty evokes something in you, and you retrospectively start calling that feeling ‘spiritual’.” Last displayed at Delhi’s India Habitat Centre in early August, the photographs Moudgill took of Kailash-Mansarovar between 2002 and 2007 do something unique: by forcing us to first consider Tibetan geography instead of Hindu myths, they make secular the sacred.
Almost 20 years ago, Moudgill remembers being woken up by an insistent voice in his head at three in the morning. His unconscious had left him with a clear instruction—“You must write a book on Kailash.” Soon after he started his research, he found that a lot of the literature on the area was tinged with religiosity: “These books all focused on the spirituality of the area, describing it as the centre of the universe, etc. I wanted my project to have its own niche and that only came later.”
Like many other photographers, Moudgill could well have made himself
or his pictures the protagonist of his exhibition, but Kailash-Mansarovar: A
Photographic Journey bypasses that vanity by focusing on the journeys of two explorers—Sven Hedin and Swami Pranavananda. While the Swedish Hedin came to Tibet “wanting to fill gaps in the world map”, Pranavananda, an ascetic traveller, came to the region in 1928, two decades after Hedin, and tried to set right what he felt the Swede got wrong. “Having two protagonists was a challenge. How do you balance them both?”
One only needs to glance through the catalogue of Moudgill’s show to know he is unsentimental, both as a photographer and researcher. While he is respectful of Hedin and Pranavananda—they did, after all, “discover” the geography of the Kailash-Mansarovar region—he never hesitates in pointing out how perilous their ambition, and, in some cases, their haste might have been. Hedin and Pranavananda, for instance, disagreed about where the Brahmaputra originated. Not only does Moudgill give us context, he also brings clarity, the way a journalist might.
Many Hindus believe that Kailash is where Shiva dwells, that Mansarovar is where Ganga was tamed, but in Moudgill’s images, the mountain and lake are natural wonders first, places of worship later. We see nomads here, not pilgrims. Shot 15-20 years ago, Moudgill says his pictures are already archival. “Since 2007, Tibet has changed multiple times. I last visited Kailash in 2018, and you had everything from mobile telephony and paved roads to four-star hotels and airconditioned buses.”
Moudgill says that Hindus often go to Kailash-Mansarovar with one agenda: “They believe their god lives in Tibet. So, they go there to meet their bhagwan, not for any cultural immersion.” Several tourism packages now promise a ringside view of Kailash-Mansarovar, but if you end up catching Moudgill’s show as it starts to travel, you are sure to feel you’re briefly in that ring yourself. ■
Moudgill’s photos show how he’s unsentimental, both as a photographer and researcher