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To thwart a prohibition against their exploration of the unknown lands of Central Asia, beginning in the 1860s, the British in India trained native Indians in surveying techniques and sent them beyond the northern frontiers to gather political and geographical information. Waller (political science, Vanderbilt) studies the adventures and the findings of these explorer-spies.
Ferris, I&NS 7.4, comments that in the last half of the 19th century, the "Pundits" represented "a fully professional and modern intelligence service" that "was used for one task alone, the acquisition of geographical knowledge about areas beyond India's northern frontiers." Political intelligence collection was incidental to this main task, and the information gained was not trusted because it came from "natives." The story of this unit of the Survey of India is "far more a part of the history of geography than of secret intelligence in our sense of the word." |
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