Oropolitics

Oropolitics comes from the Greek oros meaning mountain and politikos meaning citizen. In modern usage it denotes the use and abuse of mountaineering for political purposes.

The term "oropolitics" was coined by Joydeep Sircar in the early 1980s to describe the surreptitious efforts, first by Pakistan from the 1950s, and then by India from the late 1970s, to demonstrate control and ownership of the Siachen Glacier by allowing or organising mountaineering expeditions to the high peaks such as Saltoro Kangri and Teram Kangri flanking the glacier. The Siachen War of 1984 was the direct outcome of these 'oropolitical' activities. Another example is the Chinese publication Raising the Five Star Flag on Mount Tomur, an account of the successful Chinese expedition of 1977 to the Tien Shan peak better known by its Russian name as Pik Pobedy (nowadays renamed yet again by Kyrgyzstan as Jengish Chokusu). The Chinese volume seems to imply a first ascent and completely ignores multiple Russian ascents.

The strangest oropolitical events must surely be the unpublicised ascents of Nanda Devi and Nanda Kot by joint Indo-US expeditions in the 1960s to plant devices to monitor Chinese nuclear activity. The media disclosure in 1978 that an Indo-American covert expedition had planted a nuclear-fuelled monitoring device atop Nanda Kot in the 1960s, and that subsequently the device had disappeared, led to fears of radioactive contamination of the river Ganges, and a political brouhaha.

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