Joydeep Sircar

Who is Joydeep Sircar?

Joydeep Sircar is a mountain-traveller and pioneer mountain-historian. In 1979 he published his Himalayan handbook, an index of all the-then named peaks of 6096 meters and above in Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent giving chronological entries of expeditions up to 1975 to each peak with a brief summary of results and references to expedition reports, after a decade of solitary research. He was inspired in this formidable undertaking by the pronouncement of the late Soli S. Mehta, Hony. Local Secretary of The Himalayan Club, that the task had never been attempted before and was well-nigh impossible. This book, introduced by the famous British mountaineer-explorer J. O. M. Roberts, one of Sircar's idols, was the first one of its kind. Printed in 500 copies only, it received excellent international notices and became a basic reference resources.

In 1982 Sircar was the first to suspect and draw public attention to the covert competition between India and Pakistan over the Siachen Glacier and coined the term Oropolitics to describe the use of mountaineering expeditions as a cloak for establishing territorial claims. His essay on this topic was published in abbreviated form in an article in The Telegraph newspaper of Calcutta. The full essay titled "Oropolitics" came out in Himalaya Sameeksha, a limited circulation magazine published by Kamala Mukherjee in Calcutta, and was subsequently reprinted in the prestigious Alpine Journal of London in 1984. India sent troops into the Siachen Glacier the same year.