DNA Special: Will Mount Everest become Mount Radhanath Sikdar?

On the death anniversary of George Everest, we will tell you how the British did injustice to an Indian by naming the world's highest mountain peak after him, Mount Everest. The work of measuring the height of Mount Everest was done by Radha Nath Sikdar, an Indian employee of Survey of India but he was not given credit for it. Therefore, today we will take forward our campaign to take Radha Nath Sikdar to the pinnacle of respect, which we started on this day last year.

Mount Everest on the border of Nepal and Tibet is named Chomo-lungma in the Tibetan language. Whereas the people of Nepal call it Sagar-Matha. But in India and the rest of the world, it is famous as Mount Everest. Last year, when we raised this issue, we made it clear to our Nepalese audience that we are not saying at all that Nepal should also rename this mountain as Mount Sikdar. They should say such a Sagarmatha, we are also in support of this. Our only demand is that as Nepal knows it by its name, China knows it by its name, in the same way, this mountain should be recognized as Mount Sikdar in India.

The official estimate of the height of Mount Everest was done for the first time in the British Raj by the Survey of India. And this agency was established to make the official map of India. In the year 1830, Sir George Everest became the director of Survey of India and in the year 1831, he appointed a mathematician from West Bengal, Radhanath Sikdar, to the post of Computer in the Survey of India. At that time all the calculations were done by humans, so such people were called computers in the Survey of India because the basic work of computers is also to calculate. 

In the year 1852, Radhanath Sikdar started the work of measuring the mountain peak named 'Peak 15'. At that time, Mount Everest was known by this name. Then foreigners were not allowed to enter the border of Nepal. Therefore, with the help of a special instrument, Radhanath Sikdar recorded the height of 'Peak 15' as 8,848 meters. Andrew Scott Waugh, the then director of Survey of India, examined the assessment of Radhanath Sikdar for 4 years. Scott had worked with Sir George Everest and considered him as his mentor. That is why he had sent a proposal to name 'Peak 15' mountain peak as Mount Everest to the Royal Geographical Society of Britain. That is, Radhanath Sikdar was stripped of the credit of measuring the official height of Mount Everest and the world's highest mountain peak was named after an Englishman. The British government tried its best to hide this information but despite this, the great discovery of Radhanath Sikdar could not be hidden.

In January this year, we gave you all the information about the real hero of India, Radhanath Sikdar, which the historians of our country never told. Think how ironic it is that the historians of this country wrote hundreds of books on Mughal rulers like Babur, Akbar and Aurangzeb, but never told anything about Radhanath Sikdar to the country.