SAJHAITES IS THIS ARTICLE AN HONEST ONE, I WAS DAZED..TENZING SHERPA a TIBETAN....CLARIFY SAJHAITE HISTORIANS, PHDS, INTELLECTUALS...

LONDON, DEC 25: Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, who accompanied Edmund Hillary,
the first everester in 1953, was a Tibetan and not a Nepali, according
to a new book.

While
Hillary and the expedition's leader Lord Hunt both believed that the
Sherpa had been born in a remote mountain village in Nepal, a new book
"Snow in the Kingdom" by American mountaineer Ed Webster claims that
not only was Tenzing born in Tibet, but he spent much of his childhood
there. The world's most famous Sherpa was not really a Sherpa at all.

Even
after Tenzing's death in 1986, the truth was considered too sensitive
to disclose, not least for fear of embarrassing the Indian government
which had supported Tenzing after his ascent. It would have handed a
propaganda coup to the Chinese authorities in the Tibetan capital Lhasa
that a "Chinese climber" was the first to climb Everest.

But now Webster has been given permission by the family to reveal the truth about Tenzing's real origins.

Throughout
his life, Tenzing remained vague about his background. In his
autobiography, "Tiger of The Snows", he obscured the truth of his
childhood without quite denying it, telling ghost-writer James Ramsey
Ullman that he grew up in the village of Thame, in Nepal. In fact, his
parents migrated there during the early 1920s after a period of
financial hardship and debt to a local Tibetan governor.

Tenzing,
however, was more forthcoming about his birthplace. He said "I was born
in a place called Tsa-Chu, near the great mountain of Makalu, and only
a day's march from Everest." Tenzing also explains that when he was
born, his mother had been on a pilgrimage to the nearby monastery at
Ghang La, the name of Tenzing house in Darjeeling.

When
Tenzing climbed Everest in 1953 he was hailed by the Nepalese
government in Kathmandu as a local hero who happened to live in India.
Nepal's fledgling constitutional monarchy feared political domination
by the new Indian republic and both countries saw great propaganda
value in claiming Tenzing, the first humble born Asian of the modern
era to achieve global fame, as their own.

Tenzing's
caution about revealing his true origins was partly explained by his
political wrangling. "After we climbed Everest," Hillary said, "and
Tenzing was invited to England, we were really in a jam because Tenzing
had no passport."

The
crisis was averted only when the Indian Prime Minister, Pandit
Jawaharlal Nehru, stepped in and personally ensured that Tenzing
received an Indian passport--something for which the Nepalese
authorities never forgave him. Nehru became Tenzing's patron and
authorised the establishment of a mountaineering school in Darjeeling,
which Tenzing helped to run.