Four Rugby Boys

Lungshar and the four Tibetan students just before leaving for England.
Rugby School as seen from "the close" where according to legend Rugby football was invented

The 1910s saw an attempt to turn four young Tibetans – the Four Rugby Boys – into the vanguard of "modernisers" through the medium of an English public school education.[1]

Lungshar, a Tibetan high official, escorted four sons of Tibetan "respectable families"[2] – W. N. Kyipup, K. K. Möndö, Sonam Gonpa Gongkar and R. D. Ringang – to England, in 1913, so they could be educated at a public school. After completing their studies at Rugby School, each of the Rugby Four[3] received professional training in a particular field and eventually returned to Tibet.

According to Lungshar's son Lhalu Tsewang Dorje, "the experiment was not a great success."[4] Historian Alastair Lamb concurs: “the experiment […] can hardly be described as a success", adding that the boys were side-tracked by the Tibetan establishment and "made no significant contribution in later life to the development of Tibet".[5]

  1. ^ British Intelligence on China in Tibet, 1903–1950 Archived 5 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Formerly classified and confidential British intelligence and policy files, Editor: A.J. Farrington, Former Deputy Director, OIOC, British Library, London, IDC Publishers, 2002, p. 22.
  2. ^ Alastair Lamb, Tom Browns from Central Asia, in The History of Tibet: The modern period : 1895–1959, the encounter with modernity, Alex Mackay, Routledge (ed.), 2003, p. 325.
  3. ^ The four boys are variously referred to by historians as "the four Rugby boys", "the four young Tibetans", "the four Tibetan youths", "the four Tibetans in England", "the Rugby party".
  4. ^ Robert W. Ford, Wind Between the Worlds, David McKay Company, Inc, New York, 1957, p. 109.
  5. ^ Alastair Lamb, Tom Browns from Central Asia, in The History of Tibet: The modern period : 1895–1959, the encounter with modernity, Alex Mackay, Routledge (ed.), 2003, p. 327.