page_title: Four Rugby Boys
section_title: Sonam Gonpa Gongkar
hierarchical_section_title: Four Rugby Boys / The experiment / Sonam Gonpa Gongkar
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Tibetexpedition, Tibeter, Möndro Lhasa, Mr. K. K. Möndo [Möndo, Möndro]
context_page_description: The 1910s saw the attempt to turn four young Tibetans – the Four Rugby Boys – into a vanguard of "modernisers" through the medium of an English public school education.
  Lungshar, a Tibetan high official, escorted four sons of Tibetan "respectable families" – 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 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." Historian Alastair Lamb concurs: “the experiment […] can hardly be described as a success", adding that the boys were sidetracked by the Tibetan establishment and "made no significant contribution in later life to the development of Tibet".
context_section_description: Gongkar went to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich in London and then on to a short period of officer training with the Indian Army as he was expected to later reorganise the Tibetan Army. He was attached to the Northumberland Fusiliers for a short period. However, for political reasons, he was assigned to a frontier post in Kham. He died from pneumonia in 1917.
caption: Möndö in 1939
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