In Memoriam
Hubert Decleer (1940–2021)
Welcome. I’m glad you found this memorial for my dear teacher, mentor, and friend Hubert Decleer. I wrote it together with Benjamin Bogin and Dominique Townsend. I first met Hubert when I was a student on the School for International Training’s Tibetan Studies program. That was the spring semester of 1988, the program’s inaugural year. I was later fortunate to serve as co-academic director (together with Hubert) of the Tibetan Studies program from 1993-1999. In 2014, I co-edited a volume of academic essays in his honor titled Himalayan Passages. Hubert touched the lives of many. If you knew him, feel free to leave a memory in a comment below.
In Memoriam: Hubert Decleer (1940–2021)
With great sadness, we share news that our incomparable teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend Hubert Decleer passed away peacefully on Wednesday, August 25. He was at his home with his wife, the poet Nazneen Zafar, in Kathmandu, Nepal, near the Swayambhū Mahācaitya that had been his constant inspiration for nearly five decades. His health declined rapidly following a diagnosis of advanced-stage lung cancer in May, but he remained lucid and in high spirits and over the past weeks he was surrounded by family members and close friends. Through his final hours, he maintained his love of Himalayan scholarship and black coffee, and his deep and quiet commitment to Buddhist practice.
Hubert’s contributions to the study of Tibetan and Himalayan traditions are expansive, covering the religious, literary, and cultural histories of Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and India. For nearly thirty-five years he directed and advised the School for International Training’s program for Tibetan Studies, an undergraduate study-abroad program that has served as a starting point for scholars currently working in fields as diverse as Anthropology, Art History, Education, Conservation, History, Religious Studies, Philosophy, and Public Policy. The countless scholars he inspired are connected by the undercurrent of Hubert’s indelible “light touch” and all the subtle and formative lessons he imparted as a mentor and friend.
Hubert embodied a seemingly inexhaustible curiosity that spanned kaleidoscopic interests ranging from Chinese landscapes to Netherlandish still lifes, medieval Tibetan pilgrimage literature to French cinema, 1940s bebop to classical Hindustani vocal performance. With legendary hospitality, his home, informally dubbed “The Institute,” was an oasis for scholars, former students, artists, and musicians, who came to share a simple dinner of daal bhaat or a coffee on the terrace overlooking Swayambhū. The conversations that took place on that terrace often unearthed a text or image or reference that turned out to be the missing link in the visitor’s current research project. When not discussing scholarship, Hubert inspired his friends to appreciate the intelligence and charm of animals—monkeys and crows especially—or to enjoy the marvels of a blossoming potted plum tree. His attentiveness to the world around him generated intense sensitivity and compassion. He was an accomplished painter and a captivating storyteller, ever ready with accounts of the artists’ scene in Europe or his numerous overland journeys to Asia. The stories from long ago flowed freely and very often revealed some important insight about the present moment, however discrete.
Hubert François Kamiel Decleer was born on August 22, 1940, in Ostend, Belgium. In 1946, he spent three months in Switzerland with a group of sixty children whose parents served in the Résistance. He completed his Latin-Greek Humaniora at the Royal Atheneum in Ostend in 1958, when he was awarded the Jacques Kets National Prize for biology by the Royal Zoo Society of Antwerp. He developed a keen interest in the arts, and during this period he also held his first exhibition of oil paintings and gouaches. In 1959 he finished his B.A. in History and Dutch Literature at the Regent School in Ghent. Between 1960 and 1963 he taught Dutch and History at the Hotel and Technical School in Ostend, punctuated by a period of military service near Köln, Germany in 1961–62. The highlight of his military career was the founding of a musical group (for which he played drums) that entertained officers’ balls with covers of Ray Charles and other hits of the day.
In 1963 Hubert made the first of his many trips to Asia, hitchhiking for thirteen months from Europe to India and through to Ceylon. Returning to Belgium in 1964, he then worked at the artists’ café La Chèvre Folle in Ostend, where he organized fortnightly exhibitions and occasional cultural events. For the following few years he worked fall and winter for a Belgian travel agency in Manchester and Liverpool, England, while spending summers as a tour guide in Italy, Central Europe, and Turkey. In 1967 he began working as a guide, lecturer, and interpreter for Penn Overland Tours, based in Hereford, England. In these roles he accompanied groups of British, American, Australian, and New Zealand tourists on luxury overland trips from London to Bombay, and later London to Calcutta—excursions that took two and a half months to complete. He made twenty-six overland journeys in the course of fourteen years, during which time he also organized and introduced local musical concerts in Turkey, Pakistan, India, and later Nepal. He likewise accompanied two month-long trips through Iran with specialized international groups as well as a number of overland trips through the USSR and Central Europe. In between his travels, Hubert wrote and presented radio scenarios for Belgian Radio and Television (including work on a prize-winning documentary on Nepal) and for the cultural program Woord. The experiences of hospitality and cultural translation that Hubert accumulated on his many journeys supported his work as a teacher and guide; he was always ready with a hint of how one might better navigate the awkward state of being a stranger in a new place.
With the birth of his daughter Cascia in 1972, Hubert’s travels paused for several years as he took a position tutoring at the Royal Atheneum in Ostend. He also worked as an art critic with a coastal weekly and lectured with concert tours of Nepalese classical musicians, caryā dancers, and the musicologist and performer Michel Dumont.
In 1975, during extended layovers between India journeys, Hubert began a two-year period of training in Buddhist Chinese at the University of Louvain with pioneering Indologist and scholar of Buddhist Studies Étienne Lamotte. He recalled being particularly moved by the Buddhist teachings on impermanence he encountered in his initial studies. He also worked as a bronze-caster apprentice and assistant to sculptor—and student of Lamotte—Roland Monteyne. He then resumed his overland journeying full time, leading trips from London to Kathmandu. These included annual three-month layovers in Nepal, where he began studying Tibetan and Sanskrit with local tutors. He was a participant in the first conference of the Seminar of Young Tibetologists held in Zürich in 1977. In 1980 he settled permanently in Kathmandu, where he continued his private studies for seven years. During this period he also taught French at the Alliance Française and briefly served as secretary to the Consul at the French Embassy in Kathmandu.
It was during the mid 1980s that Hubert began teaching American college students as a lecturer and fieldwork consultant for the Nepal Studies program of the School for International Training (then known as the Experiment in International Living) based in Kathmandu. In 1987 he was tasked with organizing SIT’s inaugural Tibetan Studies program, which ran in the fall of that year. Hubert served as the program’s academic director, a position he would hold for more than a decade. Under his direction, the Tibetan Studies program famously became SIT’s most nomadic college semester abroad, regularly traveling through India, Nepal, Bhutan, as well as western, central, and eastern Tibet. It was also during this period that Hubert produced some of his most memorable writings in the form of academic primers, assignments, and examinations. In 1999 Hubert stepped down as academic director to become the program’s senior faculty advisor, a position he held until his death.
Hubert taught and lectured across Europe and the United States in positions that included visiting lecturer at Middlebury College and Numata visiting faculty member at the University of Vienna.
Hubert’s writing covers broad swaths of geographical and historical territory, although he paid particular attention to the Buddhist traditions of Tibet and Nepal. His research focused on the transmission history of the Vajrabhairava tantras, traditional narrative accounts of the Swayambhū Purāṇa, the sacred geography of the Kathmandu Valley (his 2017 lecture on this topic, “Ambrosia for the Ears of Snowlanders,” is recorded here), and the biographies of the eleventh-century Bengali monk Atiśa. His style of presenting lectures was rooted in his work as a musician and lover of music—he prepared meticulously to be sure his talks were rhythmic, precise, and yet had an element of the spontaneous. One of his preferred mediums was the long-form book review, which incorporated new scholarship and original translations with erudite critiques of subjects ranging from Buddhist philosophy to art history and Tibetan music. His final publication, a forthcoming essay on an episode contained in the correspondence of the seventeenth-century Jesuit António de Andrade (translated by Michael Sweet and Leonard Zwilling in 2017), uses close readings of Tibetan historical sources and paintings to complicate and contextualize Andrade’s account of his mission to Tibet. This exemplifies the spirit and method of his review essays, which demonstrate his deep admiration of published scholarship through a meticulous consideration of the work and its sources, often leading to new discoveries.
In addition to Hubert’s published work, some of his most endearing and enduring writing has appeared informally, in the guise of photocopied packets intended for his students. Each new semester of the SIT Tibetan Studies program would traditionally begin with what is technically called “The Academic Director’s Introduction and Welcome Letter.” These documents would be mailed out to students several weeks prior to the program, and for most other programs they were intended to inform incoming participants of the basic travel itinerary, required readings, and how many pairs of socks to pack. The Tibetan Studies welcome letter began as a humble, one-page handwritten note, impeccably penned in Hubert’s unmistakable hand.
Hubert’s welcome letters evolved over the years, and they eventually morphed into collections of three or four original essays covering all manner of subjects related to Tibetan Studies, initial hints at how to approach cultural field studies, new research, and experiential education, as well as anecdotes from the previous semester illustrating major triumphs and minor disasters. The welcome letters became increasingly elaborate and in later years regularly reached fifty pages or more in length. The welcome letter for fall 1991, for example, included chapters titled “Scholarly Fever” and “The Field and the Armchair, and not ‘Stage-Struck’ in either.” By spring 1997, the welcome letter included original pieces of scholarship and translation, with a chapter on “The Case of the Royal Testaments” that presented innovative readings of the Maṇi bka’ ’bum. Only one element was missing from the welcome letter, a lacuna corrected in that same text of spring 1997, as noted by its title: Tibetan Studies Tales: An Academic Directors’ Welcome Letter—With Many Footnotes.
Hubert was adamant that even college students on a study-abroad program could undertake original and creative research, either for assignments in Dharamsala, in Kathmandu or the hilly regions of Nepal, or during independent-study projects themselves, which became the capstone of the semester. Expectations were high, sometimes seemingly impossibly high, but with just the right amount of background information and encouragement, the results were often triumphs.
Hubert regularly spent the months between semesters, or during the summer, producing another kind of SIT literature: the “assignment text.” These nearly always included extensive original translations of Tibetan materials and often extended background essays as well. They would usually end with a series of questions that would serve as the basis for a team research project. For fall 1994 there was “Cultural Neo-Colonialism in the Himalayas: The Politics of Enforced Religious Conversion”; later there was the assignment on the famous translator Rwa Lotsāwa called “The Melodious Drumsound All-Pervading: The Life and Complete Liberation of Majestic Lord Rwa Lotsāwa, the Yogin-Translator of Rwa, Mighty Lord in Magic Intervention.” There were extended translations of traditional pilgrimage guides for the Kathmandu Valley, including texts by the Fourth Khamtrul and the Sixth Zhamar hierarchs, for assignments where teams of students would race around the valley rim looking for an elusive footprint in stone or a guesthouse long in ruins that marked the turnoff of an old pilgrim’s trail. For many students these assignments were the first foray into field work methods, and Hubert’s careful guidance helped them approach collaborations with local experts ethically and with deep respect for diverse forms of knowledge.
One semester there was a project titled “The Mystery of the IV Brother Images, ’Phags pa mched bzhi” focused on the famous set of statues in Tibet and Nepal and based on new Tibetan materials that had only just come to light. Another examined the “The Tibetan World ‘Translated’ in Western Comics.” Finally, there was a classic of the genre that examined the creative nonconformity of the Bhutanese mad yogin Drugpa Kunleg in light of the American iconoclast composer and musician Frank Zappa: “A Dose of Drugpa Kunleg for the post–1984 Era: Prolegomena to a Review Article of the Real Frank Zappa Book.”
Frank Zappa was, indeed, another of Hubert’s inspirations and his aforementioned review included the following passage: “If there’s one thing I do admire in FZ, it is precisely these ‘highest standards’ and utmost professional thoroughness that does not allow for any sloppiness (in the name of artistic freedom or spontaneous freedom)…. At the same time, each concert is really different, [and]…appears as a completely spontaneous event.” Hubert’s life as a scholar, teacher, and mentor was a consummate illustration of this highest ideal.
Hubert is survived by his wife Nazneen Zafar; his daughter Cascia Decleer, son-in-law Diarmuid Conaty, and grandsons Keanu and Kiran Conaty; his sister Annie Decleer and brother-in-law Patrick van Calenbergh; his brother Misjel Decleer and sister-in-law Martine Thomaere; his stepmother Agnès Decleer, and half-brother Luc Decleer. A traditional cremation ceremony at the Bijeśvarī Vajrayoginī temple near Swayambhū is planned for Friday.
**UPDATE** The cremation ceremony has been changed to Monday, August 30 at 8:00 am, next to the Bijeśvarī Vajrayoginī temple near Swayambhū. Apparently, the body rested for several days without signs of decay.
Benjamin Bogin, Andrew Quintman, and Dominique Townsend
Portions of this biographical sketch draw on the introduction to Himalayan Passages: Newar and Tibetan Studies in Honor of Hubert Decleer (Wisdom Publications, 2014)
On Saturday November 6 we held a virtual memorial for Hubert where family, friends, colleagues, and students gathered to share their reflections. A video of the event is posted below, together with a separate video for the slide show we incorporated into the memorial. (The introduction to the memorial was inadvertently not recorded, and there was a small break midway through due to an internet disruption.)
15 COMMENTS
Studying with Hubert (and Ben) with the Fall of 2000 group was one of the great privileges and most influential periods of my life. When I turned 40 a couple years ago my wife, who had heard stories about this period, turned secretly to Hubert to write me a surprise birthday letter as she recognized the profound impact he carries on me. I was in tears reading this letter from Hubert despite some 20 years having passed. Hubert gave me the courage to commit to a cause and the insight to realize that if you do such you can change people’s lives. Hubert is one of those quiet souls that has made an impact beyond what anyone can realize, and my sadness of his passing is only aided by the knowledge that he has a legacy that is so enduring and profound. Thank you Hubert as our life being briefly intertwined was tremendously special for me.
What a life! Honored to have met Hubert briefly in 1994 through SIT.
Such a loss for all who knew him. I feel honored to have met him in person in Nepal in 2019. He was an amazingly knowledgeable person who contributed in so many positive ways to this world and will certainly be remembered in his various circles for lifetimes to come. May Hubert Rest In Peace.
Such a generous soul.
Hubert lived a Fascinating life! I wish i had met and talked to him. A gem of a person! Life flows like a river, constantly, erratically all at the same time and it takes a unique heart to weather all storms with simple calm and clarity of mind
I had the great privilege to know him as my ‘big brother’ and good friend and fell it as a great honour to share the last week of his being with us. It was his believe in my crazy lifestile that gave the boost to go for it.
I was hardly three years old when he shared the wonders in his microscope with me, the fabulous unseen life off our freshwater-aquarium in a single waterdrop. We held all kinds of weird creators in containers in the bedroom, far away from the boring television downstairs, watched beatles making their untherwater-nesting spot and raise their offspring, watched newts mating, had offspring of little snakes which escaped in the room… Somehow he was allways there for the well being off this creatures and would say: soon the newts will leave their untherwater world, we will bring them back to the pool where we caught them…At 19 years of age I partly joined him on an overland tour from London to Kathmandu (from Greece to Kabul, where a stayed awhile in this fascinating world before continuing to India). I was really amazed about his super knowledge all along the way and how he inspired the people joining the trip. He got them into making Haiku’s, teached them some of the local language, was invited throughout the trip by locals… Sometimes we could escape for a little while and went horseriding (learning it the fast way, it’s to say, get on and try to stay on while the owner chased the horse off.) We went to weddings in Baluchistan, went birding at lake Vann, We tasted the Marihuana with local musisians at Mazari Shariff (it where the late sixties, maybe before your moyher was born) and I just made it to India before the war broke out. I was intended to learn Indian ragas and big brother said: go looking for a quit place to learn about Indian lifestyle first, to become quit and be ready to be accepted. I landed at Barathpur, went to the amazing Keoladeo (house off peace) Bird Sanctuary, and 4 months later was still there., the start off my job as a freelance wildlife-photographer, which amazed me dayly ever since. Hubert came to sea me there later; I took him in a little boat up there and we both had a heavenly day. Never since I had such a great soul in my wild days. The way he observed, the glitter in his eyes, the few words so softley spoken. Wish I where there now again with him.
Thanks Hubert for all and more. Love You so dearly
My deepest condolences. Thank you for the wonderful words.
None of us live forever but Hubert is one of those who might just test that perceived truth. From our early days working together in the 1990’s, I felt an honesty, humility, and even sacredness that embodied everything he did. Stroking his beard and sucking on his Gauloise, he could hold court by simply being present. He had, no doubt, an inner life that fueled this demeanor, But it was his interaction with his students, in Kathmandu or Dharmsala that was extraordinary to watch. On several occasions I was witness to his students’ final oral presentations of their undergraduate research. His extraordinary selfless mentorship of young American students – many of whom might not have been able to identify Nepal or Tibet on a map before they encountered Hubert – was clearly evident and remarkable in the insightful writing they produced. This is a man who will live on in all of us who had the privilege to know him.
Hubert was a remarkable human being. For a 21 year old college student studying abroad (Tibetan Studies, Fall 1995), he was a phenomenon: exceptionally knowledgeable (not just about Tibetan Studies but about pretty much everything) and remarkably skilled at navigating cultural differences. Hubert had a quiet, intense, enigmatic charisma. He was also unfailingly polite, punctuating his surprise or disappointment with the trademark phrase, “Shit, please.” I never saw him lose his cool, even in the face of mini-crises like when our tour bus’s windshield shattered into a thousand pieces.
Hubert modeled how to make genuine connections across cultural divides: Be curious and respectful. Ask questions. Have a sense of humor. He encouraged his students to be independent and adventurous, sending me off on a month-long independent study project with nothing more than a single piece of paper containing the name of a Tibetan refugee settlement some 7 hours away from Kathmandu.
I have deep admiration for Hubert–for his generosity of spirit, his rich and varied life experience and his lifelong commitment to teaching and learning. Om Mani Padme Hum.
A life well lived and a soul never forgotten!
It’s sad to hear Hubert’s death. Prayers and condolences to his family. I worked with him as a Tibetan teacher for American students in Kathmandu [1990s] when he was the director of the program. He was a man of humility and simplicity. I remember him drinking strong black coffee all the time, I mean real hard strong and black. Good karma is on his side for sure. Om Mani Pay May Hung Hri!
44 year ago in Sept 1977, I drove my my first Penn Indian Overland tour out of London, and my courier was a Belgian guy with a huge droopy moustache – his name was Hubert.
The India Overland coach trip lasted for 72 days and was full of adventures and challenges, but Hubert and I got along so very well each and every day, and that’s how Hubert came into my life. Once we were east of Istanbul’s Bosphorus Bridge and into Asia proper, Hubert changed character being into the parts of the world he loved, so he dressed in the local style for each country and also spoke most languages along the route. I found him a real mentor and happily he was impressed with my driving ability too!
I still have & treasure the ragged Khata scarf HDC presented to me when leaving Kathmandu after that 1st trip in 1977 – I wore it for another 72 days all the way back to London!
I was in Kathmandu frequently after that until Penn Overland ceased to exist with my final Kathmandu visit being on my honeymoon in 1981, and of course saw HDC every now and again. We settled down in the UK and subsequently Australia, and by then HDC was settling in Kathmandu, but over the years we have kept in touch by email about once a year as to use HDC’s words “overland afficionados of 40+ years ago still feel connected by that unique experience—one that, today, is unthinkable. A world that no longer exists.”
Hubert also wrote to me once saying “We have to abide by a certain code of honour, as we did on the Overland; and I make a daily vow not to strive for personal honour and gain.”
Hubert’s last email to me was June 2020 when he was replying to some searches I was helping with and had asked him about another legendary driver of the Indian Overland named Gino Teseo. Of course Hubert knew Gino!
I received a lengthy email from HDC complete with a sketch which he said he might turn into one of his ‘savant painting’ series, and give it a title such as “Homage to Gino Teseo, Absent or Actually There”. Then added that the last time he met Gino may have been Venice, where, over a glass of wine Gino quoted to Hubert the quatrain by Lorenzo de Medici ‘il Magnifico'(1449-1492):
How beautiful is youth
That is always slipping away!
Whoever wants to be happy, let him be so,
Of tomorrow, there’s no knowing.
This year my “annual check up” email to HDC didn’t get sent until Aug 26th, and having not heard back, I did a google a few days ago and found the wonderful ‘in memoriam’ piece by Benjamin Bogin, Andrew Quintman, and Dominique Townsend.
Oh how I wish I had sent that email a couple of months earlier just to have one more conversation with you Hubert. Like so many of the overland fraternity I was just gutted to learn of your passing. R.I.P. Hubert old friend.
PS: I never got to meet Nazneen, but she will know of me from his story telling – I’m the guy that made the coach fly on the drive from Khajuraho to Varanasi
Thank you so much for this wonderful remembrance. Over the years I heard many stories about your legendary driving skills. So glad you found this.
Absolutely beautiful. Many thanks for sharing.
Andrew Bray, Fall ’92
Thank you for posting this. It was such a jolt to listen to the “Ambrosia for the Ears of Snowlanders” recording. Hubert La (and co-pilot Andy, and shero Nazneen) greatly affected my life in the Fall of 1995 in the best possible manner. The world has lost a giant mind. Hubert La was such a crossroads for so many of us. Connecting, humbling and bumbling, celebrating the best things this world has to offer. Goodbye greatest Teacher, may i be fortunate enough to encounter you again,