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The Politics of Being Buddhist in Zangskar: Partition and Today

2006; Routledge; Volume: 5; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14736480600939306

1557-3036

Kim Gutschow,

South Asian Studies and Diaspora

Abstract There is no abstract. Notes NOTES 1. Examples of this literature are Sumantra Bose's Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), Sumit Ganguly's Conflict Unending: India Pakistan Tensions Since 1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), Prem Shankar Jha's Kashmir 1947: Rival Versions of History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), and Victoria Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan, and the Unfinished War (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000). Those writing on the Kashmir conflict who take events in Ladakh as central to their narrative include Ravina Aggarwal's Beyond Lines of Control: Performance and Politics on the Disputed Borders of Ladakh, India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004); Martijn van Beek, "Identity Fetishism and the Art of Representation: The Long Struggle for Regional Autonomy in Ladakh," PhD Dissertation, Department of Sociology, Cornell University, 1997; Martijn van Beek, "Beyond Identity Fetishism: 'Communal' Conflict and Ladakh in the Limits of Autonomy," Cultural Anthropology Vol. 15, No. 4 (2001), pp. 525–69; and Navnita Chadha Behera, State, Identity, and Violence: Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh (New Delhi: Manohar, 2000). 2. Administratively, Kargil is comprised of two subdistricts, Zangskar and Kargil, each of which make up half of the districts total area 14,086 square kilometers. Yet Zangskar's 12,169 people account for less than 10% of the total district population of 119,307. 3. Gyandendra Pandey's Remembering Partition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) provides a succinct example of a subaltern history of partition, which examines the "faceless" or nameless citizens in whose name partition happened. The subaltern studies group's alternative approach to history is summarized in Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Spivak, Selected Subaltern Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). 4. Indian military histories of Kashmir that describe Ladakh's role in the 1947–49 war include S. N. Prasad and Dharm Pal, History of Operations in Jammu and Kashmir (1947–48) (New Delhi: Ministry of Defense, 1978) and L. P. Sen, Slender Was the Thread: Kashmir Confrontation 1947–48 (New Delhi: Orient Longmans, 1969). Sources reporting the invasion of Zangskar include M. L. Chibber, Pakistan's Criminal Folly in Kashmir: The Drama of Accession and Rescue of Ladakh (New Dehli: Manas Publications, 1998); H. Dani, History of the Northern Areas of Pakistan (Islamabad: National Institute of Historical and Cultural Research, 1991), pp. 400–401; Kim Gutschow, Being a Buddhist Nun: The Struggle for Enlightenment in the Himalayas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 25–8; Shridhar Kaul and H. N. Kaul, Ladakh Through the Ages: Towards a New Identity (New Delhi: Indus Publishing Company, 1992), pp. 181–2; and Tariq Ali Khan, "Little Tibet: Renaissance and Resistance in Baltistan," Himal Vol. 11, No. 5 (May 1998), pp. 14–21. 5. Gyanendra Pandey's oft-cited "In Defense of the Fragment: Writing about Hindu–Muslim Riots in India Today," Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 36, Nos. 11–12, pp. 559–72, calls for a historiography of secularism and communalism that privileges the overlooked but threatening minorities or fragments in Indian society. 6. The more recent re-readings of Partition include Suvir Kaul, The Partition of Memory: The Afterlife of the Division of India (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002); Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voices From the Partition of India (New Delhi: Penguin, 1998); Urvashi Butalia, "Community, State, and Gender: On Women's Agency During Partition," Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 27, No. 17 (April 24, 1993); Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries: Women in India's Partition (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1998); Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, "Recovery, Rupture, Resistance: Indian State and Abduction of Women During Partition," Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 27, No. 17 (April 24, 1993); Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); and Veena Das, "National Honor and Practical Kinship: Of Unwanted Women and Children," in Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 55–83. 7. The Maharaja's eventual accession to India in October 1947 has been the subject of considerable historic and scholarly debate and is not our concern here. See Jha's Kashmir 1947 and Bose's Kashmir, as well as Alistair Lamb, Incomplete Partition: The Genesis of the Kashmir Dispute, 1947–1948 (Hertingfordbury: Roxford Books, 1997). 8. See Veena Das and Ashis Nandy, "Violence, Victimhood, and the Language of Silence," Contributions to Indian Sociology Vol. 19, No. 1 (1985), pp. 177–95. Veena Das makes an analogous argument about the impossibility of representing the violence of Partition in her essay "National Honor and Practical Kinship." 9. Sumantra Bose's Kashmir, p. 40, notes that entire communities of Muslims and Hindus in Muzaffarabad, Bagh, Rawalkot, Kotli, Mirpur, Kathua, Jammu city, and Udhampur were either killed or exiled during this period. 10. Akbar Khan, Raiders in Kashmir (Islamabad: Pak Publishers, 1970) offers fascinating details about the Pakistani army's complicity in the invasion of Jammu and Kashmir in late 1947. More details on the invasion can be found in Jha's Kashmir 1947 and Bose's Kashmir, while the fall of Gilgit is described in careful detail by Kaul and Kaul's Ladakh Through the Ages. 11. Shridhar Kaul offers a firsthand account of the attacks on Sikh and Hindu civilians during the fall of Gilgit in Kaul and Kaul, Ladakh Through the Ages, pp. 162–9. 12. Chibber's Pakistan's Criminal Folly in Kashmir, p. 146 describes the Kalon's recruitment efforts and cites from the YMBA telegram to Nehru which states: "we have arrived with bows and arrows to defend Ladakh. Request, send arms and ammunition and reinforcements." Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict, p. 66, describes Nehru's rather casual attitude towards the Pakistani invasion of much of Jammu and Kashmir in a letter Nehru sent to Patel "this is of no great military significance and we can capture lost ground." 13. Kaul and Kaul's Ladakh Through the Ages (p. 170) notes the difficulty the Leh Kalon faced by describing the Tehsildar as "steeped and dyed fast in the traditions of the Revenue Service and a true-blood Muslim Leaguer at heart, though paying lip homage to nationalism and the accession of the State to India." 14. See Kaul and Kaul, Ladakh Through the Ages, p. 173. 15. See Major Chand's speech in Chibber, Pakistan's Criminal Folly in Kashmir, p. 154. Chand's army unit had served on an internal security detail in the Punjab between 1946 and 1947, where he witnessed the genocide of Partition firsthand. Chibber's Pakistan's Criminal Folly in Kashmir, pp. 163–4, reports that Chand notes "I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and Buddhists were inter-related by marriage." 16. In an interview I undertook with Major General Mani Rai of New Delhi in 1999, the general recalled that because Dakota airplanes had never been flown above 11,000 feet, an extra engine was tied onto the wings creating what he called a "hyper-Dakota." As Chibber reports in Pakistan's Criminal Folly in Kashmir, p. 30, General Thimmayya noted that the higher authorities had forbidden him to fly to Leh, because "Dakotas cannot land at Leh." As Chand adds, the plane landing was such a novelty that a senior monk of Spituk approached the pilot to ask what should be offered the plane in the way of food and drink. Further details on the battle for Leh are found in Prasad and Pal, History of Operations in Jammu and Kashmir (1947–48). 17. The Ladakhi partition narratives can be found in a special edition of La dvags kyi Shes rab zom [Sheeraza Ladakhi] Vol. 20, Nos. 3–4 (1998–99). While some of the authors are well known figures like Tashi Rabgyas, Abdul Ghani Sheikh, Kalon Rigdzin Namgyal, others like Sonam Wangdus of Basgo or Tsetan Namgyal of Phyiang Chubi are Ladakhis whose service to their nation might otherwise be forgotten. The volume is entirely in Ladakhi and merits broader translation for an Indian audience. 18. Chand's recollections are cited in Chibber, Pakistan's Criminal Folly in Kashmir, p. 189. hisrecollections are occasionally at odds with the Defense Ministry's report given by Prasad and Pal. For example, while Chand lists the names of the 17 soldiers who marched with him to Leh, the Defense Ministry claims there were 40. 19. Major Chand accused the British Reverend Norman Driver of propagating false rumors for Pakistan. Thus, when General Thimmayya visited Leh on August 29, 1948, he nominated Chand to replace Driver as Leh's new Chief Minister. See Chibber, Pakistan's Criminal Folly in Kashmir, p. 190. 20. Tashi Tundup confirms that the Pakistani invaders arrived around the time of the Sani festival, which takes place in the sixth Tibetan month (late July/early August). Kaul and Kaul (1992) note that the Buenos Aires Herald, August 23, 1948, reported that Pakistani soldiers had stolen tapestries and statues from a monastery in Padum. The story proves the arrival of Gilgit Scouts by August of 1948. Between 1994 and 2003, I interviewed several Zangskari villagers who had lived through the 1948–49 invasion including Tashi Tundup of Yulang, Yeshe Angbo of Sendo, Phuntsog of Langmi, Lonpo Sonam Angchug of Karsha, Geshe Ngawang Tharpa of Karsha monastery, Ani Yeshe Angmo, Ani Kundzes, and Ani Dechen Angmo of Karsha nunnery. 21. Shridahar Kaul's letter, written to Pandit Nehru on August 17, 1948, is reported in Kaul and Kaul, Ladakh Through the Ages, pp. 353–7. 22. Kaul and Kaul, Ladakh Through the Ages, pp. 354–6. 23. Both Ladakh and Zangskar might not lie in India today if the two brothers from Lahaul, Prithi Chand and Thakur Pratap Chand, had not organized such a rapid defense of these regions. Their contributions have been largely overlooked by many authors writing about Kashmir with the exception Prasad and Pal's History of Operations in Jammu and Kashmir (1947–48), Sen's, Slender Was the Thread, Kaul and Kaul's Ladakh Through the Ages, and Chibber's Pakistan's Criminal Folly in Kashmir. Only the latter two mention Thakur Chand's role in the defense of Zangskar. 24. Chand's account of the defense of Zangskar, from Chibber's Pakistan's Criminal Folly in Kashmir, tallies with the Zangskari narratives I gathered on most points. He differs on the question of the arrival of Indian reinforcements and the surrender of the Gilgit Scouts. 25. Kaul and Kaul's Ladakh Through the Ages, pp. 107–17, offers a vivid portrayal of the oppression the Zangskaris faced at the hands of Wazirs and other officials in Kargil before 1947. Zaildar's duties are described more generally in D. G. Barkeley's Directions for Revenue Officers in the Punjab Regarding the Settlement and Collection of Land Revenue and Other Duties Connected Therewith (Lahore: Central Jail Press, 1875), which was adapted from the directions used more widely in the North Western Provinces and Jammu and Kashmir. 26. Gutschow's Being a Buddhist Nun (chapter 7) describes the way in which birth and death pollution (bang nga)—which lasts between two and four weeks in most Zangskari households—is used to define the hierarchical relationship between insider/outsider as well as male/female within Zangskari ritual discourse. Aggarwal's Beyond Lines of Control relates several narratives regarding funerals that produce tropes of borders and belonging within the Buddhist and Muslim villagers of Achinathang. 27. Most Zangskari accounts insist that Indian reinforcements arrived via the Chadar in the winter of 1948–49 and that the Gilgit Scouts only surrendered in June of 1949. However, in Chibber's Pakistan's Criminal Folly in Kashmir Chand notes that reinforcements came from Kargil and that the Scouts surrendered as early as March of 1949. 28. Interestingly, during the 1971 war with Pakistan. 29. The debate about the forcible recovery of tens of thousands of women regardless of what they may have wanted is addressed in Das, "National Honor and Practical Kinship," Butalia's Other Side of Silence, and Menon and Basin's Borders and Boundaries. 30. Kim Gutschow's Being a Buddhist Nun (chapter 6) analyzes the discourse surrounding purity and pollution in Zangskar that illustrate the link between guardian deities, purity, and prosperity. 31. Both Martin van Beek and Ravina Aggarwal (personal communication, October 10, 2005 and October 15, 2005 respectively) report similar terminology in Ladakh. Aggarwal notes that Muslims in Achinathang refrain from calling Buddhists insiders. For an interesting genealogy of the term mussulman from the Persian, see Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical, and Discursive (New Delhi: Rupa and Co., 1986 [original 1886]), p. 603. 32. S. C. Das's classic dictionary, A Tibetan–English Dictionary (Calcutta: Gaurav Printing, 1902), pp. 732–4, offers a detailed exegesis of the Tibetan use of the term nang pa and phyi pa, referring to Hindus. His parable, "the Buddhists are inwardly pure, while Hindus have outer purity" (nang pa'i nang gtsang phyi pa'i phyi gtsang) relates to the philosophical notion that Buddhists practice inward purity through meditation while Hindus practice outward purity through Brahmanic ritual. 33. Local informants reported the stories about the origins of Padum's Muslim community, but see also James Crook and Henry Osmaston's Himalayan Buddhist Villages (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1994), p. 461, in which they cite James Crowden's allegation that one family is descended from the cook of the last ruling king. 34. Chapter 2 and 6 of Gutschow's Being a Buddhist Nun describes Zangskar's stratification as well as the discourse around purity and pollution. Compare Aggarwal's discussion of caste in Achinathang in Beyond Lines of Control and Brauen's list of Ladakhi strata in Feste In Ladakh (Graz: Akademische Druuk und Verlaganstalt, 1980). 35. I did not hear of any inter-communal marriages in Karsha or its surrounding villages in the 15 year period during which I conducted fieldwork. However, my work was not based in Padum, where such unions would have been likely. Gutschow's Being a Buddhist Nun specifies the manner in which wedding ceremonies help produce and reify communal solidarity and hierarchy, while Aggarwal's Beyond Lines of Control describes communal rhetoric surrounding the boycott of a funeral in Achinathang, Ladakh. 36. Lama Lobzang's remarks on the problem of Buddhist conversions to Islam are reported in the Daily Excelsior, July 26, 2000. 37. The census in 2001 reported that the 183,963 persons identified as eligible for Scheduled Tribe status made up only 2.5% of the population of Jammu and Kashmir but 88.7% of the population in Leh and Kargil districts, as Martijn van Beek noted (personal communication). The imposition of the tribal label in Ladakh is discussed in Aggarwal's Beyond Lines of Control, as well as Martin Van Beek, "The Importance of Being Tribal; or the Impossibility of Being Ladakhis," in Thierry Dodin and Heinz Räther, eds., Recent Research on Ladakh 7: Proceedings of the 7th International Colloquium of Ladakh Studies (Ulm: Ulmer Kulturanthropologische Schriften, 1997), pp. 21–42, and Martin Van Beek, "Beyond Identity Fetishism: 'Communal' Conflict and Ladakh and the Limits of Autonomy," Cultural Anthropology Vol. 15, No. 4 (November 2000), pp. 525–69. 38. Stanley Tambiah uses the term "minority complex" to explain how a Buddhist majority in Sri Lanka may feel under attack, despite its majority status in his Buddhism Betrayed? Religion, Politics, and Violence in Sri Lanka (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Tambiah's Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist and Collective Violence in South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996) offers a useful summary of the recent literature on communalism in South Asia. 39. My interviews with both Zangskari and Ladakhi health workers who were involved with a Ladakhi health team visit to Zangskar in 1995 confirmed the active interference of the LBA in preventing the distribution of contraceptives. 40. Lama Lobzang reported these statistics on Buddhist and Muslim access to education and government jobs in the course of a speech at New Delhi Constitution Club covered in the Daily Excelsior, July 26, 2000. 41. The statistics are cited from the Kargil District's official website, http://kargil.nic.in/departments/departments.htm. 42. The Daily Excelsior, July 13 and July 17, 2003, reported the comments made by the Zangskari Action Committee in response to the implementation of the Kargil Hill Council. Zangskar was allotted three seats, as was the Shakar–Chigtan bloc, although Zangskar has one-third more people than the latter. 43. The Daily Excelsior, February 14 and July 23, 2004) reports the comments by Chief Minister Mohammad Sayeed regarding the boycott and the development of Zangskar. 44. Kargil district map and history can be seen at http://kargil.nic.in/profile/profile.htm. 45. Seb Mankelow's "Watershed Development in Central Zangskar," Ladakh Studies Newsletter No. 19 (March 2005), pp. 50–57, mentions conflict between Buddhists and Muslims in Padum over access to the newly established Watershed Development Program. 46. Chapter 2 of Gutschow's Being a Buddhist Nun describes the customary office that mediates grazing disputes and is known in local idiom as lo ra pa. 47. See Martin Van Beek's Identity Fetishism and the Art of Representation and his more recent article, "Dangerous Liaisons: Hindu Nationalism and Buddhist Radicalism in Ladakh," in S. Limaye, M. Malik, and R. Wirsing, eds., Religious Radicalism and Security in South Asia (Honolulu: Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, 2004), pp. 193–218. Aggarwal's Beyond Lines of Control offers a multi-sited view of the communal conflict in Ladakh, presenting both the political view in Leh town as well as rural repercussions in the mixed Buddhist–Muslim village of Achinathang. 48. When I first traveled to Ladakh from Srinagar in 1989, the Ladakhis sent Kashmiri militants a clear message in graffiti along the Leh–Srinagar highway: "Kashmiri Dogs Go Home." Over the next few years, as militancy engulfed the Kashmir valley, Buddhist politicians in Leh district fought for political and economic autonomy within the state and began to implement its Hill Council in 1996. 49. Praveen Swami, "Murder in Leh," Frontline Vol. 15, No. 15 (August 4, 2000), cites LBA vice-president Sonam Gonbo's gaffe. Other accounts of the murder in Rangdum are found in "Tension Simmers in Ladakh After Killings," Indian Express, July 13, 2000; "Indefinite Curfew Clamped in Leh after Buddhists' Killings," Daily Excelsior, July 14, 2000; "Ladakh Muslims Flay Lama Lobzang's Statement," Daily Excelsior, July 19, 2000 ; "German Tourist's Body Recovered From Kargil Sector," Daily Excelsior, August 5, 2000. 50. The synopsis of the Rajya Sabha debates for August 22 was found at http://164.100.24.167/rsdebate/synopsis/190/sy22082000. 51. See Kaul and Kaul's Ladakh Through the Ages, p. 356.