Justifying Autonomy for Ladakh Martijn Van Beek Aarhus University, Denmark

Himalaya, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies Volume 18 Number 1 Himalayan Research Bulletin: Solukhumbu Article 9 and the Sherpa, Part Two: Ladakh 1998 True Patriots: Justifying Autonomy for Ladakh Martijn van Beek Aarhus University, Denmark Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya Recommended Citation van Beek, Martijn (1998) "True Patriots: Justifying Autonomy for Ladakh," Himalaya, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies: Vol. 18: No. 1, Article 9. Available at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol18/iss1/9 This Research Article is brought to you for free and open access by the DigitalCommons@Macalester College at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Himalaya, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. True Patriots: Justif ying Autonomy for Ladakh Martijn van Beek Department of Ethnography and Social Anthropology Aarhus University, Denmark email: [email protected] When the first Ladakh Hill Development Council Minster joined in and the Governor of the State, General (Leh) was sworn in on 3 September 1995, Le.h District K.V. Krishna Rao, addressed the first meeting of the in the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir regained a Council saying: measure of the autonomy that the Kingdom of Ladakh "Today, we have gathered here to mark one of the had lost in the 1830s .1 The Ladakh Autonomous Hill most important turning points in the history of this Development Councils Act 1995, decreed by the great land. This historic event also signifies that from Presid ent a few months earli er, signified a major now on, the people of this land will preside over their concession on the part of State and Central own destiny. ( ... ) It has been a longstanding demand of Government, especially considering the strategic and the people here for the right to take decisions for their political importance of Ladakh in the overall Kashmir own development. You had to undergo considerable issue.2The 'Reasons for Enactment' accompanying the struggle in achieving this Hill Council. I am happy to Act suggest a straightforward justification: a remote note that your struggle has been peaceful and democratic mountain region in need and desirous of decentralization means were used towards this end. This is a shining of decision making is given its own administrative example for every one in our great democratic country, body. At first glance, then, this is the stuff that many that one can achieve one's legitimate demands through indigenous peoples, many marginal groups in India and constitutional means."5 around the world, dream about: a responsive government recognizes the legitimate desires of a minority with a As the Governor's words suggest, Leh District did distinct identity. not get its Hill Council without a struggle. Indeed, if we trace the history of the demand for regional The Indian press hailed the institution of the Ladakh autonomy, we need to go back at least to the 1930s.6 In Autonomous Hill Development Council, Leh his speech, the Governor recognizes the length and (LAHDeC), with headlines such as "A New difficulty of the struggle and praises the Ladakhis for Beginning"3 (Bagla, 1995); the Prime Minister, P.V. having used peaceful, democratic means. Now that all is Narasimha Rao, sent his congratulations to "the brave settled, one can get on with the business of people of Leh" and expressed his conviction that "this development. would give tremendous boost to the developmental activi ties in Leh and meet the aspirations of the people The Governor's speech, the journalists' writings and of the region for all round progress"4; the Home the justification accompanying the Act offer an insight 1 Conquered by the Dogra state a few years earlier, 5 Excerpt from "Address by General K.V. Krishna Rao, Ladakh was an integral part of the State of Jammu and PVSM (Retd), His Excellency the Governor of Jammu Kashmir that was created through the Treaty of Amr.itsar and Kashmir to Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development of 1842. While few Ladakhis would challenge the Council, Leh, on 3rd September, 1995." region 's association with India, the link with Kashni.ir 6 Of course, Ladakhis also offered resistance to their has remained contentious. incorporation into the State in the first place in the 2 See (India, 1995) for the full text of the Act. This text 1830s and after, and the memory of independent Ladakh, is also available online at the website of The Mountain as we shall see, remains relevant today. However, in Forum (http://www .mtnforum.org). terms of the modern political formulation of the demand 3 Pallava Bag Ia (1995) in Frontline. for regional autonomy, the 1930s and 1940s are where a 4 P.V. Narasimha Rao, telegram toP. Namgyal, 3 new form of representation and justification of the September 1995. demand can be seen to emerge for the first time. AUTONOMY FOR LADAKH/van Beek 35 into the creation of an official history. This simplified, uniqueness within India, and later, during the 1989 sanitized representation of the struggle for regional agitation, re inforced thro ugh the use of a communal autonomy and its outcome may enter textbooks and representation of Ladakh as Buddhist. This second public memory, escaping the confines of the audiences move, of course, was important in enabli ng th e Ladakhi and purposes fo r whi ch it is ori gin all y being composed: Buddhist leadership to contrast themse lves with the to justify c oncess ions to a s mall bunc h of Other comm unities in the wider State, above all tro ublemakers on the frontiers of the Nation through M us li ms . Ladakhi secessionism, it was made safel y reinterpreting and representing both history and abundantl y clear, was aimed against the State of Jammu solutions to the conflict as firmly within the and Kashmi r, not the Union. constitutional, political, and nationalist bounds of the I will suggest th at we need to understand Ladakhi nation-state. Ladakhis had legitimate grievances and politics, like politics elsewhere , as a complex process they were recognized and addressed by the state. of negotiation , contestation , and representation; a The Government's willingness to accommodate the 'game' of strategic deployment of justifications , at once Ladakhi demand must also be seen in the light of the making use of and constrained by the spaces made broader domestic and international politics of the available by the state 's own di scurs ive tropes. Ladakhi Kashmir issue, but one still needs to ask why the state politics, in other words, is the work of people whose celebrates the strengthening of regionalist forces in this actions are guided by th eir reading and interpretation of case. This should at the very least lead us to ask the wider political fi e ld , and the ir readin gs and whether the granting of autonomy to Ladakh is in fa ct interpretations , their actions, in turn help shape and an illustration of the possibility of successful resistance reconstitute that very same fi e ld . Formal politics is, in to the hegemony of the nation-state and national this sense, a question of perfo rmance, although not just development project. The following analysis suggests performance. that quite the reverse may be true: it is precisely its firm Three central the mes emerge from Ladakhi location within the discursive and institutional frames representations: Ladakh is a poor and backward region , of nation-state and development project that makes the and home to a unique , distinct culture and people; empowerment of the Hill Council desirable from the Kashmir's Government has neglected Ladakh and has perspective of the state (and arguably from the fail ed to develop the region; Ladakh's population are perspective of at least some of the Ladakhi leaders of the true patriots and dedicated to the Nation. The same agitation). It is clear that- considering how Ladakhi themes are found also in the more communal representatives justified their claims in terms of representations, where Ladakhiness is reduced to backwardness and patriotism-the demand did not pose a Buddhism; the Kas hmir Government is driven by threat to the national project and nationalist ideology of communal motivations; and the secessionists in the the Union. This call for minority rights, in other words, Valley cannot be trusted precisely because they are was anything but counter-hegemonic, and locally, Muslims, while Ladakh's Buddhists are naturally part of within Ladakh, was premised on the radical and at times India. violent silencing of anOther Ladakhi community: Muslims.? As the following account will show, these themes, both in their communal and all-Ladakh forms , recur Here, I will look at how political leaders in Ladakh from the time of the first representation presented on have presented and justified their demand for regional behalf of the Buddhist community to the Glancy autonomy over the years. I will show that these Commission.8 More often than not, an all-Ladakh form representations relied on a complementary, but is chosen, with the notable exception of Partition, and apparently contradictory claim: that Ladakhis are the 1969 and 1989 agitations. The first of these can be different from the rest of the Indian nation, but true understood in the context of uncertainty over Kashmir's patriots nevertheless. The possibility of making this future and the recent invas ion of Ladakh by Pakistani claim in turn is premised on, first, an erasure and 'raiders.' The second and third are of a quite different silencing of difference within Ladakh (of class, gender, nature .

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