Invitation to Ladakh as a Sanctuary of Spirit

Meditations on A. G. Sheikh’s Reflections on Ladakh, Tibet and Central Asia.

Literature is essentially about presenting us a world we have lost or we can reclaim; it creates a world that ought to be or that we can imagine. It has often presented Utopias or imagined heavenly perfection in distant or exotic lands. Fairy tales retain such attraction because they present a world somehow we identify with or feel nostalgic about. What if we are told about something that has been the case and that is, to a significant extent, a case and that can be, in a way, accessed, here and now. Ladakh is one such case. Indeed it is a sanctuary of sprit, a preview of heaven, a moral ideal that puts to shame all ideals of material progress, the last bastion of tradition that can revivify the world or at least remind it of what it has forgotten and could arguably reclaim. Abdul Ghani Sheikh has devoted his life to better comprehension of the mystery, beauty and sacrality of the paradise we all have inherited or have a claim to preserve. Such is man’s tendency to forget and the violence of modernity that even he seems to be ambivalent about certain ideals and ideals Ladakh and Tibet encapsulated. Sheikh must be congratulated for making Ladakh a subject of his multipronged  investigations though one struggles to find coherent case for metaphysical, philosophical and religious basis of unique Ladakhi culture. This task has been performed by Marco Pallis in The Way and the Mountain and Peaks and Lamas. Helena Norberg- Hodge has, in her case study of Ladakh, lucidly illustrated the thesis that development has been a disaster. Both need to be read to see how problematic is the discourse of development severed from more holistic idea of man as a unity of body, soul and spirit.
      A few points noted by Sheikh in his tribute to Ladakh may be quoted to give an idea of the glory that has been Ladakh and the misery it has been heading to before our eyes.

“I did not meet one individual armed during the whole of my stay, although they keep guns and other weapons in their houses” (Mir Izzet Ullah) and “They are very mild race, disposed to offer injury to no one, and are free from religious intolerance.” Mir adds, in the author’s paraphrase, that “murder, robbery, violence and bloodshed were unknown.” Ashbrook Crump (1919) asserted that the vegetables grown in Leh were the finest that she had ever seen in the East and “One must come to Leh to know what air is.”  William Douglas (1951) “The people of Leh don’t seem to know the worries of which I speak. They have little; they expect no more; they are happy with their lot. They are friendly and cheerful, simple and uncomplicated.” I spent seven days in heaven.” About Leh, Lt. Col. Henry Torrens noted “No need here for policemen.” Leh, a “meeting place of Aryan and Mongol” “a wonderland …wears his oldest dress outside and his best one underneath.”

      Sheikh’s work reviews almost everything significant on Ladakh, defends it against hostile critics, celebrates its diversity and richness and assimilating genius. He defends cultural rather than metaphysical principles taking for granted the embodiment of the later in the former. He refers to Pallis but in a manner that his distinctive framing of Tibet-Ladakh issue is overlooked. Sheikh  also emphasizes that Ladakh is rich in biodiversity, in wildlife  -“a sportsman’s paradise” it is called – in what is called the symbolism of virgin nature, has a claim to a distinctive cultural and civilizational identity, has been a centre of certain intellectual-spiritual thought currents that still rule over part of the world.
      Sheikh has also devoted some space to songs of Ladakh and the special place of oral literary culture. The great culture of songs for almost every occasion and stories have been part of traditional cultures and both Kashmir and Ladakh were proud of the same. Against morally culpable practice of mass farming and ecocidal practices of drug dependence, we find organic, backyard and what may be called sylvatic mode of livestock rearing in Ladakh.
      Merciful and friendly attitude shown to lowly animals is another feature of traditional cultures that moderns addicted to farming animals on mass scale under inhuman conditions with no motive other than profit  and the practice of  slaughtering in and mechanized slaughter houses is illustrative of the same worldview tied to land and animals.  To quote Norberg-Hodge:

Fish is never eaten, as it is thought that if you are going to take a life, it is better for it to be the life of a large animal that can supply food for many people; if you ate fish, you would have to take many more lives. The killing of animals is not taken lightly and is never done without asking for forgiveness and with much prayer:

Those animals which / use for riding and loading

Which have been killed for me,

Ah those whose meal I have taken,

May they attain the state of Buddhahood soon.

      One wonders when will such attitude be interiorized on mass scale although it is noteworthy that in Kashmir many people have refrained from buying immature fish and some have refrained from taking fish on other grounds as well.
      One of the very important features of traditional view is not taking affairs of life too seriously, a certain playful spirit, an acceptance of larger cosmic rhythms, a more healthy or natural attitude towards death and misfortune. Certain love of fate is what characterizes traditional cultures. Many songs quoted in Sheikh’s work while breathing certain poignancy nevertheless are songs of acceptance. There is no complaint against Heavens. Again to quote Norberg-Hodge:

The Ladakhi attitude to life—and death—seems to be based on an intuitive understanding of impermanence and a consequent lack of attachment. Again and again I have been struck by this attitude in my Ladakhi friends. Rather than clinging to an idea of how things should be, they seem blessed with the ability to actively welcome things as they are. For instance, during the middle of the harvest it can snow or rain, ruining the barley and wheat that have been cultivated with such care for many months. And yet people remain completely unperturbed, often joking about their predicament.
      
      A critical look at the idea of progress from such scholars as Coomaraswamy and Lord Nourbourne seconded by many other scholars, anthropologists, economists and ecologists needs to be respectfully considered for building a new Ladakh. The story of modern Ladakh is a tragic story of loss, a sordid tale of what monetized economy or money power can do to traditional resources and sustainability ideal, a colossal loss of thousands of years cultural heritage, traditional knowledge concerning host of disciplines and cultural practices that can’t be duplicated again anywhere. We can make some significant intervention even today if there is a will to do so. The value of Sheikh’s work lies in raising consciousness regarding Ladakh heritage although he has not articulated in great detail more foundational issues that determine value of certain legacy. Without denying certain ills that beset traditional society of Ladakh, as all traditional societies, our focus should be on the essential good embodied by traditional cultures in general and Ladakh in particular. Modernization identified with change of outlook from nature and relationship centric to objectification of everything and descarlization that erases the very core of Sacred centric paradigm represented by Ladakh is mutilation of traditional man and culture. Certain material amenities and restructuring of certain spaces towards more egalitarian and just socio-political, economic and gender relationships is part of the inner dynamics of traditional cultures.
      What a comment on contemporary tendency to progress at the cost of spirit one finds in the statement of Development Commissioner noting that authorities had to make efforts to make people greedy to pave way for modernization. Until now Ladakhis would not exchange local products for even hefty sums but as the power of money became known and greed was instituted people sought tourists to fetch money.
      Many travelogues have been written about Tibet-Ladakh but none that could surpass that of Marco Pallis who showed how Tibet (and by extension Ladakh) had preserved its traditional roots and as such the whole world need to look towards it as a roof for weathering stormy winds that have uprooted culture after culture. Even the heartlands of the Islamic world have given up resistance and embraced a path of modernization that ripped apart traditional fabric. Ladakh still  preserve something great culture it has inherited. If we see relatively more tolerant, more honest, more culture sensitive people in Ladakh, it shows all has not been lost.
      Norberg-Hodge describes one aspect of traditional Ladakh in these words “In Ladakh I have known a society in which there is neither waste nor pollution, a society in which crime is virtually nonexistent, communities are healthy and strong, and a teenage boy is never embarrassed to be gentle and affectionate with his mother or grandmother.” Many such things that we now treasure and are nostalgic about have been Ladakh’s heritage. The world needs Ladakh for its spiritual health. But it is this aspect that has been increasingly forgotten. Mountains are symbols of spirit and going to Ladakh is spiritual pilgrimage. In fact Kashmir’s preeminence as a land of saints is mirrored and complemented in Ladakh. This unity  needs to be recalled in this age of regionalism. Those who ask what does Ladakh share with Kashmir and Jammu may note that it is culture rather than geography that ultimately prevails and all the three regions share distinctive cultural ambiance marked by the centrality of the figure of the saint/lama/priest or, in terms of architecture, buildings honouring the Sacred(shrines, temples, monastries).
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