Eclectic culture

ZERIN ANKLESARIA

A comprehensive book on a little known region.

Ladakh: Culture at the Crossroads, edited by Monisha Ahmed and Clare Harris, Marg Publications. Rs. 2250. LADAKH to the uninitiated is synonymous with isolation, monoculturalism and remoteness from the mainstream. The sub-title of Marg's latest book suggests that this is not the case, and, on the contrary, diversity is the chief characteristic of this little-known region.

Located on the ancient trade routes running through Central Asia to China and the Far East, its art and religion are closely, but not exclusively, connected to Tibetan Buddhism. From the rock engravings of Buddhist deities at Dras and Leh, probably of the 8th Century, scholars have deduced that the Kashmiri influence was dominant until the 10th Century and persisted for 300 years, when it blended with Central Asian traditions in the building of the great monastery at Alchi. By the 15th Century, the Central Tibetan style had taken over.

Ladakhi collaboration

Muslims probably started to settle here in the 14th Century, but were not a substantial presence till 300 years later when a mosque, still in use, was built at Leh. The royal palace dominating the landscape was built at about the same time by a Muslim architect for a Buddhist king, a typically Ladakhi collaboration. Largely a trading community, Muslims today make up almost 50 per cent of the population.

Everywhere local materials are used for building, namely bricks, stone for foundations and lower walls, and wood from juniper or poplar trees. The home is considered a microcosm of the universe, and ritual and symbols are associated with each stage of its construction. The ground floor is the underworld of spirits and houses stables, storerooms and the sewage pit. Living rooms, bedrooms and the kitchen, the centre of family life, occupy the first floor. On the roof, closest to the Gods, is the chapel containing statues and paintings, carved woodwork and sacred books.

Quaint beliefs and customs govern the lives of the people. Outer walls carry lines, dots and triangles in red, the lucky colour, to ward off evil spirits; monks or astrologers provide paper charms to soothe domestic strife; wooden penises hang from parapets to deflect malicious gossip; and prayer flags flutter from roofs bringing merit to the home.

The height of a building is a power statement, and old forts and castles stand atop cliffs so precipitous that one wonders how anyone ever got access to them. Nine-storey structures like the palace at Leh towering over the town are considered particularly auspicious.

Cultural markers

Clothing and headdresses, like architecture, are emblems of status. The latter have an entire chapter devoted to them. Chiefly there is the perak, an intimidatingly ornate head cover for women shaped like a serpent's hood, extending from the top of the forehead and narrowing as it reaches halfway down the back. A broad one adorned with nine lines of turquoise denoted royalty in earlier times, while lesser folk had to make do with seven, five or even three lines. These bejewelled items are valuable heirlooms and historic objects through which a woman's lineage can be traced.

Nowhere do we find greater evidence of Ladakh's eclecticism than in her arts and crafts. Goldsmiths of Nepali origin settled here in the 16th Century and created Ladakh's most spectacular images, chiefly a 12-metre high, seated figure of Maitreya and a two-storey high statue of Buddha Sakyamuni, both in resplendent gilded copper. Ornate teapots made of silver or partially gilded copper made by local artisans are of more recent provenance, and are done in the accepted style, with a dragon handle and makara spout worked in exquisite detail.

Contemporary Ladakhi art, a neglected area, is presented through a detailed study of the work of Nawang Tsering, a sculptor who has won all-India recognition for his revolutionary use of clay in modelling huge figures for monasteries and Buddhist institutions.

His equally illustrious contemporary, Tsering Wangdu, tries to preserve Tibetan traditions in his paintings of murals and thangkas.

David Jackson distinguishes four schools of painting, and attempts a stylistic analysis to relate them to the work of 20th Century artists. For art historians this chapter is essential reading, but there is little in it for the non-specialist reader. Perhaps if we had been told something about recurring motifs or the use of colour it would have been of more general interest.

Scholarly book

Ladakh is undoubtedly a scholarly and comprehensive book on a region that deserves to be better known, and contains some seminal studies. The one on Muslim architecture, for instance, is the first ever on this subject.

There is little, however, on the social consequences of the change that has occurred, within a generation, from a way of life rooted in the Central Asian tradition for centuries to a Pan-Indian ethos. The transition has not been painless.

The army, while blasting roads through the mountains, has connected Ladakh to the larger world but threatened the built environment, and cheaper goods from outside are outselling local products. Hordes of tourists and bureaucrats are diluting the distinctive character of the region and, saddest of all, communal tensions from the subcontinent are infiltrating an area where religious amity has been undisturbed for centuries.

In Leh, where, for the last 300 years, a Koran has occupied a prominent place in the largest Buddhist monastery and a sacred Buddhist stick has been similarly honoured in a mosque, communal rioting broke out for the first time during Muharrum.

A full chapter devoted to these social upheavals would have been appropriate in a book about a culture that is at the crossroads in more senses than one.

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