In Conversation

Winds of change

GUNVANTHI BALARAM

Weaving is a tradition dear to the Rupshupa of Ladakh. But the craft is at the crossroads because many youngsters are leaving in search of a better lifestyle, says Monisha Ahmed.

The warp and weft of life: Monisha Ahmed (right) with the family she lived with.

The loom is a shrine, the sound of the beater, the voice of the Buddha.

FOR the Rupshupa nomadic pastoralists of Ladakh, weaving is a sacred activity. The craft of weaving, they believe, was bestowed upon them by the gods and all feats related to it have a connection to the sublime. The loom and the art of weaving are modelled on the mythical loom of Duguma, wife of King Gesar of Ling, the legendary hero-god in the Buddhist world of the Himayalas. Duguma, they claim, continues to work on this loom, weaving one row a year, and when she completes her fabric the world will come to an end.

And so they weave — invariably with a chant on their lips. "There are very few ethnic communities in the world where both men and women weave, and that's what makes the Rupshupa special," says Monisha Ahmed, an Oxford-educated, Mumbai-based social anthropologist who is an expert on the textile arts of Ladakh. "Weaving is common throughout Ladakh, but it is exclusively a male occupation in central and western Ladakh. In these areas, it is taboo for a woman to weave; the men allege that if she did, her hands would go up in flames or the mountains would collapse, and if she were to as much as touch a loom, she would become infertile. It is only in the northeastern area of Rupshu, where herding is a way of life, that women also weave. In fact, here they weave far more than the men do."

Fabric of life

Ahmed first encountered the Rupshupa — who number a mere 400, living in 85 tents — in 1987, while teaching in Ladakh as a fresh graduate from St. Xavier's College.

"I was so intrigued by their weaving tradition that in 1992 I decided to do my doctoral dissertation at Oxford on the Rupshupa," says Ahmed. In the years since, Ahmed has spent a lot of time roaming and camping in their stark Changthang highlands with the Rupshupa, studying the fabric of their life. She has seen them moving 10 times a year, observed them herding and shearing their livestock, weaving their hair and fleece, playing traditional games, celebrating marriages, mourning the dead and offering worship at their monasteries in Thugje and Korzok, the tiny towns where they have their storehouses.

She has learned their songs and understood their prayers. Her first book, Living Fabric: Weaving among the Nomads of Ladakh, Himalaya, won the Textile Society of America's Shep Award in 2003 for best book in the field of ethnic textile studies. And now, Marg has brought out a volume, Ladakh: Culture at the Crossroads, which Ahmed has edited along with Clare Harris, a curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.

As she went along, she discovered that the Rupshupa's woven textiles "are a pointer to their religious and social dynamics. For instance, though the fabrics woven by women are quite as essential as those woven by men, there's a thread of prejudice against women running through the discourse of spinning and weaving," she reveals.

"In the Rupshu creation myth, weaving was the means by which recalcitrant demonesses were transformed into women, and women are obliged to weave regularly to avoid reverting to being demonesses. Men, who, according to Buddhist principles, are considered to be of superior merit, face no such danger."

But the women take it in their stride. As one doughty matriarch, Abi Yangzom, once told Ahmed, "Of course there are demonesses amongst us, but I won't tell you who!"

Before she had her babies, the women would quiz Ahmed about why she, a married woman, had no children. "They were reluctant to let me try my hand at their loom. Perhaps they felt I was unlucky." However, they warmed to her as time went by, especially after she learnt Ladakhi, a dialectic form of Tibetan. "That's when they began to explain their designs and their significance. As you would expect, Buddhist symbols, especially the eight lucky signs, and the swastika, are popular motifs because their use is said to ward off evil spirits and demons. Other design motifs include things from their surroundings such as flowers, dice and religious images. And the colours they use are also those that are popular in the Buddhist tradition: white, red, blue, green and yellow, which correspond to the five elements."

The long period over which Ahmed has known the Rupshupa has made her acutely conscious of the changes occurring within this vulnerable society. With the winds of change blowing through Ladakh, how long will the lifestyle of the Rupshupa remain viable?

"For several years now there has been a small stream of out-migration, with a few younger people moving out each year to Leh in search of a modern lifestyle. But earlier, that didn't really harm the community because the number of exits was low. Many families were content to stay the way they are. The main reason for this is the pashmina goat — its wool fetches the Rupshupa a fair income and helps them sustain their traditional lifestyle," Ahmed explains. Their pashmina earns Ladakh Rs 1.5 crore a year.

In the last year or two, however, about 25 or 30 young people have left — a large number in a populace of 400. Most of them have taken up Rs. 140 a day jobs as coolies and construction workers in Leh and as horsemen-porters and trekking guides for travel agencies.

Some have left because their family's herd of pashmina goats has dwindled because of the crush on local grasslands — the Rupshapa have to share their traditional pastures with increasing numbers of Tibetan refugee-nomads.

Others have left also to enable their children to attend school — the government recently discontinued the practice of having mobile tent schools in Rupshu and established a residential school in Dumdo (in the middle of the Changthang), creating a problem for these nomads.

The government, it seems, does not appreciate the traditional lifestyle of these people, leave alone want to preserve it.

Burdened lot

The result is that the elders left behind in Rupshu are suffering, as Ahmed is at pains to highlight. "There's nobody to fetch and carry water for them or to go out herding. With all these tasks to accomplish, there's less time for weaving. And then again, fewer youngsters to pass on the skills to."

The new kids in town are not having an easy time of it either. "There are bills to pay in Leh, so they have to work overtime, or resort to selling some of their old woven stuff to or to weave new touristy stuff for local shopkeepers, something they don't feel good about. But several others, who have taken up menial or factory jobs, find little time to weave."

Threatening trends, these. Clearly, it's time for the powers-that-be to review their policies and expedite measures to strengthen the fabric of Rupshu life.

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