By Yoginder Sikand, TwoCircles.net,
Full Series: Buddhist-Muslim Relations in Ladakh
Abdul Ghani Sheikh is probably one of Ladakh’s most well-known writers. A retired Indian Information Service officer, he has authored numerous books, including short stories, in Ladakhi and Urdu, and some of his writings have been translated into English as well. He is a Argon community leader and commands considerable respect among the Buddhists as well.
Sheikh tells me that the boycott had an indelible impact on Buddhist-Muslim relations, the scars of which still remain today. During the boycott, he says, Muslims living in far-flung villages in scattered groups had to leave their homes for Leh, where they were granted plots to settle down. Several Muslim houses were burnt, and a few cases of conversions by Muslims to Buddhism, out of compulsion rather than choice, were also reported, but these Muslims, he adds, were in any case just ‘nominal’, already heavily influenced by Buddhism. He points out that the attacks were initially directed against the Argons, not the Baltis, although both were subjected to the boycott. This he attributes to the fact that many Buddhists saw the Argons as their principle enemy, and also because they might have been wary that attacks on the Baltis might lead to similar attacks by Baltis in nearby Kargil against the Buddhist minority living there. At the same time, Sheikh reveals that despite the boycott many Muslims and Buddhists helped each other secretly, especially families that were related to each other through marriage.
Today, Sheikh says, Buddhist-Muslim relations have considerably improved. ‘Ordinary Buddhists are very good people’, he stresses, laying the blame for boycott on local politicians who have a vested interest in promoting what he sees as ‘baseless fears’ about the local Muslims being sympathisers of the Kashmiri militants. He speaks about the work that he, along with several other Muslim and Buddhist leaders, has been engaged in to promote better inter-community relations, referring to the activities of the International Association for Religious Freedom, of which he is a member, in bringing Muslims and Buddhists to sort their problems out through dialogue. He also talks about the role of the Dalai Lama, who visits Ladakh often, and whom the Muslims also greatly respect. ‘When the Dalai Lama heard about the boycott, he refused to step foot inside Ladakh till the LBA lifted the boycott’, Sheikh says. ‘Whenever he comes here’, he adds, ‘he stresses the need for communal harmony and that has a very positive impact on the Buddhists as well as the Muslims’. Not many Ladakhi Buddhists, Sheikh says, heeded the Dalai Lama’s appeal to stop the boycott, but the resident Tibetan refugee community did so, and they remained neutral throughout the period of the boycott. For this, they are said to have been heavily criticised by some Ladakhi Buddhists, and there was even talk for a while in some quarters of extending the boycott to them as well.
Religious leaders have a very crucial role to play in promoting dialogue, Sheikh underlines. He tells me how when the Taliban destroyed the Buddha statues in Bamiyan, some Ladakhi Muslim ‘ulamacondemned it, and several Muslims joined Buddhists in a demonstration through the streets of Leh. Likewise, when America attacked Afghanistan, a widely respected Ladakhi Buddhist lama is said to have offered special prayers for the suffering Afghans.
Sheikh hands me a set of some of his writings. Most of them have to do with the history of the Argons. A few deal specifically with interfaith issues. One of these is a report of the proceedings of a interfaith conference organised by the Sunni Anjuman Moin ul-Islam in Leh. It refers to prominent Buddhist and Muslim leaders stressing the need for communal harmony. The Director of the Mahabodhi International Meditation Centre is quoted as arguing that all religions teach peace and harmony; Shaikh Mirza, a Balti Shi‘a scholar is mentioned as having stated that Islam teaches peace and affirms that diversity is part of God’s plan; the Sunni Maulvi Abdul Qayyum Nadwi quotes the Qur’an to stress the point that everyone should be free to choose his or her own religion; Togdan Rinpoche, head lama of the Phyang gompa calls for the separation of religion from politics, arguing that conflating the two generally leads to communal conflict; and Tsultim Gyatso of the Central Institute of Buddhist Studies presents the Dalai Lama as a sort of role model to emulate, stressing that he is revered by both the Buddhists as well as Muslims of Ladakh.
‘Meetings and statements like these’, Shaikh says after I finish reading the report, ‘may be small, symbolic things but they can have a powerful influence on people’s thinking’.
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Maulvi Muhammad ‘Umar Nadvi is the Imam of the Sunni Jami‘a Masjid in Leh. As his title suggests, he is a graduate of the renowned Nadwat ul-‘Ulama madrasa in Lucknow, one of the most well-known centres of Sunni Islamic learning in India. He also holds a degree from Kashmir University and works as the principal of the government middle school in the Buddhist-majority village of Saboo, near Leh.
Nadvi sees himself not simply as a religious functionary, but also as a community activist. Indeed, he is one of the major spokesmen of the Sunni community in Leh, and is involved in various community-related activities. He tells me, for instance, about his work with a voluntary agency LASH (Ladakh Action for Smoking and Health), which conducts anti-smoking awareness camps across Ladakh. He has also served on the board of the Students Educational Cultural Movement of Ladakh, a multi-religious organisation that focuses on educational issues. He is a senior office-bearer of the Anjuman Moin ul-Islam, a local Sunni community organisation, which, among other activities, arranges to collect zakat money for widows and scholarships for poor students. In the village of Saboo, where he teaches, he works with his students, Buddhists and Muslims, to promote awareness about the hazards of drinking. ‘The Buddhists of the village respect me’, he says. He tells me about how an Indian army officer once offered him some money for the local madrasa, but how he, instead, chose to use the money to build a glass room in the school to keep the children warm in the winter.
This message of social involvement, Nadvi tells me, is something that he also preaches from the pulpit of the mosque. In his Friday sermons, he says, he often focuses on social issues. ‘Just last week’, he tells me; ‘I spoke about the need to save electricity, to go in for modern education and to support the efforts of the local administration’. He admits that, often, Friday sermons in mosques are ‘obsessed with rituals’, and are ‘not life-related’, and insists that this has to change.
‘I don’t want to talk about the past’, Nadvi tells me when I ask him about the boycott and its impact on Buddhist-Muslim relations. ‘I am concerned about the future, about peace and how to rebuild our relations’. Despite his various commitments he does take this task with particular seriousness. He tells me that he sometimes speaks on the local radio station on peace and development issues, in which he quotes from both Islamic as well as Buddhist scriptures to make his point. He recently organised a function to celebrate Eid, to which he invited several Buddhist lamas, political leaders and government officials were. Some years ago he organised a seminar devoted to discussion of the role of religion in peace-building. Recently, he, along with some important Buddhist leaders at the Central Institute of Buddhist Studies, arranged a large interfaith dialogue meeting, which culminated in a public march by local Muslim, Christian and Buddhist leaders through the streets of Leh, stopping at mosques, churches and monasteries on the way.
Nadvi admits that despite these and other such efforts to promote better relations between Buddhists and Muslims, mistrust remains, particularly among the youth. ‘Many young Muslims and Buddhists have wrong views about each other, but such extremism cannot last long’, he tells me. He is bitterly critical of radical Islamists who denounce other communities as ‘enemies of God’. ‘The Qur’an’, he argues, ‘tells us not to harm anyone, not to abuse others’ religions or hurt their sentiments. It tells us that everyone is free to believe what he or she wants to’. ‘My solution to the communal problem’, he tells me half-jokingly, ‘is that the extremists from all communities should be locked up together in jail. There they will be forced to communicate together, break down their barriers and come to the realisation that all of us are basically the same’.
‘Buddhists and Muslims need to learn about each other’s religions’, Nadvi stresses, adding that this is essential in order to remove misunderstandings and to promote mutual respect. However, he admits, ignorance about other faiths abounds among both communities. Hardly any Islamic literature is available in the Ladakhi language, and writings on Buddhism in Urdu are rare to come by in Ladakh. The problem, Nadvi says, is further compounded by the fact that many Muslims believe that to learn the Tibetan script, in which Ladakhi is written, is almost tantamount to becoming Buddhist. Likewise, many Buddhists are reluctant to learn Urdu, which they see as somehow a ‘Muslim’ language. Nadvi insists that such arguments are, as he puts it, ‘silly’. The different languages, he tells me, are all ‘signs of God’. He himself has learnt the Tibetan script, being probably one of the few ‘ulama in Ladakh to have done so, and is now working with a lama, Geylong Phande of the Phyang monastery, to translate the Qur’an into Ladakhi.
One of the several community projects that Nadvi is involved in is the newly established Madrasa ‘Ulum ul-Qur’an at the village of Thiksey, not far fro Leh. Established in 1997, it is the only Sunni madrasa in the whole of the Leh district. Only a few of the eighteen children in the madrasa are locals, most of them hailing from far-flung areas of Ladakh, including Kargil, Zanskar, Nubra and Dras. Almost all of them are from poor families, and there is not a single child from Leh town, where most Argons are fairly prosperous. As elsewhere in India, madrasa education, here, too, is now associated largely with the poor.
The curriculum of the madrasa is an adaptation of that used in the Nadwat ul-‘Ulama, Lucknow, where most of the leading Ladakhi Sunni ‘ulama have graduated from. The focus is on the Qur’an and the Hadith, the traditions attributed to the Prophet, fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence, and Arabic, although basic English and Mathematics are also said to be taught. The medium of instruction is Urdu. No arrangement is made for the teaching of local history, Buddhism or the Ladakhi language.
The madrasa has two teachers, both of whom are from Uttar Pradesh. Neither of them, they admit, have ever had a conversation with a lama. Nor, they say, do they have any knowledge of Buddhism. One of them, however, has visited a monastery. I ask them if they do not think it important to interact with the lamas, because most of the villagers are Buddhists. ‘Yes’, they somewhat hesitatingly agree, but they complain that the work in the madrasa gives them little free time. The village also has a sizeable Shi‘a population, and only one of the teachers, the one who has met a lama, has met with the local Sh‘ia shaikh, and that too only briefly.
I raise this issue with Nadvi, who readily agrees with my point that interaction between religious leaders of the different communities is crucial. ‘I am afraid’, he says, somewhat despairingly, ‘things will take a long time to change’.
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Ahmad works in a travel agency in Leh. His father is an Argon and his mother is a Buddhist. A college graduate, he is associated with the Tablighi Jama‘at, a reformist Sunni movement which has a small presence in Ladakh.
Buddhist-Muslim relations in Ladakh, Ahmad says, are gradually returning to normalcy, although the effects of the boycott can still be felt. He attributes the boycott to the fact that the Buddhists felt that the Argons and the Kashmiri Sunnis controlled the local economy. This was naturally resented by an emerging generation of modern educated Buddhists. To add to this was the widespread feeling among the Buddhists that the Argons, and, to a lesser, extent, the Baltis, were opposed to the Buddhist demand for autonomy for Ladakh, which, they feared, would lead to Buddhist domination in the region.
Further complicating the situation was the fact of fairly frequent inter-marraiges between was the fact that several Buddhist women were marrying Muslim men. This was not a new development, however, since intermarriage had been occurring for centuries. One reason for this, Ahmad informs me, was that traditionally polyandry was widely practised among the Buddhists, which meant that many of their women were left unmarried. Some of these became chomos, female lamas, while several others married Kashmiri men.
Ahmad tells me that although many Baltis might deny it, the fact that they do not eat food cooked by the Buddhists is greatly resented by many Buddhists, particularly the youth. A common argument put forward by the Baltis for this, he says, is that since the consumption of liquor and the eating of the meat of dead animals is forbidden in Islam they cannot eat food cooked by the Buddhists, many of whom consume liquor and carrion. Behind this argument, however, he says, is the general Balti belief that the Qur’an condemns non-Muslims as ‘impure’.
The Qur’anic verse that the Baltis use to justify this stance, Ahmad tells me, is interpreted differently by the Baltis and the Argons. The verse in question warns the Muslims that the ‘unbelievers’ are ‘impure’. The Baltis take this to mean that all non-Muslims are both physically as well as spiritually impure, and hence refrain from eating food cooked by them. In contrast, the Argons, Ahmad explains, take the verse to refer simply to ‘spiritual impurity’, which allows them to eat non-Muslim food. Ahmad thinks that the Baltis use this verse simply to ‘magnifiy differences between themselves and the Buddhists’. This, he says, is ‘very wrong’. After all, he claims, ‘Islam seeks to bridge differences between people and communities, not to create new ones’. It is particularly important for Muslim minorities to have good relations with the majority community where they live, he says, adding that the Balti practice of untouchability is a major hurdle in promoting better relations between Buddhists and Muslims in Leh.
We talk about the changes that the Argon society are undergoing, particularly after the lifting of the boycott. He sees a growing cultural insularity taking place, with some younger Muslims now consciously seeking to distance themselves from what they see as Buddhist cultural influence. He points to the new structure of the Jami‘a mosque in Leh, which is decidedly ‘Islamic’, having taken the place of the older structure which was almost identical to a Buddhist monastery in its design and floral motifs. Many Muslims have given up traditional Ladakhi wedding ceremonies and customary practices, such as reciting the aurad or litanies in the mosque. Ahmad sees this, in part, as a reaction to the suffering of the Muslims during the boycott. It is also a result of the gradual, almost imperceptible, spread of more scripturalist forms of Islam that are stressed by visiting missionaries of the Tablighi Jama‘at and the local ‘ulama, almost all of whom have been educated at madrasas in other parts of India.
There is a growing realisation among the Argons, Sheikh says, that they must now take to modern education. Earlier, the Argons were mostly traders, and so generally did not take much interest in higher education for their children. That, however, is changing now. The community has now set up its own high school, the Islamiya Public School, a coeducational institution which even has a few Balti and Buddhist students on its rolls. Besides this school and a similar one in the village of Thiksey, the Argons have few other institutions. Unlike the Buddhists, who have many non-governmental organisations, some of which are funded by donors in America and Western Europe, the Argons do not run any organisations for the welfare of the community. ‘We are so badly organised’, he laments, and exclaims, ‘What is the use of all this talk about Islam and its glories when we are not interested in helping ourselves, leave alone others?’
Ahmad tells me about the efforts of local religious leaders in promoting better relations between the different communities. The Sunni Moin ul-Islam and the Shi‘a Anjuman-i Imamia work together on common issues facing Muslims, he says. Shi‘as invite Sunni scholars to address them on the occasion of Imam ‘Ali’s birthday, and the Sunnis reciprocate during the Eid celebrations. Sometimes, Muslim and Buddhist religious and political leaders attend each other’s religious functions. At the same time, ‘ordinary’ Muslims and Buddhists enjoy fairly cordial relations. ‘The situation is much better here than in most of India’, Ahmad stresses. ‘We’ve never had the sort of communal riots as in Gujarat, and God willing, never will’. He also tells me that few Argons support Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan, fearing that their economic conditions would worsen if they severe their ties with India. ‘We have to be pragmatic, in any case’, he stresses, ‘because under no circumstances would the Buddhists of Leh want to live with Pakistan and so we have to go along with them’. In the course of the Kargil war, he tells me, numerous Argons, in addition to Baltis, helped the Indian army, but he complains that this fact has not been highlighted by the media, which further reinforces what he says is the baseless myth of the Argons sympathising with the Kashmiri militants.
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It is true, as these voices show, that relations between Buddhists and Muslims in Leh (and in Ladakh more generally) are less strife-driven than in many other parts of India. At the same time, these voices also highlight the deeply problems and conflicts that underlie these relations, which cannot be ignored. Rather, they need to be properly investigated and dealt with. While the immediate causes for the deterioration of Muslim-Buddhist relations in Ladakh in recent years may be political and economic, deep-rooted prejudices based on religious understandings and religious-based communal or identity consciousness underlies these. This calls for developing alternate ways of imagining religion and religious perspectives on inter-community relations that can help promote, rather than hinder, solidarity and peace between Muslims and Buddhists in the region.