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| Title |
Celebrating Life in Ladakh |
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Can you give us a picture about survival conditions in Ladakh ?
People often call Ladakh, the moonland. We Ladakhis feel very proud about it, but it is not only the beauty of the moon. It is also just like the moon. It is a trans-Himalayan mountain desert, where almost nothing grows on its own, at least nothing for human consumption. If you see Ladakhi villages, they are like oasis in the desert. This is one place, where human beings have contributed to vegetation rather than degrading it.
What are the cultural institutions which have helped survival in such difficult conditions?
There are two ways of coping : One is by having more resources, the other by needing less resources. In Ladakh, we need less resources. Nothing is ever wasted there. For instance, a Ladakhi woolen dress goes through five different stages. First, it is used only for formal occasions. As it gets older, it is used for daily use. As it gets more older, it is used as a second layer of clothing, under the normal dress. As it gets more older, it is cut up and used as a duster. As it gets more older, it is used in the fields to make the sluice gates for the canals. Finally, it disintegrates and becomes manure in the field.
There are other institutions which help us survive. We have something called phaspuns . These are small groups of eight to ten families. These families support each other during times of birth, death, marriage etc. They provide logistical support and also contribute money. If it is my son or daughter’s wedding, it is not like I have to save up for it all my life. I don’t need to contribute at all. In a way I do, because I contribute to all the weddings, and at the end of it, it all comes back to me for my children’s wedding.
In farming, we have an institution called langde. A calendar is made during the farming season. The farm at the lowest end of the village is chosen first. On a specific day, all the families which have langde relationship with this family come to the farm with their animals and get involved in the activity. Once, it is over on one farm, they move to the next farm. In this way, we benefit from the other’s labour also as well as the animals which the others own.
Farming itself takes place in a village picnic kind of atmosphere. The west might have invented the tractor, but we have invented our own inner resources. We have a song for every activity. And everyone in the village is involved in the activity. Farming with tractors can still be drudgery, farming without tractors can still be fun.
There are also other cultural survival strategies. Our summers are comfortable, but winters can be a harsh. So our forefathers kept a lot of festivals for the winter. Children do not mourn the harshness of winter when they look forward to the colors of the festivals. A few years ago, when Ladakh was open to tourists. The monks in the monastery decided that if the festivals were shifted to summer, then the tourists will come and there will be more income. Suddenly there was nothing to look forward to in winter. And the Ladakhis did not attend the festivals in summer because they had to work on the farms. The tourists also stopped attending the festivals or regretted that they attended them, when they realized that the locals were not present. So gradually, the festivals shifted back to the winters.
We also have an interesting tradition of keeping water sources clean. It is believed that if you dirty the water, you will get some diseases. As a child, I always questioned this idea. Now, we have a lot of people who came from the plains, they did not grow up with these stories. And they started dirtying the water. Obviously nothing happened to them. But the people downstream started getting all sorts of diseases
Are memberships in these institutions voluntary or ancestral?
It is ancestral. Sometimes, when a family moves into a new area, they choose their langde or phaspun. It is semi-religious. Phaspuns are like brotherhoods under a god. I say god with a small ‘g’ because there are numerous small gods and goddesses. It is like decentralized ‘gods’.
How have these institutions reacted to modern forces like urbanization ?
They are stressed, but in some cases, interestingly, they have resurrected. In cities like Leh, you will not have institutions like langde but they do flourish in the villages. And phaspuns are also quite strong.
Can you tell us something about creativity among children in Ladakh?
In Ladakh, the children also have the capacity to be satisfied with whatever little that they have. One American lady was simply amazed when she saw a child playing with her handkerchief. She said her nephew in the US would need at least four or five toys to keep himself occupied at any point of time.
We also have a strong tradition of story telling. Interestingly, we believe that the stories have to be told to children only in the winter and must be stopped at the sight of the first spring green. I never understood the practice. But then I realized, that we needed the stories to take us through the winter. In summer, there was work to do, so you could not spend time on stories.
What is the status of the traditional knowledge systems in Ladakh ?
We have a system of medicine, based on the Tibetian system of medicine. It is also a fairly popular system and even the district hospital in Leh has a department for this system of medicine. The training was initially through apprenticeship, but now we also have some institutes offering training.It is my belief that we can progress only with a synthesis of the old and the new. If you take construction for instance, the design and aesthetics and some materials used in the olden time was very effective, but they never thought of harnessing solar energy, with the use of glass. Our buildings combine both these systems.
How do you think these systems of knowledge should be integrated, so that children learn them in formal schooling systems ?
Children have to learn them despite formal schooling systems. Formal school can only teach about half of what you need to know. And in Ladakh, it was only teaching about a quarter of that half. Parents stopped getting involved in their children’s education, because they felt that they could learn nothing new from their uneducated parents. But parents can actually teach children a lot. Sometimes, the only way the school can contribute to education is by remaining shut. For instance, the schools stay open in the summer season, when there is so much that the children can learn from the farms. The way to ensure that children learn about agriculture is not by starting agriculture classes for them, but just to remain closed for a month in the summer, when the children can automatically learn from the fields.
How much has SECMOL managed to achieve in the seventeen years of its existence ?
We started giving tuition classes to children to make them pass. But we realized that the problem was systemic. Ladakhi children were forced to study in Urdu, a language alien to them till Class 8 and then switch to English, another alien language. The teachers were themselves not trained properly. In most cases, they were not locals and regarded Ladakhis as primitive people. The text-books were not relevant. Imagine teaching F for fan, when the temperature is -20 degrees Celsius. Is it any wonder then that 95% of them failed. The wonder is how the 5% passed.
We didn’t start with radical demands. We demanded that children be instructed in English itself, rather than Urdu and then English. We started forming Village Education Committees to get the community involved in education. This is recommended in the New Education Policy of the Indian Government, but no one had actually bothered to implement it. With the help of the Ladakhi Hill Council, we were able to launch Operation New Hope. We started with teacher training and capacity building, the redesigning of text books to make them more relevant and the involvement of the community in the school. Previously, the only involvement of the community was in stealing the doors and windows of the school. Now, a government residential school in Dubruk was built entirely by the community members. Each person had to contribute at least one day’s voluntary labour for the building. So the results are not only in terms of an increased pass percentage but in terms of greater community ownership of the school.
What were the problems faced in mobilizing funds for SECMOL?
When we started SECMOL, we were just a bunch of college graduates. We did not know what to do. We made, what could be called a brave or a foolish decision. We borrowed about 40,000 rupees at a very high rate of interest. And then, we went about putting up cultural performances for the tourists in Ladakh. Within four months, we were able to repay the 40,000 and we also had an additional one lakh rupees.
In recent years, with the Ladakhi separatist movement, we have had fewer tourists. So we can’t generate funds only from there. So we had to get funds from donors. But we have never compromised on our ideas for the sake of funds and we have never been put in such a situation either, which is lucky for us. We of course never take money from the Government, because if you are trying to reform a system, you cannot take money from the system. |
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| Volume No. |
Honey Bee, 16(4):12-13, 2005 |
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