Ladakh

The Fractured Himalaya: India • Tibet • China 1949–1962 by Nirupama Rao, New Delhi: Penguin Viking, 2021; pp 640, `999.

Nehru, Tibet and China by A S Bhasin, New Delhi: Penguin Viking, 2021; pp 368, `399.

Contested Lands: India, China and the Boundary Dispute by Maroof Raza, Westland
Non-fiction, 2021; pp 208, `699.

The Long Game: How the Chinese Negotiate with India by Vijay Gokhale, Vintage Books, 2021; pp 200, `699.

Forgotten Kashmir: The Other Side of the Line of Control by Dinkar P Srivastava, HarperCollins, 2021; pp 304, `699.

The response of people of Ladakh to the formation of the union territory, as it has manifested one year later, is analysed. After an initial sense of satisfaction to their long-pending demand for UT status, people in Leh have become as restless as the people in Kargil to the changes resulting from their UT status, and there are a lot of anxieties related to lack of representation and concerns related to jobs, land, environment and heritage.

As the ongoing negotiations bet­ween India and China fail to end the impasse in Ladakh, the de­ma­nd for New Delhi to play the “Tibet card” to force Beijing to disengage is gaining salience.

The abrogation of Article 370, after a year, continues to elude democratic experience and aspirations.

The nature of Ladakhi identity has been a subject of much discussion for some decades now, particularly in the context of assertions of nationalism, regional autonomy and religious identity in the region. Using ethnographic material, this article focuses on identity formation amongst migrant youth whose “Ladakhiness” is both interrogated and reinforced in large cities like Delhi. In Ladakh itself, anxieties about loss of culture and community have intensified even as the nature of Ladakhi identity is asserted in specific cultural terms.