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TOURISM: LADAKH
Culture Beyond Clouds
Political expediency, tourism and culture combine
in Ladakh thanks to a major policy push by the Central Government
By S. Kalidas in Leh
 Monsoon
clouds do not reach Ladakh. But roads and airplanes do. For long they
carried troops and supplies. More recently, they have also been carrying
tourists-both Indians and foreigners. For even longer though, hardy highland
men and their yaks and ponies have crossed these mountains plying their
trades on the silk route to Tibet, China and beyond. Now, as a matter
of declared policy, the Government of India is carrying to this remote
Himalayan desert at 11,000 ft above sea level, a rather self-conscious
brand of cultural nationalism.
Talking to media persons on the eve of the Sindhu
Darshan festival at Leh last week, Union Minister for Culture and Tourism
Anant Kumar declared, "The security of Ladakh lies not in its military
isolation but in its cultural integration with the larger Indian diversity."
This profound, if belated, realisation dawned on the Government thanks
to two unrelated events.
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| THE TRADITIONAL AND THE SYNTHETIC:
Thiksey Gompa cradled on a rocky hillside; (below) girls from North
Zone Cultural Centre dance to the Vande Mataram on the Sindhu's banks |
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One was the rising aspirations of the Ladakhis
to get a Union territory status freeing them of the turbulent Kashmiri
political dominance. "We are a colonised people," insists Thupstan
Chhewang, chairman of the Ladakh Hill Development Council (LHDC), much
to the discomfiture of Kumar who did not (understandably) wish to be seen
as a silent supporter of the Ladakhi demand for autonomy from Kashmir.
The second was Union Home Minister L.K. Advani's
personal discovery in 1997 that the river Sindhu (Indus)-from which India
derives its name-flows some 500 km through India before crossing over
to Pakistan to meet the Arabian Sea. As a Sindhi, Advani was deeply moved
and wisely decided to highlight the symbolic and cultural value of the
mighty river by holding the Sindhu Darshan festival and constructing a
ghat on its banks at Shey, a few kilometres beyond Leh town.
Thus the three-day Sindhu Darshan festival-funded
and organised by the Central Government along with the LHDC-is currently
India's most publicised and power-pushed cultural event. Laden with too
many metaphors and messages it is far more important to the Government
than the other niche cultural tourism festivals like Khajuraho, Elephanta
or Konark. The only new cultural extravaganza that comes close to this
one is the Brahmaputra Festival in the North-east, again promoted by the
Central Government for similar reasons.
The idea of celebrating and worshipping a major
river is not new. Rivers such as the Indus, the Ganga, the Narmada and
the Kaveri have cradled civilisations for millennia and carry in their
meandering flow the racial memories of the people inhabiting the regions.
They are not only the lifelines of agriculture and prosperity but have
also been, in the not-too-distant past, popular means of transportation
and travel.
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| AN ANCIENT BEAT: Buddhist monks in their
colourful costumes recite mantras at the inauguration of the Sindhu
ghat to ladakh with love |
In this age travel and tourism are means of commerce
and development. Although Ladakh was opened to tourism over two decades
ago, till just three years ago only 3,000 Indian tourists visited it annually.
Last year the number jumped to 20,000 and this year with the massive promotion
of the destination by the India Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC)
and the Ministry of Tourism the numbers are expected to swell much more.
The number of foreign tourists was 13,000 in 1999 and rose to 19,500 last
year.
However, the Sindhu Darshan festival itself
cannot be credited for the dramatic spurt in tourism to Ladakh. Unimaginatively
planned and poorly executed, the festival comprises sundry folk dances
put up by the zonal cultural centres and highly contrived "ballets"
(a peculiar Indianism for dance-dramas) on the themes of national integration
and/or peace and non-violence are any aesthete's nightmare. Semi-political
jamborees with too many speeches and bureaucratic rituals only serve to
put off the cultural tourist and bore the local populace stiff.
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TO LADAKH WITH LOVE
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570 per cent increase
in domestic tourists since 1998.
Big boost to tourism
through Central programmes and grants.
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| Advani, Kumar and Farooq Abdullah at the
newly constructed Sindhu ghat |
The spurt in tourism has been due to more prosaic
factors like improving the accessibility to Ladakh by increasing the number
of flights to Leh (from thrice a week to two flights a day during high
season including a Jetair flight) and the support given to local Ladakhis
to run guest houses, hotels and tours. The bus journey from Manali is
the preferred land route even if it is long and arduous involving crossing
the high altitude Rohtang pass and a night stop at Keylong.
Ladakh is the land of Buddhist monasteries and
the more interesting festivals there are the myriad local festivals like
the one held at the Hemis monastery. Amid all the rhetoric about "unity
in diversity", Chhewang rightly pointed out, "There is no need
to underline and present Indian cultural diversity in Ladakh as Ladakh
is a crucible of cultural diversity anyway." Besides, he says that
the coming of tourism has revived local traditions and Ladakhis are now
proud of their customs and costumes, if only to display them to tourists.
Over the years, Ladakh has become the summer
destination for the backpacker foreign tourist in a big way. Goa in winters
and Ladakh for the summer seems to be the tourist trail. Tiny as it may
be, Leh has Italian restaurants, German bakeries, even a Swedish vegetable
shop. Guest houses and hotels employ Goan cooks, Malayali bellboys and
Bihari labourers for the season. So the atmosphere is amazingly cosmopolitan
and the range of cuisine eclectic.
Distant and difficult, Ladakh is nonetheless
a brilliant gem in India's crown. It has to be kept that way.
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