Peace and Conflict in Ladakh

Brills Tibetan Studies Library

Edited by
Henk Blazer
Alex McKay
Charles Ramble
VOLUME 13
Peace and Conflict in Ladakh
The Construction of a Fragile Web of Order
by
Fernanda Pirie
LEIDEN

BOSTON
2007
Cover photo: The Babar celebrating the exorcism of evil from Photoksar at the end of the
New Year celebrations, December 1999 (Photo by Fernanda Pirie).
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
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the Internet at http://catalog.loc.gov
ISSN 1568-6183
ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15596 1
ISBN-10: 90 04 15596 1
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CONTENTS
List of maps and illustrations ......................................................... .... vi
Note on transliteration .................................................................... viii
Acknowledgements ............................................................................. ix
Maps ................................................................................................... xi
Chapter One Introduction .............................................................. 1
Chapter Two Ladakh ................................................................... 17
Chapter Three Village organisation .............................................. 42

Chapter Four Conflict in the village ............................................ 68
Chapter Five The realm of the spirits .......................................... 88
Chapter Six Losar .................................................................... 112
Chapter Seven The sacred social order ........................................ 125
Chapter Eight Ethnographic Tibet .............................................. 143
Chapter Nine Urban process and political change ..................... 170
Chapter Ten Conclusion ........................................................... 196

Glossary .......................................................................................... 209
Bibliography ................................................................................... 217
Index ................................................................................................ 227
LIST OF MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
Maps
Ladakh ............................................................................................... xi
Ethnographic Tibet ........................................................................... xii
Photographs between pages 116 and 117
1 The Potala palace.
2 Tibetan government officials at the Potala.
3 Leh palace.
4 The mosque.
5 Ridzong monastery.
6 The winter cham festival at Likir monastery.
7 The route from the Shi Shi La to Photoksar.
8 A lhato protecting travellers on a mountain path.
9 The gorge between Wanla and Photoksar.
10 Descending from the Sengge La towards Nyeraks and Lingshed.
11 Photoksar.
12 The hamlet of Machu.
13 Photoksar.
14 Meme Sonam reading a Buddhist text.
15 Paljor carving a block for a prayer flag.
16 Meme Sonam pouring tea.
17 Choron collecting water from the frozen river.
18 Yangzes washing clothes.
19 A yak herder.
20 Threshing with yaks.
21 Orsal and his brother learn to winnow.
22 Paljor reads a chos before the first ploughing.
23 Changing the juniper on the lhato.
24 The komnyer performing a sangs at the lhato.
25 Gyaltsen tending the lhato for the phalha.
26 The lhaba possessed by the yullha.
27 The bele.
28 The boys alamdar and the girls patimo.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS vii
29 Village women dancing in age order.
30 The onpo and the amchi at the front of the line of dancers.
31 The onpo.
32 The chos-sil.
33 One of the older village women with her prayer wheel.
34 Orsal taking leave of the goba before departing for Lamayuru.
35 Village women listen to Chado Rinpoches teachings.
36 Chado Rinpoche performing a skurims in Photoksar.
37 The lama placing a pungpa in a new lhato.
38 Morup and Api Rigzin with one of Morups sons.
39 Khangltakh in the snow.
40 Chortens above the village.
41 A seventeenth century document.
Photographs 1 and 2 courtesy of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of
Oxford. All other photographs by the author.
NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION
Ladakhi is a Tibetan language. Most words have a standard written form
but local pronunciation often differs markedly from that of central Tibet.
In this book I transcribe most Ladakhi words as they are spoken in the
Photoksar dialect, which sometimes differs even from that of Leh.
In the case of standard Tibetan terms, such as chsi zungdrel, how-
ever, I have retained the standard romanization. I do the same with
Tibetan names, such as Sakya, pronounced Saskya in Ladakh, and adopt
the individuals preferred form in the case of Ladakhi names such as
Thupstan Chhewang, pronounced Tupstan Tsewang. Where the spelling
is relevant I have included the widely-accepted Wylie transcription
(Wylie 1959) in the text.
The glossary lists all the most frequently used Tibetan and Ladakhi
words, together with the written Tibetan form and an English translation.
The Ladakhi use of a word can differ markedly from that elsewhere in
Tibet. For example trims (khrims) means custom in Ladakh but gener-
ally has the sense of law in central Tibet. The absence of a written
forms means that the word does not appear in the dictionaries of either
Das (1998), Hamid (1998) or Jschke (1881) and the spelling is not
obvious.
The -pa ending indicates a person, as in Ladakspa`, a Ladakhi.
The same ending is found in yulpa, a person of the yul (village), and
nangpa, a person of the nang (inside), that is a Buddhist.
I and e are generally genitive endings, so onpe chos is the chos
(rituals) of the onpo.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The fieldwork on which this book is based was funded by the Economic
and Social Council of Great Britain and the Max Planck Institute for
Social Anthropology in Halle. I am also grateful to the Max Planck
Institute for funding the inclusion of the photographs in the volume.
Nick Allen, Martijn van Beek, Martin Mills and David Parkin all read
and made important and helpful comments on sections of the manu-
script. Marcus Banks, Keebet and Franz von Benda-Beckmann, Clare
Harris and Charles Ramble read and commented on earlier drafts of the
material that has been transformed into this book. I am very grateful to
them all.
John Bray, among others at the International Association of Ladakh
Studies, has been consistently helpful in providing information and
materials on the region.
I spent over twenty months undertaking fieldwork in Ladakh between
1998 and 2005. During this time Ladakhi people from far and wide were
unfailingly helpful, friendly and supportive. Those of Photoksar, partic-
ularly the family in Khangltakh, were generous beyond measure.
Wangchuk and Becky of SECMOL, Sonam Phuntsog of Hemis
Shukpachan, Lama Tsewang Jorgas and Karma Namgyal of Lingshed,
Tinles Angmo, Henk Toma, Sharif Bhat and Soso in Leh must, in
particular, be mentioned for the help and advice they gave over a long
period.
For editorial assistance I am indebted to Eva Pirie, to Paul Honey at
the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies of Oxford University and to Patricia
Radder at Brill.
Six months after I first visited Ladakh, while on a student holiday in
1983, a letter from my father was returned by the Indian post office,
having lain uncollected in the poste restante in Leh. He had opened the
atlas, he said, and could not resist sending off a missive to a place whol-
ly represented by a swirling mass of purple. His letters, discovered in
post offices throughout my journey, were evocative, inquisitive and
thought-provoking, qualities which I can only aspire to as an anthropolo-
gist. Seventeen years later, when I returned to Ladakh, an array of frien-
ds wrote the letters that sustained the ups and downs of a long period of
fieldwork. The envelopes that were waiting each time I returned to Leh
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
from Photoksar contained thoughts and reflections, advice and admon-
ishment, which greatly enriched my time in Ladakh. This book is dedi-
cated to all the letter-writers. These include my father, Gordon Pirie,
who did not live to write to me again in Ladakh, but who would, I hope,
have been pleased with what I have done.
The quotes are from Rizvi (1983) (title page), also cited in Bray (2005: 2), Srinivas
1
(1998: 4) and Aggarwal (2004: 3, 7, 8). They are, it should be pointed out, matched by
those, generally in earlier works, that emphasise Ladakhs seclusion and geographical
position encircled by the highest mountain chains in the world (Crook and Osmaston
1994: xxv; Dollfus 1989: 19).
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Crossroads of high Asia, a borderland, a vulnerable and strategic
tract for India, positioned in the penumbra of the Line of Control ...
part of the discord in Kashmir. The images used in recent studies to
introduce Ladakh, the Himalayan region of the Indian state of Jammu
and Kashmir, emphasise its liminal position on the westernmost corner
of the Tibetan plateau. Ladakh was, and still is, the meeting point of the
1
Islamic and Buddhist worlds and of the Tibetan and Indic cultures.
Historically it was a staging post on the formidable trade routes that
crossed the Himalayas to connect central Asia with India and central
Tibet. Now within India, but abutting its disputed borders with Pakistan
and China, the region hosts army camps for the forces engaged in the
Kashmir conflict. Over the centuries the Ladakhi people have become
used to invasions and conflict, political interference, fiscal demands and
religious proselytisation from east and west, north and south. The birth
of the Indian nation state, with its programme of social and economic
development, and the opening of the area to tourism mean that the forces
of consumerism and material advancement have now reached even the
remotest villages of the region. This book investigates the processes by
which the Ladakhi people have constructed their own ideas of commu-
nity and spaces of social order amidst such diverse influences.
Ecologically, Ladakh is part of the high Tibetan plateau, an arid
region, lying beyond the monsoon watershed formed by the Himalayas.
Most inhabited areas lie at over 3,000m and the sparse population
clusters around the pockets of flat land on which the water from melting
glaciers or snow-fields makes irrigated agriculture possible. Apart from
the nomads who herd their livestock on the Chang Tang plateau to the
east, most Ladakhis live in geographically-bounded villages separated
by acres of pasture and wasteland. Theirs is still largely an agricultural
society; even the inhabitants of the towns rely upon the complex irriga-
2 CHAPTER ONE
Politically, the region is now divided into the Leh Block and the Kargil block with
2
Buddhist and Muslim majorities, respectively. In 1999 each block had a population of
around 115,000 (Census of India 1999).
tion systems that provide water for their gardens, orchards and barley
fields.
The languages of the region are varieties of Tibetan, quite distinct
from the Urdu of neighbouring Kashmir, a legacy of Ladakhs historic
links with early Tibetan civilisations. For centuries Ladakh was, how-
ever, an independent kingdom, governed by a long line of hereditary
rulers. They were assisted by a small aristocratic elite who extracted
taxes from the villagers and traders and raised armies for the kings wars
with Kashmiri, Tibetan and Mongolian forces. Under the influence of
religious leaders from Tibet the kings patronised Buddhist monasteries
throughout the region and the major part of population in the east re-
mains Buddhist. Several kings came under pressure from Kashmiri
leaders to convert to Islam, however, and much of the population in the
Kargil area to the west is now Muslim. This division has been associated
with communal tensions and mistrust in the late twentieth century.
2
In the 1840s, Ladakh was conquered by the Dogras, then rulers of
Kashmir, and they undertook a series of administrative reforms, land
settlements and development initiatives over the following century.
Since Indian independence Ladakh has been subject to the administra-
tive control of the Indian state and it is from the cities of India that a host
of bureaucrats, entrepreneurs and, more recently, development workers
and tourists now bring the values of modernity and the market economy
into the region, as well as the ecological, political and ethical ideals of
the west.
During the time of the Ladakhi kingdom it was the aristocrats, the old
Ladakhi elite, who were most closely involved in relations with the
outside world. Those who had acquired high aristocratic or religious
status tended to live along the Indus valley, close to the political and
monastic centres. But traders, both Buddhist and Muslim, also travelled
great distances on perilous journeys, often accompanied by pilgrims or
monks who had been sent to train in the monasteries of Tibet. Their
modern-day equivalents are the children of the upper classes and newly
wealthy families sent for education to India, members of non-govern-
mental organisations (NGOs), entrepreneurs and local politicians.
Educated in Jammu, Delhi or the monasteries of India, making a living
from tourism, development activities or western patronage, most cosmo-
INTRODUCTION 3
politan Ladakhis are acutely aware of the issues of development and
modernisation as they affect their populations. Many are concerned
about the effects on their small region of the new market economy, a
changing cultural heritage and the divisive effects of party politics.
Although the greater proportion of the Ladakhi population remains
subsistence farmers scattered through the regions remote villages, they,
too, go on pilgrimage to Leh, some even to India and Nepal. They send
their children to school in the towns; they visit Leh to buy consumer
goods and negotiate with government officials; they vote in regional and
national elections. They are far from being isolated from the forces of
change and modernity sweeping through the Indus valley.
The questions I set out to answer here concern the ways in which the
Ladakhi populations, both urban and rural, maintain their social order in
the midst of these influences. I draw on interviews conducted with
people from all over Ladakh, but concentrate on the experiences of two
distinct groups, the inhabitants of one of the remoter villages and those
living in the urban centre, Leh. Their experiences of modernity are
vastly different but there are common threads to be found in the ways in
which they manage conflict and pursue peace, constructing fragile webs
of order within the boundaries of their Himalayan communities.
The SECMOL dispute
One winters day in 1999 on the dusty streets of Leh, under a sun that
was still hot although the temperature had hovered below freezing for
weeks, a group of Buddhist monks set upon a boy who was selling
magazines at the main bus stand. They beat him up and destroyed a large
number of his copies. The monks had taken offence at an article in the
magazine which had made critical remarks about monks who behave in
a non-Buddhist way. Ladags Melong (Mirror of Ladakh), is produced
by the Students Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh
(SECMOL). This non-governmental organisation, founded in 1988,
works for the improvement of education and to preserve the culture of
the region. It was run by a group of young, educated Ladakhis, many of
whom had obtained, or were studying for, university degrees and who
were encouraged to take an interest in the changing social conditions
brought about by modernisation and its effects on Ladakhi culture. The
article in question had been written by Rigzin, one of the SECMOL
students, in which he recounted, in critical terms, how a group of Bud-
4 CHAPTER ONE
In 1999 there were around 65 rupees to the pound sterling.
3
dhist monks had recently thrown him off a bus. The incident was the talk
of the town for several weeks.
When I investigated this incident the following summer, Tashi Mor
up, the editor of the magazine, told me that he had advised the magazine-
seller not to take the case to the police. He felt that it could better be
solved by dialogue with the monks. The case was taken over by Sonam
Wangchuk, founder and Secretary of SECMOL, who wrote a letter to the
monks asking for an apology. When none was forthcoming, he threat-
ened to take the case to the court or to the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala.
The SECMOL members were then invited to a meeting with the Ladakhi
Gonpa Association (LGA), a body which represents the Buddhist monas-
teries of the region.
At the meeting, the monks claimed that they had been sent by the
LGA to beat up the sales boy because Rigzins letter had insulted their
religion. They had destroyed the magazine, they claimed, for the monas-
teries and for the chos, the Tibetan term used to denote religious
rituals, doctrine and texts. In response, Wangchuk told me, he had
decided to use a traditional tactic and asked one of the monks to put a
picture of the Dalai Lama on his forehead and repeat his claim. I do not
really believe in such things, Wangchuk told me, but I knew the monks
had enough sense not to lie with the Dalai Lama on their foreheads. At
that, the monks attitudes had changed, he said, and they began to sug-
gest that Ladakhis were a minority people and should not fight. Eventu-
ally they agreed to pay a fine to SECMOL, which they agreed at 500
rupees (Rs). Some of the monks argued that Rigzin should also pay a
3
fine because of the letter. Wangchuk advised him to agree to a fine of
Rs200, on the basis that the dispute would otherwise become big news,
which would be bad for Ladakh. Rigzin told me that he did not consider
the fine to have been just; this was India and he had a right to express his
opinions in the media. However, he had accepted Wangchuks argument
that such a small region could not afford internal fighting. Wangchuk
also told me that he did not think the fine had been right. However, he
had advised Rigzin to accept it in the interests of resolving the whole
issue.
When narrating these events to me Wangchuk expressed the opinion
that the dispute was really about the freedom of the press. However, he
said, SECMOL would have to have gone to the court to ensure that such
principles were explicitly recognised. In the end, he thought, things had
INTRODUCTION 5
worked out in a satisfactory way because the result had upheld, and had
been seen to uphold, the right principles. Rigzin was less sanguine,
reflecting that if he had known his rights better, he might not have
accepted the fine. Wangchuk and Rigzin were both aware of the princi-
ples of freedom of speech and individual rights, that is, but had been
prepared to compromise them for the sake of reaching a settlement.
This case involved a number of the most well-educated, politically
and socially aware young Ladakhis. The three SECMOL members had
all had experience of modern urban Indian society. They associated
frequently with international development workers, educationalists,
ecologists and tourists, and Wangchuk, married to an American, had
travelled widely in the west. Their education had been inspired by
models and ideologies imported from modern India, many of western
origin. Nevertheless, when they themselves became embroiled in a
conflict, they had turned, for guidance, to Buddhist leaders. Under state
law there would have been no case against the magazine and no justifi-
cation for the monks assault. Yet the SECMOL members were prepared
to submit to the mediation of their traditional leaders. The value and
sanctity of religion were not overtly questioned during the mediation
process, while the principles of freedom of speech and of the press were
not raised. The importance of resolving the dispute and reaching a
settlement in the interests of the wider community was both expressed
and implied on all sides throughout the process.
When I asked Wangchuk to explain why he had chosen to accept the
LGAs mediation his answer was that, like all Ladakhis I do not like to
fight; we like to settle our disputes because everyone knows each other;
we have to get on and do not like lingering disputes. During our discus-
sions, Tashi Morup, the magazines editor, also reflected more generally
on Ladakhi attitudes to disputes. Our society is close knit, he said, and
families are prepared to suppress crimes when they consider social
relations; few cases go to the police and the majority are solved at family
level with the use of apologies. Pressure is applied to make people settle,
but the decisions are generally right because the older people understand
the society. These young men were, thus, suggesting that they, along
with other Ladakhis, are averse to conflict and place a premium on the
settlement of disputes, conscious of the effects they can have on the
community as a whole. Their sense that order must be maintained within
their community, in other words, leads them to accept the mediation of
elders and to compromise their individual interests, in this case by
accepting a fine they patently did not consider to be just. The SECMOL
6 CHAPTER ONE
men were choosing to set aside the values of freedom of speech as well,
one might add, as freedom from physical attack, in favour of compro-
mise and the restoration of order.
The question that arises is, quite simply, why they place the interests
of their community above their own rights. It is a question which goes
to the heart of their ideas, both explicit and implicit, about the nature of
order in their society. It raises issues which have been central to anthro-
pological inquiry since the early days of the discipline, when scholars
first began to discuss the problem of order. How is the anthropologist
to approach these issues in the early twenty-first century?
The problem of order
As Roberts (forthcoming) points out, two models of order recur in
sociological theory, that of the leader and his following, often over-
simplistically attributed to Weber, and that of the shared, articulated
repertoire of norms, generally associated with the theories of Durkheim.
Both have continued to be relevant to anthropological writings on order
in the early twenty-first century (Benda-Beckmann and Pirie, forthcom-
ing).
The Indian legal system, the principal means by which the state seeks
to impose social order within its borders, is not absent in Ladakh. In both
Leh and Kargil there are courts and judges. A number of my informants
had trained as lawyers and were practising as such within the Indian
legal system. However, as I describe later, the laws, structures and
officers of this system play little part in the processes by which most
Ladakhis, either urban or rural, resolve their conflicts. Even in the
towns, judicial practices have developed apart from the state. In the
SECMOL dispute, for example, the states agents were distanced in
favour of the religious elite, whose authority stems from long-standing
political and religious structures. They were also, however, joined by
Tsering Samphel, the President of the Ladakhi Buddhist Association
(LBA). The LBA is a local political party which has been active in
demands for regional autonomy and was at the centre of the communal
tensions of the 1980s and 90s. It is dominated by members of the local
elite, those with education and high status jobs or members of the old
Ladakhi aristocracy. However, its aims and activities and, thus, the
authority of its President, are very contemporary. He had played an
important role in the mediation process, Wangchuk told me.
INTRODUCTION 7
Legal is a term I use infrequently, save in connection with legal anthropology or
4
the Indian legal system. Like Roberts (1994), I regard it as too closely associated with
governmental or state processes and structures to be well-suited to informal processes of
the kind I am more often describing in Ladakh.
Ladakhi villages range from those in the Indus valley with populations of around
5
In order to understand the dynamics of order in Ladakh it is, there-
fore, necessary to consider the history of the political, judicial and
religious power exercised by these different groups, both secular and
religious. This involves examining the nature of the authority their
leaders have established which I do, in part, by reference to Webers
categories of legitimate authority. It also involves examining the
relationhsip between political, religious and judicial forms of authority.
This requires consideration of the relationship between the political and
religious domains in Tibetan societies, a topic which has been the sub-
ject of extensive debate among both Tibetan writers and western ana-
lysts.
Political is a broad term. In the context of the Ladakhi kingdom I
use it to refer to relations between kings, aristocrats and the wider
populations, the raising of armies and taxes, in other words, the business
of rule. In reference to later periods, it concerns the exercise of power by
the Dogras and their administrators and, subsequently, by Indian politi-
cians and bureaucrats, including the processes of the Indian democracy.
When used in the context of the village, it concerns events connected
with the organisation of the village economy and relations with outsid-
ers, events which are mostly directed by the village meeting and negoti-
ated through the payment of village taxes. I use the term judicial to
refer to processes connected with the resolution of disputes and settle-
ment of conflict. Religion is a term I use in its widest sense to refer to
4
activities directed towards the spirit world, as well as the practices of
Buddhism. In subsequent chapters I discuss the complex relations be-
tween these realms.
As well as the continuing importance of traditional forms of status,
the SECMOL dispute highlighted the importance of the participants
ideas about conflict. The norms invoked during the SECMOL dispute
were dominated by an emphasis on the promotion of reconciliation, the
ceremonial restoration of good relations and a rhetorical affirmation of
the undesirability of conflict within the local community.
In order to understand the nature and role of such norms I undertook
fifteen months of fieldwork in Photoksar, a remote village in the Sham
area of Leh District from the summer of 1999. Photoksar is two days
5
8 CHAPTER ONE
1,000 down to hamlets with no more than a dozen. Photoksars population was around
200 in 1999 and that of Leh roughly 15,000.
walk from the road and a long days journey over high passes to the
nearest villages on either side. I interspersed this fieldwork with periods
in Leh, where I was able to contrast the ideas and customs I observed in
the village with the views and practices of my urban informants. Once
I was in the village it quickly became apparent that all forms of fighting,
arguing, quarrelling, abusive and insulting language were strongly
condemned. They were unequivocally considered to be undesirable,
even dangerous. If a quarrel was reported people would shake their
heads and they shuddered at the mention of fighting. Even to express
anger was considered to reflect bad personal qualities. The statements
of my SECMOL informants that disputes had to be resolved within the
community were repeatedly emphasised by these villagers. People
would use phrases meaning inside or within, nangla or nangosla, as
the context in which disputes had to be settled. This reflected a strong
sense of local community, of the village as a place with boundaries
beyond which disputes must not be allowed to emerge. The concerns
with settlement and the restoration of order that were implicit in the
attitudes of the SECMOL men, including the idea that conflict is harmful
to the wider community, dominated in the village.
Throughout my fieldwork in Ladakh certain fundamental attitudes to
conflict and order recurred and these are reflected in the examples cited
in this book. I am not suggesting that there was only a single, let alone
a static, set of norms in Ladakh; there are sets of beliefs and practices
that are accepted by different people at different times. Nevertheless,
certain ideas dominated in these discussions. This raises questions about
the origins of such attitudes and the relationship between them and the
religious beliefs and practices of the Ladakhi people, particularly given
their historic links with Tibet.
Ladakh and Tibet
Ladakh is generally regarded as forming part of ethnographic Tibet, a
large area encompassing parts of China, India, Nepal, Bhutan and Paki-
stan in which the major part of the population is ethnically Tibetan and
shares numerous aspects of culture, language, social organisation and
religion (Bell 1924: 5, 8; Samuel 1993: Ch 3). Many studies of Ladakh
INTRODUCTION 9
These include nineteenth century writers (Ramsay 1890), historians (Francke 1907,
6
1926; Carrasco 1959), linguists (Denwood 2005), scholars of religion (Samuel 1993),
Ladakhi scholars (Nawang Tsering Shakspo 1997a, 1997b, 1999) and anthropologists
(Riaboff 1997; Mills 2003; Gutschow 2004; Pirie 2005).
have rightly and profitably analysed the historic, religious and social
processes found in the region by reference to Tibetan religion and
culture.
6
The early Tibetan empire of the seventh to ninth centuries incorpo-
rated what is now Ladakh, but after its dissolution in 842 the region
became and remained largely an independent kingdom until it was
conquered by the Dogras in the 1840s. Nevertheless, Mahayana (Ti-
betan) Buddhism was well established in the western part of the Tibetan
region from at least the twelfth century and the religious links between
Ladakh and Tibet remained close until the 1950s. As Buddhist monaster-
ies established a politically dominant position in central Tibet all the
major sects founded their own establishments in Ladakh. Right up until
the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the 1950s, Lhasa and the central Ti-
betan monasteries exerted considerable religious control over Ladakh.
During a series of wars and relations with Kashmir, a substantial propor-
tion of the Ladakhi population in the Kargil area was converted to Islam,
but even after a century and a half of rule by Kashmir most of the Bud-
dhist population of Ladakh continues to emphasise its religious identity
as nangpa. Literally insiders, this is the term used by them to refer to
followers of Tibetan Buddhism. In the twenty-first century, monasteries
are still major landowners and even the poorest families send significant
donations and, often, their sons into these establishments. The monks are
placed high in the social hierarchy and some have risen to senior posi-
tions within Indian politics. Buddhist leaders played a central part in the
settlement of the SECMOL dispute. To what extent, therefore, have
Buddhist leaders and ideas influenced the way order is maintained in
Ladakhi society? Do the attitudes expressed during the SECMOL dis-
pute reflect some sort of Buddhist morality or legal principles, whether
deeply ingrained in Ladakh during centuries of contact with Tibet, or
more directly influenced by contemporary leaders?
Many studies of Tibetan communities have placed the practices and
principles of Buddhism at the heart of their analyses of social forms
(Stein 1972; Ortner 1978; 1989; Samuel 1993; French 1995). Dreyfus
(1995: 119), for example, states that Buddhism, is dominant both from
religious and socio-political points of view in the region. The religious
realm is eclectic and heterogeneous, having incorporated numerous
10 CHAPTER ONE
elements of more local and indigenous ritual practices, but it is, never-
theless, fundamental to the shape of the total social whole of Tibetan
societies. Samuel (1993: 362) uses this phrase in his wide-ranging work
on Tibetan Buddhism, for example, talking of the cultural patterns
supplied by the religion.
The idea that legal practices in Ladakh might represent a form of
Tibetan law, based on Buddhist practices and principles, gains consider-
able support from Rebecca Frenchs work on Tibetan law, The Golden
Yoke: the legal cosmology of Buddhist Tibet. In a study which relates to
the whole of ethnographic Tibet, she characterises Tibetan understand-
ings of law in terms of a kaleidoscope cosmology (1995:16, 21). One
of the questions I set out to explore was whether similar ideas could be
found in the remote villages of Ladakh, which might have suggested that
Ladakhi attitudes to conflict could be traced to Buddhist principles. To
my initial surprise, however, I did not find religious ideas to be central
to legal practices, whether philosophical Buddhist concepts or more
straightforward moral precepts. I concluded, after long months of field-
work, that even though Buddhism, its practices and practitioners, have
had a profound influence on many aspects of lay life in Ladakh, the
influence of Buddhist principles on legal practices was nonexistent. It is
one of the aims of this book to analyse the consequences of this finding
and, in so doing, to challenge the unreflected equation of social practice
in Tibetan communities with religious principles.
Harmony ideology in legal anthropology
My Leh-based informants were generally quick to refer to the villages
when discussing Ladakhi attitudes to conflict. One lawyer, explaining
the regions legal system to me, for example, spent some time describing
the state courts and procedures. But Ladakhis dont often use the courts
in Leh, she continued, they settle most of their disputes in their vil-
lages. Ladakhis are peace-loving people, she added, echoing the
attitudes of my SECMOL informants, they dont like long-running
disputes.
Although the history of the late twentieth century in Ladakh has been
characterised by unrest and disruption, the SECMOL men were con-
cerned about the maintenance of good relations in their small region.
To what extent might their attitudes and understandings simply reflect
the historical structures of Ladakhi society, the division of the popula-
INTRODUCTION 11
The expression of similar attitudes to conflict are found, for instance, among the Dou
7
Donggo of eastern Indonesia (Just 1990, 2001), in groups in Japan (Henderson 1965;
Smith 1983) and Morocco (Rosen 1989, 2000), as well as among the Zapotec of highland
Mexico (Nader 1990) and the many others referred to by Nader.
tion into small, clearly-bounded communities and the sense, even on the
part of urban populations, that their region is a small and fragile part of
a much larger whole? Were the SECMOL men simply articulating
judicial norms developed in the small, isolated Ladakhi villages, which
are lingering in the urban centre, not yet swept away by the counter-
forces of modernity?
The emphasis on peace and conciliation apparent in these attitudes
finds echoes in the legal practices described by anthropologists in many
parts of the world. Nader (1990), for example, has famously described
how the Zapotec of highland Mexico assert that a bad compromise is
better than a good fight (1990: 1), an attitude she labels a harmony
ideology. As Just (1992: 392) points out, an ideology of harmony is, in
fact, a widely distributed sense of what justice ought to be and seems
to be as common a mode of justice as the western adversarial/absolutist
models of dispute settlement. (1992: 392) A similar emphasis on peace
7
and harmony is often associated with small-scale, face-to-face societies.
The papers in the volume edited by Howell and Willis (1989) Societies
at Peace, for example, almost all concern communities of this nature, as
do many of the others referred to by Nader and Just.
A harmony ideology is by no means a universal characteristic of
small-scale societies, however, as anthropological literature on Melane-
sia (Strathern 1985; Harrison 1989, 1993) and Amazonia (Chagnon
1968; Overing 1989), among others, graphically illustrates. Moreover,
the ideas that have developed in the Ladakhi villages cannot be assumed
to have arisen entirely autonomously of the political, religious and
cultural influences that have swept across Ladakh over the centuries.
During the Ladakhi kingdom, people from even the remotest villages
were drawn into wars, conflicts and long distance trading activities, well
before the region fell under the influence of Kashmir. Nor do they now
exist in some sort of isolation from the modern world.
The problem of relating the legal practices and understandings found
in a local setting to wider political and economic processes and religious
influences is far from new within legal anthropology. While early stud-
ies of social order often focussed on small-scale societies seemingly in
isolation from the influence of colonial regimes and other external
influences, and seemingly deliberately ignoring relations of leadership
12 CHAPTER ONE
and hierarchy, there has subsequently been considerable interest in the
relations between them (von Benda-Beckmann and Pirie, forthcoming).
All people are, at least theoretically, now governed by a framework of
national laws and judicial structures designed to maintain order and
resolve disputes. These are often influenced by international laws. In
India, for example, the legal system is based on the British model and
NGOs undertake campaigns explicitly designed to promote minority,
womens or child rights. The SECMOL men were familiar with such
ideas. In recent years many legal anthropologists have focussed on the
issues of hegemony and domination and the global spread of legal
regimes: empire, colonialism and the establishment of state structures by
a political elite (Starr and Collier 1989; Nader 2002).
How, then, are such processes to be related to the concerns with order
found in Ladakh and its villages? In her analysis of the Zapotec, Nader
(1990) looks beyond their highland communities and attributes their
harmony ideology to the hegemonic colonial system of the Christian
missionaries finding that the culture of harmony is constructed as part
of the development of Christianity as a messianic religion associated
with a particular political economy. (1990: 291) That ideology was,
therefore, a product of nearly 500 years of colonial encounter, but it
was also a strategy for resisting the states political and cultural hege-
mony. (1990: 2) Similar styles and ideologies of harmony, she says,
have been found in communities elsewhere in the world, and she con-
cludes that the discourse of harmony among the Zapotec is undoubtedly
connected to the spread of Christian colonial policies, as it was else-
where in the world (1990: 320). Can the Ladakhi judicial practices and
attitudes be explained by reference to missionary, colonial or other
similar activity? This would seem inherently unlikely, given that there
was little missionary activity in Ladakh and the colonial encounter was
mediated through the rule of the maharajah of Kashmir. For much of its
one hundred and fifty years as part of India, the Ladakhi experience of
government has been light, particularly in its remoter villages.
Naders analysis of the Zapotec also relies upon a model of domina-
tion and resistance to explain the existence of a harmony ideology. This
is a model which has been pervasive in many areas of political and legal
anthropology, particularly in the seminal works of the Subalterns Studies
school (Guha 1982), the writings of Scott (1985, 1990) and the many
studies these writers have inspired. While many valuable insights can be
gained from these analyses, I would suggest that in its simpler forms the
model sets up an opposition which can obscure many of the subtleties
INTRODUCTION 13
A distinction needs to be drawn between fully ordained monks and lamas. The latter
8
are teachers of Tantric practices and include incarnates, or trulku, whose status
automatically qualifies them as such (Samuel 1993: 31; Mills 2003: 28). Ladakhi people
tend to use the term to refer to all monks, but in order to avoid confusion I only use it in
the more restricted sense in this book.
and ambiguities in the relations between subaltern and dominant groups.
Just (1992), for example, while praising Naders ethnography, has
cogently criticised her final analysis by saying that it does little justice
to either the variety and subtlety of the missionaries ... or to the struc-
tural and moral imperative of indigenous solutions to the problems of
making the balance. (1992: 392) Nader describes how the construc-
tion of harmony was used by the Zapotec to resist external control.
However, she does not ask how that ideology might have reflected
indigenous, pre-Christian, or at least non-Christian, ideas and how these
ideas might themselves have been transformed by, survived or explain
the Zapotec reaction to the colonial encounter.
In Ladakh, representatives of the states legal system, as well as many
of the old elites and religious leaders, are distanced from the judicial
processes found in the villages. However, many of the attitudes and
ideas that are central to such processes are also found in the urban centre
and very similar ideas about community, order and the undesirability of
conflict appear to underlie both. The SECMOL men actually turned to
the authority of members of the local elite, including the LGA, in their
attempts to resolve their disputes. While, as I describe in subsequent
chapters, the villagers turn their backs on external elites, these urban
disputants reaffirmed the supremacy of traditional statuses. They both
embraced ideas of modernity, rights and justice and deliberately
emphasised elements of tradition. A model of domination and resistance,
I suggest, is too simplistic to explain these different, but clearly related,
attitudes to conflict and the judicial process. The analysis of the ways in
which judicial practices, norms and attitudes have emerged and are
maintained needs to take into account a multiplicity of encounters:
between Ladakh and Tibet, Ladakh and Kashmir, Buddhists and Mus-
lims, laity and monks, monks and lamas, local leaders and Indian
8
politicians, villagers and urban elite, as well as between Ladakhis as
quasi-colonial subjects and their rulers.
Whilst I cannot and do not attempt to map out all these forces,
through a number of case studies this book demonstrates how different
Ladakhi communities negotiate their order within this complex web of
relations, distancing some power-holders, embracing others, relying on
14 CHAPTER ONE
traditional values, adopting new ideologies and adapting to new forms
of power and control.
Divisions and discord
In recent years there has been considerable interest on the part of many
anthropologists in Ladakhs position as part of Jammu and Kashmir and
its links to the south and west, both historically and in the contemporary
period. Political developments, including the activities of the LBA, their
demands for regional autonomy and the communal violence that erupted
in the late 1980s and early 1990s, are the subject of a number of studies
(van Beek 1996, 1997, 1999; van Beek and Bertelsen 1997; Bertelsen
1996, 1997; Srinivas 1998). These describe the processes of identity
creation that accompanied the growing demands for benefits and, ulti-
mately, for a measure of autonomy from the governments of India. Not
surprisingly, such processes have been accompanied by a conscious
valorisation of both the values of Buddhism and the traditional culture
of Ladakh. It could be said that in subtle ways modern Ladakhi leaders
are using local concepts of community and religious authority to
strengthen their own positions and pursue their own political agendas.
The fieldwork on which this book is based was conducted some time
after the worst of these communal tensions had died down, in the mid
1990s. Nevertheless, the violence of the previous decade was recent
enough to be a powerful memory for most Ladakhis and there remains
a lingering tension between the Buddhist and Muslim communities. The
main organisations of each, the LBA and the Anjuman-e Muin-e-Islam
of the Sunni Muslims in Leh, compete with each other to broadcast
prayers through their loud speakers in the market. Aggarwal (2004)
investigates the ramifications of such processes within a village with a
mixed Buddhist and Muslim population close to the disputed line of
control between Indian and Pakistani-administered Kashmir. She dis-
cusses the multiple influences of modernity in Ladakh and the forces of
social stratification, gender divisions, regional politics and communal
tensions. She offers an insight into the conflicts and divisions found in
the village, the intersecting struggles of religion, class, caste, gender,
and ethnicity (2004: 8). However, this approach does not account for
the processes of conflict resolution and the sense of local community I
found in both Photoksar and Leh.
During fieldwork I discovered, for example, that the LBA and the
INTRODUCTION 15
Anjuman, as well as undertaking semi-political functions, performed
valuable social services for their respective communities. These included
the provision of a forum for dispute resolution. The LBA runs a Shakhs
Khang, literally, house of resolution, which considers disputes that
village headmen have been unable to resolve themselves, and the
Anjuman hears disputes that have arisen within the community of Sunni
Muslims. Each provides an alternative to the formal processes of the
state courts, which are said to be beset by delays, expense and, on
occasion, corruption. These are mechanisms by which modern urban
Ladakhis are deliberately creating means of restoring and maintaining
order within the complex society of the urban centre.
My suggestion is that such forms of conflict resolution are more than
just the response to a history of domination or the political turmoils of
the late twentieth century. They display attitudes, understandings and
cultural elements identifiable in the village. The ways in which people
react to the spread of legal and political regimes is profoundly affected
by local understandings and expectations. Subsequent chapters describe
the key aspects of such processes: the manner in which concepts of
community are generated, the underlying moral principles, the relations
between individual and community and the expectations of leadership
and authority, both political and religious.
Found in both rural and urban settings, these have been shaped, I
suggest, by the history of relations between local communities and
centres of power. In many cases the containment of conflict within a
communitys boundaries and the resolution of disputes without reference
to the police or other representatives of state authority acts as a means
of keeping the state at bay. Monks and other members of the elite,
although highly respected, have historically been distanced from the
judicial processes of the Ladakhi villages. The SECMOL disputants also
shunned the formal frameworks of the states laws and judicial proce-
dures and submitted to the authority of political and religious leaders,
asserting a type of regional autonomy in the face of the states political
and legal authority. The issue of autonomy is one that recurs throughout
this book. This is not simply resistence to domination, however. It is a
more active, creative process involving both deference towards external
power holders and the simultaneous maintenance of distance from them.
In this study I analyse the local practices, epistemologies and moral
understandings found in a remote village, but in the context of Ladakhs
religious and historical legacies, its historical position as an independent
kingdom and as part of ethnographic Tibet, as well as its experiences
16 CHAPTER ONE
over the last 150 years as part of India and its experiences of modernity.
Among these influences a variety of different dynamics of order can be
found: the cultural order of Tibetan Buddhism; the controlling order of
the kings; the order of the social hierarchy; the administrative order of
the modern bureaucracy; the dynamics of the market economy with the
associated opportunities for wealth, status and influence; the ideologies
of the Indian democracy; the ideals of the international development
community; and the processes by which village communities create their
own forms of internal order. The SECMOL dispute, to which I return in
my conclusion, illustrates the dynamics found at the intersection of these
forces, in particular the creative attitudes of deference and distance
adopted towards powerful elites, the acceptance and adaptation of new
ideas and the creation of new spheres of order.
My suggestion is that the construction of order needs to be regarded
as a creative and dynamic process. Certain patterns of order can be
imposed by the controlling hand of a leader or through the powerful
ideologies of a religion; they can reflect deep-seated norms and values;
disorder can be found in relations of domination and resistance and
power struggles between competing groups and leaders; but order can
also be creatively constructed by small communities caught in the midst
of such heterogeneous forces.
The chronicles, analysed by Petech (1977) and Francke (1926, 1998), are the best
1
source, albeit not a wholly reliable one, for the period up to the 15th century.
In accordance with Ladakhi tradition (e.g. Nawang Tsering Shakspo 1997), Bud-
2
dhism was re-introduced into the region by the great Tibetan teacher Lotsava Rinchen
Zangpo (958-1055). However, the earliest surviving Buddhist monuments, such as the
temple complex at Alchi, are now attributed to the twelfth or thirteenth centuries
(Luczanits 2005).

CHAPTER TWO
LADAKH
The Ladakhi chronicles, the Ladakh Gyalrabs, compiled in around the
seventeenth century, refer to several dynasties of kings, some of which
were said to be descended from Gesar, the mythical Tibetan hero
(Francke 1998: Ch V; Petech 1977: 16). The account of Hye Cho, a
1
Korean pilgrim who travelled through the Himalayas between 724 and
727, indicates that Buddhism was already being practised in Ladakh,
having probably penetrated along trade routes from Kashmir, even
before the Tibetans assumed control of the region in around 663
(Luczanits 2005). With the collapse of the Tibetan empire in 842 the
area dissolved into a series of principalities, however, and the chronicles
refer to warfare and raiding, which was particularly problematic during
the harvest season (Petech 1977: 13).
In the tenth century a new state was established in Purang, south of
Mount Kailash in western Tibet, by descendants of the central Tibetan
monarchy and this came to incorporate a large part of Ladakh. Buddhism
re-entered Ladakh under the Dro clan, of elite central Tibetan descent,
who established a small principality in Ladakh. This then became the
2
basis of the Ladakhi kingdom, as the family extended its influence and
local rulers were forced to pay them tribute (Petech 1977: 17-18; Lucza-
nits 2005).
As Buddhism flourished in central Tibet over the following centuries,
its influence in Ladakh increased. King Lhachen Gyalpo is said to have
established Likir monastery, probably in the early 12th century (Petech
1977: 18-19), and subsequent Ladakhi kings patronised new monastic
establishments. By 1450 the Gelukpa sect, which had been established
in Tibet by the great Buddhist teacher Tsongkapa, had penetrated
Ladakh, and the monasteries of Spituk, Tikse, Karsha and Puktal, along
18 CHAPTER TWO
Petech is of the opinion that the reliability of Franckes record of inscriptions is not
3
great (1977: 3). However, the story probably represents a significant historical tradition.
with the Sakyapa monastery of Matho, had all been founded (Howard
1997: 121). An edict carved on a rock at Mulbe, dating from this period,
records an order by the king, in the name of Tsongkapa, that animal
sacrifices be abolished. However, another inscription on the same rock
by the people of Mulbe claims that the order was too hard to execute, for
what would the local deity say if the goat were withheld from him?
(Francke 1998: 79) This tension between the orthodox Buddhism of the
3
religious establishments and more locally-rooted ritual practices is a
recurrent theme in the history of Buddhism in both Tibet and Ladakh.
Between 1394 and 1416, the Moghuls, who had recently conquered
Kashmir, invaded Baltistan and the subsequent history of Ladakh is
punctuated by invasions from Kashmir and wars with the Moghuls
(Petech 1977: 23, 26-28, 30). The period 1450 to 1550, the interregnum
between the Lhachen and the Namgyal dynasties of Ladakhi kings, was
particularly troubled (Howard 1997). Baltistan was the first area of
greater Ladakh to adopt Islam, probably in the early fifteenth century
(Francke 1998: 90), and a number of mosques had been established in
Purig and Baltistan by 1500 (Howard 1997: 122). Over the course of
several centuries the majority of the population in what is now the
Kargil Block adopted Islam. Kashmiri traders also established bases
along their routes, bringing Islam to Leh and its surroundings.
From the sixteenth century onwards Ladakh flourished under the
Namgyal dynasty of kings, who extended their kingdom from Purig, in
the east, to Guge, now part of Tibet, in the west (Petech 1977: 28). They
were adherents of the Kargyud sect of Tibetan Buddhism and founded
a number of monasteries, including Hemis, Phyang, Stakna, Hanle and
Chemre. There were subsequent tensions between the Drukpa and
Gelukpa monasteries in Ladakh, influenced by relations between the two
sects in Tibet. However, Hemis, of the Drukpa Kargyud order, was
patronised by the Ladakhi kings and remains the richest and most
influential in the region today.
The Namgyal kings engaged alternately in warfare and peaceful
relations with Balti and Kashmiri rulers, on the one hand, and Tibetan
leaders on the other. Jamyang Namgyal, for example, was disastrously
defeated by Ali Mir, ruler of Skardu, in the early seventeenth century.
Thereafter he patronised Tibetan monasteries and invited the great
Drukpa monk Staktsang Raspa to Ladakh, under whose influence several
LADAKH 19
monasteries were founded (Petech 1977: 33-37). His successor, Sengge
Namgyal, who reigned from 1616 to 1642, is generally regarded as the
greatest of the Ladakhi kings. His reign saw an extended state of tension
with Guge in western Tibet. Having successfully resolved this, he
entered into conflict with the forces of the Qoshot Mongols under Gushri
Khan, who then exercised considerable power over central Tibet. At the
same time the Moghuls were threatening Purig, then a Muslim chiefship.
The king was successful in his counter-offensive against both Balti and
Moghul forces but it interrupted Ladakhs trade for several years with
disastrous economic consequences (Petech 1977: 41-51).
Deldan Namgyal (1647-91), for his part, became embroiled in Tibets
conflict with Bhutan, which occasioned an offensive by Tibetan and
Mongol forces against Ladakh. Eventually he asked for help from
Ibrahim Khan of Kashmir and although the Moghuls forced the Tibeto-
Mongolian forces to withdraw they imposed stringent conditions on
Ladakh, demanding tribute, monopolising the wool and pashmina trade
and requiring the king to convert to Islam in 1683 (Petech 1977: 63-65).
The following year the Tibetan Regent, concerned about the danger to
Buddhism in Ladakh, sent a mission which succeeded in reconverting
the king. His emissary also negotiated the Tingmosgam treaty of 1684,
which fixed the frontier between the two territories. This treaty recorded
Kashmirs monopoly over the purchase of pashm, which amounted to
the mortgaging of Ladakhs only product of economic value (Rizvi
1999: 54). The treaty also established the triennial lopchak trade mission
from Ladakh to Lhasa, which became one of the most important sources
of commercial relations for Ladakhs merchants. The mission continued
until the 1940s, when economic and technological developments and the
unrest associated with Indian partition made the arduous journey imprac-
ticable (Rizvi 1999: 261).
The lopchak, significantly, took offerings to Lhasa for the Dalai
Lama and other incarnates on the occasion of the mon lam, the great new
year festival, as well as contributions to the Lhasa treasury. This symbol-
ised Ladakhs religious dependence on Tibet (Petech 1977: 78). In 1685,
Deldan Namgyal pronounced his adherence to the Dalai Lamas Gelukpa
sect and sent his son to train as a monk in Tibet. Petech talks of
Ladakhs subordination to Tibet by the end of the seventeenth century
(1977: 87).
Tibetan influence over Ladakh was again exercised in the mid
eighteenth century when conflict broke out between Ladakh and Purig,
a region which had established itself as an independent kingdom under
20 CHAPTER TWO
Trashi Namgyal, uncle of the Ladakhi king, Phuntsog Namgyal, in 1734.
This complex dispute was complicated by threats from Kashmiri troops,
which interrupted trade through the region. The seventh Dalai Lama was
called upon and sent his emissary, the incarnate lama Katog Rigzin
Tsewang Norbu, to intervene. The lama succeeded in settling the dispute
under a treaty dated 1753, which re-established workable relations
between Ladakh and Purig and ensured the resumption of trade. One of
the main players in this conflict was Gyalsas Rinpoche, brother of the
Ladakhi king Phuntsog Namgyal, who acted as regent for the kings son
after his abdication (Petech 1977: 98-108; Schwieger 1997a)
As Schwieger (1997b: 433) describes it, in the late eighteenth century
Ladakh had to deal with two large foreign powers, Tibet on the one side
and the Moghul Empire on the other. Both had an interest in maintaining
the stability and independence of Ladakh, partly as a buffer against the
other and partly to ensure the continuation of smooth trade links between
India, Central Asia and Tibet, in which Leh was a centre of the utmost
importance (Rizvi 1999). There is evidence that as well as the emissary
sent by the Dalai Lama and subsequent visits by Drukpa lamas from
Tibet, the Moghuls also sent diplomatic mediators to Ladakh (Schwieger
1997b: 434). The involvement of certain high ranking Ladakhi lamas in
regional politics is also evident.
Throughout this period the population must frequently have been
mobilised for military campaigns. Under subsequent rulers the kingdom
suffered attacks from both Baltistan and Kashmir eventually, however,
falling to a sustained invasion by the Kashmiri Dogras which began in
1834. In 1842 the territory was formally merged with the dominions of
Gulab Singh and in 1846 he became Maharaja of Kashmir under British
protection.
Administration in the Ladakhi kingdom
By the time of the Dogra invasion the Ladakhi king had established a
position of considerable status and honour and he was surrounded by
a sacral aura (Petech 1977: 154). However, there was no very stable
structure of authority. Petech describes a shifting pattern of power
relations between the king, his senior ministers and the monasteries.
William Moorcroft, who visited Ladakh in 1820-22, describes the then
king, Tsepal Namgyal, as an individual with little real power who
relinquished his affairs entirely to his kalon (Moorcroft and Trebeck
LADAKH 21
Francke (1926: 125), however, describes how the king later seized the prime
4
ministers seal and appropriated power to himself again.
1841: 332-34). Cunningham, who came to the region in 1846 and 1847
after the Dogra invasions, notes that although there had been powerful
kings in the past, in the last years of the kingdom king Tsepal Namgyal,
literally did nothing, leaving the conduct of government to his power-
ful prime minister. He adds that, the apparent power of the prime
minister was absolute, but his real power was much curbed by the wide-
spread authority of the monastic establishments, and by the partial
independence of the petty Gyalpos and district kalons. (1854: 257-8)
4
Carrasco (1959: 162) describes three grades of ministers in the
Ladakhi kingdom: four or five hereditary ministers, kalon, from among
whom the prime ministers were chosen, lesser hereditary minsters,
lonpo, and a small number of elders, rgan sum, of standing and experi-
ence. The first two formed the class of nobility, skudrak. The kalon were
district governors, often relatives of the kings family and many of the
lonpo families were the chiefs of districts that had once been independ-
ent. They remained in charge of their districts and acted as a sort of
advisory council to the government, also supplying officers for the army
(Petech 1977: 156).
Monasteries representing all the major Tibetan sects had been
established in Ladakh by the sixteenth century and they acquired large
land holdings. Although a few high lamas, such as Gyalsas Rinpoche of
Hemis, participated in affairs of state, the religious establishments never
achieved the power that they did in Tibet, where the Sakya and Drukpa
sects dominated a number of lesser states and the Gelukpas effectively
controlled the Ganden Potrang government in Lhasa. This dominated
central Tibet from the mid seventeenth century to the mid twentieth and
its leader, the Dalai Lama, was regarded as supreme ruler and land-
holder, as well as the highest religious figure in the whole of Tibet. In
Ladakh, by contrast, there were no equivalents of the monk officials who
held government positions in Tibet (Carrasco 1959: 166-7). The Ladakhi
government was largely organised by assigning additional duties to the
kalons and lonpos, such as the offices of army chief (dmag dpon),
treasurer (phyag mdzod), chief collector of taxes (shi gam phyag mdzod),
master of the horses (ga ga rta rdzi) and judicial officers (gshags dpon
and khrims dpon) (Carrasco 1959: 178; Cunningham 1841: 259; Petech
1977: 154-7). The income of these officials was basically derived from
their estates and the only salaried posts were those of treasurer and
22 CHAPTER TWO
judicial officers. Unlike in Tibet, there were no provisions for the formal
training of officials, no fixed scale of offices and promotions, no limita-
tions on the period of tenure and no centralised system of local govern-
ment (Carrasco 1959: 179).
Local administration, therefore, remained largely in the hands of
local hereditary chiefs, the lonpos, and officials were only occasionally
sent from central government (Carrasco 1959: 164-5). These local rulers
collected revenues, administered justice, oversaw the system of begar,
transportation provided by local labour as a form of taxation (Grist 1994,
Bray forthcoming), and were responsible for raising armed forces from
their districts. Cunningham describes the inferior officers, mipon or
goba, who were directly responsible to the kalon or lonpo on all criminal
matters and most accounts of revenue (1841: 260). The titles of these
officials varied, however, from one district to another, suggesting
considerable regional autonomy. These mipon or goba were almost
certainly the same village headmen, goba, that are found in every
Ladakhi village today.
Judicial activities
According to the chronicles, Jamyang Namgyal (ca 1595-1616) equal-
ized rich and poor three times (Francke 1926: 106). As Petech (1977:
36) remarks, although this claim seems to be copied from the Tibetan
chronicles, in which it is attributed to the eighth century king Mune
Tsanpo, it probably indicates some form of widespread tax reform.
Nyima Namgyal (1691-1725) was also known for his re-organisation of
the judiciary. The chronicles (Francke 1926: 118) state that he appointed
elders, rganpo, from each district to decide questions and established a
tribunal of elder officers of the state. He consulted state officers when-
ever he delivered a judgment personally and requests for legal docu-
ments were referred to a tribunal consisting of three elder officers of the
state who took oaths on the Three Jewels, the most sacred Buddhist
symbols. Moreover, the roots of every case were carefully inquired into.
Petechs translation adds that, on the whole, this resulted in a sharp
decline of crimes such as robbery and theft (1977: 83).
Francke describes a case settled by Jamyang Namgyal in the seven-
teenth century, which was recorded in a document preserved at Khaltse
(1998: 116-7). The previous king had, apparently, elevated the family of
LADAKH 23
Dragchos could be the title (drag shos), which Jschke (1881: 260) gives as an
5
inferior officer or magistrate.
one Gangva Gyatso, to be Dragchos or chieftain of the village.
5
However, Dondrub Sodnam, of the previously most powerful village
family, had objected and petitioned the king in Leh. The edict then
reads, The elders of Upper and Lower Ladakh, having carefully listened
to the case, cast lots to find exactly the truth, and made the king swear
an oath. Gangva Gyatso won and my oath is.... He then stipulates that
the Dragchos was entitled to be treated as a member of the nobility,
taking the place of honour and the dish of honour at festivals and a share
of the harvest from the peasants and commanding the other noblemen to
treat him accordingly. The use of lots and oaths in legal cases has
historically occurred all over the Tibetan region, a phenomenon I discuss
further in chapter eight.
A document from 1822 also records a dispute between three villages
over the use of some land, which was settled before the king and elders
in Leh (Schuh and Phukhang 1979: Doc LIII). The actual provisions of
the settlement are not mentioned in the document, but what is stated is
that the parties are not to quarrel any further and that any individuals
who do so are to have their property confiscated. It therefore seems that
there were some attempts to systematise the administration of justice
from as early as the seventeenth century, but there is little evidence of
extensive, let alone independent, judicial structures.
Cunningham (1854: 262-8) describes the administration of justice in
the nineteenth century as being truly patriarchal. Anyone injured or
aggrieved proceeded directly to the gyalpo, the kalon of the district or
the goba of his village. An assembly of five to seven elders was then
called, whose business it was to decide on the yul trims the customs of
the land (Petech 1977: 157). In Leh, as Cunningham describes it, judicial
procedures had some formality. A complaint had to be made to the
lonpo, who reported to the kalon, who then gave instructions to the
shakspon, the chief justice, who assembled a court with members
selected from among the rgad po (undoubtedly the same as the rgan
sum and rganpo referred to by Carrasco, above), joined by two or more
trimspon or law officers. Punishments meted out included stripes, fines
and imprisonment with banishment, an ignominious expulsion from
society, being the punishment for murder. However, the commutation of
a punishment was almost always procurable for money, near relationship
with the judges might induce them to impose a lighter sentence and a
24 CHAPTER TWO
Schwieger (1997b: 429) describes the repeated use of precedents in the Ladakh-
6
Purig treaty of 1753, but not in the form of law codes.
The Alchi lonpo who died in 2002 told me that his family only stayed in Photoksar
7
a short while after the appointment and that the move to Alchi was 20 generations ago,
during the time of the early fifteenth century king Gyalpo Dragspa.
bribe judiciously bestowed might persuade the head lama of Hemis to
appeal to the kings mercy, which it was unusual for him to refuse.
Punishments seem to have been more violent in theory than in practice.
According to Cunningham, however, in a doubtful case where the
evidence was considered to be unsatisfactory a decision was obtained by
casting lots or by ordeal. In the latter case the accused had either to draw
a red-hot iron through his hand or take a stone out of a pot of boiling oil
without injury.
The impression one gets is that although there was some formality in
the administration of justice it was still organised on a rather ad hoc
basis, as part of kings business of rule, with the involvement of the
kalon and other existing officials as appropriate. There does not appear
to have been any reference to legal codes or other written precedents.
6
The use of lots and ordeals in difficult cases is significant and finds
echoes in legal processes and systems of governmental administration
recorded throughout the Tibetan plateau.
How, then, was this system of governance experienced in the vil-
lages? In response to my enquiries about historical events the people of
Photoksar described a time of fighting, when their forebears suffered
aggressive raids from other villages and had to gather in a walled area
and defend themselves with slingshots. In this period, they said, one of
the village households provided the goba, a chief with real power who
could order the others around. A strong leader with power to give
commands was obviously needed at this time in order to organise the
defence of the community. They spoke of the kings power as marking
the coming of peace in the region, by which they meant that it brought
an end to inter-village raiding. At some point, they told me, their fore-
bears had removed the power of their local leader. The excuse was that
his family had been responsible for bringing smallpox into the village,
but it is likely that they simply did not need a strong leader any more in
peaceful times.
Then, however, came the power of the lonpo. He was the head of one
of the village families, who was appointed as lonpo by the king in
around the fifteenth century. He was granted lands closer to Leh, nearer
7
LADAKH 25
A document I found in Photoksar dating from the late seventeenth century records
8
an order by the king, Deldan Namgyal, relieving two of the village households of their
taxes because a member of each had been killed during his campaigns (photo 41).
the Indus at Alchi, and moved his residence there sometime later. He
still remained nominally in charge of the Photoksar-Lingshed area,
however, and was responsible for collecting taxes for the king. The
villagers oral histories recall the harshness of his rule and the retainers
who wielded big sticks to enforce his orders. Having got rid of their
internal leader, therefore, the Photoksarpa (the people of the village)
found that a lonpo was imposed on them as a ruler by the king. Like the
coming of the kings own rule to Ladakh, which was established by
virtue of military superiority, the lonpos authority was imposed on them
from the outside.
The Alchi lonpo told me that his ancestors gave the law (trims
tangs) in Photoksar and settled their disputes: he was the shakspon, the
term used for law officials in the central administration. After his family
moved its residence to Alchi people would still come to him for media-
tion from the whole region, he said. However, his main duties were as
one of the kings ministers and his contact with the remote villages was
limited. There was clearly no systematic body of law that was imposed
at local level and nor was the justice system easily accessible from the
remoter areas. We can surmise that in villages like Photoksar the inhabit-
ants were largely left to make their own decisions about internal matters
and to settle their own disputes. They had to pay taxes to the lonpo and
to provide labour for the kings wars and other villages may well have
8
been more closely dominated by the power of the aristocracy. But the
rule of the kings was principally about wars, trade and taxes and pene-
trated very lightly into local affairs.
The legitimation of rule
The earliest Ladakhi kings were outsiders from western Tibet and their
rule was imposed on the area by virtue of their military superiority.
Their regimes did not, however, remain solely dependent on the sanction
of force for their authority. Tibetan myths concerning the early kings
link them with divinity or divine qualities (Haarh 1969) and, as Riaboff
(1997: 110) and Schwieger (1997b) have noted, both Ladakhi and
Zangskari kings claimed descent from, and attributes of, early Tibetan
26 CHAPTER TWO
Petech (1977: 19) puts king Lhachen Morup into the thirteenth century and makes
9
no reference to this practice, but it certainly became customary for monks to go to central
Tibet for higher training.
Dollfus (1996: 13) describes how in the village of Hemis Shukpachan the annual
10
ceremony to the village god used to be carried out by a representative of the king, thus
establishing a control of the social space of the village. This did not occur in Photoksar,
however, and lapsed in Hemis Shukpachan with the demise of the kingdom.
kingship. On the other hand, the political authority of the Ladakhi rulers
did not develop out of their power as ritual specialists and guarantors of
prosperity, in accordance with Hocarts (1927) theory of the emergence
of kingship. By the time the Ladakhi kings established their rule in
Ladakh, Buddhism had already developed its own structures of power
and influence and these did not merge, as they did in central Tibet with
the rise of the Sakyapa and Gelukpa sects, to positions of political
dominance. Rather, the kings patronised the monasteries in order to
secure their support. Furthermore, from as early as the fourteenth
century, under king Lhachen Morup, it became customary for novice
monks to go to Tibet for training (Francke 1926: 98), which would have
meant that local monasteries remained subordinate to the superior
Tibetan establishments and ensured that they did not become too power-
ful in their own right. Whilst, therefore, the Dalai Lama in Tibet was,
9
first and foremost, a religious leader, uniting ritual with secular author-
ity, the power of the Ladakhi kings remained distinct from that of the
monasteries. The kings established themselves as monastic patrons and
only performed limited ritual functions, for example during the New
Year and Spring festivals, which were not under the control of the
monasteries (Ribbach 1986: Ch 7).
10
The Ladakhi chronicles also attribute meritorious, as well as ritual,
qualities to the early kings:
After a council had been held by them all they said: Now we must elect
from among us a lord of the fields, a man who is able to distinguish
between good and bad, a man of great diligence and courage, a man king
towards all men, and great in merit generally, who is wise in all works as
well as in speech, who is clever in administering judgment (literally,
measuring). All of the field-owners offered him tribute and he received
honour from the whole assembly of men..... (Francke 1926: 68)
This indicates that, at least by the seventeenth century, the time the
chronicles were written, the Ladakhi kings were legitimising their
LADAKH 27
Documents concerning the early kings of central Tibet describe their descent from
11
heaven at the request of people who were without a ruler, huddled into fortresses and
unable to unite and settle their disputes (Stein 1972: 47-48)
The parallels with the Tibetan chronicles indicate that these may originally have
12
been Tibetan ideas, which were adopted in Ladakh.
Gutschow suggests figures of 2% and 8% respectively, based on her fieldwork in
13
Karsha village in Zangskar (1998: 62), while the neighbouring village of Stongde had
two garba families, out of a total of thirty-one extended families, in 1980 (Attenborough
1994: 306-08). Erdmann (1990: 143) suggests that the upper and lower classes were
roughly equal in size, each comprising less than 5% of the total population, although it
is generally agreed that the lower castes together form a larger group than the upper
classes. Aggarwal (2004: 177) refers to a Scheduled Tribes census which lists 2,100
members of the lower castes, equivalent to 8.4% of the population. However, unofficial
estimates, she says, are closer to 5,000.
authority by reference to the wisdom of their predecessors and their
response to the demands of their subjects. The attribution of tax
11
reforms to the sixteenth century king Jamyang Namgyal similarly
reflects an ideal of kingship: the good king uses his power to ensure
equality among his subjects, reflecting mutual duties between ruler and
ruled. As the narratives of my Photoksar informants also indicate, the
12
kings achieved some legitimacy in the eyes of their people as the bringe-
rs of peace. These Ladakhi kings thus appear to have developed an
authority that was a mixture of the divine (claimed descent from the
gods, a limited ritual role and patronage of the monasteries) and the
moral or contractual (their response to the needs of their subjects,
assumption of obligations towards them and justness of their rule).
Over the centuries this authority became institutionalised through the
construction of a social hierarchy. An aristocracy was created by confer-
ring a higher social status on a small, endogamous, ruling class of kalons
and lonpos, collectively known as the skudrak, and the kings placed
themselves at the head of this hierarchy. Petech describes an increase in
the hereditary character of the highest offices of state under Nyima
Namgyal in the early 18th century (1977: 93). The skudrak probably
accounted for less than 5% of the population and below them in the
hierarchy, which is still widely recognised on social occasions today,
were the commoners, the mimangs. Below these were the rigsngan, three
castes separated on the basis of impurity. This under-class of black-
smiths, garba, musicians, mon and itinerant performers, beda probably
makes up less than 10% of the population. An extensive system of
13
social status, comparable to the caste hierarchy in India, did not, there-
28 CHAPTER TWO
As Quigley (1993: 16) points out, the elaborate Indian caste system evaporates
14
above a certain altitude in the Himalayas. His theory (1993: Ch 6) is that it is linked to
the emergence of complex, agricultural-based, surplus-producing societies, which were
politically unstable and in which internecine conflict undermined structures of kingship.
Caste, a structure based on kinship, emerged as a means of generating order in such
societies. Whether or not he is right about this, caste gives many lowland Indian societies
a radically different character from those of Ladakh.
fore, develop in Ladakh. The Ladakhi social hierarchy elevated the
14
king and a tiny group of aristocratic families, which helped to legitimate
their political authority, but village leaders, goba and mirpon, did not
form part of the hereditary nobility and neither, even, did the rganpo
who advised the king.
We can surmise that the kings were a very distant form of authority
for the inhabitants of the remoter villages. They were at the head of a
hierarchy, members of whose upper strata barely touched these commu-
nities, save when their representatives visited to collect taxes and throw
an annual party, as they described it to me in Photoksar. They may have
been a more immediate presence in the villages along the Indus valley,
whose inhabitants also had greater access to Leh and the ceremonies
associated with the kings entourage. At best, however, the aristocracy
were a small elite, clustered around the king, and this almost certainly
has a bearing on subsequent attitudes to centralised power and authority
on the part of Ladakhi villagers.
As I describe in more detail in chapter four, the monasteries repre-
sented distinct centres of power, based upon the religious authority of
their monks and reincarnate lamas. Although senior lamas, like the 18th
century Gyalsas of Hemis, had their origins in noble or royal families
and played a significant role in affairs of state, monks could be drawn
from any of the social classes. They still take the top places in the social
hierarchy, above the skudrak, today and certain high lamas have risen to
prominent positions within political institutions of the Indian state.
There was, thus, a dual system of power and authority, secular and
religious, whose two strands were, in many respects, interconnected but
also remained distinct. This dual system is still significant in Ladakh
today, although it has become complicated by the advent of the Indian
administration. It also remains significant, although in a different form,
within the village.
LADAKH 29
The Dogra period
From 1846, when the princely state of Kashmir was integrated into the
Indian Empire, Ladakh was governed by a Wazir, appointed in Kashmir.
The Dogras initial activities consisted primarily in the imposition of
another layer of taxes on the population (van Beek 1999: 436). William
Henry Johnson, who held the office of Wazir from 1871 to 1883, began
the survey that eventually led to the land settlements of 1908-9, by
which every area of cultivated land in Ladakh was mapped and its
ownership was recorded. The maps and records produced during this
period are still the basis of the land records kept in Leh, according to
which, land revenue officials decide cases of ownership. The chronicles,
which were continued up until the early twentieth century, record that
Johnson assembled the nobility and other people of high rank, including
the monks of Hemis and Chemre monasteries, to obtain their agreement
to the imposition of the new taxes and Francke (1926: 141-42) records
that he was criticised for concerning himself more with the nobility than
the peasantry. Old forms of status were not, therefore, immediately
swept away.
Grist (1994: 267, referring to Gordon 1876:12), says that the Dogras
initially tried to implement a new system of local administration. How-
ever, this failed and they quickly reverted to a set of arrangements that
were very similar to the old, albeit giving new names to their officers. As
Bray (forthcoming) puts it, the Dogra administration took over the
existing system and, rather than making fundamental changes, reinforced
it, to extract maximum economic benefit. The preliminary land settle-
ment report (Muhammad 1908), for example, records that until around
1901 the gobas, appointed and changed from year to year by the villag-
ers themselves, had been responsible for the collection of land revenue,
the provision of begar and the supply of provisions to visitors. It also
indicates that a lambadars agency had recently been set up, with
responsibility for the collection of taxes, and that the gobas were
recognised as local lambadars, although under the supervision of the
kardars (an Urdu term). Village administration and responsibility for the
collection of taxes, therefore, remained with the gobas.
Above the gobas were the kardars who, according to the preliminary
settlement, represented the gentry and in some cases the nobility. The
names listed in this report indicate that at least one of these was a
Muslim and one a kalon (Muhammad 1908). It states that all important
services connected with judicial and revenue administration, supply of
30 CHAPTER TWO
transport and provisions etc. were rendered by the Kardars. Some of
them, it continues, possess considerable influence in the distant
borders of the State. The report does not elaborate on the role played by
these officials but it seems that their primary duty was to liaise between
the villages and the central administration. The Alchi lonpo told me that
his family had been appointed as zaildar or kalkar (which must be the
same as kardar) under the Wazir, who gave him orders which he passed
on to the goba. In Photoksar they remembered having to pay taxes to the
kasdar or zaildar in Lamayuru.
The main administrative changes brought about by the Dogras,
therefore, appear to have been the recognition of the goba as a tax
official and the replacement of the kalons and lonpos as officials with
responsibility for tax collection to the centre, by kardars, many of whom
were, in fact, the same people. Of course, the language of the new rulers
was quite different from that of the Ladakhis, which must have posed
further administrative problems.
Relations between the administration and the people were far from
happy. The chronicles report repeated petitions by the Ladakhi people
to the Dogras to lessen their taxes and in 1886 there was a serious
complaint about the unjust seizure of land, bribery by the rich, false
accusations and beatings of the poor (Francke 1926: 141-5). van Beek
(1996: Ch 4; 2001: 535) describes a letter of 1879 asking for the rein-
statement of Wazir Johnson. This took the form of an appeal from the
people of Ladakh on the grounds that earlier sahibs had taken all the
edibles and pack animals without paying for them and punished people
for no reason. Several attempts by different Wazirs to reform the tax
system were opposed by Ladakhi delegations, notably the monks, whose
establishments stood to lose revenue (Bray forthcoming).
In the early years of the twentieth century, as described by the
historian Shridhar Kaul (1992), district officials used their powers in a
despotic way, especially tahsildaris, land revenue officials, but also the
Wazir himself, who combined the roles of Superintendent of Police,
District Magistrate and Judge. Local constables, he reports, invented
crimes in order to be able to extract bribes and in Zangskar years were
reckoned to be good or bad depending on the number of visits from
officials. A similarly bleak picture of the pre-independence period was
painted by a number of Leh families (Crook and Shakya 1983). The law
was administered very harshly they said: people could be chained up for
simple offences and state officials, especially patwaris, the lowest land
revenue officers, were very domineering.
LADAKH 31
The Dogras obviously saw themselves as being responsible for law
and order in Ladakh and there does appear to have been a certain amount
of judicial activity in Leh and Kargil during their administration. The
chronicles indicate that Maharajah Rambir Singh, who governed from
1857 to 1883 created a law book, called the Kannun (from the Urdu
qanun) (Francke 1926: 138-148), although I have seen no record of its
content nor evidence of its application in practice. Hanlon (1894) refers
to the Wazirs court which sat once or twice a week, when required, and
heard cases of petty theft, encroachment on a neighbours land, allowing
livestock to stray onto fields and adultery. A description of a court case
is given by Rassul Galwan (1923), a Muslim who lived in Leh and
accompanied Francis Younghusband on several of his expeditions at the
end of the nineteenth century. When he was a young man one of the
Wazirs soldiers accused Rassul of adultery. He was taken to the Wazirs
court where a number of people were called to give evidence. Although
his mother tried to bribe the Wazir, Rassul was found guilty, ordered to
pay a fine and spent a month in jail. Ribbach, a Moravian missionary
who worked in Ladakh between 1896 and 1913, wrote a fictional
account of the life and conversion to Christianity of a village head-man.
In it, he describes one incident in which a thief was brought before the
headman in his capacity as village magistrate, whereupon he held a
short trial, not wanting to go to Leh to seek judgment. In a later incident,
however, the head-man was, himself, arrested and tried while on a visit
to Leh and was invited to offer a bribe to a police officer in order to
obtain an appointment as a district official (Ribbach 1986).
Probably as part of the land settlement process, a survey was under-
taken by the Assistant Settlement Officer of Ladakh, Thakar Singh, to
establish a code of tribal custom. The report (Singh 1912) attempts to
identify local customs relating to marriage, succession, wills, gifts and
so on. It also contains short reports of a number of cases that had been
decided by the Wazir, Assistant Wazir or Tahsildar in the previous ten
years. The report indicates that in many instances the officer had sent for
evidence of local customs and decided the case accordingly. Twenty-two
cases are reported, on matters of divorce, maintenance and entitlement
to property, most of which originated in Leh, just a few coming from
nearby villages. However, the survey does not appear to have been
translated into a set of codified laws. It seems that the Wazirs simply
continued to provide an informal dispute resolution service over which
a variety of officers might preside, which was available for those who
32 CHAPTER TWO
wanted to and were able to travel to Leh to use it, rather as the kings
administration had done earlier.
In other colonial situations around the world, extensive exercises
were undertaken to record and codify custom, or what was regarded as
such by colonial officials. This was then developed into a corpus of
regulation, or customary law, which was recognised in the courts and
integrated into the colonisers systems of government and administration
of justice (see, for example, Bloch 1971: 31-2 and Chanock 1985). The
exercise carried out by Singh appears to have been a preliminary step
towards such an exercise for Ladakh. However, it did not result in a code
of customary law that was applied in any systematic way. Rather, the
pattern of light and unsystematised judicial control by the centralised
administration continued.
It is important, therefore, not to make assumptions about the Ladakhi
experience of colonial rule by analogy with writings on the colonial
experience in other parts of the world. The historical reports offer a
picture of an administration primarily concerned with the raising of
taxes, in money or kind, the provision of begar and the institution of
certain limited improvements, such as irrigation and schooling (Kaul
1992). In the urban centres these decades saw a succession of adminis-
trative, fiscal and economic changes, which must have been unsettling,
but also provided the opportunity for members of the old elite and
enterprising individuals like Rassul Galwan, to obtain new positions of
power and take part in new economic activities. Power relations must
have been shifting and uncertain as a succession of outsiders, Kashmiri
and British, came and went.
The reports of my informants in Photoksar suggest that the villagers
main experience of government during this period continued to be tax
collection and the burdensome begar, which required that several men
leave the village with their pack animals, to provide transport for
officials, for two or three months at a time. From their perspective, the
various officials, the sahibs, had the status of upper classes and the
Wazir was a person to whom respect was due, whose family (and dog)
had to be transported back and forth between Leh and Skardu, the
summer and winter capitals, but who also rewarded service with gener-
ous tips. Many institutions of bureaucratic control - courts, police and
land settlements - were introduced during this period. However, as
regards the practical maintenance of law and order and the settlement of
disputes, the picture one obtains from these accounts is that, particularly
in the remoter areas, the structures of village organisation and the goba
LADAKH 33
These events have been extensively analysed by Bertelsen (1996, 1997) and van
15
Beek (1996).
Practices of polyandry have been extensively discussed in the literature on Tibet
16
(Prince Peter 1963; Goldstein 1971c; Levine 1988; Crook and Crook 1994). Practices
vary considerably throughout the region. The official marriage of a wife to a number (but
generally not all) of the sons of a pastoral family is found in Amdo, although the system
is relatively rare. In Ladakh the wife is married to the eldest son and the arrangements
between her and the younger brothers are informal. The essential element is that there is
only one wife per generation, as it was in central Tibet (Goldstein 1971c), a practice
system continued to function relatively autonomously and the officials
remained largely distant from the everyday life of the villagers.
Economic and legal developments in the twentieth century
In 1934 the Young Mens Buddhist Association (YMBA) was formed
by a number of men from the Ladakhi elite, in particular members of the
Leh kalon family, who were also renowned sponsors of Hemis monas-
tery. They formed links with a group of Kashmiri activists, the neo-
Buddhists, who had adopted the cause of the Buddhist Ladakhi people
and, in 1932, set up an association to represent the interests of Ladakh
to the Glancy Commission. This was looking into the conditions of the
people in Jammu and Kashmir. The two groups shared the view that a
15
gradual shift in the demographic composition of Ladakh in favour of
Muslims was occurring and in 1941 they secured the passing of the
Abolition of Polyandrous Marriages Act by the state of Jammu and
Kashmir (Bertelsen 1997; van Beek, 2001: 533). As Bertelsen (1997: 67-
68) remarks, this was the first collective representation made on behalf
of a large segment of the people of Ladakh and it laid the ground for the
practice of identification in Ladakh along religious lines.
Shortly after the Polyandry Act the YMBA secured the passing of the
Ladakhi Succession to Property Act 1943, which stipulated that all land
should be divided equally between the sons of a land-owner on his death.
This was replaced, in 1956, by the Hindu Law of Succession Act, which
still applies to Buddhists and requires equal division between both sons
and daughters. These laws initially had a negligible impact. Among the
Buddhist Ladakhis it continued to be the norm to have one wife per
household, per generation, which is the way in which the Ladakhis
themselves describe their practice. In the remoter areas this continues
today. Primo-geniture remained the norm until the 1980s, although it
16
34 CHAPTER TWO
which served to maintain the landholding intact.
depended very much on the area, and land division only became
common-place in 1990s. Indeed, one of my most knowledgeable Leh
informants even considered that these laws had not been introduced until
the 1970s. The twentieth century has, therefore, seen an increase in legal
consciousness among certain sections of Ladakh society, with the idea
that social reform can and should be brought about through legislation.
At the same time the agitation for autonomy and benefits for the region,
such as the petition to the Glancy commission, was often pursued
through the language of entitlements.
Compared to these early legal activities, however, far greater changes
were subsequently brought about by the social campaigns of the Ladakhi
Buddhist Association (LBA) and the Ladakhi Gonpa Association (LGA).
In 1950, after Indian independence, the LGA was formed by Bakula
Rinpoche of Spituk monastery, primarily to resist the effects of the
Indian land reforms, which would have decimated the monastic land
holdings. In this it was successful and, together with the YMBA, it
began a campaign against polyandry, animal sacrifice and the consump-
tion of barley beer, chang (van Beek 1996: Ch 5; Mills 2003: 302, 320).
In the mean time, a new administration had been established. After
Indian independence some Ladakhis obtained seats in the Kashmir
parliament but they were not, generally, considered to be capable or
sufficiently educated to run their own affairs (van Beek 1999: 437) and
the region continued to be administered by a District Commissioner
appointed by the State government. Senior officials still tend to be sent
from outside the region, although the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Council
was established in 1995 to give the region a measure of autonomy.
In 1949, the Indian Prime Minister Nehru visited Ladakh and de-
clared his intention that the backward Ladakhis should be assisted in
developing their region as part of the modern Indian nation state. The
results, encouraged by the demands of Ladakhi religious and political
leaders, in particular Kushok Bakula Rinpoche, profoundly affected
many aspects of Ladakhi life. The settlement and cancellation of debts
shortly after independence led to considerable improvement in the living
conditions of many Ladakhi villagers, who had been heavily indebted to
landlords and money lenders (Phylactou 1989: 44; van Beek 2001: 534).
Two important motor roads were constructed: the two-day link with
Srinagar, along which truck-loads of subsidised foods, fuel and building
materials are brought throughout the summer and subsequently a link
LADAKH 35
van Beek (2001: 537) and Aggarwal (2004: 73-74) discuss some of the social
17
effects of these changes, including the sense of dissatisfaction experienced by many of
the newly educated youth, unable to find suitable employment.
with Manali much used by tourists and the army. A hydro-electric plant
has been constructed, health and education services introduced and
tourism has been encouraged since 1974. The army has been a huge
presence since the Sino-Indian wars of 1962 and 1971 and because of
the continuing Indo-Pakistani frontier conflict. It maintains the main
roads and creates a demand for cash crops and opportunities for wage
labour.
17
From a village perspective many of these changes have been unequiv-
ocally beneficial. The importation of cheap food rations of wheat-flour,
rice and salt, along with kerosene and gas cylinders, has dramatically
improved food security. In Photoksar they told me of times when food
was so scarce that they had to travel to Lingshed, a good ten hour walk
for a healthy, unencumbered man, and return with sacks of barley on
their backs when supplies ran low in the spring. One house in the village
suffered so badly that its family emigrated to Zangskar, to be followed
some years later by its successor in the same household. Since the advent
of rations, however, there has always been enough of the staple foods
and the populations fertility has dramatically improved since the 1980s.
The government has established a primary school in every village that
has more than ten children of school age and pays a trained medical
assistant for each village. The larger villages have Middle and Higher
schools and there are two or three boarding Higher Schools for children
from remote areas, like Photoksar, who otherwise would not have access
to secondary education. There is an excellent hospital in Leh. In prac-
tice, however, the provision of services to the remote villages is far from
satisfactory. Trained teachers and medical assistants do not like these
postings and fulfill their duties, at best, half the time. In fifteen months
I did not see the Photoksar medical assistant once. A bureaucratic
administration, marred by corruption, together with a reluctance to lodge
complaints, allows this situation to prevail. The Public Works Depart-
ment maintains the roads that branch off the main highways when they
are damaged by floods and land-slips, but it does a poor job of maintain-
ing the paths and bridges in the remoter areas. Nevertheless, the govern-
ment provides a basic level of services which is beneficial to the vil-
lages, in theory if less so in practice.
36 CHAPTER TWO
Her views are largely shared by John Crook (1994).
18
For a thorough criticism see van Beek (2000b).
19
There is a debate in some quarters about the overall benefits of such
development in Ladakh, led by Helena Norberg-Hodge whose book,
Ancient Futures (1991), is much publicised and widely read. She paints
a depressing picture of the pernicious effect that the governments
development efforts are having on the local ecology and the impact that
new material values are having on village life. Many of the points she
18
makes about damage to the environment, dependence on the central state
and threats to village and family social structures from migration to the
towns have much force. However, the picture is one-sided, failing to
mention the benefits brought about by the introduction of rations,
schools, health-care and roads. It is not my intention to enter into these
19
complex debates about the effects of development, however. Their
relevance to the subject of this book lies in their impact on village
organisation and legal practices and in the relations between the villages,
representatives of the central administration and development agencies.
The fact that villages now look for the provision of services to the
centre means that many issues which were formerly organised by the
villagers themselves are now dealt with by government departments:
agricultural improvements, the maintenance of paths and bridges and the
provision of food and fuel. For pathway repairs and certain agricultural
developments the villagers of Photoksar must, or at least can, travel to
the relevant towns to find money and other forms of assistance. They are
also entitled to educational and medical services, which are administered
from Leh and Khaltse. Since those who should provide these services
often do not care to travel to remote villages, securing development and
progress depends upon finding a representative who can travel to Leh
and negotiate with the authorities. This requires time, money and, most
importantly, the confidence and skills to deal with officials who are
often supercilious, rude and do not speak Ladakhi. These arduous tasks
are generally deemed to be the responsibility of the goba and they
represent new duties which demand a certain skill and education. This
has had an impact on internal village organisation and the balance of
power, but much more so in the villages closer to the centre, where the
opportunities for obtaining material benefits are greater.
LADAKH 37
The activities of the LBA and the issues of identity and communalism have been
20
extensively analysed by van Beek (1996, 1999, 2001), Bertelsen (1996, 1997) and
Aggarwal (2004).
Political agitation in Leh
The YMBA started to become politically active again in the late 1960s
and reformed itself as the LBA. It organised the first agitation in Leh in
favour of regional autonomy in 1969. This was followed by an Action
20
Committee for central administration which, in 1980, made its first
demands for Scheduled Tribes status for Ladakhis, which would have
resulted in reserved government jobs and educational opportunities,
concessionary loans and other funds. This year also saw the first in a
series of clashes between Buddhist and Muslims, which continued over
a number of years. The LBAs movement for autonomy continued
throughout the 1980s and culminated in violent agitation in Leh in 1989
between Buddhists and Muslims. This was something of a watershed,
the agitation diminishing in subsequent years as negotiations for auton-
omy took place and, finally, the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Council
(LAHDC) was established in 1996.
As well as its agitation for regional autonomy, the LBA began
campaigning in the villages in the early 1970s. Its main aims were said
to be (i) to preserve and promote the religious and cultural traditions of
Ladakh, (ii) to disseminate and promote the teachings of Buddhism, (iii)
to eradicate the social evils prevailing amongst Buddhists and (iv) to
promote the Bodhi (Tibetan) language. At the height of its power and
influence in the late 1980s, it established regional groups and village
representatives and attempted to create its own administrative and
judicial structures in the villages. In 1989 the Youth Wing was estab-
lished and a wide network of committees promoted a new form of
Buddhist morality, campaigning against the social evils of alcohol and
polyandry. In this it was supported by the LGA, which had a similar
agenda to reform religious practices. This can be regarded as part of a
long history of efforts by Buddhist leaders to establish what they con-
sider to be proper Buddhist practices in Ladakh. The communal tensions
that exploded in Leh were played out in divisions and conflict between
such committees and other village organisations, especially in villages
with a mixed Buddhist and Muslim population (Aggarwal 2004: 72, 77-
87).
38 CHAPTER TWO
For example, one Leh-pa told me that the gifts and khatags, white scarves, given
21
at weddings were gradually becoming very expensive and the LBA had usefully issued
a ruling about the maximum amount that should be spent.
In order to ensure support for its own leadership, the LBA also
encouraged the appointment of a person of authority, competence and
initiative as village headman, rather than allowing the post to rotate, as
had been the norm (van Beek 1996: 323). Ahmed (1996: Ch 8.2) de-
scribes the way in which the LBA publicly criticised the practice of the
Chang Tang nomads who elected their goba using dice. The LBA also
encouraged its groups to become involved in dispute resolution. Srinivas
(1998: Ch 6) reports from Nubra that in the early 1990s its committees
had influence with the gobas and were mediating in disputes. The Alchi
lonpo told me that there had been a regional LBA committee based in
Saspol, close to Alchi, of which he had been the President and that, as
such, he had become involved in resolving disputes throughout the area.
In the late 1990s, however, the Saspol organisation, like most of the
LBAs regional committees, was disbanded and everyone I talked to,
including current LBA officials, said that the organisation now wields
less power in the villages. The LBA remains politically active in Leh,
continuing to campaign for increased autonomy for Ladakh, but its direct
influence is now limited to the issuing of social rulings from time to
time. Whatever the former strength of the LBA, its power was linked
21
to its political campaign for autonomy in the late 1980s and early 1990s
and, with the creation of the LAHDC, this activity has diminished. At
the same time, its influence on village politics has reduced to being
negligible and authority over local affairs has reverted to the hands of
the goba and villagers themselves. No-one I talked to would offer a firm
view as to why the authority of the LBA in the villages had declined
recently. However, its campaigns had obviously had no dramatic effect
on village-level politics and its committees have not supplanted the
existing structures of village meeting and headman. Consciously or not,
the villagers were mostly able to resist a direct attempt on the part of the
LBA to interfere in their internal organisation. It is, as I describe in later
chapters, the activities of development organisations and entrepreneurs
that have subsequently had a greater affect on relations of power and
authority in the villages.
It is clear from van Beeks accounts that the LBAs activities were
much influenced by religious leaders, high lamas and rinpoches, who
were able to use their authority to add to the movements power and
LADAKH 39
influence. By the 1960s Kushok Bakula Rinpoche of Spituk, Togdan
Rinpoche of Phyang and Khanpo Rinpoche of Tikse monasteries were
all active in politics and variously formed alliances with other prominent
Ladakhis, including members of the LBA. van Beek suggests that many
of the concerns of the LBA were genuinely the same as those of the
monks and the LGA. However, the LBA represents a new type of
centralised power and authority in Ladakh, which has obviously been
successful, at least in part, because of its identification with religious
leaders. van Beeks own informants expressed the view that in order to
get the support of a significant part of the Ladakhi population the co-
operation of religious leaders, both Buddhist and Muslim, was needed.
You cannot go against the ka, teaching or command, of a religious
leader, he was told (van Beek 1996: 199). He also attributes the 1998
electoral success of the National Conference party in Ladakh to the
skilful enlisting, by Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, of two
ambitious Buddhist leaders, Khanpo Rinpoche of Tikse and Togdan
Rinpoche of Phyang (van Beek 2001: 546).
The LBA has also been able to use the social status of many of its
leaders to add to its influence. Rigzin Namgyal, the second President of
the YMBA, was from the powerful Leh kalon family and in 1988
Thupstan Chhewang, the nephew of Bakula Rinpoche, was elected as
President. He is from the Shey lonpos family and married to the daugh-
ter of the Queen of Stok, descended from the old royal family. He had
also been recognised as a reincarnate lama, which, although he had
chosen to live a secular life, added to his status. Commenting on this,
one Leh-dweller told me that Tsering Samphel, the current President of
the LBA would eventually acquire a similar status himself but that this
would take a while because he was not from an upper class family.
A number of Ladakhis, particularly in Leh, suggested that the status
of the upper classes has been very much in decline recently. At least one
kalon family has accepted marriage with commoners and one of my
informants, a man from the Nubra lonpos family, only mentioned his
status to me, and with some embarrassment, after I had known him for
a long time. However, it is evident that the old aristocratic statuses
remain significant. Many still insist on using their titles of lonpo and
kalon and some people told me that the importance of these titles has
revived since the later 1990s. The Alchi lonpos elder son, for example,
who worked for a development organisation in Leh, told me, with some
embarrassment, of his difficulty in finding a wife. His family, still based
in their village, does not have the wealth now expected by some upper
40 CHAPTER TWO
In fact, when I returned in 2003, he was married to a girl from the lonpo family in
22
Mulbekh.
class brides. However, it would be impossible for him to marry a com-
moner, he told me, because the people of Alchi would not accept it.
22
Status is especially evident on social occasions among the women, who
put great store by their position in the social hierarchy and may end up
in tears if they feel their due status has not been respected. It was
suggested to me by one Leh dweller that this is partly attributable to
Thupstan Chhewang who publicly insists on the recognition of his social
as well as his political position.
There has been a strong movement on the part of the urban-based
elite, including the LBA, to abolish discrimination against the lower
castes (Aggarwal 2004: 174-75). This has had some positive effects with
a few mon and garba men rising to high office. It is a more difficult task
in the villages, however, and Tsering Samphel, president of the LBA,
explained to me that he and a number of others had to physically place
themselves below members of the lower castes in the social hierarchy in
his village and to assist them in carrying their dead to the cremation
ground, activities normally shunned by commoners. Only in this way
could other commoner families gradually be persuaded to ignore the
caste-based rules, he explained. At the same time, however, I heard the
story of a group of commoners who were trying to deny the status of the
upper classes in Leh. They were wrong-footed when the skudrak said
they would give up their positions only if the commoners accepted the
lower castes in their seating lines. The commoners hurriedly backed
down.
Patterns of power, authority and influence in contemporary Ladakh
are, thus, complicated by the interaction between distinct forms of
social, religious and political status, and the introduction of new forms
of wealth, which have altered these patterns to some extent. In some
villages this has led to changes in the authority structures and, often, to
factionalism and power struggles, as I describe in chapter nine. How-
ever, old established statuses of the upper classes and respect for reli-
gious authority remain effective and potent forces.
For the people of a village like Photoksar, the events I have summa-
rised in this chapter have meant that Leh, the political centre of power
in Ladakh, has changed from being an extractor of taxes, patron of the
monasteries and a place of superior social status, to a provider of
material benefits. The elite who inhabit it now fall into three categories -
LADAKH 41
government officers (often sent from Jammu) and local Ladakhi politi-
cians, including those involved in the agitation for autonomy; members
of development organisations who can provide benefits for the village;
and those with aristocratic status, who are often also members of one of
the other categories. The monasteries represent a more diffuse power,
but their lamas enjoy social status and, often, political power. Ladakhi
monks are still sent to train in Tibetan monasteries in India, from where
high status teachers, including the Dalai Lama, travel to give teachings
in Ladakh. Buddhist ideas and ideologies are, thus, brought into the
region, and further disseminated through local teachings and the monas-
teries support of small temples in each village. I consider the influence
of religious practitioners further in chapter five. First, however, I turn to
Photoksar and describe the villagers maintenance of internal social
relations, their attitudes to the management of conflict and relations with
outsiders and external influences.
CHAPTER THREE
VILLAGE ORGANISATION
At 4,200m Photoksar is one of the highest villages in Ladakh. It is part
of the Wanla region of Sham, lower Ladakh, and lies on the historic
summer route that links the main Indus valley, via Lamayuru, with the
trans-Sengge La group of villages. This route continues into Zangskar
and used to be the main artery between the two regions before roads
were built in the 1970s. Previously Photoksar was a weeks journey from
Leh and it is still a long days walk from the end of the nearest road. The
journey involves traversing either the difficult Shi Shi La pass which, at
4,900m, is snow-bound in the winter, or the rocky Askuta gorge, treach-
erous when the river rises in the summer. The nearest villages along
either route take several hours to reach. Villagers from across the Sengge
La, a pass of over 5,000m in the other direction, and monks from
Lingshed, the small Gelukpa monastery in that area, still pass through
Photoksar on their way to Leh. However, the Zangskaris now use the
motor road to Kargil.
As in most Ladakhi villages, the dwellings are scattered around an
area of relatively flat land divided into fields irrigated by water chan-
nelled from the river. This is, itself, fed by snow fields and melting
glaciers. The majority of the houses are clustered on the edge of a steep
ravine above the main river, from which the women must carry up their
households water along precipitous paths in the winter. There is a
separate group of houses at Machu, forty-five minutes walk down the
valley, but these are treated, to all intents and purposes, as part of the
village (photos 11-13).
Barley is the only grain that grows at this altitude. Peas provide
winter fodder for the livestock and these are also dried and ground into
a coarse flour which, when mixed with barley flour, provides the villag-
ers heavy, but nutritious, staple food, paba. This is generally eaten with
stored turnips and radishes or dried lettuce, in the winter, and with
yoghurt or fresh vegetables in the summer. This diet is supplemented by
stews based on noodles made out of the wheat flour that the villagers
bring from Wanla, at the end of the road, and the meat of their sheep,
goats and yaks. Photoksar is lucky in having access to large areas of
good pasture, high in the mountains, where yaks are tended during the
summer by herders living in tiny stone huts, who return periodically to
VILLAGE ORGANISATION 43
the village with butter and cheese. These yaks, along with the flocks of
sheep and goats kept year-round in the village, provide milk and butter,
as well as meat and wool, which is woven into coats, blankets, mats,
ropes and saddle bags. Women spin constantly throughout the long
winter evenings, when they cluster in their dark kitchens, around the yak
dung stoves.
The diet is not rich and the villagers tell of serious food shortages in
the past, when late snows or heavy rain destroyed their crops. The Indian
governments food rations have dramatically improved food security. A
third of the barley crop can now be spared to make chang, the local
barley beer, which is consumed in large quantities on all social occa-
sions. Social events regularly punctuate the daily round of life, espe-
cially in the winter when temperatures fall to -30/C, or lower, and hover
below freezing all day. When skies are clear the sun still provides
warmth, however, and the villagers can gather on their roofs to celebrate
weddings, births, the new year or one of the many religious festivals that
punctuate the year.
Most households still depend on their fields and livestock for subsis-
tence and the opportunities for wage labour are limited. Some young
men go into the army and are able to send money home. There is one
carpenter in the village and a few of the younger people are, in the early
2000s, completing their schooling and seeking jobs as teachers or
medical assistants or in business ventures in Leh. Otherwise, the sale of
animals is the main source of income. Villagers travel regularly to
Wanla to collect their rations of flour, rice and kerosene, or to Leh
where they buy household goods. Their social links, by contrast, are
concentrated on other villages in the Wanla area, both those towards the
road and those over the Sengge La, where marriages are contracted and
kin links provide the excuse for social visits. Brides generally now come
from the villages further into the mountains because the construction of
the roads means that families in the better connected villages are unwill-
ing to send their daughters to Photoksar.
The village has just over two hundred inhabitants, divided into
twenty-two main households, khangba and a fluctuating number of
smaller khangu. In around half of the households all generations live
together in the khangba, but in others the older generation or two has
moved into a smaller, dependent house, the khangu, with younger
children, leaving the eldest son, his wife and children in the khangba.
This practice is found widely in Ladakh and distinguishes the region
from other parts of the Tibetan plateau (Phylactou 1989; Dollfus 1989).
44 CHAPTER THREE
There has been considerable discussion of the nature of the household in Ladakh
1
(Phylactou 1989; Dollfus 1989) and the applicability of Levi-Strausss concept of the
household society (Kaplanian, forthcoming).
Throughout most of my fieldwork there were eighteen khangu in
Photoksar, but the number fluctuates, unlike that of the khangba, as
families divide and older generations die out.
Khangltakh, the household in which I stayed, is one of the largest in
Photoksar, in terms of its landholding, the size of its house and number
of family members. Three generations ago the family lacked children so
the present grandfather and grandmother, Meme Sonam and Api Rigzin,
were brought in from two different houses, Rigzin from Photoksar and
Sonam from the village of Nyeraks, beyond the Sengge La. This is not
an uncommon event and it does not affect the continuity in the identity
of the household. The grandparents eldest son, Sonam Paljor (Paljor),
1
is the village amchi, the practitioner of Tibetan medicine. Although this
is a hereditary post elsewhere, it is not in Photoksar. Meme Sonam,
therefore, sent Paljor to train at Ridzong, a Gelukpa monastery where
there was a renowned amchi teacher who had trained at the Mentsikhan-
g, the famous college of Tibetan medicine in Lhasa. Paljor is, conse-
quently, well educated and knowledgeable. He took a great interest in
my research and became one of my most valuable informants. His wife,
Morup, who had come from the village of Lamayuru, was also a great
source of information. When I first arrived in 1999 Paljors brother
Tsewang was married to a village girl called Yangzes, but unusually they
had not moved into a separate khangu. Their youngest brother, Jigsmet,
had found a job in Khaltse. Paljors eldest son Gyaltsen had also just
been married to Choron, a girl from Nyeraks. This union had been
arranged, as most are, by their families and Meme Sonam had used his
links with his natal village to do so. Choron had, thus, become the new
nama, the in-marrying wife. Paljor and Morup also have two daughters,
both of whom were attending the boarding school in Khaltse, and three
younger sons.
The household
To be a member of the village means to be a member of one of its
khangba or khangu, by either birth or marriage. This involves being
brought within the protection of the household spirits through the
VILLAGE ORGANISATION 45
ceremonies that accompany either birth or marriage, which establish the
outsider as a full member of the new household. Even after I had been
staying in the village for over a year and was firmly attached to
Khangltakh, people would laugh if I referred to our house. This
suggested I must have married one of the sons, which was a source of
great amusement. People are usually known by their household name:
Chulampi Ama (the mother from Chulam), Takshe Meme (the grandfa-
ther from Taksha), Rdamte Nama (the in-marrying wife at Rdamta).
Chortrakh, an unmarried man who spent most of his time outside the
village in a small house in Askuta, a collection of fields and dependent
dwellings two hours walk down the valley, was as independent as any
individual in Photoksar. He lived essentially alone and hardly ever
appeared in the main part of the village, but he was still uniformly
referred to as Onpopi Chortrakh (Chortrakh from Onpo).
The importance of the household, the khangba, as the basic unit of
village organisation cannot be over-emphasised. All non-communal land,
livestock, agricultural and household goods are owned by the khangba
and water rights and village obligations are allocated amongst them. It
is the basic tax-paying entity of the village and all village meetings have
to be attended by at least one man from each. Khangba take it in turns
to assume the annual obligations to provide the village headman and his
assistants, to guard the fields from livestock, to host the main ritual
events and to provide the participants in the new year festival, as well as
a host of other village duties. These are known as tral, village taxes.
Photoksars number of khangba, twenty-two, has remained constant
for many years. Since the land settlements of 1908 there has been only
one change, caused by a failure in succession to Pilipa, a house which
has subsequently remained empty. Its fields are still known as Pili
zhing (the fields of Pilipa), however. The villagers can name the heads
of each khangba from over 200 years ago. They told me about a time,
long past, during which an epidemic of smallpox had wiped out several
of the households which thus required some reorganisation and consoli-
dation, but that was an unusually traumatic and distant event. The idea
of a fixed and unchanging collection of households is central to the
villagers sense of their own community.
Under what the villagers call the old custom of having only one
wife per household, per generation, the eldest son was married to the
nama, but his younger brothers stayed with them in the khangba. This
form of polyandry meant that the landholding passed, undivided, from
one generation to the next, as it does elsewhere in the Tibetan region. It
46 CHAPTER THREE
Change can, of course, also lead to tensions. In Sankar, one of the villages into
2
which Leh is divided, the khangba had been demanding that the khangu contribute
equally to the local duties. In 2000 their continued refusal to do so resulted in the
khangba imposing a social boycott on the khangu.
This would support the conjecture of some that the phaspun is a relic of an ancient
3
lineage-based system that has long since given way to household organisation (Kaplanian
1981, forthcoming and cf. Crook 1994: 506 and Riaboff 1997 on Zangskar). The rules
of exogamy for phaspun that apply in Photoksar, and used to apply elsewhere, also
also meant that it was only in the khangba that children were born and
the continuation of the household as an entity was ensured. When she
enters the new household the nama is only, however, married to the
eldest son. The way the custom works was explained to me by Sonam
Phuntsog, the teacher posted in Photoksar from another village in Sham.
As he put it, an elder brother is glad when he hears that his younger
brother is having sexual relations with his wife, because it means that he
is less likely to want to set up a separate family in a khangu. Neverthe-
less, some younger sons have now done so in Photoksar, causing a
permanent division in the landholding. This is much more common in
Leh and surrounding villages, where alternative forms of employment
mean that a family can afford to divide its land. The Photoksar villagers
2
are conscious that, by contrast, they follow the old customs. Younger
sons now generally move to a khangu, with their parents, instead of
remaining in the khangba, but unless they become monks or marry a girl
who has no brothers, thus becoming a makpa in her household, it is rare
for them to marry. The identity of each khangu is still firmly attached to
that of the associated khangba, whose name it bears. The khangba is still
the larger house, with the greatest number of fields, finer household
goods, the resources to host major social events and greater village
obligations. The khangu do have certain village duties and they now
have an equal vote with the khangba at village meetings, but the taxes
weigh much more heavily on the khangba.
The khangba, with their associated khangu, are grouped into a
number of networks, including the phaspun, a group that is found widely
in Ladakh. It is, as Dollfus says, an association of three to ten house-
holds which worship the same household divinity, the phalha, and help
each other, especially at life-cycle events (1989: 170-181). It was
originally assumed to be a kin group because the word itself is derived
from roots meaning father and cousin and the explanation given to
me in Photoksar was that phaspun were formed when two brothers set
up separate households. However, it is now generally recognised as
3
VILLAGE ORGANISATION 47
support this theory.
This term is spelt mem bhar in village documents. It almost certainly derives from
4
the English member.
having become primarily a mutual assistance group. As Dollfus also
found, the phaspun are seen as creating more permanent alliances that
those of cousins. After several years, said one man in Photoksar, we
forget our cousins but the phaspun remains. As Mills (2003: 214) points
out, however, its association with life-cycle events is significant. It is on
the occasion of birth, marriage, death and during the new year and spring
festivals that the protection of the phalha is particularly sought..
The two Machu khangba form a phaspun with three others in the
body of the village. This binds them into an alliance with the main group
of houses and counteracts the danger of the hamlet separating itself off
from the rest of Photoksar. There are many other networks which also
unite different groupings of households for other purposes. There are
fixed groups of households that join together to undertake the larger
agricultural events, such as the ploughing. Others jointly organise the
large festivals or host prayer readings. These are different combinations
from those of the phaspun and different again from those of the three
chutsoks or khor. These are the three sections into which the village is
divided for political purposes, which follow geographical lines: an
upper, a middle and a lower section. Each has a representative, a memb-
ar, who is responsible for raising levies and calling householders to
4
village meetings. There are other more informal networks which manage
the communal herding of livestock in the mountains, for example, a task
organised according to rotas set up between the households. The faces
that appeared most regularly in the kitchen at Khangltakh were those of
the khyimtses, the neighbours, in this case a group of four households
whose members are called upon to lend food and utensils or to help
drink up the remains of a barrel of chang which might remain from a
party. Shnyen, relations, are also frequent visitors and they co-operate at
demanding times such as the ploughing and harvest seasons and make
loans to poorer relations.
Each household is, thus, allied to several distinct groups of others -
phaspun, chutsoks, khyimtses, shnyen, ploughing, harvesting and herding
networks - depending on the occasion. Between them there is, thus, a
web of links, relations and networks through which religious, agricul-
tural and social events are co-ordinated. The whole village is united
through these cross-cutting alliances and there is no single household
48 CHAPTER THREE
In the monasteries, the dral is based on monastic seniority, that is numbers of vows
5
taken and entrance into the monkhood, rather than on age (Mills 2003: 34).
grouping that can dominate. This is fundamental to the sense the villag-
ers have of their own community, how it is constructed and, ultimately,
to their sense of local order. It is also one of the many ways in which
village structures and practices counteract the emergence of hierarchies
and dominant groups and promote relations of equality among both
individuals and households.
The dralgo
In every village household, whether the family are living in the big
summer kitchen or have moved into a dark, windowless winter kitchen,
there is an arrangement of mats and cushions around the stove. On one
side sits the cook, normally the wife of the eldest son, maybe surrounded
by his sisters and her own children. On the other side sit the elder men
on a slightly elevated platform or, at least, on cleaner carpets. Other
members of the household hover in between, depending on their tasks.
In the winter the heat from the cooking stove may be supplemented by
a separate iron stove or a pile of smouldering, face-blackening sheeps
droppings, around which other family members cluster. As soon as
guests walk in, however, everyone leaps up and re-arranges themselves
to give the newcomers the seats by the stove and one of the men will join
them to pour tea and chang. On the occasion of a party, a common event
during the winter, a full line, a dral, will form around the walls, starting
by the stove. The dral is the line of seats or dancers into which Ladakhis
organise themselves on every social occasion, the most senior men (or
women, if no men are present) sitting at the top by the stove, the dralgo,
and the most junior at the bottom, men above women, or in two separate
lines at major events. Each new guest knows where to sit, depending on
his age and gender (photos 29 and 30).
Much has been made in the literature of the social stratification that
is apparent in the dral (Kaplanian 1981: 171-90; Aggarwal 2004: 154-
55). Monks take the highest seats, according to their own hierarchies of
seniority, followed by the skudraks (upper classes) and then the drong-
5
pa or mimangs (the commoners), with the rigsngan (the outcaste black-
smith and musician families) at the bottom. In most villages, however,
the vast majority of people are drongpa. A village of 50 households
VILLAGE ORGANISATION 49
This is also remarked upon by Dollfus (1989: 154).
6
might have one lonpo and one or two mon and garba families but in
Photoksar there are no upper class or outcaste families. Unless monks or
important guests are present three village men take the upper seats at the
dralgo: first the onpo, the ritual practitioner, second the amchi, and next
to him the goba, the headman. Below them people take their places in
either the womens or the mens line solely according to the year of their
birth. Differences in wealth, between older and younger sons, between
members of richer and poorer households and between those from
khangba and khangu are not recognised here.
The symbolic importance of the dral cannot be over-emphasised. The
Photoksar villagers are extremely sociable and for a man, at least, it is
a rare day that he will not be involved in a dral at some point, either in
his own or another household. Even in the tiny yak-herders huts a
scrappy piece of a mat by the fire will indicate the dralgo. On larger
social occasions everyone knows where to sit but must first try to take
a lower place in the line. This is particularly pronounced among the
women: even the most senior will make for a lowly place while the
others protest loudly and there are physical struggles between peers,
which are watched with amusement by the others. They were all de-
lighted when I learnt to join in this game, although the women had been
careful first to find out my age, so that they knew where my rightful
place was.
The dral is, therefore, a ranking system. It is used to recognise the
social superiority of monks and skudraks, the superiority of gender and
age, the statuses of the onpo and amchi. But it also represents equality
between households, between elder and younger sons, between married
and unmarried and between rich and poor. A younger son living alone
in a tiny khangu, such as Onpopi Chortrakh, will take a seat in the line
which is higher than that of the elder son from a large household, Paljor
and Gyaltsen from Khangltakh, for example, given their differences in
age. This is one of the most important ways in which relations of relative
equality are marked between members of a single community who could,
otherwise, be differentiated on the basis of wealth, literacy, position in
the household and influence over village affairs.
6
There is obviously a male social superiority within the village, as
expressed in the dral (and this is never denied, even in jest) and within
the household there is a certain hierarchy of men over women. However,
this is expressed weakly amidst a host of roles, duties and expectations.
50 CHAPTER THREE
When en famille men tend to take the higher seats at the dralgo by the
stove, but even Meme Sonam will go round to the other side to help with
the cooking if the need arises (photo 16). Men are responsible for any
task that takes them away from the village, while women are tied by the
daily routines of child-care and, in the summer, the irrigation and
weeding of their fields. However there is no perceived ranking of work.
This is mens work, that is womens work, they told me, without
offering any explanation for the difference (see also Dollfus 1989: 147).
Among the women in Khangltakh, Morup was in charge of most of the
meals, making the chang and supervising the stores, having taken over
this role from Api Rigzin. She allocated tasks among other people, but
this was done almost imperceptibly and the obligation was on other
people, especially Choron, the nama, to offer help. Although the running
of this large household required divisions of labour and responsibility,
the organisation was characterised by a fairly equal division of tasks,
some by gender, others by habit, others by agreement. Authority and
superiority were expressed to a minimum degree.
Women do not attend village meetings but the men report their
discussions in detail and the women comment freely on all subjects, both
before and after the event. They are forthright and confident in express-
ing moral judgments on other members of the village (and those outside
it) and on matters of village organisation, such as irrigation arrange-
ments, that affect their household. The men expressly take their views
into consideration when discussing village matters amongst themselves.
Only boys used to be taught to read, before the introduction of schools,
and it is generally only the men who take part in the chos sil, the recita-
tion of religious texts, but now girls are just as likely to be encouraged
to study. Among those sent to higher education in Leh there are now as
many girls as boys.
The goba and yulpa
The nominal head of the village is the headman, the goba. He controls
the village funds and represents the village vis vis outsiders. He
organises meetings, ensures that everyone is aware of the onpos direc-
tions concerning the timing of agricultural events, as well as being
responsible for settling disputes. However, this is not a permanent post.
It rotates annually, as does that of the chief membar, his assistant,
between all the khangba in the village. Any man can and every house-
VILLAGE ORGANISATION 51
This recalls Goldsteins (1971d) comment that gen-bo (village elders) in central
7
Tibetan villages were regarded as agents of the tre-ba (members of tax-paying
households).
hold must take its turn. At most social events the goba is accorded social
status and at the beginning of the year the two new office-holders each
host a party at which they are complimented with khatags by the whole
village. When I arrived in Photoksar in the middle of a year, however,
it was a long time before I was able to work out who the goba was and
even longer before I realised that Paljor was the chief membar. Although
referred to by their titles when it comes to political matters, the post-
holders are accorded no day-to-day status and no-one in Khangltakh
thought it important enough that I should know about Paljors position.
Nor is the post considered to require special individual qualities. It is
generally a younger man, rather than an elder Meme (grandfather), who
assumes the post, but in his absence another male member of the house-
hold, even a boy, will carry out the requisite duties and be referred to as
goba. It is a tax, one of the tral that falls on each household in turn,
more than an individual appointment. For the villagers the post is
unequivocally seen as a burden rather than a privilege. They say that a
household has been struck by this obligation, as it is struck by any tax.
The gobas duties are onerous and, in particular, the need to travel to
Leh to negotiate with authorities takes up precious time and resources.
The occurrence of a dispute may also require immediate attention by the
goba and membar, who shoulder the responsibility for achieving a
settlement. The gobas powers are balanced by burdensome duties.
The gobas power is also limited, in practice, by the fact that all
important and innovative decisions are taken at the village meeting, a
forum attended by all the adult men, the yulpa. It is the yulpa, acting at
the meeting, who are the political authority of the village, taking deci-
sions about the village taxes and festivals, overseeing the water rotation
and making new rules. They also act as ultimate arbiters in disputes,
when a case is serious or the goba has been unable to resolve it. They
impose fines and ensure that all arguments are ceremonially resolved,
thus acting as the villages ultimate judicial authority. The goba is, in
effect, the agent of the yulpa. The yulpa were explained to me as being
7
everyone. Membership extends to all village men, although women and
children are, in fact, excluded. This group also excludes all outsiders and
even the komnyer, the monk sent by Lamayuru monastery to tend the
small temple it owns in the village, who is from Onpo, a village house-
52 CHAPTER THREE
Since meetings were all male affairs and often dealt with sensitive subjects I would
8
not have felt comfortable sitting among the men and tended to watch from a distance with
the other women. However, Paljor and meme Sonam were happy to tell me in detail
about the course of the meeting, as did they did the women of the household, who were
always interested in the discussions and decisions.
hold. There are two such temples in Photoksar, unusually for a Ladakhi
village, the other belonging to Hemis, which sends its own komnyer.
The meetings of the yulpa are relatively informal. They are attended
by all men who wish, sometimes several from one household. There is
one important meeting held at the beginning of each year, when the
gobas and membars posts are changed and the tral for the coming year
are determined, which all men are expected to attend. One of the central
village fields is used for the meeting and men come and go throughout
the proceedings, depending on their own interests, work obligations and
the importance of the occasion. Women watch from a distance, espe-
cially if something is going on which directly concerns their own
household, and departing men report to them on what is happening.
8
At the meetings there is no fixed agenda and no seating plan. The
dralgo does not apply here, thus denying even the superiority of age that
determines seating order on social occasions. The goba takes a central
seat with the membars (the chief membar and those from each chutsoks)
and is in charge of business, but everyone has the chance to speak. If a
consensus is not reached, a ballot will be taken, Paljor explained to me,
one vote counted from each khangba and khangu. However, this is rarely
necessary because in practice consensus is almost always reached.
Differences of opinion may initially be expressed but people let an
agreement emerge. There is no question of opposing camps forming,
either before or during a meeting. Men never lobby their neighbours to
secure support for a controversial proposal. In practice, certain men talk
more than others at meetings, some go to more than others, some are
listened to more respectfully than others, but when people discuss the
events of the meeting afterwards the influence of such individuals is
never acknowledged. Those who attend always report what we agreed:
we decided that every household with more than one son must send one
of them to the monastery, or the yulpa imposed a fine on them.
Documents drawn up to record their decisions invariably stress the fact
of agreement between the yulpa. In effect, therefore, divisions amongst
the individuals who form this body are precluded by the procedure of the
meeting and the rhetoric of agreement, which expressly deny any
lingering differences of opinion. It is the yulpa, as a group, who have the
VILLAGE ORGANISATION 53
ultimate authority to control and organise the activities of the village.
The will of the yulpa is expressed in the form of decisions said to have
been taken by everyone, even when, as normal, only a proportion of
the men actually attended the meeting. The idea is of absolute inclusion
and unity amongst them.
Rules and customs
Control over village affairs is, therefore, exercised by the yulpa largely
through the imposition of tral, taxes. The concept of tral covers almost
all village obligations imposed on households, from small contributions
in money or kind for festivals, up to the most burdensome of all, assum-
ing the post of goba. Other rotating tral obligations include being an
assistant membar, responsible for relaying information to each chutsoks,
being mon (village musician in the absence of any member of the mon
caste in Photoksar), being lorapa, responsible for keeping livestock out
of the fields in the summer, undertaking government work, such as
looking after the medical assistant or being on the village education
committee, organising one of the numerous village festivals and taking
on one of the ritual roles during the new year festival. The most impor-
tant of these duties rotate annually between the khangba, according to
lists drawn up many years ago. Others are distributed between the
khangba and khangu as a matter of agreement at the annual village
meeting, but on the understanding that tasks are to be allocated fairly
throughout the village. Yet others, such as providing transport for
visiting lamas or government officials, still known as begar, and carry-
ing out work on common property in the village (maintaining the
helicopter pad, for example) are organised, as the need arises, by means
of rotas. Both khangba and khangu also have to make contributions to
village funds for certain festivals.
Most tral can be passed over on payment of a fine, generally by
providing chang for the village, but this is only accepted if it is recog-
nised that the household is going to have genuine problems in fulfilling
the obligation, for example if there are no adult males in the household
to provide the goba. The irrigation system also operates like a tral,
although it is not generally referred to in this way. Formerly, they told
me, the field owners worked out an ad hoc arrangement so that each
received a fair share of water. However, in the early twentieth century
they established a rotation system for the two main channels, which
54 CHAPTER THREE
Each village has its own particular methods of organising water distribution. In
9
Alchi and other villages where droughts are frequent the rules are complex and very
strict. In Urtsi, a small village near Photoksar each day a number of houses is entitled to
take water from the entire irrigation system and this effectively limits the number of
fields a single household can comfortably cultivate (Cynthia Hunt personal communi-
cation).
serve almost all the houses in the village. Depending on the number of
fields it intends to cultivate that year, each household will ask for one,
two or three days in a cycle of ten to fifteen days. It then has to send as
many people to help clear out the channel as it wants days in the rota-
tion. The actual sequence is determined by lots. In the case of the
smaller channels, which serve lesser numbers of fields, they still make
informal arrangements.
9
The yulpa occasionally decide upon new tral. During my fieldwork,
for example, they decided that there were not enough monks in the
village, the Lamayuru komnyer being the only one, and Hemis sending
a monk who was only occasionally resident. They decided that each
household with more than one son should send at least one into the
monastery. This, of course, makes it less likely that the landholding will
have to be divided at a later stage, but it also reduces the amount of
manpower in the household and the potential for income. The household
also has to support the boy in the monastery, which can involve many
years of education if he turns out to be academically minded, so it was
a burdensome new tax.
In the case of most tral, like the irrigation arrangements, there is
hardly ever a case of non-compliance. Everyone knows what everyone
elses obligations are and someone else would carry out the task if the
person responsible did not appear, creating an obligation to reciprocate
on the part of his household. The well-established nature of these tral
and the sense of absolute obligation when it comes to these duties all
contribute to ensure that failure to comply is, in practice, impossible. In
the case of a new rule, however, like the obligation to send one son to a
monastery, the yulpa might decide that any household which failed to
comply would have to pay a serious fine. In this case it was set at Rs
5,000, a considerable amount in local terms, being almost the value of
a yak. The yulpa also have the ultimate sanction of a social boycott at
their disposal to enforce their will on recalcitrant individuals or house-
holds. However, both this and the imposition of fines require the deci-
sion of the yulpa which is, therefore, limited to cases serious enough to
warrant the calling of a meeting. When I returned to the village almost
VILLAGE ORGANISATION 55
In fact, when I visited the village in subsequent years it became apparent that the
10
rule was, in fact, being implemented by almost all households.
exactly a year after this rule had been passed a number of households
had still not complied. Gyaltsen reflected that it showed how many
people in the village were tsokpo, bad, refusing to do what the yulpa
decided. Paljor, who had been one of the more enthusiastic supporters
of the rule and had already sent his son, Orsal, to Lamayuru, was more
positive: they will go, he reassured me. This reflects a difference in
attitude between father and son: Paljor is much more community-minded
and had been active in securing the decision on this new rule; Gyaltsen
is more representative of the slightly cynical, reluctant attitude of the
majority of the villagers. However, it also demonstrates the fact that
10
differences do arise between individuals and limit the nature and number
of the innovations they can implement.
The yulpa, therefore, have authority to impose and allocate tral and
other village obligations and to control compliance through the imposi-
tion of fines. In practice, change is limited, however, by the practical
necessity of securing agreement among the yulpa. It is also limited by
the trims, the customs of the village. The concept of trims is one of
something we do, not for any particular reason but simply because it
is there, the custom. Some trims, patterns of dress, for example, are
recognised as being followed everywhere in Ladakh, as opposed to in
Tibet, or within the Tibetan exile community or by Kashmiris, for
example. Other trims are particular to the Buddhist, as opposed to
Muslim communities, certain marriage practices, for example. However,
the strongest notion is that of the yuli trims, those of the village (nor-
mally just referred to as ngati trims, our customs). People explained
that in the neighbouring Wanla, where there are many more khangu, the
trims has changed so that all households contribute equally to the village
tral. But in Photoksar we still have the old trims, they said. Many trims
are associated with festivals, weddings, and the new year celebrations
and people generally talked approvingly about the former, snganme,
trims of the area, which are different and older, they said, from those of
villages closer to Leh.
These trims govern many important matters of internal village
organisation, khangba/khangu status in village politics, tax obligations,
succession to property and its division when a new khangu is set up.
These are all important because not only do they play a defining role in
the political structures of the village but they limit the authority of the
56 CHAPTER THREE
Two of each households best fields are designated the Apis and the Memes
11
fields, the lto zhing, and these are taken to the khangu to provide for their subsistence,
being transferred back to the khangba on their decease. Lto is a reference to food (Das
1998: 545), indicating the nature of the fields as security for subsistence.
yulpa. When a family decides to divide, for example, it is invariably the
practice that the older generations move to the khangu, not the
younger. One day Paljor was called to see the grandmother in one of
11
the Machu households, who was already living in a khangu with her
younger son and his family. She was not getting on with the nama, he
reported, and wanted to move out to a separate khangu. She would find
it hard to set up a new khangu, however. This is a trims tsokpo, he
reflected, referring to the fact that it was she, not her son and daughter-
in-law, who would have to move. I asked if the custom could change or
be ignored in cases like this, but he said simply, no, it is our trims. He
was, thus, recognising that the trims would work injustice in this case,
but accepted that there was no question of ignoring or trying to alter it.
The trims also govern marriage and succession practices, including
the practice of having only one wife per household, per generation and
not dividing the landholding. The development of these practices can be
explained in socio-economic terms, as suggested by Goldstein (1971c).
Dividing a landholding would, until recently, have been economically
disastrous and changes in marriage practice elsewhere in Ladakh have
coincided with economic developments. However, it is important not to
ignore the force of the trims. In Photoksar in 2000, although it was still
not the norm, there were five younger sons who had married and were
raising their own families in a khangu. Moreover, the fourteen unmarried
younger sons had almost all moved into the khangu, too. This represents
a considerable change from the older trims, in which younger sons
remained in the khangba. Meme Sonam said that the change had come
about because there is now more food and younger sons can afford a
separate family, but he also acknowledged the influence of changing
practices in Leh. Morup explained to me that previously everything used
to go to the eldest son but now we give some fields to younger sons, if
they want, and, if they have a family in the khangu, their fields do not go
back to the khangba. The trims is changing a bit. She was quite specific
about the new trims: the eldest son gets most, the next about half that
amount and younger ones, if they want some, even less. This change,
although prompted by economic development and changing practices
elsewhere, is locally perceived as a change to the village trims.
VILLAGE ORGANISATION 57
Although many trims are, essentially, immutable, marriage is also an
area in which the trims is negotiable in practice. Shortly before I arrived
in Photoksar there was a violent argument between the second and third
(adult) sons in one household, apparently over the nama. The yulpa
decided that both sons should move out to separate khangu. The older
was given a small house but said he did not want any fields. The younger
went to live with his father who was already in a khangu, but was only
given a small additional field to take with him, because of the argu-
ment, Morup explained. By contrast, if Paljors younger brother Tsewa-
ng wanted to move out to a khangu, she said, we would give him a lot
of land, animals and household goods. In practice, therefore, the
circumstances of the move to the khangu are taken into account in each
individual case. Although the trims appear to give sons rights of succes-
sion, therefore, in practice each situation is resolved according to its own
particular circumstances. The trims act as a sort of standard, setting the
starting point and limits within which a decision can be arrived at
regarding what should be given to each person. Another case of negotia-
ble trims is found in divorce arrangements. Morup explained to me that
if the divorce is the mans decision, implying that the wife is not work-
ing properly, then her family would have to repay all the bride price. If,
on the other hand, it is the womans decision, on the basis of some sort
of fault on the part of her new family, then, although her family repays
the bride price, she also reclaims all her trousseau, the implication being
that this would achieve parity. In practice, however, these rules are
highly negotiable. In Khangltakh, Tsewangs nama, Yangzes, had come
with very little trousseau and only a small bride price had been paid. On
their divorce she took all her personal possessions back but the bride
price was not repaid. Rather, Khangltakh paid the equivalent of half a
yak to her family. Morup described this as being for the child that the
wifes family were taking, although other people suggested it was
because Tsewang had been bad, tsokpo.
Trims are, therefore, customs that have developed rather than rules
decided upon in village meetings. They are seen as subject to gradual
change, but they cannot be altered at will by the villagers. In some cases
the trims is fixed and not negotiable. In others it merely provides a
standard against which an individual case can be judged, according to its
own circumstances. The trims, therefore, serve as limitations on the
authority of the yulpa to make and enforce new rules and a framework
within which their autonomy, as the political authority of the village, can
be exercised. They also serve to centre the village organisation within
58 CHAPTER THREE
Similar dynamics are described by Dollfus (1989: 224-25) in her account of Hemis
12
Shukpachan.
the community itself, notionally denying the influence of outsiders. The
changing succession practices that I have noted in the village are, for
example, clearly linked to wider processes of change in Ladakh, in
particular the developing economy but also the legal changes that
occurred in the 1940s and 50s. Sonam Phuntsog also mentioned the
campaign of the LBA to stamp out polyandry and the effects of educa-
tion, which made people feel embarrassed about the old trims. In
Photoksar, however, the changes are almost exclusively discussed as
changes to our trims. External influences are barely acknowledged and
the existence of state laws was never mentioned. Even Paljor looked
puzzled when I tried to ask about government trims. There is a strong
narrative of autonomy in village organisation here, both in terms of the
decisions of the village meeting, which exclude outsiders, and in the
force of ngati trims, quasi transcendent rules, which bind the yulpa.
Hierarchy and equality
The village community is, therefore, made up of a network of house-
holds between which there is, or should be, a web of co-operative
relations, and it is governed by the yulpa, amongst whom there is an
ideology of unity and agreement. There are, however, numerous tensions
inherent within its internal structures, which constantly have to be
negotiated. Relations between households and individuals are complex,
often tense and fractious. Ideals of peaceful cooperation and united
decision-making are based on an idea of equal relations, in a number of
different contexts, between both households and individuals. These are
needed, however, to counteract the emergence of hierarchies and in-
equalities.
12
There are richer and poorer, larger and smaller households in the
village, but the most significant status distinction is that between the
khangba and khangu. It is found in all Ladakhi and Zangskari villages,
although not, apparently, among the Muslims of the Suru valley in
Kargil (Grist 1998: Ch 2), and many analysts have described, or implied,
that the khangba is socially superior to the khangu (Kaplanian 1981:
133; Dollfus 1989: 156-57). Mills (2003:66), for example, describes the
khangba as the place of surplus production, which is able to supply
VILLAGE ORGANISATION 59
Dollfus (1989: 57) does describe the strategies of younger sons to obtain greater
13
status for their khangu and the possibilities now afforded by wage labour. However, she
also remarks that as of the late 1980s most khangu had, in fact, been established for at
least forty years.
festivals and sponsor monastic rituals, while the khangu merely has
sufficient for its own survival. The khangba is the place of reproduction,
while in the khangu the (older) members are expected to live increas-
ingly celibate lives. In Photoksar I found, however, that older genera-
tions were often keen to move out of their khangba into a khangu. In
Khangltakh such a move was being contemplated during my field-work
on the grounds that the younger couple were not pulling their weight in
the house. When discussing this prospect both Morup and Api Rigzin
expressed a certain pride in the fact that their two generations had not
separated, but had lived together harmoniously for many years. Never-
theless, they talked about their move without expressing any resentment
at having to move from their larger house and long-standing home. In a
khangu their work loads would be lighter and the taxes lower, they
explained.
13
In other contexts, too, living in a khangu was presented as being a
preferable option because of the lighter village obligations. One of the
village khangba, Pili, had effectively been abandoned in the late twenti-
eth century, having produced no heirs in a previous generation. This had
happened twice and the first time, as is normal, a nama and makpa had
been found from other houses. When it had happened again people
began to suspect that bad spirits might be attached to the house. After
explaining this to me the Khangltakh women also commented that it was
always difficult to find someone in the village prepared to take on the
burden of being a khangba householder. There were generally plenty of
unmarried younger sons around, they explained, but such men generally
preferred to remain, unmarried, in a khangu, where their work-loads
would be lighter. The khangba is larger and richer than the khangu,
therefore, but the social status that accompanies this is counter-balanced
by the burden of greater agricultural responsibilities, heavier taxes and
more extensive social obligations, so much so that, given the choice,
many people prefer the latter.
Between the khangba, while every household has enough land and
livestock to support a family some do have a significantly greater
number of fields and larger houses. Wealth is most clearly marked by the
fact that the richer households are able to host the more elaborate social
60 CHAPTER THREE
This was the most dramatic change in fortunes demonstrated by the land records,
14
however, which otherwise suggest a certain stability in wealth.
events, to which a certain prestige attaches. Paljor suggested that the
reason that two of the village chutsoks are called Khangltakh khor and
Chulam khor, after the houses with those names, was that way back
these were the first households to acquire more sophisticated household
goods and to invite others to social events. Khangltakh also has a large
landholding and during the harvest it sends out an invitation for manual
help, providing two meals with plenty of chang for the workers. This
clearly demonstrates the status of Khangltakh as one of the wealthier
households. During my first harvest in the village, however, when the
family were explaining the event to me, they described it as just a party
that we always hold. Differences in wealth were always downplayed
and it was some time before I was sure that Khangltakh was, indeed, one
of the wealthier households.
Such differences are generally historic, but fortunes do fluctuate
according to size of family because a large family can cultivate more
fields and tend more animals. Machu Gongma, one of the two khangba
at Machu, for example, is a large house and in the 1908 land settlement
records is listed as owning over 100 sheep and goats. This was by far the
greatest number of any of the Photoksar households at that time. When
I mentioned this to the family in Khangltakh, however, they laughed and
asked if I knew how many sheep and goats the family now had. It was
just twenty-five, considerably fewer than in Khangltakh. They do not
have enough people at Machu Gongma to look after them any more,
they explained. They were obviously amused by this demonstration of
fluctuating fortunes. Beyond the social events and livestock numbers
14
there are few obvious markers of wealth. Dress, for example, is uniform
in quality as well as style. The only clear symbol of wealth is the
womans perak, the turquoise studded head-dress that she receives from
her family on marriage. However, this is more an indication of the
wealth of her natal home and that of her mother than of her new home.
Whilst, therefore, there are marks of social superiority in the village,
which are linked to the wealth of a household and the types of events it
can afford to host, there are also rhetorical and social practices by which
the villagers downplay the wider significance of such distinctions. Paljor
and Morup told me that when a household obtains a new source of
wealth and become richer, this causes khon, resentment, which can bring
people into conflict. Wealth is not something the villagers boast about
VILLAGE ORGANISATION 61
This position has been formalised by the structure of the land records, which list
15
the eldest man as head of household and owner of all the property. However, it is
probably true that some concept of household head pre-dated these records. When
discussing the longevity of households, for example, Paljor and Meme Sonam were able
to recite the names of heads of households back into earlier periods.
and, on the contrary, Paljor was keen that if I found any Westerners
willing to sponsor a Photoksar child to attend a school in Leh then one
of the poorer families should benefit. Everyone is aware of the dispari-
ties in wealth but they resist discussing and even acknowledging them
and in the vast majority of respects all households and their members are
treated as being socially equal.
This tension between the contrary forces of hierarchy and equality is
matched by even more complex relations between individuals, both
those within one household and those of different houses. As with the
difference between khangba and khangu, some writers have seen the
difference between older and younger sons in terms of social status.
Gutschow, for example, describes the household as maintaining an
authority structure with a clear head of household, a position which
determines many social and ritual roles in the village (1998: 56). This
position passes from father to elder son. Aggarwal (2004: 74) avers that
when a male child is born to the eldest son, that son stakes his claim as
head of the main household ... requiring that his parents and siblings
shift to an auxiliary dwelling. This is vastly to over-dramatise the
dynamics that generally arise (see e.g. Dollfus 1989: 154).
In Khangltakh both the grandfather, Meme Sonam, and the father,
Paljor, had lived under one roof for many years after the latters majority
and there was no clear head of household. Meme Sonam was still very
active during my fieldwork, even after his grandson, Gyaltsen, had
reached adulthood and taken a nama, and none of the three men had any
obvious superiority when it came to household affairs. In a few distinct
areas, such as property division, any Meme, even one who has moved to
a khangu, has a specific role to play. When there is a question of
15
succession he determines everything, they told me. In Khangltakh it was
Meme Sonam who finalised the divorce agreement for his son, Tsewang.
However, this status does not extend into other situations. Paljor made
equally important decisions, deciding to spend a large amount of money
on a small property in Leh, for example, against the counsel of both his
parents. Tsewang took a minor role to that of his elder brother in house-
hold affairs, but this was primarily due to the fact that he spent most of
his time in the mountains with the livestock. When he was back in the
62 CHAPTER THREE
village he took part in discussions of household and village affairs and
attended village meetings.
Elder sons do, undoubtedly have a certain status in the village,
therefore, but this is counteracted by the ways in which this is downplay-
ed in practice. One of the main ways in which this is done is, of course,
in the dralgo, which requires that a younger son from a poorer khangu
will take a higher seat to an elder son from a richer khangba, purely
because of his age.
Trelba
One of the strongest, but least explicit, of the forces that promote
equality in the village is an antipathy towards individualism and a
corresponding expectation of conformity in daily life. All agricultural
techniques are, for example, common to the whole village. Households
are maintained, food is prepared and clothes are sewn in the same way.
A village woman can sit down at anyone elses stove and prepare a meal.
At Losar guests are given meat, at the spring festival dras tuk (rice
stew); skyu (round noodles) and chu tagi (bow-shaped noodles) go with
meat while tukpa, vegetarian or cheese stew, contains long flat noodles.
Neighbouring villages may have slightly different trims when it comes
to their clothes or the tailoring of their shoes but within Photoksar even
the colour and style of their knitted hats is standard. Turquoise is good
for women, but not for men, Choron informed me. Each time I acquired
a new piece of local clothing (including the turquoise acrylic hat that, I
realised, had to replace the warm black wool I had brought from Leh)
and began to look more and more like a villager, the women noticed and
approved. Conformity, not individuality, is beautiful.
Conformity also governs social events. Most parties are determined
by the time of year or circumstances, such as a birth or marriage, and
everyone knows what to expect from each event. Only small variations
in the size, the quality of the food and the amount of chang offered are
countenanced. There are rules, too, for who is invited to each event - the
whole village or just the phaspun, relatives or neighbours. Whenever I
returned from a social event, Api Rigzin would ask for a detailed
account of the proceedings, who was there and what had been served. If
I got something wrong a sceptical look would immediately cross her
face.
These expectations of conformity are generally expressed through the
VILLAGE ORGANISATION 63
Of all the generosities that my hosts in Photoksar displayed towards me, learning
16
to indulge my persistent desire to participate in mundane tasks, which meant overcoming
this sense of embarrassment, was one of the greatest.
notion of trelba, which can mean all of embarrassing, shameful and
contrary to social etiquette. It is much heard in everyday conversation
and applies to such things as placing the small tables, choktse, the wrong
way around, sitting too high in the dral, spending too much time visiting
other people and accepting their hospitality, even writing a letter or
speaking incorrectly. Clumsiness, but also breaches of eating rules, such
as passing an individual plate above the serving dish are all trelba.
Children learn their social and practical skills very young, which means
that adults are not used to being teachers for each other and they were
frustratingly averse to teaching me anything difficult. This reluctance
was partly lack of habit but also a concern that they might have to point
out that I was doing something wrong which they would have considered
trelba, embarrassing for me. It was something that constantly marked me
out as an outsider. I was exempt from participation in everyday tasks, but
if I tried and failed, which I did repeatedly, the results were embarrass-
ing.
16
Trelba, therefore, stigmatises inappropriate behaviour. The contrary,
socially appropriate behaviour, consists in knowing ones place, acting
appropriately in any social situation and knowing the right way to
perform all household and agricultural tasks. Even greater merit is
acquired by publicly downplaying ones status, as happens, most obvi-
ously, in the fight to take a lowly dral position. Such merit could be
characterised as a form of social capital. This capital is, however,
acquired through conformity rather than the display of individual
qualities attracting status and superiority. Trelba is one of several
concepts and practices that promote a sense of unity and equality
amongst the individuals who comprise the community. The rules of the
dral, membership of the yulpa and significance of local knowledge,
associated with the concept of trelba, also serve to mark out the insider
from the outsider, a point I return to in the following chapter.
Leadership and autonomy in village politics
The conformity in behaviour that is expected of individual villagers is
mirrored in notions of unity and agreement, which are intrinsic to the
64 CHAPTER THREE
political authority exercised within the village. The goba is more of an
agent of the yulpa than an autonomous leader with personal power.
Moreover, a sense of inclusion and agreement characterises the activities
of the yulpa, the ultimate political authority in the village. Decisions are
always represented as having been taken by all of us, suggesting equal-
ity in political participation.
This is the way in which the village administration was always de-
scribed and presented to me. In practice, too, it was almost impossible
for me to identify any de facto leaders in the village or men with lasting
influence on village affairs. Workers from a Ladakhi development or-
ganisation who were undertaking a project in Photoksar, for example,
referred to some of the village men as active, Paljor in particular. They
were the ones who first introduced me to the village and when I arrived
I expected to be able to identify prominent and influential men. Paljor,
I could easily see, was educated, clever and highly regarded in the vil-
lage. However, when his term of office as village membar came to an
end he strongly resisted attempts made by others to continue to involve
him in the resolution of disputes. A group of men came to the house, one
evening, to report a quarrel and instead of going to assist Paljor indicated
a reluctance to give up further time to village duties: it was someone
elses turn, he protested.
My attempts to identify effective leaders were constantly thwarted by
counter-examples and denials, like this: the onpo, for example, is the
most senior man socially, in the village, and his pronouncements with
respect to the calendar are followed absolutely. He was the one called to
Khangltakh to mediate Tsewangs divorce. However, he only performed
such a role once during my stay and it soon became apparent that he had
no particular political authority. He generally talked very little in village
meetings and when conversation turned to village politics he was one of
the least vocal. In fact, there were no men who were called on more than
others to be mediators. Meme Sonam was often deferred to within our
household as a source of knowledge and experience and people would
often come to seek his advice on practical matters, such as the tailoring
of clothes and shoes. Even he, along with the other older men, however,
did not have any obvious political influence. Indeed, he once complained
to me that he now had less influence in the village because he was grow-
ing old.
The villagers themselves never acknowledged the superior capacities
and influence of any individuals. At one point a foreign development
worker came to the village and called for a small meeting of influential
VILLAGE ORGANISATION 65
men. Her Ladakhi interpreters, trained in the town to look for leaders
and active men, translated this as mi gyalla, good men. However, the
villagers simply sent the goba and membars. On another occasion
Gyaltsen tried to throw his weight around by being physically aggressive
to the school teacher. Sonam Phuntsog told me he thought that Gyaltsen
was trying to rely on his fathers status. Paljor, however, disciplined
Gyaltsen severely for this behaviour. He was ambitious for his children,
but this took the form of a desire that they be well educated so that, as
he explained to me, they might become amchis or onpos. These are the
only forms of status to which individuals can properly aspire.
Outspoken characters in the village, those that have ideas about what
they want and are the sort of people who might become leaders in other
societies, tended to get into arguments, thereby attracting strong disap-
proval. One woman impressed the same development worker, who had
brought some dentists to the village, by gamely agreeing to undergo
extensive treatment and then insisting that her daughter do the same,
holding her head during the process. This is just the sort of person we
need to galvanise the villagers into action, commented the development
worker. I had to demur. She was treated with suspicion by her fellow
villagers because she was forthright and got herself into too many argu-
ments. The women in my household had already told me she was tsokpo
because of the number of times she had become involved in serious
quarrels in the last few years.
Ladakhi villagers are often strongly criticised by development work-
ers (and not without justification if change and development are the
goals) for their lack of leadership and innovation. As I have suggested
elsewhere (Pirie 2002), this can be attributed to their reluctance to ac-
knowledge and grant power or authority to individuals with leadership
qualities and their corresponding practices of selecting a headman by
rotation. This, of course, means that the goba is often one of the least
politically capable men in the village. He also has to call a village meet-
ing to secure approval for any controversial new proposal, which is a
further barrier to innovation and change.
It was, in the end, possible to see that some of the older men did
concern themselves more in village affairs, were more ready to speak in
meetings and had voices that were listened to with more respect than
those of others. However, their influence over village politics was very
subtle and, in the case of Paljor, the chance to take a more prominent
role was actively avoided. There is a resistance to asserting status in this
way. Social capital attaches to self-effacement and knowing ones place
66 CHAPTER THREE
in the village order. To an extent, status and respect are earned by those
with age, education and knowledge of the chos, as well as those with the
positions of amchi and onpo. However, these statuses are strictly limited
in their significance and there is more merit to be gained by denying
social superiority.
Social status is also attributed to outsiders, most visibly in the struc-
ture of the dral. All visitors are placed high in the dral and I, too, was
initially forced to take a seat here. I had to make deliberate and pro-
longed efforts to sit with the women while in Khangltakh, and according
to my age in the dral on social occasions. Subsequently, when returning
to the village, I was again required to take a high position. Respect is
also paid by the use of honorific language, zhe skat, with which monks
and members of the aristocracy are almost invariably addressed. This
symbolic respect paid to outsiders serves to distinguish them from mem-
bers of the village. Close relations and those who stay for any length of
time, as I did, are eventually addressed in normal language and inte-
grated into the age-ranking order of the dral, symbolising our partial
integration into the social structures of the village. However, initially
outsiders are physically set apart. These markers of respect subtly indi-
cate the boundaries of the community.
This is even more marked at village meetings. While the dral places
outsiders, like monks, in higher positions, the body of yulpa excludes
them completely. They never attend village meetings as members of the
yulpa. Even the Lamayuru komnyer, who was from a village family and
would, otherwise, have attended village meetings, was never invited. His
status placed him outside the ranks of the yulpa. When outsiders, such
as development workers, visit the village they often call for a village
meeting, usually with the attendance of women. This is not, however,
considered as a meeting of the yulpa and it is not regarded as an appro-
priate place for the villagers to discuss the tral or to mediate conflict, for
example. The notion of the yulpa thus symbolises the boundaries of
village membership and marks out an important separation between
monks and lay householders.
Order in the village is, therefore, the responsibility of the yulpa,
acting in the village meeting. They have the power to make and enforce
the tral and also, as I describe in the next chapter, to manage and punish
those who engage in conflict. They are, however, bound by their own
trims. There is, thus, a strong sense of autonomy in village organisation:
this is found both in the composition of the yulpa, which excludes out-
siders, and in the power of ngati trims, customs rooted in the village
VILLAGE ORGANISATION 67
itself, but which represent a quasi transcendent force that binds the
authority of the yulpa.
The village, as a community, is, therefore, made up of a web of cross-
cutting ties, characterised by tendencies towards hierarchy and status,
which are counteracted by processes of uniformity and equality. What
is of constant concern to the villagers, however, is that relations between
households and individuals should be cooperative and peaceful. Ensur-
ing this is one of the most onerous and important responsibilities of the
yulpa.
Tea should always be available when there are people in the house. Being able to
1
store it in a thermos rather than a simmering kettle is one of the many advantages modern
technology has brought to the village. However, the glass-lined vessels they buy in Leh
are easily broken and tiresome to transport.
CHAPTER FOUR
CONFLICT IN THE VILLAGE
During the first few months of my fieldwork, when I could still under-
stand very little of what was being said around me, I would prick up my
ears whenever I heard raised voices and run to catch a glimpse of
quarreling people from the roof of our house or the window of my room.
In my quest to gather data on disputes, however, I was invariably
disappointed. Paljors tone of outrage turned out to be directed at a guest
who was hastily tucking his empty cup into a pocket and tearing himself
away from the chang jug and Paljors entreaties to stay. The neighbours
cries were last minute instructions to a husband who was departing with
his donkeys down the hill. Information, invitations and instructions were
shouted from afar. It was never insults that were being flung around.
The villagers seemed to be able to avoid quarrels and arguments
when tiredness, frustration and displeasure might have provided reasons
for bad tempers and cross words. They laughed easily at their own and
others mistakes. The breaking of a thermos, a valuable item, was
greeted with a shrug of the shoulders and a sigh. Tsewang would
1
emerge out of a snowstorm in the mountains, where he must have spent
a miserably freezing night, and laugh as he thawed his hands by the
stove. A runaway donkey or a cloud of chaff blown into the face were
greeted with laughter. Dignity, it seemed to me, did not need to be
upheld by showing annoyance or blaming another person for ones
misfortunes.
At Khangltakh I could occasionally sense tension in Meme Sonams
sharp remarks or an exhausted Morup speaking crossly to Paljor. This
was obvious even before I could understand the details of their conversa-
tions. But I never actually witnessed anything that could be termed a
quarrel. Paljor would listen while the tone of Morups voice gradually
subsided. Gyaltsen shrugged his shoulders and said nothing while Meme
Sonam complained. Even mild expressions of annoyance were rarely
directed at others. During the harvest, while the whole family worked
CONFLICT IN THE VILLAGE 69
long days to pull out whole fields of barley and peas by hand under a hot
sun Gyaltsen and Choron spent a large amount of their time lying on
their backs in the fields, eating the peas and young turnips they found
there, while the others persevered with their back-breaking labours. It
annoyed me to see them lounging around. Why doesnt anyone else
remark on it? I wondered. Only once did I see Tsewang, the most
outspoken of the family, tell Gyaltsen he might get back to work. It was
not that the others did not notice and did not mind, however. It became
apparent later that the older generations were seriously displeased with
the extent to which the young couple were failing to contribute to the
households tasks. As I became more integrated into the household both
Morup and Api Rigzin divulged their disapproval of Choron to me: she
was refusing to help and stealing food. But the extent of their displeasure
was not even hinted at while they were together in the fields and they
never treated Choron with anything but warmth and concern. Good
personal relations were always maintained. When I visited Photoksar
eighteen months later the family had decided to divide and both the older
generations were going to move to a khangu, a disastrous occurrence for
the young couple, who would have to maintain the large khangba, with
all the related tax and social obligations, on their own. Nevertheless,
they were all working together to build the new house and maintaining
harmonious family relations in the meantime.
Once, when I returned to the village from a visit to Leh, both Morup
and Paljor told me privately that they had had an argument about some
money. They were obviously concerned that someone else might tell me
about the quarrel as, indeed, one of the village women did, and wanted
to impress on me that it had all been resolved. There was obviously an
element of shame in having a public quarrel. Earlier in my stay Tsewang
and Yangzes had had a stormy argument. I did not witness this but
people told me that she had reproached him for hitting their son, upon
which he had hit her. As a result she had become angry (sho yongse) and
taken her two children back to Wadze, her natal khangba in the village.
Just days after the event Khangltakh hosted a party, however, which both
Yangzess brother and father attended and I watched them chatting and
laughing without any sign of tension. There had, indeed, been an argu-
ment; it was being treated seriously by both families and eventually lead
to a divorce, but in the mean time the wider families were refusing to let
it affect their social relations. Public displays of anger, discontent and
disharmony were, thus, rare, and it gradually became clear that such
behaviour attracted moral disapproval.
70 CHAPTER FOUR
The morality of anger
Paljor quickly became one of my major sources of information about the
village, its history and customs. The women in the family were, on the
other hand, the most outspoken in their judgments of their fellow
villagers. They were particularly critical of those who got involved in
public quarrels. In the aftermath of one argument between two village
women Morup and Choron told me that one of the protagonists was very
bad because she got into a lot of arguments. They could list the number
of people with whom she had quarrelled over the years. I never saw
women being critical of their husbands in such a forthright way as when
they suspected them of arguing and they were positively afraid at the
thought of their men fighting. One evening Gyaltsen, who normally
drank very little, came back slightly drunk from a party at which raised
voices had been heard. He was immediately harangued by Choron, with
the support of Morup and Api Rigzin: If you get drunk you will start
arguing, she said, and then you will get into a fight. Gyaltsen took the
criticism in silence. One of the most serious fights I saw occurred
between drunken men at a wedding. As soon as her husband reappeared
the young wife of one of the protagonists started shaking and berating
him in floods of tears telling him very publicly to go away, go home!
The villagers talked about both fighting and arguing in the abstract
as very bad. The phrase used to describe people who got into quarrels
was usually tsokpo, a general word meaning bad or dirty but also used
to signify strong disapproval. This is distinct from behaviour which is
merely regarded as breaching the trims, which is greeted by amusement
and the phrase jara met khan (I/you have been clumsy/stupid). The use
of the words gyalla, good, and tsokpo, bad, in such contexts implies
moral approval and disapproval.
The condemnation of conflict was matched by the censure of those
who expressed anger. Whenever anger, sho, was mentioned it was with
a shake of the head. To get angry, sho yongse, was always tsokpo. The
concept of sho can generally be translated as anger, but it was also
used, with the same element of disapproval, to refer to people who
merely expressed aversion or displeasure. A visiting foreign tourist, for
example, had stayed in the main guest room in Khangltakh, the one I
normally occupied, while I was away for a few days. After I had returned
he came through the village again and was offered the second, smaller
guest room. He thought this was inadequate and went off to try to find
something better. As the Khangltakhpa described it, he had become
CONFLICT IN THE VILLAGE 71
When he failed to find a better room elsewhere and returned to Khangltakh they
2
were not, however, too proud to offer him the second room again.
cross, sho yongse, which they considered to be tsokpo and they refused
to let me offer him my room as an alternative.
2
Disapproval was also voiced of those who were perceived as failing
to co-operate with others. As already mentioned, the young couple in
Khangltakh were regarded as falling well below their implicit duties to
contribute to the household tasks. Choron, Morup told me, should be
relieving Api Rigzin of some of her work, by insisting, no, Ill do that.
Any failure to comply with the obligation to help and co-operate with
other households, particularly in agricultural matters, also attracted
criticism. The sheep and goats were taken up to the mountains every day
in two combined flocks, for example, and each morning someone from
each household would milk the animals and then drive them to the
meeting point. Very often, one person would ask a neighbour to take
both groups together and it was expected that the other would agree. In
one case a quarrel ensued from one womans refusal to do this and she
was quietly criticised by Morup. If someone else asks us to take their
animals we should say ya ya* (OK), she told me. In other words, there
is a clear social and moral obligation to assist others. A similar expecta-
tion of co-operation also ensures that water from the smaller irrigation
channels and their maintenance is shared fairly.
Along with anger, selfishness and laziness are, thus, readily criti-
cised. When a development worker visited the village and gave out free
toothbrushes Morup told me indignantly that she had seen a couple of
women asking for more than they needed. Some people always say nga
nga (me, me), was the view of the others around the stove that evening.
On another occasion the komnyer did not arrive when he was expected
to perform a ceremony in Khangltakh, causing inconvenience to Morup.
Paljor shook his head and said that the komnyer was lhende. Lhende can
mean stupid or selfish but he meant lazy and unhelpful in this context.
Such strong criticism is rarely voiced publicly of anyone, especially a
monk, and Morups comments about the selfishness of the village
women were equally unprecedented. The villagers reluctance to express
sho means they are rarely openly critical of each other. They are more
likely to talk about anger and fighting in the abstract. Nevertheless, after
I had spent some time in the village and became integrated into the
household, the Khangltakhpa expressed critical views to me which
72 CHAPTER FOUR
indicated the implicit moral standards by which they were constantly
appraising each others behaviour.
Anger, laziness and selfishness are all, then, regarded as bad. Positive
stubbornness is even worse. Apart from getting into arguments, simply
stirring up trouble by talking badly of others was also described as
tsokpo. For the most part, the villagers avoided behaviour which dis-
played such characteristics. The excessive drinking of alcohol was also
frequently criticised in the abstract, being linked to the occurrence of
quarrels and fights. Alcohol, in general, was mentioned with disap-
proval. However, the expectations of hospitality demanded that chang
was brewed, offered and drunk in very large quantities. The drunkenness
the villagers fear was regularly forced by them upon one another. In
practice, when a man (much more rarely a woman) returned home drunk
from a social event and fell asleep in front of the stove he was laughed
at indulgently. What the villagers really fear is alcohol-induced aggres-
sion. As Meme Sonam once said to me, most of us just fall asleep, but
chang makes some men feel tall and then they start arguing. It is the
resulting quarrels that are the real object of the disapproval of drinking
in the village.
Adultery was never discussed by the Photoksarpa in front of me but
Sonam Phuntsog, the teacher posted in Photoksar, assured me it was
common in the village. It is disapproved of, but, he explained, a man
will say, "it is OK because my wife has done the same thing," or, "her
husband is proud". In practice, the child of a wife will always be
regarded as her husbands son or daughter and a child of her household,
even when everyone knows the biological facts, and I never heard of any
conflict arising out of adultery. It is the child of an unmarried woman
that is a problem because a child must, above all, have a household. As
with the chang, therefore, the underlying object of the behaviour that
attracts moral disapproval is the social disruption that is liable to result.
These moral judgments are directed at the overall good of a harmonious
community.
Morality and the individual mind
The moral realm is, therefore, a public one, directed at a public good.
Any scheme of moral imperatives, however, implies a distinction
between an is and an ought. It implies that the person is, in certain
crucial respects, an autonomous individual, responsible for his own acts,
CONFLICT IN THE VILLAGE 73
People would also attribute anger to a sems lchinte, literally a strong mind, but they
3
would use this phrase interchangeably with sems chungun.
capable of choosing to act correctly and, consequently, worthy of
opprobrium if he does not. The individual who gets angry in Photoksar
ought to restrain himself.
When discussing anger in the abstract, the villagers would generally
attribute it to having a sems chungun, a small mind. This involved a
certain recognition that individuals have different sorts of minds, which
affects their tendency to express certain sorts of emotions. Expressions
of emotion are, on many occasions, matters of ritual display, particularly
during the events of a wedding when a bride is expected to weep contin-
uously over several days. The villagers also, however, recognise that
some individuals tend to be more emotional than others. In Khangltakh,
Api Rigzin would always cry easily, much more than Morup, and people
laughed about this, although it was not something she was proud of. She
was considered to have a sems chungun, which meant that she also
quickly became afraid in the dark. All Ladakhis, but especially women,
are expected to be afraid outside at night or when travelling alone
because of the lhandre, the ghosts, and the evil spirits. The Khangltakh-
pa were always amazed when I wanted to travel alone and when they
saw westerners trekking by themselves. Many men also refused to do
this and some would not even spend a night alone in a house, a fact
remarked upon during these conversations. Other men, however, gener-
ally those who do the yak-herding, spend long days relatively alone in
their huts in the mountains. These men have sems chenmo, big minds,
people explained. A large or small mind or, indeed, something in
between, is what you are born with, therefore, rather than being the
result of personal effort or practice. Paljor, for example, readily admitted
that he had a sems chungun and his mother agreed that he used to get
terribly afraid in the dark as a child while his brother, Tsewang, and son,
Tundup, are afraid of nothing.
Having a sems chungun, then, means that you tend to get emotional
at leave-takings and are easily afraid in the dark. Paradoxically, how-
ever, the sems chungun is also equated with anger. In one conversation
3
Paljor explicitly linked the two. If you have a sems chungun you get
angry; and you also get afraid easily. This patently does not reflect the
reality because individuals who were fearless could also be those who
were quick to anger. Tsewang was a good example of this. Nevertheless,
74 CHAPTER FOUR
the fearful sems chungun was equated with the strong mind, prone to
anger, while the fearless sems chenmo is the soft mind of patience.
There is a conflation of the moral and the emotional worlds here.
Anger attracts moral disapproval while fear and weeping are merely
laughed at. The thread that links the two ideas is the notion of self-
control. Those who do not become angry are self-disciplined and an
emotionally self-disciplined person should be able both to master the
emotion of fear and to control the morally reprehensible expression of
anger. This is to ascribe autonomy to the individual, however, which
makes evident the conceptual paradox in the concept of the sems. It is
something a person is born with and is unchangeable. Some people are
inevitably liable to cry at leave-takings and to be afraid in the dark. Yet
the sems is also supposed to account for the expression of anger, which
is the object of moral opprobrium. The man who is tsokpo because he
gets angry ought to restrain himself, to exert a measure of self-control,
implying the exercise of individual will. On the one hand, therefore,
each individual has an unalterable propensity to a certain expression of
emotion: the concept of sems expresses innate differences in individual
personalities. On the other, however, there is a set of moral values with
which the individual ought to comply: anger is a controllable emotion
and the individual is a free agent to act appropriately.
Mauss, in his celebrated essay (1985), discusses the different con-
cepts of the person that have existed in different societies over time. He
describes the social person identified with clan totems and ancestors
among the North Americans, the jural person of Classical Rome, the
moral person of the Greek Moralists and the Christian notion of the
person as rational and indivisible. He also draws a distinction between
the personne, the socially-constructed person, and the moi, the individual
free agent. He is describing the different ideas encompassed in the
concept of the person as it has evolved through time and across cultures.
However, his essay becomes particularly enlightening if, as Allen (1985:
42) has suggested, it is allowed that several such aspects may exist
synchronically. A person may be identified with his clan, but also be a
jural individual and a rational being. To this complex we could add the
coexistence of moi- and personne- oriented systems. As Carrithers points
out (1985: 235, 236) Mauss draws a distinction between the personne
and the moi, the social person and the individual, and then elides the
CONFLICT IN THE VILLAGE 75
The moi-oriented moral systems of Stoicism, Christianity and Buddhism, for
4
example, are based on images of man alone, communing with nature of the German
Romantics, acting according to his intrinsic human nature for the Stoics, meditating in
the forest for the Theravada Buddhists, struggling in ones room in prayer for Protestant
Christians. There are theories found in complex societies which simply could not be
characteristic of a simple society. (1985: 48-49) In other words, the moi-oriented
systems are also social constructs. If the Ladakhi villagers do not participate fully in the
philosophies of Buddhism, as I suggest in the next chapter, they do, nevertheless, have
a sense of moral responsibility which implies individual will and responsibility.
The concepts of flesh (sha) and bone (rus) are also connected to ideas about the
5
transmission of bodily substances from parents to children, which are part of the kinship
patterns of the clan-based societies of Tibet, although not given any prominence in
Ladakh.
Mills (forthcoming) stresses the physical elements of spirit possession in the Tibetan
6
region.
difference. The moi- and the personne-oriented systems do, in fact,
4
relate to and influence one another.
The individual in Photoksar is, accordingly, defined in numerous,
interlinking and not always consistent ways. The sems can be attacked
by the evil spirits to cause physical illness; the physical person of the
5
lhaba, the spirit medium, is liable to be possessed; membership of the
6
yulpa is a jural position; the social individual in the dral-go has a status
determined by gender and age; the fortunes of the person as a metaphysi-
cal being are influenced by astrological configurations; the fate of the
soul in the next life is governed by the laws of karma; and there is the
individual who is autonomous with respect to the dictates of morality.
The moral, social, jural and metaphysical are all distinguishable, al-
though interlinked, aspects of the Ladakhi person. Even the moi is a
complex of ideas: on the one hand its nature is determined by the sems
and on the other it is autonomous with respect to moral behaviour. It
would be a mistake, I would suggest, to try to rationalise these different
aspects. Despite the notion of the sems chungun, each individual is also
a moi who inhabits a moral universe, responsible for keeping the peace
and avoiding the evils of anger and conflict. In a similar way, as I
suggest in the next chapter, Buddhist notions of the individual soul,
subject to the moral laws of karma, do not eclipse the notion of the moi
who inhabits the realm of village morality.
76 CHAPTER FOUR
Order and responsibility
The way the Photoksar villagers judge each other, which aspect of the
person they invoke at any particular time, is very much dependent on
context. When discussing fear and anger in the abstract, for example,
these emotions are attributed to the state of a persons sems. In the
context of particular instances of conflict, on the other hand, one villager
is more likely to pass a moral judgment on another, criticising him or her
as tsokpo for getting angry. The attribution of moral responsibility to
individuals within the village must also, therefore, be approached from
the point of view of those who place the blame.
In his comparative discussion of violence in an African and a British
setting, David Parkin (1986) points out that two different views of evil-
doing and evil-doers can be distinguished. Referring to a study by
Pocock (1985) he distinguishes between a relativistic or circumstantial
view of evil, on the one hand, and a more absolute image, on the other.
Those who adopt the first can excuse gross perpetrators, regarding them
as individuals who might have excuses or who can, at least, claim
reasons for forgiveness. The second view precludes such forgiveness.
Pococks study, based on British data, had suggested that the second was
the majority attitude: public attitudes to crime tend to condemn the
perpetrators by reference to the effects of their actions on society,
demanding punishment to fit the crime. However, as Parkin suggests
(1986: 209), most people (in the west) probably alternate at some time
between different attitudes to criminality.
The more absolutist view, which characterises perpetrators as deviant
and crime as a lapse from absolute standards of socially acceptable
behaviour, is the attitude adopted by the Ladakhi villagers in many
contexts. They do recognise that anger and violence can be caused by
provocation - people worry if they think their remarks have made
someone else angry. However, such provocation never excuses the other
persons anger. The expression of anger and use of harsh words are
never considered to be morally justified within the village, so much so
that the concept of revenge is unequivocally disapproved of. After a
fight a man may try to justify his own aggression on the basis that the
other person provoked him or struck the first blow, but this does not
absolve the sin of fighting.
This became apparent in the context of a discussions about the Sumde
Gokpo, some old wooden Buddha statues in the village of Sumda
CONFLICT IN THE VILLAGE 77
Gokpo is the word used to refer to things that are old and in disrepair, like the
7
abandoned temple above Photoksar. However, Tim Malyon, who has studied these
statues (Malyon and Denwood 1986) told me that gokpo can also refer to the long trance
that Buddhist meditators enter into. The statues date from between 1000 and 1350
(Luczanits 2005: 84).
In fact, the explanation that the villagers of Sumda Chenmo, themselves, have given
8
to others is rather different (Tim Malyon, personal communication).
Chenmo, about three days walk away from Photoksar. As I was about
7
to leave to visit them Morup shuddered and said that the statues were
tsokpo. But are they not Buddhas? I asked. Yes but angry ones (sho
yong-khan), she replied. The statues turned out not to represent fear-
some protector deities with bared teeth and weapons, of the kind de-
picted on many monastery walls, however, so I asked Paljor for an
explanation when I returned. He told me that the Buddhas are angry,
tsokpo, because people go to the statues and make offerings to ask the
deities to wreak revenge for them. As far as he was concerned, there-
8
fore, the task of taking revenge could be entrusted to these angry, non-
worldly beings. However, even on the part of such deities the act of
taking revenge was tsokpo, being the work of anger. The concept of
revenge, that is, is acknowledged but unequivocally disapproved of.
When I discussed it with Sonam Phuntsog he used the expression lan
tang-ba, literally: to give an answer. This can be either good or bad, a
lan gyalla or a lan tsokpo, he explained. In other words, the phrase
encompasses the returning of a favour as well as the answering of one
bad deed by another. A bad answer, lan tsokpo, is always tsokpo,
however. There is no concept of justified revenge. The idea of an eye
for an eye, a tooth for a tooth has no local equivalent.
External events can, thus, give rise to tension in the mind, which
makes people quick to express anger. However, responsibility for angry
or aggressive actions is not absolved by these considerations. The use of
the words tsokpo and gyalla to describe those who get into fights and
arguments is an absolute moral judgment, implying that the person
always ought to and always could, restrain himself. As Parkin (1986)
suggests, we should not be surprised by inconsistencies in judgments of
personal responsibility. Provocation, like the state of ones mind, can
give rise to anger. However, there is an over-riding moral responsibility
on the part of all individuals to restrain themselves from expressing this
emotion, which is central to the ways in which the villagers maintain
relations of order within their community.
78 CHAPTER FOUR
The same term is found in Shakhs Khang, the LBAs mediation service.
9
There are, therefore, paradoxes and inconsistencies amongst the
multiplicity of concepts which concern the individual person and
morality in Photoksar. To a large extent these reflect the context within
which (moral) judgments are made. The fact that the villagers live with
inconsistencies in their epistemological worlds is, however, of impor-
tance when examining their attitudes to the supernatural and their
relations with religious leaders.
Disputes
When anger leads to a quarrel but the protagonists walk away or make
up their differences then the incident remains merely a talking point in
the village. If animosity remains active, however, it becomes a village
concern. An unresolved dispute is an ongoing problem for the house-
holds involved and, ultimately, for the village as a whole. It is primarily
the gobas duty to engineer a form of resolution. Whenever we discussed
the role of the goba, both in Photoksar and other villages, people always
also mentioned dispute resolution, very often first, among his list of
duties. The primary concern of his intervention is to restore good
relations between the individuals, shakhs choches. One day, for exam-
9
ple, one of the village women came in a state of high indignation to talk
to Paljor, who was then village membar. She had just had a quarrel with
her daughter-in-laws mother, a woman from another village. Paljor
listened and a few days later accompanied the goba to a meeting to
resolve the problem. Choron told me that the two women had argued and
thrown stones and that the meeting was to make them shake hands so
that they did not throw stones any more. She also used the expression
chams chug. Chug means to cause and chams was explained to me in
terms of the affection that family members feel for each other. A rela-
tionship of chams was to be restored between them. No-one could tell
me what the quarrel had actually been about, however. That was not the
point. It was the argument that was the problem and Paljors responsibil-
ity, as village membar, was to ensure that good relations were restored.
For the villagers, disputes are events of public significance and
shakhs (mediation) is a conscious, deliberate process. It is a widely
discussed village practice which follows a hierarchical pattern culminat-
ing in the meeting of the yulpa, the villages ultimate judicial authority.
CONFLICT IN THE VILLAGE 79
There are two phenomena here, which could be distinguished as differ-
ences and disputes. The words used to describe disputes are roughly
translatable as shouting, flinging abuse, arguing, quarrelling and
fighting, in other words overt forms of antagonism. Their public nature
means that disputes affect the whole community. Mere differences that
do not result in overt antagonism, by contrast, are dealt with as practical
problems. On the border between differences and disputes are those bad
relations between individuals who, nevertheless, avoid an open quarrel.
I came across one of these in the village one winter, when I returned
after my primary period of fieldwork. Two men had not talked to each
other since the previous summer when an argument over livestock had
occurred. Two other men had decided to try to get the disputants to sit
down and shake hands, but without success. They were sure, however,
that things would eventually be resolved. Some of the older men would
get involved and talk wisely, they told me. The bad relations between
the two men were not an urgent problem for the community, but gener-
ated a continuing sense of unease, both because of the disrupted house-
hold relations but, more importantly, because they could develop into a
full-scale fight if they were not resolved.
Differences or disputes that do not involve violence might be re-
solved by employing the services of a mediator, a barmi. As already
mentioned, shortly after I arrived in the village Tsewang, Paljors
younger brother, had had an argument with his wife, Yangzes, during the
course of which he had hit her. It was reported to me that she had then
become angry, sho yongse, and returned to Wadze, her natal home. In
the days that followed there was much contact between the families.
Meme Sonam, Gyaltsen and Morup from Khangltakh all went to Wadze
to ask her to come back but she said that she did not want to return.
Tsewang did not go and there was much shrugging of shoulders about
his attitude. Maybe he did not want her back. Eventually they called in
the onpo to act as mediator. According to Morup, he talked wisely. At
first he told Tsewang to go and bring Yangzes back but Tsewang said he
did not want to do so. The onpo, therefore, consulted Yangzes who also
said she did not want to return. So he suggested a divorce: one of the two
children should belong to Khangltakh and the other to Wadze. Later they
drew up an agreement which included the payment of half a yak from
Khangltakh to Wadze. The whole issue was resolved within a month.
Tsewang and Yangzes remained on bad terms but the continuation of
good relations between the two households was assured by this settle-
ment.
80 CHAPTER FOUR
Although the resolution of disputes is ultimately the gobas responsi-
bility, others can, thus, act as mediators. There are no individuals who
are particularly qualified to assume this role, however. It is generally
older men who are asked to do so but, as with other matters of village
politics, there is no status of village elder, or the like. It is considered
to be more important that the mediator should know the parties and,
therefore, the background to the dispute. Several families divided while
I was staying in Photoksar. These are always problematic events involv-
ing the division of property, and they are sometimes acrimonious,
although members of the khangba and khangu invariably continue to co-
operate over social and agricultural events. On one occasion, for exam-
ple, the old Meme from one household came to complain to Paljor about
the situation in his khangba. He had been arguing with the Ama (the
mother), and the children were stealing his things, he said, so he wanted
to move to a khangu where he could lock the door. Paljor advised him
not to move because of the extra work that would be involved in living
by oneself, but he suggested that he should, in any event, consult a
mediator. He named another older man, a relation of the family. If that
mediator could not settle things, Paljor explained to me later, the case
would have to go to the goba and membar and if they also failed it
would be considered by the yulpa. There is a clear hierarchy in the levels
of village mediation, therefore, which culminates in the yulpa.
The mediation of disputes
Mediation is always a deliberate process, subject to public discussion
and comment. One evening the family in Khangltakh were asking me
about my own country. After questions about population, jobs and rates
of pay Paljor asked if there was a goba and if people got into fights. If
so, do the neighbours intervene and resolve matters, as they do in
Photoksar? he asked. This then led to a discussion of the Photoksar
customs. He was quite specific about the hierarchy of mediation. First
the family will try to resolve a dispute, he said, then the neighbours will
get involved, then they will go to a mediator. If he cannot resolve the
problem the goba and membar will be called and if they cannot solve it
the case will go to a whole village meeting. As a last resort it could go
to the police, he said.
The occurrence of two fights on consecutive days at a summer
wedding, for example, prompted the most decisive judicial activity I
CONFLICT IN THE VILLAGE 81
witnessed during my fieldwork, with a village meeting called immedi-
ately to deal with the problem. The root of one of the fights lay in the
previous years New Year (Losar) celebrations, during which a fight had
occurred between two men. There was long-standing animosity between
them because the daughter of one had been married to the other mans
younger brother. He had, therefore, joined the fathers household as a
makpa, but he had soon walked out and left his wife. The two men got
into a fight after they had been drinking during the Losar celebrations
and the following day the goba and membar were called upon to sort it
out. Morup explained to me that the goba and membar were going to tell
the two men that they had been drunk yesterday, that tomorrow they
would not be drunk, and so they must get on, shake hands and have no
more argument. I discovered, later, that the goba and membar had also
drawn up an agreement for the men to sign, each undertaking to pay a
fine of Rs1,000 to the village if he fought again.
At a wedding, about six months later, the two men did, indeed, get
into another drunken fight. Then, on the second day of the wedding
another fight erupted, this time between some of the younger village
men, three of whom ganged up against a fourth. At the time the men
were restrained by those around them, including some of the women.
This was the incident during which the young wife berated her husband
publicly in floods of tears. Very early the next day, however, the goba
came to see Paljor together with the beaten mans father. It was agreed
that an entire village meeting was necessary. Word was put about and
the men gathered the same morning. All the protagonists were called,
except the victim of the second fight who stayed in his house. First the
yulpa dealt with the smaller fight. Because of the earlier agreement each
man acknowledged that he had to pay a fine of Rs1,000 to the village
and was made to sign another agreement to the effect that if he fought
again he would pay a fine of Rs10,000 to the village, an astronomical
amount in local terms. Even Rs1,000 was very significant and there was
much discussion in the following days about how the men had managed
to raise the money. They also went through a ceremony of yal. Yal is the
term used for the pouring of chang from a changskyan, a ceremonial
brass jug decorated with butter which is used on formal occasions. In
this case the father had to give yal first by pouring and offering chang
to the brother, because he had said the first harsh words. Then the
brother had to give yal and also a khatags to the father, because he had
struck the first blow.
82 CHAPTER FOUR
The meeting then dealt with the larger fight. From my position at a
distance I could see that each of the protagonists was being questioned.
Although there was no formality in the meeting, men coming and going
all the time, there was a small core made up of the goba and membars
who directed the questions. Paljor told me later that they had asked the
men why they had fought. The men had said that the other had used
harsh words towards them. Paljor shrugged at this, suggesting that he
thought it a poor explanation: an insult does not justify retaliation. So,
he continued, they had told the men they each had to pay a fine to the
victim because he had been hurt. The men had offered Rs500; the victim
had said that was not enough; the yulpa had then suggested Rs600 and
after some to-ing and fro-ing everyone had agreed to this figure. All four
also had to pay Rs100 to the village because of the fight and to sign an
agreement undertaking to pay a fine of Rs5,000 if they fought again. The
goba and membar had then taken the three men down to the victims
house for yal. The three had given yal and khatags to the fourth and he
had then given them yal, but not a khatags, because he was the one who
had been hurt. A little while later they all emerged from the house,
laughing and talking. Good relations had, obviously, immediately been
restored. I commented on this later to Meme Sonam who said, simply,
chams song, yal tangs, a relationship of chams had been restored after
the yal had been given.
There was a perceived need to restore good relations, chams, in all
these cases and in all of them the mediation of the goba and yulpa was
ultimately successful. Lingering antipathy might have remained, as it did
between the father and brother and between Tsewang and Yangzes, but
workable relations were restored, most importantly between their
respective households. Village life, with its networks of cooperation and
assistance, could, therefore, continue as normal. Similar attitudes
towards the restoration of good relations were expressed in conversa-
tions I had about disputes with informants from all over Ladakh. One
striking example is reported by Kim Gutschow from Zangskar (2004:
140-42). A case of rape, which had resulted in the death of the girl, was
dealt with entirely internally to that village. The girls father merely
demanded and obtained, against an admittedly guilty party, a donation
to the monastery and a payment for a sangs, purification ritual. Gutsch-
ow comments on the way in which the following year the father and his
CONFLICT IN THE VILLAGE 83
Gutschow attributes this reaction to belief in the law of karma. However, for the
10
reasons I give in the next chapter I consider this not to be a realistic or sufficient
interpretation.
daughters attacker were again working side by side in the fields without
any apparent residue of animosity between them.
10
The resolution of fights in Photoksar can involve an element of
punishment by the community of the individuals involved, with the
protagonists called to justify themselves before the village meeting and
fines being paid to the village, for the fight. When we were discussing
the mediation carried out by the yulpa, for example, Paljor was quite
specific about the sort of fines they would impose in different cases. In
a bad case of fighting the protagonists would have to give khatags and
yal and a fine of between Rs6,000 to Rs9,000, but the fine would only
be around Rs1,000 if the case was less serious. If it was just an argument
then they would only have to give khatags and yal. I never encountered
any cases of theft but Paljor said that if they caught a thief then the goba
and membars or the yulpa would beat him.
This punitive authority on the part of the yulpa was readily apparent
in the resolution of the most serious fight I came across in Photoksar,
which had occurred a little before I arrived in the village. The two
younger brothers of the three at Chushot, men probably in their 40s, had
argued over the Mother of the house, a problem not uncommon in
polyandrous relationships. Morup told me the background in some
detail, suggesting that the Chushot Mother had been playing the two
younger brothers off against each other, using bribery and flattery. There
had been much conflict between the two, she explained, which had
become violent, the older brother getting out his rifle at one point (he
had been in the army for a while). After this incident the yulpa had
intervened and decided that both men should leave the khangba and live
in separate khangu. They also made each sign an agreement undertaking
to pay a fine of Rs9,000 to the village if they ever returned to the
khangba. They were required to pay a smaller fine to the village immedi-
ately, because of the argument. However, after some months, when I
was in the village, the Chushot Mother enticed the younger brother back
to the khangba, asking him to help with their work, and he was seen to
be living there again. As a result he had to pay his fine to the village and
another agreement was drawn up recording this.
84 CHAPTER FOUR
The epistemology of conflict
Despite this element of punishment and even when the yulpa have
imposed fines on the parties to a dispute, conciliation is still needed
before a dispute is recognised as having been resolved. Agreement
between the protagonists is an absolute requirement. One summer, for
example, an argument occurred over the lora, the duty of certain house-
holds to protect the fields from the animals. A large group of people
gathered in the upper fields and after a while some of them passed by the
place where I was sitting and told me that two women had been quarrel-
ling over the animals. One of them was Rigzin, whose household had
that years lora obligations. I learned later that some animals had got
into the other womans fields and she had complained to Rigzin, where-
upon Rigzin had used harsh language against her. Rigzin was clearly
seen by the villagers as having been at fault by turning the complaint
into an argument and the goba and membar went to discipline her.
However, Rigzin then started arguing with them and refused to apolo-
gise. Paljor later told me that Rigzin had been bad, tsokpo, because she
was stubborn, khyongbo, and disobedient, kha ma nyan (literally, not
hearing his words).
Now the problem was considered to have become serious. It was
discussed at the next village meeting and a group of the yulpa was sent
to ask that she apologise to the goba and membar. They came back
saying that she had refused to do so and further discussion took place.
Eventually another party of people went to threaten her with a social
boycott, chu len me len chad. This is a tactic commonly employed in a
variety of different contexts throughout Ladakh. It was used by the LBA
against the Muslims during the communal tensions which arose in Leh
in the late 1980s, for example. In the village it is the ultimate sanction
that can be applied since life would be impossible without cooperation
from other households over agricultural and ritual events. Eventually,
faced with this threat, Rigzin had agreed to give yal and say jule, jule,
that is, to apologise to the goba, and everything was settled. In this case
merely imposing a fine was not an option. The miscreant had to apolo-
gise for shakhs to have been achieved.
Even in the case of a theft, Paljor told me, the thief would have to pay
a fine as well as endure a beating. If he accepted the fine and apologised,
by saying jule, jule, that would be an end of the matter, he explained.
There is, therefore, an element of punishment in many of the settlements
negotiated by the village and heavy fines might be imposed but the
CONFLICT IN THE VILLAGE 85
ideology of agreement pervades them all. A case is not settled until
agreement has been achieved between the parties.
Abel (1974), along with certain legal anthropologists, defines conflict
as arising when parties develop inconsistent claims to a resource.
Gulliver (1969), for example, defines a dispute in terms of disagreement
between persons or groups in which the alleged interests or rights of one
are claimed to have been infringed by the other. Indeed, some anthropol-
ogists have concluded that it is of the essence of dispute resolution that
it involve a procedure of inquiry into guilt and responsibility and the
process of adjudication between conflicting claims (Epstein 1967). In
Photoksar, however, when a dispute or a fight occurs it is the fact of the
conflict, not the clash between competing rights, that is the focus of
attention. What are discussed by the villagers are the details of the
argument or fight, not the underlying rights and wrongs of the situation.
Indeed, an analysis of individual claims and interests is striking in its
absence. In Rigzins case the focus of the villagers attention was on the
course of the argument, initially that between the two women and later
the attitudes expressed by Rigzin towards the goba. During the course
of the yulpas involvement in this case the underlying cause of the
quarrel between the two women and the question of who had been at
fault for letting the sheep eat the barley was entirely forgotten. There
was no question of the woman who complained demanding or receiving
compensation.
The same emphasis on the nature of the antagonism, rather than the
underlying cause of the quarrel, can be seen in the context of another
argument which arose one summer. Two women, one from Chushot and
the other from Zurba, got into a disagreement over the res, the herding
of the sheep and goats. The Zurba Mother came to tell her story to all
those sitting at the stream, the villages central meeting place, so it soon
became the talk of the village. Apparently her daughter had asked the
Chushot daughter to take both flocks together up to the mountains, but
the Chushot Mother had come out and told her not to, reducing the
Zurba daughter to tears. The Zurba Mother had then come to complain
and a big argument had ensued between the two women. I met one of the
village men later at the stream who confirmed these details, but when I
asked him about the rights and wrongs of the situation, enquiring who
had been tsokpo, he just shrugged his shoulders. I dont know, he said,
obviously feeling uncomfortable that I had even asked the question and
not wanting to have to make any judgment on the matter. That evening
Api Rigzin told me that the goba and membar had settled the problem.
86 CHAPTER FOUR
Paljor had sorted it out with khatags and yal, she said. But she could not
tell me, and was obviously not interested in, who had given what to
whom, who was right, wrong or at fault.
It was only later that Paljor told me, because I specifically asked him,
that the Chushot Mother had given yal first because she had been the
first to use harsh words, but the Zurba Mother had given both yal and
khatags because her language had been worse. The settlement, therefore,
was determined according to the course of the quarrel, not to the under-
lying rights and wrongs of the disagreement. When I asked about the
reason for the argument, Paljor told me that Zurba had been sending its
animals to one area of the mountains but had asked Chushot to take them
to another area with theirs. As part of the settlement they would now be
taken to the second area together. What he was telling me was how the
settlement had dealt with the future question of the herding, not who had
been right or wrong at the time. Only later, when I was in the fields with
Morup and Choron and the subject of this argument arose again, did I
get any view on what had caused it. Morup volunteered the opinion that
the Chushot Mother ought to have agreed to take both flocks. Every day
people ask each other for help with their animals and we say ya, ya,
yes, yes, she told me. In her opinion, therefore, the fault had lain with
Chushot. This, however, was a very private opinion. The notion of fault
was not the primary concern of the villagers and had not determined the
giving of yal and khatags. Choron followed up what Morup had said by
expressing the opinion that the Chushot Mother was tsokpo, bad, be-
cause she regularly got into arguments. This was the real focus of village
disapproval, not how the res system ought to have operated, important
though this is in the normal course of daily life.
It is not that the villagers completely disregard the issue of the fault
attaching to the differences underlying an argument. When Morup was
explaining procedures that follow a divorce for the return of the bride
price and trousseau, for example, she told me that it would depend on
whose choice the divorce had been. The implication was that the party
who chooses has some justification and that the settlement will reflect
this. On the other hand, in the actual case of Tsewangs and Yangzess
divorce I got different accounts from the two families. Khangltakh told
me that it was Tsewangs decision and, rather than reclaim the bride-
price, Meme Sonam had generously offered to pay half a yak to Wadze,
Yangzes family. Other people, however, expressed the view that
Khangltakh had been mean in only offering half a yak. When I stayed in
a village on the way to Leh, my hosts, kin of Khangltakh, were keen to
CONFLICT IN THE VILLAGE 87
As Cowan et. al. (2001: 1-4) point out, although the model of rights is today
11
hegemonic, this discourse is animated by a desire to establish universal rights. Rights
discourse constitutes a kind of culture, part of the global and transnational cultural order
(2001: 11-13).
catch up on such events. They asked whose choice the divorce had been
and whether Yangzes had not been working hard enough (the normally-
cited reason for a man to seek a divorce). They were, therefore, inter-
ested in the rights and wrongs of the situation. However, the settlement
itself had not involved any determination of or judgment on these issues.
All these cases could be analysed in terms of competing claims,
interests and rights: the Chushot and Zurba women had competing
interests in the herding of the sheep and goats; the divorce settlement
involved a determination of the respective parties property rights and
their entitlements with regard to the children. Similarly, relations
between members of a household, between different households and
between individuals and the community as a whole could be analysed in
terms of rights and control over resources. However, this type of analysis
is not the local one. It does not explain the villagers attitudes to and
perception of what conflict is, its consequences and significance for the
community. The villagers effectively preclude the expression of
11
individual rights by concentrating on the course of the disruption and
expression of anger and antagonism. What could be analysed as a clash
of interests is, rather, described as a disturbance to order. This is what
marks the distinction between differences (clashes of interests that
require a pragmatic solution) and disputes (overt antagonism that
requires reconciliation). It is the latter that disturbs the village order and
requires the most immediate and deliberate remedy.
According to this epistemology, all overt antagonism is a danger to
the order of the community requiring resolution and the ceremonial
restoration of good relations. This is supported by the local scheme of
morality according to which all such behaviour is reprehensible on the
part of the individuals involved, who are labelled tsokpo. The question
I turn to in the next chapter is whether these epistemological and moral
aspects have been shaped by the ideas and ideologies of Buddhism or
whether any other cosmological concerns can explain the villagers
anxieties about disorder.
The translations from the French are my own.
1
Aggarwal (2004: 153) likewise suggests that to sit in a place (in the dral) is to
2
embody and inhabit a material territory, a cosmological sphere, a social identity, a niche
in the universe.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE REALM OF THE SPIRITS
Several writers have suggested that a sense of cosmological order
underlies the social and political structures of Ladakhi communities.
Dollfus, for example, maintains that, the observance of hierarchy and
order is necessary for the maintenance of order, the success of a mar-
riage, the efficacy of a ritual. (1989: 98) This is expressed in seating
1
plans, in language (the use of honorifics) in food and serving dishes. It
reflects, she says, the hierarchical spatial ordering of the world in which
east is superior to west and above over lower, which is also reflected in
the physical structures of individual houses and the arrangement of the
village itself (1989:102). Hierarchy is also said to be present in the
2
worlds inhabited by the spirits, the lha, which are divided between the
stanglha (an upper realm), the barsam (the immediate world) and the
yoklu (the underworld) (Phylactou 1989: 55; Day 1989: 162; Riaboff
1997: 339; Mills 2003: 151-61). These writers suggest that the house-
hold is a similarly ordered social space, in which religious activities are
related to productive and reproductive processes in a hierarchical
relationship: the chod khang for the Buddhist deities is on the upper
storey of the house, along with the lha khang for the phalha; in the
middle are the rooms devoted to the pragmatic business of daily life and
it is here that the spirits of the locality receive offerings from each meal
prepared on the stove; while on the lower levels are the animals quar-
ters and the shrines to the lu, the spirits associated with fertility. Protec-
tor deities are, thus, placed above humans who, themselves, inhabit a
realm superior to that of the important, but problematic, lu. As Mills
points out (2003: Ch 6), deity is superior to fertility.
These writers, therefore, present a picture of a hierarchical cosmolog-
ical realm, reflected in the structures of village organisation and in the
relations between the human and supernatural inhabitants of the village,
which symbolises village order and the sense of solidarity that unites its
members. The existence of the community, Dollfus maintains (1989:
THE REALM OF THE SPIRITS 89
This view is substantially repeated in her later work (1999: 102-05).
3
125), is often defined by reference to either the village divinity or the
gonpa, and she links this to the strong sense of solidarity within the
village. Srinivas (1998: 90) also suggests that, the symbolic unity of the
village ... the internal field of power and well-being, is affirmed in the
presence of the god of the village settlement. Conflict, it would seem,
must pose a threat to this overarching cosmological order, dislocating
the hierarchies which constitute it and which allow humans and spirits
to live in harmony. Indeed, there is evidence that elsewhere in the
Tibetan region disputes are, indeed, considered to give rise to drib,
spiritual pollution (Schickelgrber 1989).
Other writers on the Tibetan region have linked religion and social
practices in different ways. In his study of the Sherpas of Nepal, Frer-
Haimendorf (1967: 181) describes their local moral concepts as having
been shaped by the philosophy of Buddhism. Ortner (1978, 1989)
describes Buddhist divinities and rituals as providing models for the
social problems of Sherpa society. The symbolic meanings of these rites,
she says, provide models for the problems of ageing, wealth, status,
fighting and the contradiction between hierarchy and equality. Inspired
by Geertzs (1973c) description of religion as a cultural system, she
argues that through its rituals, the Buddhist mode of seeing, feeling,
interpreting, categorising and so forth, are constantly and systematically
fed into lay experience. (1978: 162) A related view is taken by Samuel
3
(1993: 362) who suggests that other aspects of religious life in Tibet, not
just the strictly Buddhist, provide the cultural patterns that are funda-
mental to social forms. As he puts it (1993: 4):
For Tibetans, the vocabulary and modes of thinking deriving from Indian
Buddhism came to pervade many areas of experience that we do not neces-
sarily think of as religious, while the concerns of Tibetan folk religion, such
as the maintenance of good luck and good fortune, continue to underlie
virtually all facets of life.
Religion, that is, is multi-faceted and fundamental to social life.
These writers, thus, suggest three distinct ways in which the religious
or supernatural may be concerned with wider social and moral processes
in Tibetan societies. Frer-Haimendorf and Ortner concentrate on the
moral content of Buddhism and the symbolism of its rites and deities.
Indeed, Ortner has been criticised for over-interpreting her material in
line with Buddhist doctrine (Ramble 1980). Samuels analysis of the
90 CHAPTER FIVE
complexities of religious forms in Tibet finds cultural patterns in an
array of religious practices. Dollfus and other writers on Ladakh focus
on the structures of the spirit realm. My own thesis, however, is that
neither the moral order of Buddhism nor the realm of the spirits is
related to the moral and political order of the village that I have de-
scribed in previous chapters. The monks and other ritual practitioners are
firmly distanced from this realm, and the activities of the lha, complex
and important though they are in daily life, do not have any direct
bearing on the villagers concerns with conflict, nor the moral judgments
by which they condemn the expression of anger.
Tibetan religions
Samuels distinction between Indian Buddhism and Tibetan folk religion
is one that structures many discussions of religion in Tibetan societies.
At its starkest, Stein suggests that in Tibet the central religious activity:
is the concern of monk and hermits. It is inaccessible to ordinary believers.
Their deep faith depends upon the members of the monastic community.
Lay Buddhists do not take part in rituals and religious services, save
sometimes as mere spectators. They do not hear sermons and have no
private prayers. (1972: 172)
The nameless religion, by contrast, is the whole body of ideas and
customs belonging to the indigenous tradition: a religion, but an unor-
ganised churchless, doctrineless, priestless and almost nameless, whole.
(1972: 164) As Samuel describes it, this folk religion is concerned
primarily with this-worldly concerns (1993: Ch 10). According to Tucci,
the numina ... assist [the Tibetan] in his difficulties, they stand by his
side in his incessant struggle to defend himself against obstacles and
dangers, open and secret adversaries, who everywhere threaten his
existence, his well-being, his property. (1980: 165)
Many writers suggest that by a long process of assimilation,
Buddhism in Tibet came to incorporate local invocations and festivities
into its own ritual world and to adopt local numina into the ranks of its
protector deities (Tucci 1980: 163-6, 206). The notion of subjugation or
taming, dulwa, is the metaphor found widely in Tibetan texts to describe
the spread of Buddhism and the conversion of both human populations
and local numina (Gyatso 1987). Having been tamed and brought into
the service of Buddhism by Padmasambhava, among others, such local
THE REALM OF THE SPIRITS 91
gods can now be called upon in monastic worship to perform a protec-
tive function (Snellgrove 1957: 239-42; Tucci 1980: 168).
A range of practices is, thus, directed at the local gods, whose
importance is justified on the basis of their subjugation and conversion
to Buddhism. However, many of them command an uneasy respect from
the more orthodox practitioners. As Samuel says:
The Buddhist teachings repeatedly describe [the worldly gods] as foolish,
vain, and untrustworthy, as not fit objects in whom to take refuge or seek
protection, as involved only with the affairs of this world and not with
salvation. Yet within the context of this life, as opposed to rebirth or
Enlightenment, the gods can assist one or cause one harm, and relation-
ships with them have to be negotiated properly. (1993: 190)
There is, therefore, a tension between types of practice and the related
numina. This has given rise to debates about the relationship between
the orthodoxy and ideals of the religious elite and the practices those
elites would not regard as true Buddhism (Gombrich 1972: 488; Huber
1994: 32-3). Gellner (2001) describes the spectrum of views taken by
anthropologists, albeit of Theravada Buddhism, concerning the relation-
ship between these systems. At one end is the the whitewash theory of
syncretism according to which, high religion is seen as a thin veneer
covering a mass of non-Buddhist practices. Gellner describes this as the
modernist position, one taken by Tibetan Buddhist elites who, them-
selves, regard Buddhism as a quintessentially elite practice. Against this
there is a populist position, which regards Buddhism as the practice of
the masses, which has been distorted by the middle class (Southwold
1982). A middle ground, the one taken by most anthropologists and
many Buddhists themselves, is that Buddhism contains a hierarchy of
teachings and roles that coexist with other systems in a structured
hierarchy. (2001: 50-1) The idea of a hierarchy is found in certain
discourses in Ladakh, particularly those of the monks, who suggest that
the rituals of the higher monastic practitioners, along with the deities of
the orthodox Buddhist canon, are superior to local rites and deities, in
whom the laity often place too much faith.
While it is useful to distinguish between types of practice in this
way, however, I would suggest that the differences between them cannot
simply be viewed in terms of a hierarchy. Mills (2003) has re-analysed
the relationship, suggesting that both village and monastery, laity and
monks, exist within the power of local gods and their associated
cosmologies. The relationship between local deities and Buddhist
92 CHAPTER FIVE
practitioners cannot, therefore, be regarded in terms of a simple hierar-
chy of power. Bearing this in mind, I turn to the ritual practices I ob-
served in Photoksar.
Village practices
Each Ladakhi household is allied to one or other of the main monasteries
and most laymens primary contact with the Buddhism of these estab-
lishments is through the komnyer, the monks sent by the monastery to
tend the small temples they have established in each village. In Photoks-
ar there are two temples, belonging to Lamayuru and Hemis gonpas
respectively, and normally two komnyer. Both are invited by individual
households to do a monthly sangs, the basic purification ritual said to be
for everyone, for the animals, to make sure we do not get ill and do not
have accidents. They also carry out the Guru Rinpoche chos on the
tenth day of each Tibetan month and various annual rituals. The Hemis
komnyer was particularly keen to introduce proper Buddhist practice
into the village and, when I arrived, had recently instigated a three-day
ritual of devotion on the thirteenth to sixteenth days of the first month,
one of the most holy, during which the villagers congregated to recite
mantras, later circumambulating the village temples and associated
monuments, making prostrations along the way.
Each khangba has a shrine room, a chod khang, which contains
Buddhist statues, tankas (painted hangings), offering bowls and the
ritual objects that might be used by either the monks or the onpos, the
local ritual practitioners. Most houses also have a lha khang for the
household god, the phalha, a windowless room containing juniper
branches, white scarves and skulls from the animal sacrifices of former
years, in which daily offerings are made. The village roofs and nearby
hillsides are dotted with lhato, cairns of stones topped with juniper
branches, containing a jar of barley, gold, silver, turquoise and other
precious objects, where offerings are periodically made to the different
phalha or for the yullha, the village god. Each household also has at
least one pang gong, a shrine for the water spirits, the lu, who are
associated with springs and fertility. These are square, white-painted
structures, containing pots of barley and other treasures.
Within the village, the lha are a ubiquitous presence, responsible
for the physical security of both people and livestock. All acts of eating
and sleeping, the responses to birth and death, and all agricultural and
THE REALM OF THE SPIRITS 93
Some writers describe this as being for the tap lha, the spirit of the stove (Mills
4
2003: 156) but this has, at best, a shady existence and in Photoksar they suggested that
it was the phalha who received such offerings.
The same word root is found in chodpa, the general term for offerings made in all
5
Buddhist rituals.
These words are compounds of zhi (gzhi, home, residence), sa (earth) and dagpo
6
(bdagpo, lord or owner). Paljor also explained them as zhis-la shnase duk khan, meaning
the original (sna) inhabitants of the place.
Literally, this means the mouth (kha) of the earth (sa).
7
pastoral activities are conducted in a way that will appease them, while
sicknesses, misfortunes and deaths are unequivocally attributed to the
pernicious influence of their malevolent counterparts. In Khangltakh,
Api Rigzin renewed the offering bowls of water in the chod khang every
morning and performed a number of prostrations, while Morup carried
a small censer of burning juniper around the house, blowing smoke into
every room and calling invocations to the local gods. Throughout the
day, numerous small food offerings were made to the spirits. The first
spoonful of any meal was placed on the side of the stove, for the lha,
4
and before the meal that accompanies any ritual, of which there are
many, a short mantra was recited while a chod (literally, food) offering
5
was made. A small piece of barley dough, some flour and chang were
tossed into the air for the lha, placed on the stove for the phalha and cast
onto the ground to pacify the hungry ghosts. Chod were also offered
when people ate out in the fields or up in the mountains, for the zhidag
and sadag, the spirits that inhabit the locality (photo 19).
6
Many of these spirits are directly implicated in the fertility and
prosperity of village life. The zhisdag and sadag, for example, are
primarily responsible for the fertility of the soil in the areas of land with
which they are associated, both cultivated fields and mountain pastures,
and they are appeased in many of the rituals which punctuate the year in
accordance with the agricultural cycle. Spring, for example, sees a series
of rituals, called the Sakha. In Khangltakh a two foot conical dough
7
offering, bando, was prepared for the Sakha that occurred during my
fieldwork and a small party was held for the phaspun group of houses.
At the end of this, Meme Sonam made a three-part chod offering and
then placed a plate of tagi (flat bread) with a portion of the bando, flour
and chang on the kitchen shelf as an offering for the phalha, while
another older man read a short prayer. Then a goat-skin filled with
barley and topped with juniper was raised high three times, as invoca-
tions to the lha were shouted by all present, before it was taken up to the
94 CHAPTER FIVE
Shub means an unripe ear of grain.
8
fields for a ceremonial ploughing of the first furrow (with a pick-axe)
and scattering of seed from the bag. On the following day each house-
hold performed a ritual first ploughing of its own fields, with further
dough offerings, shubla, decorated with ears of barley and pods of peas,
8
and the recitation of another short chos (photo 22). My informants were
unable to explain the meaning of either of these rituals to me, however,
saying that they were for the zhisdag and sadag, old customs per-
formed for the sowing and the harvest. The involvement of the phaspun
indicates the importance of the phalha in ensuring fertility during the
following agricultural year.
There are numerous other small rituals associated with the agricul-
tural year, which all involve food offerings to the lha. Food always has
to be shared between people and spirits. After the birth of the first yak
calf in the Spring, for example, a custard, phrums, was made with the
milk and an offering was created out of this (with the usual tagi, flour
and chang) and placed by the stove with an incantation for the lha after
further chod offerings. This was said to be for the new calves, lambs
and kids and for good grass in the mountains. Further shubla offerings
were prepared on the first day of the harvest, when the grass was cut in
the mountains, and placed in the chod khang and lha khang, while
another was taken to the phalhas lhato on the hillside.
The lu are connected with water and springs, where many of the
shrines, the pang gong, are placed. These protect the whole village,
while others are specific to individual households and can be found in
their basements or on their roofs. The lu are generally associated with
wealth and fertility but they are also easily offended and cause tsitu, an
illness described to me as being like a cold. This is most likely to happen
if their residences are disturbed and if married (so potentially child-
bearing) women from other households come too close to them. In some
villages they live in trees, usually junipers, which must, therefore, not be
cut and in others it is dangerous for any married woman to go close to
their springs, shrines and trees. In Khangltakh the pang gong were in a
room in the basement, which meant that married women from other
households could not enter any room directly above them. Offerings to
the lu are made at the springs several times over the summer, preferably
by a monk who has not eaten meat or drunk chang for seven days. But
lay people also make offerings at the springs, using milk that must have
come from a red goat or a white sheep, as long as the offerant has
THE REALM OF THE SPIRITS 95
Riaboff (1997: 344-45) discusses the ambiguous place of the powerful and
9
aggressive rgyalpo in Zangskar, who seem halfway between lha and dre (evil spirits).
Kaplanian (1987) suggests that gyapo, probably the same term, are a class of lha who
punish theft with madness. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that either of these
descriptions necessarily holds true elsewhere. While some features of the spirit worlds
are widespread, others are highly localised.
abstained from meat and chang for a day. The lu are sensitive to meat
and chang while all the other lha enjoy these offerings.
Other lha are more powerful protectors but they are, accordingly,
more dangerous. The phalha, the household god, receives offerings in
the lha khang and the lhato on the hillside, as well as the chod offerings
placed on the stove. The lha khang and lhato are dangerous areas for
married women from other phaspun, this group of households being
united by having a single phalha. Paljor described these lha as gyalpe.
Gyalpo is a word usually used to refer to the king, with the associated
adjective, gyalpe, meaning victorious. Referring to lha (as Jschke 1881:
109 indicates it can) the term, therefore, indicates a spirit with a wider
domain than that of the yullha, suggesting that the phalha can protect
individual people and animals in places beyond the realm of the village,
the yul. The phalha have a multiple physical presence, associated with
9
several lhato. Their activities are generally protective, as long as they are
carefully propitiated, and a phalha seen to be a good one in Photoksar
can be adopted by other households in substitution for their own.
However, they remain dangerous and liable to cause trouble, particularly
for married women, as are the lu, a point stressed by other writers
(Riaboff 1997: 342). Many years ago one household in Photoksar had
severe problems with food and crop failures and its family twice mi-
grated to Zangskar. In the end the phalha was thought to be the problem
and his lhato was move from the lha khang in the house out onto the hill.
The family that subsequently moved into that khangba has prospered.
The yullha, named Shpungsal, is the protector of the village and a
powerful spirit who can offer all kinds of protection to the villagers and
their animals against the host of malevolent forces that constantly
threaten them. The shrine where he resides, the main lhato, overlooks
the village from a high point on the opposite side of the valley so his
presence is evident in almost all parts of the village. There are two
associated lhato on the village side of the valley, at one of which a
sangs, the basic offering ritual made to local deities, is performed three
times a month, on the holy third, eighth and fifteenth days, in sight of the
lha. This is preferably done by a monk, but can also be carried out by the
96 CHAPTER FIVE
In fact, most of these ceremonies include meat offerings. Even if an animal is not
10
sacrificed at the lhato, therefore, the villagers still share their most valuable foods with
the lha.
village onpo. The other shrine is a simple cairn topped with juniper next
to the much-used path that leads from the village to the fields. When
they pass this spot all the villagers salute the lha opposite and, if they are
carrying food or drink, they place a little on the top of the cairn. The
yullha is, therefore, appeased both by food offerings and by the sangs, a
ceremony performed by Buddhist monks. Machu, being at a distance
from the main village, has a separate protective lha with its own lhato,
at which members of the two households make offerings for the protec-
tion of that area.
Twice a year a group of men climbs the hill to the main shrine of
the yullha opposite the village accompanied by one of the village monks.
Here they undertake the shukpa shpoches, the changing of the juniper
(photos 23 and 24). This shrine is a square stone building with a sealed
doorway topped with juniper branches wrapped in white cloths. Inside,
they say, it contains jars with barley, wheat, precious things and clay
figures of horses, other animals and people. The monk carries up his
drum, cymbals and other ritual objects to perform a sangs while village
men replace the juniper branches. The yullha is called Shpungsal
because years ago he is said to have demanded the offering of human
blood from the shoulder (shpungba) of a young boy who, therefore, had
to be sacrificed every year. That custom is, however, said to have been
changed long ago to the sacrifice of a yak and then to a white goat. Older
members of the village remember the goat sacrifices, which were
performed by a renowned onpo who came from Nyeraks. He was
described as extremely powerful, trakpo, and the villagers told me that
he would open up the lhato, sleep inside for a few days and renew the
offerings. In around the early 1980s, however, Togdan Rinpoche of
Phyang monastery, the highest Drigungpa lama in Ladakh, visited the
village and told the people to cease their animal sacrifices. Instead they
should perform a sangs twice a year. After some initial scepticism and
fear that Shpungsal would be dissatisfied with the new offerings the
villagers have accepted the new practice.
10
There seems formerly to have been at least one other yullha in
Photoksar, but it was not clear why he faded from prominence. The
villagers still change the juniper on his shrine but told me that he no
longer possesses anybody. This is another important feature of the
THE REALM OF THE SPIRITS 97
I was allowed to observe the shukpa shpowa ceremony in 2000 but they said firmly
11
that they would not allow it another year if I were to be married.
Several writers have interpreted these events as indicating the presence of drib, the
12
ritual impurity that arises on birth and death (Dollfus 1989: 178; Mills 2003: 212-13).
In Photoksar, however, the notion of vulnerability to spirit attack was dominant. It was
not so much that mother and baby might pollute external spaces if they ventured outside
the house as that they would be likely to be harmed by the yullha.
yullha. One of the older men in the village is a lhaba who is possessed
by the yullha annually as part of the New Year celebrations and also
when there is a sickness, and it is thought that the yullha, through the
lhaba, might be able to exorcise the spirits responsible. In Khangltakh,
Chorons first baby was sickly for several weeks after his birth, as was
Choron, and the lhaba was called to suck out the poison from her body,
the standard practice of spirit mediums all over Ladakh (Day 1989). He
also advised, while in trance, that the baby should be taken to the
hospital in Leh.
While the yullha is a powerful protector he is also, like the phalha
and lu, a dangerous presence, capable of causing harm, especially to the
vulnerable, particularly fertile women and new-born babies. All married
women are in danger if they approach Shpungsals lhato too closely.
11
Birth is considered to be a particularly dangerous time when mother,
baby and, initially, father must be shielded from the yullha. All three are
confined to the house for two or three days following the birth, after
which a sangs is performed and the father is free to leave. Mother and
baby must, however, remain in the house for at least another month, until
after the performance of two more sangs, one in the house and one
opposite the main lhato. The most auspicious date for these is deter-
mined by the onpo who will also perform the sangs if there is no monk
present. During this period they must also be careful not to go onto the
roof if it is overlooked by the lhato or else erect some sort of screen to
protect them from the sight of the lha.
12
The evil spirits
Although they are, thus, dangerous, especially to fertile women and new-
born babies, the yullha and the phalha offer protection to the villagers
against the multitude of evil spirits that inhabit their surroundings and
who are liable to cause illness and misfortune at any moment, the gegs
and dre. Paljor told me that there were 80,000 of them (the number also
98 CHAPTER FIVE
Tucci (1980: 18) says that they symbolise the flesh and bones of enemies, which
13
the protective powers can use to bring about their destruction.
given in Das 1998: 279), of many different kinds. They are associated
with shkyen, misfortune or ill-luck and, particularly in children, they
cause semne shnamtok, aberrations of the mind, which make them
physically ill. They are generally thought to lurk outside the boundaries
of the village, beyond the protection of the lha, but people can carry evil
spirits around with them. So, when Meme Sonam returned late one
evening from Machu, Api Rigzin went out with a ladle of burning coals
to scare off any lurking spirits that might affect the children when he
entered the house.
The rituals by which the protection of the yullha or phalha is
invoked often involve the exorcism of these troublesome numina throu-
gh the making and throwing out of storma. Storma are dough creations
used in many Buddhist rituals, which are described, elsewhere, as
offerings to the spirits (Tucci 1980: 115-6; Samuel 1993: 265-6),
offerings made to malignant demons as a kind of exorcism or appeasing
gift (Jschke 1881: 210). Das (1998: 527) calls them sacrificial objects
offered as appeasing gifts to the gods, saints and evil spirits, while
Mills monastic informants described them as offerings to be scattered
in order to remove, rather than destroy, influences inimical to religion
(2003: 190-91). In Photoksar, however, the term was usually used in
13
a way synonymous with bele, offerings thrown out as exorcisms. Paljor,
for example, described them to me as lud, ransom offerings, to the
protective deities, whose purpose was drao dulches, the conquering or
subduing of dra (evil spirits), or gegs shadches, exorcism of the gegs.
These are the fiercest of all the evil spirits, whose exorcism can only be
achieved by the throwing out of bele.
Storma rituals, generally known as skurims, are a frequent and
important part of village life, signalling the peoples preoccupation with
the dangers of evil spirits. When his youngest child was suffering from
an extended illness during the winter, for example, Paljor made a
storma with male and female dough figures who were smeared with soot
and surrounded by old tea leaves, pieces of bone, salt and flour. These
were placed on a plate and carried around the baby before being taken
outside to be flung down the slope to banish the spirits that were trou-
bling him. More elaborate storma rituals are performed during the New
Year festival and, in one of the village houses where a young mother had
died, the family sponsored an annual ritual, during which three large
THE REALM OF THE SPIRITS 99
Gyazhi literally means four hundred. They explained to me that this comprised 100
14
storma, 100 chonme (butter lamps), 100 tinglo (small discs of dough) and 100 changsbu
(rolls of dough pressed between the fingers).
Tucci (1980: 176-7) explains that the mdos ritual is to give protection, in contrast
15
to the gto (i.e. storma), which are exorcist rituals.
storma were thrown down the hillside at night. This was performed by
the Lamayuru komnyer because, as they put it, the Hemis lama did not
know this ritual.
Every household will sponsor a skurims from time to time, if there
is a capable practitioner present in the village, simply for their general
protection. There is a family of hereditary onpos at Sumdo, a tiny hamlet
about a days walk down the valley, and the elder of these periodically
tours the area to perform such rituals. The Sumdo onpo arrived during
my stay in Khangltakh, for example, to perform a shesnying. This
involved the creation of chodpa, the standard dough offerings found in
Buddhist rituals, against which he lent pictures of Atisa, other great
lamas and Buddhist deities. It also involved the creation of male and
female storma, four rows of seven small figures (the shesnying them-
selves) and 100 small storma for the gyazhi ceremony, which formed
part of this ritual. At the end of the ceremony Tsewang carried all the
14
storma outside the house and flung them down the slope, Meme Sonam
following with a brush, while everyone else shouted gya-hor, the cry
normally used to banish evil spirits. The explanation was that the ritual
was for everyone in the house and that the shesnying were bele that
were flung out to ensure that people would not get ill, that snow would
fall in the winter, that the lus illnesses would be avoided and that the
gegs and dre, the evil spirits, would be exorcised. A special form of
gyazhi, the word applied to the strongest exorcist rites, these were
particularly useful for casting out the evil spirits, Paljor explained.
There are many different skurims, Paljor told me, some specifically
directed at ensuring snow, others for clear weather in the Spring, but all
of them for curing and averting sickness. The Sumdo onpo, he told me,
was Drigungpa and so he used Drigungpa chos in his skurims, but he
was often asked to perform rituals in households belonging to other
sects, including those in Lingshed, which are all Gelukpa. His is trakpe
las, strong or powerful work, he told me, which involves bele phangches
(exorcism), dos tangches (specifically to give protection against ill-
nesses), zhing shakhs (for the household) and shinon (a very trakpo
ritual, good for warding off all sorts of evil). These sorts of skurims are
15
also performed by the Nyingma and some Drigungpa tantric lamas but
100 CHAPTER FIVE
the Gelukpa lamas do not undertake this trakpe las, he said. The Sumdo
onpo, himself, gave me a similar explanation: the Gelukpa monks
specialise in zhiwa, practices like abstinence from meat and chang, and
reading the chos but they shun rituals involving gyazhi. A monk from
Lingshed even claimed to me that in his monastery they do not do any
gyazhi at all. While it is clear from Millss account that they do perform
gyazhi, he does note (2003: 171-72) that there are other wrathful rites
which would breach monastic ethics and for which the Lingshed villag-
ers, therefore, have to call in a different sort of practitioner.
There is, thus, a tension between forms of practice here, the more
ethical zhiwa practices performed by the monks and the more effica-
cious, strong rituals demanded by the villagers to protect themselves
against pernicious supernatural influences. For the villagers, an impor-
tant component of their ritual practices is, thus, determined by over-
whelmingly pragmatic concerns, which have little to do with monastic
practice. For them, the hierarchies of Buddhist practice are not necessar-
ily the best answer to the perils of supernatural chaos and they have no
hesitation in calling in a skilled onpo if the komnyer is unwilling to
perform the necessary ritual.
Hierarchy and protection
It is not, however, that the monks rituals are without efficacy. In the
fourth month of the Tibetan year, the villagers perform the bumskor,
during which a procession of Buddhist texts is taken from the temples
and carried all the way around the perimeter of the village, including the
hamlet of Machu. The symbolism of the ascendancy of the chos over the
natural forces in the valley and the protection they can afford the inhab-
itants is a recurrent theme in village rituals. Buddhist monuments, such
as chorten, are dotted around the village and its fields, especially along
the boundaries of cultivated areas and at the points where the village
first becomes visible to the approaching traveller. According to Mills,
the bumskor is one of several rituals that involves the re-ordering of
village space, the auspicious ordering of the natural environment as an
adjunct of the social order. (2003: 185)
In the weeks following the harvest a skangsol is sponsored by each
household, an important ritual which takes at least two days and is said,
in Photoksar, to require a monk or a good onpo. Its purpose is generally
said to be to atone for the killing of the small creatures, which has
THE REALM OF THE SPIRITS 101
inevitably taken place during the harvest, and to avoid the wrath of any
local deities who might have been angered by these activities. The
emphasis of the Photoksar villagers when describing these rituals to me
was, however, rather more on banishing the harmful local spirits than
atonement for sin or purification. For this purpose they asked for a
gyazhi to be performed at the end of the skangsol. The Hemis komnyer
did so, but unwillingly. Mills (2003: 189-196) explains the skangsol
ritual as centred on the purification of space. It involves the act of dulwa,
taming, which separates chthonic forces from religious, establishing
each in their place. Harmful influences are exorcised, but this is not just
a matter of protection through the negation of polluted or impure sub-
stances, it also involves the re-ordering of space through the purification
of territory. Such purification flows downwards from the shrine in the
form of blessings, which consecrate those things within the ken of the
shrine. The bumskor, similarly, makes fertility the object of purification
and augmentation and in so doing places the fertile below the (religious)
sources of purification and blessing. In this way, it cures the disorder
that may have resulted if the balance between religion and fecundity has
become confused in any part of the village (2003: 181-85). This, he says,
is similar to the effects of the chams, monastic dances based on the
structure of the mandala, which, he suggests, re-order ritual domains
around a sacred centre. During these processes, non-Buddhist elements
are incorporated into Buddhist hierarchies as deities and spirits bound
to protect the religion.
According to this account of ritual efficacy, therefore, the villagers
(and monks) pragmatic needs for protection against harm and disorder
are answered by rituals of purification. These are conducted according
to an idiom of re-ordering which takes the form of a vertical Buddhist
cosmological hierarchy. In Photoksar, however, it is the mandala, with
its idiom of outside-inside, that is more appropriate to describe the
villagers views of their supernatural world, although this image is never
explicitly referred to. For them, danger lies not so much in disruption to
a religious hierarchy as in the failure to keep the forces of evil outside
their domestic spaces. Their descriptions of the skangsol and other
skurims rituals centre on the straightforward need to rid their domestic
spaces of evil influences, which must be banished outside the house and
village. There is an order established by such rites, which connects
divinity with fertility, but it involves the protection of the fertile in a safe
internal space guarded by the powerful lha against the evil numina.
102 CHAPTER FIVE
Mills describes seven yullha in Lingshed, who are each associated with certain
16
areas of the village where their lhato are built (2003: 151-53).
During the related rites, the protectors are enjoined to guard these spaces
and also not to harm those within them.
The theories of Dollfus and others, including Mills, who emphasise
the existence of a cosmological hierarchy must, I would suggest, be
assessed in this light. The Photoksar villagers did talk to me about three
realms and they described the stanglha as the place where the lha live.
However, most of the local spirits have a physical presence in the village
which is rooted in their shrines or physical features in the landscape, or
associated with particular households and their members in the case of
the phalha, which does not always accord with this hierarchy. The tri-
partite scheme places the sadags in the middle and the fertile lu at the
bottom. However, the sadags inhabit the high pastures, way above the
village, its temples and lhato. The pang gong, associated with the fertile
lu, can be placed on the roof of a house in Photoksar, even above the
chod khang, and the yullha and phalha, whose lhato can be at the
highest points in the village, are just as much associated with fertility as
are the lu. The spirit world does not represent a neat model of hierarchi-
cal order with divinity above fertility. Rather, I would suggest, it repre-
sents a model of centre and periphery tied to physical features of the
landscape.
Both Dollfus and Srinivas suggest that an idea of unity among
villagers, as individuals and households, can be linked to the symbolic
presence of the yullha. In Photoksar, however, Shpungsal has a geo-
graphically limited presence, which only extends to the territory within
the purview of his lhato. It is for this reason that the hamlet of Machu,
out of his sight down the valley, has its own separate lha. The villagers
16
incorporate Machu into the village as part of a complex web of social
and political relations but the two yullha, in fact, symbolise the physical
separation between the two parts of the village.
The spirit world that surrounds Photoksar is, therefore, character-
ised by a sense of outside-inside, defined by the sight of the yullha. Like
other protective spirits, when properly appeased, he creates a safe space
for the villagers. The domains and powers of these spirits are firmly
linked to physical space. The presence of the spirits, therefore, defines
the physical boundaries within which fertility and the biological continu-
ity of the community is possible, but it is an area structured by the
geographical features of the landscape and the placement of the lhato
THE REALM OF THE SPIRITS 103
Kaplanian (1987) suggests that a certain class of lha, the gyapo, punish theft with
17
madness, but this was never mentioned in Photoksar. Dollfus (2003: 15) suggests that the
lu cause damage as a result of the breach of the yuli trims, village customs, but this is a
reference to activities that specifically offend the lu, such as polluting their shrines.
Hemis Shukpachan, where she undertook fieldwork, is renowned for its sensitive lu.
within it, rather than by any cosmological hierarchy. Beyond these
spaces of security the spirit world is overwhelmingly chaotic. It is a
disordered universe teeming with a multitude of malevolent influences
in constant battle with the stronger protectors, who turn up unexpectedly
to prey on the weak and unwary, despite their best ritual endeavours.
Even the protective lha are troublesome creatures, liable to cause harm,
as well as offering protection.
The moral order
The activities of the spirits might, therefore, be re-ordered during the
Buddhist rituals discussed by Mills, but even then they do not provide
a template for the ideas of harmony and solidarity which dominate inter-
personal relations. The lha are, in fact, supremely uninterested in the
moral behaviour of the villagers. During all the processes of conflict
resolution described in the last chapter and in the discussions that
surrounded them there was never any suggestion that conflict angers the
lha or disturbs the cosmos. At first I simply assumed that my lack of
language skills meant I was missing some of the sense of the conversa-
tions. On the other hand, people were very keen to ensure that I under-
stood the significance of the lha in other contexts, during the sangs
rituals and New Year celebrations, for example. Eventually, when I tried
to ask directly about the spirits in the context of conflict or processes of
dispute resolution people would simply look at me as if I had failed to
understand a basic point. No, this does not concern the lha, was the
normal response. Finally it became clear that the lha are not involved
17
or invoked in any way during processes of dispute management. The
resolution of conflict requires the restoration of harmony through the
enactment of respect towards other villagers, symbolised in the giving
of khatags and yal, but not through any ritual directed towards the
spirits.
Whilst the local lha are overwhelmingly responsible for fertility
and the biological continuity of the community, therefore, and while
they demand regular propitiation with appropriate offerings, they take
104 CHAPTER FIVE
He also distinguishes between pre-literate religions that include, or not, a notion of
18
reincarnation, but that distinction is not relevant to my analysis. The Photoksar villagers
notion of reincarnation is firmly connected with Buddhism.
Frer-Haimendorfs survey of non-Hindu peoples in South Asia supports this
19
model (1967: 216).
no interest in inter-personal relations. It matters not one bit to them
whether the villagers are living harmonious or disordered lives. It is a
series of human relationships that defines the community as the place of
social interaction. A host of complex relations between households and
individuals ideally produces a peaceful, cooperative community. This
order is, for the villagers, vital to the successful survival of their commu-
nity, but it is wholly unconnected to the activities of the lha.
There is a separation between two realms here, that of the spirits
connected with the physical fortunes of the villagers, their livestock and
environment, and that of the political and moral relations between the
villagers and their households. For the villagers this separation is simply
conceptualised as what does or does not concern the lha. However, it is
a separation that also relates to the structural organisation of the commu-
nity: the villagers participation in most social and political activities is
organised by the dral and by household and yulpa membership. These
are the organisations that constitute the village as a place of social and
political interaction. By contrast, the activities by which the villagers
venerate their lha and protect themselves from supernatural harm,
including the way they move around it, are organised by the phaspun
and by reference to the physical placement of the lhato, a different set
of organising structures.
As I have discussed at greater length elsewhere (Pirie 2006a), the
spirit world of the Photoksar villagers accords with Obeyesekeres
account of pre-literate religions. According to his model such religions
are non-ethicized, that is, characterised by the absence of a notion of
sin (1968: 12-14). The associated salvation beliefs, that is, do not
incorporate a conception of sin as violation of religious ethics. In such
societies there is, therefore, a separation between the secular morality
that underpins the norms of social life and the ideas connected with
religion. In Photoksar the lha, for example, are not concerned with
18
inter-personal relations within the village or with the ethics of the
villagers conduct towards one another. According to Obeyesekere
19
(1968: 12), it is primarily world religions that have ethicized religious
life, offering accounts of the supernatural which reinforce the demands
THE REALM OF THE SPIRITS 105
French (1995) regards these moral rules as the basis for the legal codes, on which
20
she founds much of her analysis of Tibetan law.
of what comes to be construed as a religious morality. The secular moral
world is thus transformed and associated with religious concerns.
Tibetan Buddhism is one of these religions, its moral scheme being
linked to its eschatological theory: under the law of karma an individ-
uals moral activities in this life substantially determine his reincarnation
in the next. What is significant about Photoksar is that the people
maintain a secular morality despite their long conversion to Buddhism.
They have accepted the law of karma and the idea that certain quotidian
activities affect the fate of their souls in the afterlife, but it is a different
set of activities that are condemned as morally bad, in that they ad-
versely affect the social order of the community. The reasons for this, I
suggest, lie in the distinctly physical influence they continue to attribute
to the inhabitants of the spirit world and the indifference of these numina
to the moral order of the community. The Buddhist deities and the
powers of the lamas have largely been assimilated by them into their
amoral spirit world where their rites assist in the constant battle against
demonic forces. Like the lha, however, they are not regarded as having
an impact on their realm of social order.
Buddhist morality
While it should be no surprise that the moral attitudes expressed by the
villagers and their condemnation of anger should not be connected, by
them, with the activities of the lha, capricious, dangerous and greedy as
they are, what of the more ethical practices and principles offered by the
monks and their zhiwa practices? Although the Buddhist rituals carried
out in the village are largely associated with the veneration of local
protectors, the religion also offers straightforward schemes of morality
of relevance to the laity. Most important of these are the three poisons,
duk sum, of anger, jealousy, and ignorance said to underlie all immoral
behaviour. The ten prohibitions, mi gewa rchu, and the mi chos, the
sixteen moral rules, also contain practical injunctions for the daily lives
of the religions adherents. The Photoksar villagers were mostly aware
20
of the basic Buddhist precepts while the more literate, such as Paljor,
could recite the longer lists. Moreover, they have unequivocally ac-
cepted the principle of karma, whereby their actions in this life deter-
106 CHAPTER FIVE
Mills (2003: 228-31) also describes the sangs as an offering to local deities which
21
is regarded as a veneration by the laity but is construed by monks as encouraging the
rokspa spirits to remain compliant.
mine the nature of their rebirth. The Buddhist schemes of morality
enumerate the sins that have karmic effects. The villagers never, how-
ever, made an express connection between the Buddhist schemes of
morality and the Buddhist law of karma, on the one hand, and their own
moral condemnation of fighting and anger, on the other. Just as they
conceptually separate their moral concerns from the activities of the lha,
so do they regard these concerns as falling into a different category from
the moral injunctions of Buddhism, which relate to the long path to
enlightenment.
In order to make sense of these conceptual distinctions we can turn
back to the tension between the pragmatic needs of the villagers for
trakpe rituals and the zhiwa practices offered by the Gelukpa monks.
From the villagers point of view some monks simply do not know the
more powerful rites. However, from the point of view of the more
orthodox Buddhist practitioners many of the laity in Ladakh place too
much belief in their local lha. The Hemis komnyer in Photoksar, for
example, repeated the opinions expressed by the Dalai Lama that too
many minor lha are revered and allowed to possess the lhamos and
lhabas, to whom the people then go for advice. Many of these are merely
spirits wandering in the bardo which have not yet found a re-birth, he
said. The Photoksar villagers are too afraid of the yullhas capacity to
cause harm and it is only the peoples beliefs that create this power. One
of the monks at Spituk, a Gelukpa monastery, told me that the local
lha should be treated like rokspa, friends and helpers, and they are not
suitable for full veneration as Buddhist deities. As we walked past the
lhato above his monastery he made a point of raising his hand and giving
the common greeting jule, as opposed to the more reverential gesture
with both hands clasped, which people use for religious monuments.
21
Despite this disapproval, however, all the gonpas have lhato for
their local deities and these are generally prominent on the hills above
the main monastery buildings. Moreover, no-one was prepared to
discount the importance of these lha completely. When I specifically
mentioned the yullha, the Hemis komnyer was quick to reassure me that
this lha was a good one. Even in the urban centres in Ladakh, where
there is a greater proportion of educated people who self-consciously
follow more orthodox forms of Buddhist practice, every house has a
THE REALM OF THE SPIRITS 107
The head of one household in Leh described to me the day-long chos which is
22
performed to accompany the erection of new namgo and sago, the dogs and sheeps
skulls filled with the precious objects said to protect the household members and their
livestock. But, he complained, it was difficult to get the lamas to undertake this chos.
Only the Nyingma lamas know it, he told me, because it is really an onpos practice.
This tension between forms of practice is not particular to Ladakh. A ritual to
23
prevent malevolent spirits from sending hailstorms was carried out by Nyingmapa lamas
in Tibet, for example, although one of them spoke of it as dirty business, non-virtuous
activity designed to harm the spirits contrary to the dictates of Buddhism (Klein and
Khetsun Sangpo 1997: 539).
I was subsequently able to discuss this issue with the Rinpoche in Leh and, far from
24
belittling the villagers superstitious beliefs in the powers of their lha, he said he was
pleased to hear that there had been no further trouble since his visit. This meant, in
practice, that after a death in one of the khangba closest to the lhato the family could
remain in their house where they had previously been thought to be in danger from the
lha.
It is one of the central contentions of Samuel (1993) that the higher tantric
25
practitioners have much in common with the local ritual practitioners in Tibet, as he
lhato for their phalha. Most also have a pang gong for the lu. Sonam
22
Phuntsog explained that most monks and some lay people consider these
onpos chos, particularly the gyazhi, to be harmful for Buddhism and do
not want to have an onpo in their family because theirs is bad work.
His own view was that the onpo do the more powerful gyazhi which
are dangerous because, while good practitioners can change the natures
of the evil spirits, that is, subjugate them, the less skilful will leave them
unreformed but strengthened in this world, where they will pose a
renewed threat to humans. However, many of the monks do perform the
gyazhi, and the Lingshed monk who had expressed disapproval of the
ritual was not prepared to say that it was not a nangpe (Buddhist) chos.
23
There is a narrative here that expresses a hierarchy in ritual prac-
tices and in the pantheon of spirits to whom they are directed, which
echoes the hierarchy proposed by Gellner. As Mills (2003) points out,
however, the ordinary monks are not able to rise above the influence of
the lha. Only the incarnates can do so. The Photoksar villagers, simi-
larly, regard the highest Buddhist lamas as being the most powerful to
deal with their troublesome local spirits. Togldan Rinpoche from
Phyang, was, for example, called upon by the Photoksar villagers when
it was thought that Shpungsal, their yullha, was causing trouble. The
lhaba went into trance in his presence and the Rinpoche was able, the
villagers told me, to enjoin him to behave more favourably. The
24
villagers regard the high lamas as the practitioners with the greatest
powers to deal with their problematic lha. The ordinary monks are far
25
108 CHAPTER FIVE
explains elsewhere (2005: 11-13).
less efficacious in this regard. They simply do not know many of the
rituals that the villagers need. They are, therefore, inferior to both lamas
and onpos, in different ways.
Examining this relationship, Mills suggests that both village and
monastery exist within the power of local gods and their associated
cosmologies, which is why the relationship between local deities and
Buddhist practitioners cannot be regarded in terms of a simple hierarchy
of power (2003: 163). It is only the incarnate who can implement Bud-
dhisms ascendancy over local domains by effecting the ritual transfor-
mation of places, merging them with a divine realm (2003: 259-62, 305-
07). Ordinary monks are embedded in their physical environment and do
not have the authority to effect changes to the spirit world. There is,
thus, a tension between the static and dependable world of monastic
ritual and the fluid and capricious world of local chthonic deities within
which they work and over whom they maintain a tenuous ascendancy.
If a monastery (or any locality) is cut off from higher sources of institu-
tionalised power, the local spirits can rise up and take back their former
powers, demanding again to be propitiated in the old ways. Reciprocity
between man and god, rather than the ascendancy of Buddhism over
local forces, then becomes the dominant relationship (2003: 319-22).
According to Mills, therefore, the order of the Buddhist cosmology,
which is imposed on local space through the skangsol ritual, is only a
contingent one, dependent on the continual intervention of ritual practi-
tioners and, ultimately, the authority of the incarnate lama. Without
them, local deities again become ascendant, in a more chaotic and
divided landscape.
This is the context in which, I would suggest, the Photoksar villag-
ers are acutely aware that they live. Safety can be provided by local
ritual practitioners, either monks or onpos, if they are able to perform the
powerful exorcist rituals which invoke the protectors to banish the evil
spirits. In cases of great danger, however, it is the incarnate lama who
must be called upon. The more ethical ritual practices of the monks,
particularly those of the Gelukpa sect, are only of limited benefit. In a
village like Photoksar, therefore, the ritual order of monastic Buddhism
and its moral codes are largely irrelevant to local cosmological concerns.
They are part of the more ethical religious practices which the villagers
admire, but do not regard as efficacious to deal with their own trouble-
some numina.
THE REALM OF THE SPIRITS 109
This distinction between forms of ritual practice, in terms of their
purpose and efficacy, is the same distinction that the villagers make
between their realms of morality. The moral attitudes by which the
villagers judge inter-personal relations are all oriented towards the
community. Individuals are expected to co-operate with others, maintain
good relations and ensure that community life proceeds smoothly. The
ideal individual is patient, calm, obedient, helpful and generous. All of
these qualities concern an individuals social relations with others and
the consequences of his actions for the community. It is a pragmatic
scheme, according to which individuals are judged more by the conse-
quences of their actions for the community than by any sense of personal
degeneracy. The content of this scheme is very similar to that of the
Buddhist moral codes, the duk sum and gewa rchu, but the latter have a
different significance in their eyes. They express the laws of karma,
which determine the fate of the soul in the after-life, not the harmony of
the village community.
It is not, therefore, that the rituals performed by the monks and their
zhiwa practices are irrelevant to the villagers. While it is true that the
philosophical content of large swathes of religious practice is only
accessible to monks well advanced in their studies, lay people rely upon
religious specialists, including onpos, to perform such rituals on their
behalf. The villagers send their sons into the monasteries and support
them there, they make substantial donations to the monasteries and
sponsor rituals, which ensure blessings and protection. Contrary to
Steins (1972) depiction of Buddhist practice being inaccessible to
ordinary people, in Photoksar all the laity recite mantras and the literate
men participate in the periodic reading of the Buddhist texts, the chos sil
(photo 32). Before going to sleep and on waking, everyone performs the
standard three prostrations and recites the skyabdro prayer by which
individuals take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha.
Older members spend moments of leisure reciting the om mani padme
hum mantra with their prayer beads or spinning prayer wheels. This, they
explain, is to increase their good karma, which is particularly important
at this time of their lives.
There is, therefore, a set of ethical practices which the villagers
associate with the laws of karma. Killing, alcohol drinking and smoking
have negative karmic consequences, while prayers, prostrations, pilgrim-
age and donations to the monasteries are seen as having a countervailing
beneficial effect. These are the activities which the lamas enjoin them
to avoid or undertake and which are exemplified in the zhiwa practices
110 CHAPTER FIVE
of the monks. This is a different set of concerns from those of their
secular moral realm, by which the villagers strive to uphold the social
order of their community. Killing and drinking have karmic conse-
quences, while pride, sloth and antagonism affect the order of the
village.
Morality and the spirits
There are, for the Photoksar villagers, three different sets of concerns
and three associated realms of village activity: the laws of karma deter-
mine the fate of the soul in the after-life and require ethical practice,
according to the gewa rchu; the lha directly affect the physical fortunes
of the villagers and require a host of propitiation and avoidance prac-
tices, many of which can only be undertaken by specialist ritual practi-
tioners; the maintenance of the community as a realm of political and
moral order requires cooperation amongst individuals and, above all, the
avoidance of anger and conflict. The higher Buddhist deities and the
incarnate lamas have superior powers to intervene directly to assist a
soul in the afterlife. They also have the ability to deal effectively with
the inhabitants of the amoral spirit world. By contrast, although the rites
and deities invoked by the ordinary monks help to ensure a favourable
rebirth and assist in the constant battle against demonic forces, they are
far less efficacious in this regard. Nevertheless, the twin objects of ritual
practice remain distinct for the villagers and neither directly impinges on
their realm of secular morality.
It would be easy, therefore, to read into certain activities and
discourses in Photoksar the influence of the practices, principles and
cosmologies of Buddhism. The pragmatic need for cosmological protec-
tion can be expressed through the esoteric idioms of Buddhist ritual
hierarchies. However, as Mills says (2003: 198), it is problematic to
view the performance of skangsol rites as simply being about Buddhist
values. They are ritual actions, designed with contextual, rather than
universalist, goals in mind. Each ritual is located in a particular physical
context, which embodies the pragmatic needs of those who inhabit it.
Similarly, the anger that the villagers criticise in one another can be
regarded as one of the fundamental Buddhist poisons and the cause of
negative karma. However, meaning is context dependent and what may
be a legitimate interpretation in the case of certain classes of people, the
monks and educated elite, for instance, can make no sense in the
THE REALM OF THE SPIRITS 111
epistemological world of another, such as that of the lay villagers. The
condemnation of anger can be interpreted as an expression of the duk
sum on the part of many Tibetans, but anger is simply regarded as tsokpo
and dangerous to the community in the eyes of the Photoksar villagers.
I would, therefore, suggest, that the ways in which certain authors
have attributed different aspects of the religious, supernatural and
cosmological worlds with social significance become problematic if read
too widely. The moral and ritual content of religious texts is not re-
garded by the Photoksar villagers as having any relevance for the moral
and political organisation of the village. Nor do the activities of the
lha or the ordering of the supernatural realm impinge directly upon this
sphere of activity. The social world of the Photoksar villagers, that
which is upheld by their moral injunctions, is a secular, non-cosmologi-
cal realm, of no concern to the lha and of little relevance to the fate of
the soul in the after-life.
As the villagers go about their daily lives this separation of realms
is, for the most part, imperceptible. Some of their activities are directed
towards the lha, others are not. They might recite mantras, toss food to
the spirits and discuss a recent case of conflict on the same social
occasion. However, there is one time of the year when the underlying
tensions between the realm of the lha and that of the villagers social
organisation are highlighted. This is Losar, the New Year festival. The
events which occurred on one occasion that I participated in the Photoks-
ar Losar also highlighted the strained relations that exist between the
villagers and external forces, in this case the powerful Buddhist estab-
lishments. Such tensions, I would suggest, are intrinsic to the web of
order that the Photoksar villagers maintain within their community. It is
this festival to which I turn in the next chapter.
The Ladakhi New Year is really a second birth when the group rejects the old and
1
welcomes the new (my trans.)
CHAPTER SIX
LOSAR
Losar is the height of the villagers ritual calendar in Photoksar and
celebrates the passing of the old and onset of the new year. Within the
nine days (and more) of dances, rituals and sheer enjoyment there are
exemplified, in subtle ways, the dynamic between the social organisation
of the village and the inhabitants of the spirit world, an underlying
tension between the yulpa and the resident monks, and a self-conscious
suspicion of modernity and resistence to change.
It is generally agreed that the central themes of the Losar celebrations
are the chasing away of the old year, with its bad or inauspicious ele-
ments, and the welcoming in of the new (Rigal 1985:95; Dollfus 1987:
64). Kaplanian (1981: 277), for example, says, Le Nouvel An ladakhi
est rellement une deuxime naissance o le groupe rejette lancien et
accueille le nouveau. Similar interpretations were offered by a number
1
of my informants in Leh. The rituals chase out the bad elements of the
past year and welcome the good of the new. Specifically they are
intended to ensure that people do not become ill, that livestock does not
die, that snow falls, babies are born and everyone flourishes.
Losar is undoubtedly a rite of passage, from the old year to the new,
involving the deliberate exorcism of the evil spirits which threaten life.
It also involves a symbolic denial of the processes of ageing and death,
a feature of rite of passage rituals throughout the world. However, the
symbolism of evil and age that pervades the festival, that which is to be
chased away with the past year, is surrounded by music, dancing, eating
and drinking, masquerade and pantomime. There is a constant juxtaposi-
tion of the forces of age and sickness with symbols of youth and fertility.
In this, I would suggest, it is possible to detect a subtle challenge to the
established social order. It occurs at several points during the festival,
particularly in the more exuberant activities of the youth.
LOSAR 113
The historical and mythological elements of Losar have been discussed by Rigal
2
(1985), Kaplanian (1981) and Brauen (1980), along with the reasons it is celebrated in
the eleventh, not the first month, of the year. Dollfus (1987) concentrates on the festivals
affirmation of internal unity and social relations. I participated in the Photoksar Losar
twice, in 1999 and 2002.
The events of Losar
Losar, itself, runs a course of nine days in Photoksar, as it used to
elsewhere, beginning on the first day of the eleventh month, but pre-
ceded by a number of preliminary events. There are significant differ-
ences in the form that the celebrations take here from those now found
in other Ladakhi villages, but most of the important events and the
significant aspects of the festival as I describe them, seem to have been
present in the celebrations that occurred throughout the region.
2
The Galden Ngamchod commemorates the day on which Tsongkapa,
founder of the Gelukpa sect of Buddhism, achieved enlightenment. It is
observed on the twenty-fifth day of every month and is not, therefore,
directly linked to Losar, but its occurrence in the tenth month marks the
start of the celebrations. In Photoksar this is the first day of the meto, the
bonfire lit after dusk by the boys of the village. On this and subsequent
nights, up to and including the twenty-ninth, a group of boys visits each
village house, collecting flat bread, which they divide up between them
while they warm themselves and sing songs around the fire. The most
important song describes Bagatam, a mythical figure who journeys into
Ladakh from the mouth of the Indus and who needs to be banished along
with the evils of the old year. On the last two days, burning branches
from the fire are flung down the hill to cries of gya khor! the impreca-
tion with which evil spirits are always banished, here directed at Bagata-
m. There is a considerable party atmosphere around the bonfire which
develops into a general round of singing and dancing, along with the
telling of licentious jokes, at which point any watching women become
embarrassed and run away.
The annual changing of the juniper on the shrines of the phalha
deities takes place on the twenty-ninth. Formerly, there was a blood
sacrifice at these shrines, which were smeared with blood and decorated
with skulls and horns. However, following the intervention of Togdan
Rinpoche, this practice has been replaced by a simple purification ritual,
normally carried out by the local komnyer. As part of this sangs, a dough
ibex figure, flat bread, flour, chang and juniper are offered to the spirits,
as they are repeatedly throughout Losar.
114 CHAPTER SIX
On the afternoon of the thirtieth, a large plate of food, including meat
and offal from the yak killed by every household specially for Losar, is
taken up the hill to be offered to the dead ancestors, the shimi tsalma
(literally, meal for the dead). A smaller plate, with a little of each food,
is placed on a rocky outcrop with a recitation to the ancestors who have
died and the imprecation khye-khar, which always accompanies
offerings made to placate troublesome ghosts. The remaining food is
then fried up over a fire and enjoyed by the participants along with jugs
of chang. As in so many of the offerings made to the numina of the
village, the element of sharing between men and spirits is strong.
In the evening each household hosts a stonzang, a dinner for the other
members of its phaspun. There is a round of tea and chang, ending with
meat from the Losar yak. The eldest man makes an elaborate food
offering to the local spirits, placing a piece of bread and meat, sprinkled
with flour and chang, on a plate for the spirit of the hearth and tossing
more flour and chang into the air and onto the ground for the benign
spirits of the earth, as well as the more unwelcome ghosts. These
gatherings, therefore, affirm social relations within the phaspun, the
group associated with life-cycle events. However, at the end of the meal,
the children, together with a few adults, make balls of dough which they
fling at each other, boys against girls. At no other event is this sort of
behaviour expected, or even tolerated. This is not quite an act of subver-
sion on the part of the children, but an unusual licence to waste food and
temporarily to step out of line.
The first day of Losar itself, the first day of the eleventh month, is
devoted to the veneration of the higher Buddhist deities and to a celebra-
tion of the family within the household. In the morning one man from
each house takes offerings up to each of the two small temples above the
village. The Hemis komnyer resident in 1999 disapproved of meat and
chang and so the villagers brought only tea and bread to his temple.
Meat and chang, more precious foods, are otherwise the norm. Later in
the day more offerings are prepared and taken by the women of the
household to the Buddhist deities and household spirits in their respec-
tive shrine rooms. That done, the mother of the household goes through
a small ritual, by which she greets every member of the family with a
changskyan of chang. In Khangltakh, Morup was followed by Api
Rigzin in this. One of the men then takes the changskyan to pay his
respects to the onpo and the goba and later in the afternoon all the
villagers go to the gobas house for a party with food and drink, singing
and dancing.
LOSAR 115
The new year is, therefore, welcomed with a propitiation of the
protector deities and an affirmation of family and phaspun relations and
of the central, albeit subordinate, position of the mother. It is also an
affirmation of the social and political order of the village, as the onpo
and goba are complimented and the latter hosts his party. It is later the
same evening that elements of evil and misfortune are brought into the
midst of the celebrations with the appearance of the first of the ritual
figures. The festival now enters a new phase as the community is
brought into direct contact with the forces of the spirit world.
On this evening the two Babar make their entrance. These roles are
played by two of the village men, an annual obligation which rotates
between all households. The men are dressed in heavy yaks hair carpets,
associated with dirt, and wear plaited crowns of straw around their caps.
They also put smudges of soot on their faces. People told me that until
around 1990 the Babar used to blacken their faces completely and
represented storma, the ritual offerings that are flung out at the end of
many rituals to banish the evil spirits. The Babar, acting as such storma
themselves, would visit each household during Losar, put a foot on top
of the stove, something that would normally be considered an extreme
and dangerous insult to the resident deities, recite a litany of illnesses
and declare that they were carrying them all away with their black horns.
Then they would run out of the door, while the household members
would shout gya khor after them and whistle. Sometimes people even
threw stones, they told me, as they do at other storma.
Now the Babar do not blacken their faces completely and do not
represent storma themselves. One informant told me that the highest
lamas had disapproved of this practice. However, people still say that
the Babar are expelled (sha-de) at the end of Losar, when they take a
ritual bath and change into fine clothes. Until that time they unequivo-
cally represent forces of evil. On the first day of Losar the Babar simply
make an appearance in the centre of the village by the mani, the small
central temple and prayer flag, with the mon (musicians) to orchestrate
an hour or two of singing and dancing. A similar party led by the Babar
and principally attended by the young men, who dance with considerable
enthusiasm and indecorum, ends each of the subsequent days of Losar.
On this, the first day, the Babar then go to be entertained at the house of
the goba.
The second day of Losar sees the appearance of the three other ritual
figures, the Api-Meme, grandmother and grandfathers, all played by
village men. The two Meme wear sheepskin jackets turned inside out and
116 CHAPTER SIX
carry bows and arrows. The single Api wears a black hat, formerly
standard dress for old women who had given up their peraks. The Api
also wears a babys coat tied to his back, to symbolise the bog, the
sheepskin back-covering worn by married women. He carries a branch
of juniper and a long stick which he rides like a horse, using the juniper
as a whip. At other times he uses the juniper like a broom, sweeping
away the dust on the ground and finding it on other peoples clothes.
Like the Babar the Api-Meme are expelled on the last day of Losar,
when they ceremonially fling away their arrows, juniper and stick and
change their clothes. One of the villagers explained to me that as old and
decrepit figures they represent the passing year. While the Babar
represent the ill effects of the evil spirits, therefore, the Api-Meme
symbolise the natural, biological processes of ageing and decay. Both
cosmological evil and natural decay are, thus, brought right into the
centre of the celebrations, where they remain until the ninth day. Like
the Babar, however, on the first day of their appearance, the Api-Meme
go with the Babar and Mon to be entertained by the goba.
On all the following days the Babar and Api-Meme are at the centre
of the celebrations, the Babar acting as masters of ceremonies and the
Api-Meme as their assistants, always accompanied by the musicians.
They visit each household at least once, where they are entertained to a
meal. The Babar sit at the head of the dralgo, while the Api-Meme act
as hosts for the party, pouring out the chang and serving food. They also
symbolically steal a piece of food from every household. In this way the
Babar and Api-Meme circulate throughout the village, and bring their
representations of evil and decay into the centre of each household.
On the third day, when the new moon makes its appearance, there are
special celebrations, for which the women dress in their best clothes and
turquoise peraks. In the morning the whole village waits for the appear-
ance of the village god, the yullha, who has entered into possession of
the lhaba. He arrives, dancing around and waving a white scarf, and
addresses the assembled villagers, giving them instructions. On one
occasion these concerned the way they should treat dead bodies, which
were interpreted, for the villagers, by the komnyer. The lhaba continued
to rant, more or less comprehensibly, while the musicians began to play,
eventually dancing round the circle of villagers, who all bowed in front
of him, before running off to collapse as he came out of his trance (photo
26). The villagers then all proceeded to the fields above the village
where the young men competed in horse races.
On the fifth to the eighth days there are dances for the whole village
in the afternoon. The first is led by the goba and his wife, who have been
TERMINALHISTORIESANDARTHURIANSOLUTIONS

1. The Potala palace, seat of the Dalai Lamas Ganden Potrang government in
central Tibet between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. 1936.
2. Tibetan government ofcials entering the Potala for the enthronement of the
Dalai Lama in 1940.
CHAPTERTWO
3. Leh palace, seat of the Ladakhi kings until the mid-nineteenth century,
which still dominates the old town.
4. The mosque, at one end of the main street in Leh below the palace.
TERMINALHISTORIESANDARTHURIANSOLUTIONS

5. Ridzong monastery.
6. The winter cham festival at Likir monastery.
CHAPTERTWO
7. The route from the Shi Shi La to Photoksar.
8. A lhato protecting travellers on a mountain path.
9. The gorge between Wanla and Photoksar.
10. Descending from the Sengge La towards Nyeraks
and Lingshed.
7
8
9 10
TERMINALHISTORIESANDARTHURIANSOLUTIONS

11. Photoksar.
12. The hamlet of Machu,
physically separate but
socially integrated into the
social community of the
village.
13. Photoksar.
11
12
13
CHAPTERTWO
14. Meme Sonam reading a Buddhist
text.
15. Paljor carving a block for a prayer
ag.
16. Meme Sonam pouring tea.
17. Choron collecting water from the
frozen river.
18. Yangzes washing clothes.
14
15
16
18
17
TERMINALHISTORIESANDARTHURIANSOLUTIONS

19. A yak herder high in the mountains
during the summer.
20. Threshing with yaks.
21. Orsal and his brother learning to winnow.
22. Before the rst ploughing Paljor reads a
Buddhist text next to an offering for the local
spirits.
19
20
21 22
CHAPTERTWO
23. Changing the juniper on the lhato, from where the yullha protects the village.
24. The komnyer performing a sangs at the lhato.
25. Gyaltsen tending the lhato for the phalha.
23
24 25
TERMINALHISTORIESANDARTHURIANSOLUTIONS

26. The lhaba possessed by the yullha.
27. The bele which are to be thrown out by the Babar.
28. The boys alamdar interrupting the girls patimo.
26
27
28
CHAPTERTWO
29. Village women dancing in age
order.
30. The onpo and the amchi at the
head of the line of dancers.
31. The onpo at the head of the dral
next to the chang.
29
30 31
TERMINALHISTORIESANDARTHURIANSOLUTIONS

32. The chos-sil.
33. One of the older village women with her prayer wheel.
34. Orsal taking leave of the goba before departing for Lamayuru.
32
33 34
CHAPTERTWO
35. Village women listen to Chado Rinpoches teachings.
TERMINALHISTORIESANDARTHURIANSOLUTIONS

36. Chado Rinpoche performing a skurims
in Photoksar.
37. The lama placing a pungpa in a new
lhato.
CHAPTERTWO
38. Morup and Api Rigzin with one of Morups sons.
TERMINALHISTORIESANDARTHURIANSOLUTIONS

39. Khangltakh, painted white, in the snow.
40. Chortens above the village.
CHAPTERTWO
41. A seventeenth century document exempting two Photoksar households
from taxes after Deldan Namgyals campaigns.
LOSAR 117
invited to dance by the Babar and the Api-Meme. They are led around
by the Api, brandishing his juniper, and are complimented with khatags
by the other villagers. The next dance is led by the panch, the next by
the membar and the next, on subsequent days, by the onpo and the
amchi. Thus, the socially important figures in the village are honoured
in these dances and they are expected to reciprocate by giving money to
all the ritual figures of Losar. On a later day it is the newly-wed couples
who are asked by the Api-Meme to lead the dances and to be honoured
with white scarves. There may also be one dance primarily made up of
the young and unmarried. Thus, there is a conjunction of the forces of
ageing with those of youth and fertility. The latter are celebrated but
have to pay tribute to the former.
The evening parties at the mani are also lead by the Babar and Api-
Meme. These are more enthusiastic and exuberant events, at which the
dancers are not under the constraints of decorum which attend the more
formal afternoon dances. All the festivities by which the villagers
welcome in and celebrate the coming of the new year are, thus, hosted
and directed by the symbolic figures who represent the forces of age and
the evil of the past year, which are to be exorcised at the end of Losar.
The humans, those alive and well, the young and fertile, are brought into
direct contact and under the influence of the old and the evil, who
positively encourage their celebrations. Their vitality and high spirits are
encouraged by the forces of degeneration.
On the fifth to eighth days these dances are preceded by displays,
ltanmo, by the boys and girls of the village. The girls, known as patimo,
dress up in the embroidered shawls their mothers wear for festivals.
They cover their faces with thin scarves and dance under the directions
of the Babar. This was explained to me as being something that the girls
do to please the lha and ensure that there will be plenty of babies in the
village in the following year. Their rather decorous movements are,
however, interrupted by the arrival of a gang of boys who have removed
their locally made coats in favour of combat style army-surplus clothing
and rush in brandishing wooden swords, also with their faces covered.
This is the alamdar. The boys leap around the dancing area for a while
and then run at the onlookers, especially the women, actually hitting
them with their sticks in some cases, while the patimo girls are shielded
by the Babar (photo 28). The alamdar was explained to me by saying
that the boys represented lha trug, child spirits, who are chasing away
evil demons. The boys, thus, demonstrate their prowess to deal with the
local spirits and exemplify the capacity of the protector spirits to control
the forces of evil. On another level, however, the alamdar represents a
118 CHAPTER SIX
defiance of the normal child-adult and men-women relations. Their faces
masked, the boys have a licence to overstep the normal markers of
behaviour, acting with disrespect towards women and adults.
On the eighth day, there is a more elaborate pantomime, involving the
enactment of a wedding by the patimo girls, which the audience greatly
enjoys, but which is again interrupted by the alamdar boys. This com-
pletes the central dances of Losar. The Babar, Api-Meme and Mon then
retire for food and drink and, when they return, as evening approaches,
the Api-Meme have a last dance in the central field where the ltanmo has
taken place. At the end of this they suddenly produce a lamb which
someone has given them. The onlookers find this highly amusing, but it
is an important ritual, and people were concerned that I should not have
missed it. Giving the Api-Meme a new-born lamb, they told me, will
ensure that plenty of lambs and goat kids are born in the new year. Here
again, fertility is represented as a product of the process of ageing and
decay.
The culmination of the events of Losar lies in the creation and
destruction of a series of storma. The first is made by the onpo on the
seventh day. Called a dradzor (or drador) and taking the form of an
elaborate spindly figure, it is placed on the ground in the centre of the
village, in front of the assembled villagers, who whistle and insult it. It
is then carried off by the goba, along a trail of specially laid flour, to be
flung down the slope below the village, to cries of gya khor from the
assembled crowd.
On the morning of the last day of Losar the Api-Meme make a final
appearance at the mani, dance with their bows and arrows and then shoot
the Memes arrows down the slope and fling away the Apis juniper and
stick, before going away to change out of their ritual clothes. The Api-
Meme have, thus, been expelled, they explained to me. Subsequently, the
Babar and Mon, with a large retinue of men, visit every house in the
village to perform individual storma rituals. Unlike the rituals of the
past, when the Babar carried off the evil of the house as storma them-
selves, special rounds of bread are prepared, to represent male and
female elements. These are flung out of the door, or off the roof, to cries
of gya khor. At the same time, the onpo is making two more
storma figures, a white male belpo and a black female belmo (photo 27).
These are placed outside at the centre of the village, where people come
to jeer at them. As a large number of people gather, the Babar raise the
two storma aloft. To a chorus of abusive shouts, cries and whistles they
carry them away through the village and out to the steep slope which
falls away beneath the houses. Here they are held high and everyone
LOSAR 119
watches from a distance as they are smashed onto the ground. The
Babars carpet robes and straw head-dresses follow. While their retinue
continue to shout and whistle in the direction of the smashed figures the
Babar take a short ritual wash and change into celebratory clothes. They
then return to lead the last dance around the fire in front of the assem-
bled villagers, before disappearing to divest themselves of their finery.
This is the final celebration of the villagers triumph over the forces of
evil, which have now been dramatically expelled.
The rite of passage
The ritual figures who represent the bad effects of the evil spirits and the
processes of ageing and decay, thus take centre stage in the village for
nine days. For the villagers, however, Losar is also a time for celebra-
tion, led by the young and vital, surrounded by the imagery of birth and
life. Fertility and gender differences are constantly represented during
Losar: the boys banish the evil forces at the meto, but embarrass the girls
with their sexual jokes as they do so; the stonzang dinner is a celebration
of the phaspun, which is responsible for all life-cycle events; the boys
display their prowess as horsemen while the women dress in their finest
clothes on the third day; the patimo girls supplicate the yullha for
fertility and act out the events of a wedding.
These elements are all brought into association with age and vulnera-
bility, in the form of the Api-Meme. The grandfathers and grandmother
sweeping away the dust of the past year represent the inevitable process
of age and decay, and yet they are frequently and explicitly linked to
images of youth and fertility. The Api wears a childs coat on her back.
They constantly encourage the youth to dance and specifically honour
young married couples. On the eighth day they publicly parade a lamb
to ensure fertility. It is they who, therefore, appear to be responsible for
bringing forth and nurturing the new life of the new year.
A similar juxtaposition of the symbols of fertility and sexuality with
those of sickness and death in rites of passage has been noted by anthro-
pologists elsewhere (Bachofen 1861; Frazer 1890; Hertz 1907; Leach
1961: 125; Huntington and Metcalf 1979). As they describe, this juxta-
position can be interpreted as a symbolic reversal of the process of
ageing. The forces of life and fertility are depicted as flourishing along-
side, and despite, the degeneration of age, nurtured and encouraged by
its representatives. In their final act of producing a new-born lamb the
Api-Meme demonstrate birth to be the product of age.
120 CHAPTER SIX
In other ways, too, the festival follows the form of the classic rites
of passage famously delineated by van Gennep (1960). Most of the
Losar events take the same form as the many other parties and celebra-
tions by which the village Ladakhis punctuate their year. What is
different about Losar is that all these events are hosted and directed by
the Baba and Api-Meme, ambiguous figures who steal the food which
they distribute and bring evil and death into every household. The
community is, thus, placed into direct contact with the effects of the
natural and numinous forces which transcend the human world. It enters
what could be called a liminal period between the old and new years,
before the ritual figures are banished at the end of the celebrations. The
basic scheme outlined by van Gennep of a three-stage process from old
to new, though a stage of liminality during which masquerades, revelry
and role-reversal are prominent, is apposite for Losar. The meto can be
seen as a preliminary ritual, prefiguring later events. Then, in the first
stage of Losar itself, the normal social order is represented in the
veneration of the deities and affirmation of family and social relations.
During the following nine days there is an extended liminal period,
dominated by the Baba and the Api-Meme. Challenges to the social order
and the role-reversals found in the alamdar, the patimo and in the male
Api, all contribute to the sense of unreality, a community temporarily
separated from the normal world and its social order. The expulsion of
these figures and exorcism of evil from the community mark the return
to normality and promise a positive beginning to the new year.
One thing that Losar does not do, however, is affirm the supremacy
of the social order. It does not unambiguously state, reiterate or reinforce
traditional social ties or delineate social roles, as many other forms of
ritual are said to do (Moore and Myerhoff 1977:5) and which Dollfus
asserts to be the final object of Losar (1987: 94-95). The festival repre-
sents the undoing of the well-established pattern of the villages social
and political order as much as it affirms it. That order is evident at many
points during Losar. The fact that the Babars meals are hosted by each
household in turn, even though nominally directed by the Api-Meme,
confirms their equality within the community, and as equal contributors
to the village tral. The goba and onpo are honoured in the dancing,
along with others who have status in the village. The headman is also the
first port of call for the Babar and Api-Meme and carries off the first
storma. Throughout the dancing the villagers line up, as they always do,
in the dralgo. This social and political order, whilst it thus underpins the
whole organisation of Losar, is often symbolically challenged, however.
The Api-Meme go around stealing food, indicating a flagrant disrespect
LOSAR 121
for household property. The youth have a particular licence to transgress
the social order at several stages. The seniority of age and adulthood, in
particular, is flouted as they throw their food around after the stonzang
dinners and attack the women and onlookers during the masked alamd-
ar. These challenges to the social order are prominent in the central,
liminal stage of the festival. Dollfus (1987: 92) regards these as markers
of that liminality but I would argue that there is considerably more at
stake in this festival.
What Losar represents is the triumph by the villagers over the two
major threats to life, the evil spirits embodied in the Babar and the
process of ageing represented by the Api-Meme. However, this triumph
is only achieved at the expense of the social order. The events surround-
ing the Api-Meme, in particular, represent and affirm the constant
renewal of the biological order, the old giving way to and nurturing the
efflorescence of youth and vitality. This is embodied in the celebrations
of the young, their masquerades, the demonstration of their strength and
prowess in the horse races and the alamdar. At these times their exuber-
ance breaks through the normal hierarchies and boundaries and over-
comes the normal deference to age and seniority, which is supposed to
be observed by the young. Losar is their time for taking centre stage,
actively encouraged by the Api-Meme in a public display of vitality and
exuberance. It would appear, I suggest, that the hierarchy of age repre-
sented in the dral has to be transcended if the finality of the biological
process is to be denied.
As well as the biological processes represented by the Api-Meme, the
world of the spirits - to which it is related - also appears to transcend and
overshadow the moral and political order of the village during Losar.
The protector deities who can assist in the struggle against the evil
demons are constantly propitiated and directly invoked by the girls and
boys masked patimo and alamdar. The youth take centre stage during
the ltanmo in the battle to prevent the chaotic cosmic forces from
intruding on the lives of the community. It is the physical fragility of the
village community and the threats to its biological continuity that are
highlighted during Losar, symbolised by the Babar and the Api-Meme.
For the evil spirits, who represent an important part of that world, to be
vanquished, the social order has, temporarily, to be overturned. The
youth have to display their powers. It is also they who must triumph over
age, asserting their vitality and exuberance in the face of the processes
of ageing and decay. The social order, which grants status to age, must,
therefore, temporarily take second place in the representation of the
struggle over the biological continuity of the community.
122 CHAPTER SIX
The social order is, thus, represented and affirmed during Losar, but
not unequivocally. The tensions between the supernatural and the social
realms of the village are also dramatically symbolised during the festi-
val.
Change
Throughout the Lingshed area, remote from the Indus valley, Losar is
celebrated in similar ways to the Photoksar festival, although with many
small differences. In villages closer to Leh, like Lamayuru, however, the
ritual figures of Losar have disappeared. Neither Babar nor Meme appear
any more here (they never had an Api). In Leh people say they spend the
first few days of Losar cooking large meals and visiting friends and
relations; they make offerings and throw out storma and rilzan, but there
are few of the more elaborate and pantomime elements left to the festival.
It could well be that it is the monastic influence and a disapproval of the
old roles of the Babar as storma, that has caused such customs to disap-
pear.
In Photoksar during my first Losar in 1999 the Babar and Api-Meme
hardly dressed up at all. There were no carpet robes, head-dresses or
soot-smudged faces and they did not symbolically go around stealing
food. By 2002, on the other hand, the villagers had decided to revive the
old customs. Paljor explained to me that they had decided the old cus-
toms were good. They were, therefore, self-consciously going against
the trends of modernity followed in villages closer to Leh. The revival of
these customs, however, caused the flaring up of an old conflict between
the villagers and the Lamayuru komnyer. This became apparent on the
seventh day, when the onpo was creating the first storma. The komnyer
entered the room and soon launched into a diatribe against old customs.
He frequently referred to the disapproval voiced by the lamas and
eventually raised the issue of the old practice by which the Photoksar
villagers (supposedly) used to sacrifice an eight-year old boy to the
yullha. The implication was that if the villagers started reviving the old
customs then where would it end? Discussing these events in Khangltakh,
Choron told me that the komnyer had recently given up chang and meat.
In other words, he was on a reforming mission.
Later, Paljor explained that there was a long-standing conflict between
this komnyer and himself, along with certain other villagers. In around
1990 Togdan Rinpoche had visited the village and told them to set up a
committee to reform the old customs, particularly those relating to
LOSAR 123
(non-Buddhist) rituals, like Losar. Paljor and the komnyer had both been
on the committee. However, they had fallen out when Paljor had argued
in favour of keeping many of the old customs. The komnyer was now
trying to reassert his authority. While he was holding forth during the
storma preparation, several of the older village men objected vocally.
One, in particular, referred to the annual meeting at which the revival of
the old customs had been decided upon. It was a decision made by mi
sakh, all of us, he insisted. The komnyer, he was suggesting, did not have
authority to override the decision of the yulpa. The ongoing tension
between the reforming forces of establishment Buddhism and the auton-
omy of the villagers own practices was developing into a struggle for
control over the most important ritual of the year.
When I returned to Photoksar in 2005, however, Paljor told me that
they had again dropped the old customs. But why? I asked. Paljor
shrugged. The komnyer threatened to leave the village, he told me.
Now the Babar do not dress up any more. You were lucky to see the last
Losar when this happened. Paljor was expressing a reluctant resignation
to the forces of modernity and the power of the Buddhist establishment,
which had eventually prevailed through the komnyers reforming cam-
paign.
In these events, I would suggest, one can detect many of the inherent
tensions within the social order of the village, in particular that between
its moral and political organisation and the realm of the spirits. The
elemental demands of the physical world mean that the youth, those who
represent the biological future of the village, have to triumph, tempo-
rarily, over the structures and hierarchies of its social order. The tension
between local ritual forms and the modernising impulses of establishment
Buddhism was also played out in the conflict and discussions surround-
ing the re-establishment of the old customs in favour of the rites
approved by the senior lamas. This was also a conflict between the yulpa
and outsiders, namely the external power of the religious establishment,
here represented by the komnyer. The decision to revive the old cus-
toms represented a conscious valuation of tradition by some of the
villagers over the forces of modernity; but the subsequent reversal of that
decision indicated the ultimate power of the latter to change the course
of the events in Photoksar, as it had already done in communities closer
to the urban centre. Such are the tensions and processes found in one of
the many fragile webs of order that constitute Ladakhi society.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE SACRED SOCIAL ORDER
If the moral and political order, which must be maintained at all costs,
is not to be interpreted in religious or cosmological terms, then how is
it to be understood and explained? This order is described by the bound-
aries of the community, which are themselves defined by the fixed
number of households and the web of cooperative relations that should
exist between them. It is not, however, an order symbolised or idealised
in any abstract way. There is no Ladakhi word readily translatable as
order, for example. In the case of a resolved dispute the Photoksarpa
merely say drig song, meaning, it is OK again. Drig is a very com-
monly heard word meaning all right or satisfactory. The restoration
of order is simply, then, a return to normality.
A certain oblique light was shed upon the implicit notions of order
underlying such concerns during conversations I had about notions of
justice in Photoksar, notions for which my Ladakhi and Tibetan dictio-
naries suggested various terms. The Ladakhi dictionary (Hamid 1998:
131, 31) gives drang po (trangpo) as straight, honest, candid, fair and
khrims drang po (trims trangpo) as justice, while Das (1998: 649), the
Tibetan dictionary, gives drang po as right, truthful, straight, sincere,
honest, khrims drangpo as righteous judgment, justice and las drang
po as good actions, righteous deeds (las means work, but is also the
general word used to refer to karma in Tibetan languages). When I raised
the concept of trangpo with Paljor, however, he gave me a rather
different set of explanations. Trangpo, he explained, means straight, like
a piece of wood. But a mi trangpo (mi is man) is someone who does not
lie. Spera trangpo (spera is speech), likewise, means to tell the truth. I
then asked about trims trangpo and his explanation was that if you have
a quarrel and a mediator achieves a settlement, shakhs, that is trims
trangpo. The idea is, therefore, not of some abstract justice but of
achieving settlement, making things straight in the community, one
might say. Las trangpo, he said, meant yulpe las, community work,
which he went on to explain as nangla nyams mi cho, not causing injury
or suffering (nyams) inside (nang). Nang is the shortened form of
nangosla usually used in Photoksar to refer to the village. The idea of
las trangpo, then, is of work or actions that do not harm us, the yulpa,
inside our community.
126 CHAPTER SEVEN
The dictionary lists them as (1) a decrease in the duration of life, (2) perversity in
1
thoughts and religious disbeliefs, (3) the five poisons, (4) difficulty to convert and (5)
degenerate ages or times.
Looking for a concept of justice I was, therefore, met by a series of
expressions which referred back to the community, to the yulpa and the
nangosla, as opposed to any abstract scheme of right and wrong or
fairness. The resolution of disputes is conceptualized not as a case of
discovering the truth, nor of determining individual rights, let alone
applying laws that enshrine some abstract principle of natural justice. It
is, rather, conceptualised as making things straight in the community by
restoring order within it.
There is, then, a vision of an ideal community here, one that is free
from any form of conflict and anger. When I suggested to Paljor that the
Photoksar villagers did not quarrel very much he was quick to disagree:
Oh no, we have a lot of arguments, which is very bad, he said, shaking
his head. We drink too much chang, he explained. This was not just a
criticism of the villagers as individuals but an admission of failure and
poor standards on the part of the community as a whole. On another
occasion he was looking through my Tibetan dictionary, as he often did
to help me with my language, and came across the term snyigs ma,
which is translated there as degenerated and grown worse (Das 1998:
501). He asked me what the dictionary said and I explained the English
entry for snyigs ma lnga ni, the five impurities. He then explained his
1
understanding of the concept as being a state in which people die young,
they have too much work, bad minds (sems tsokpo) and there is fighting.
According to his understanding, therefore, fighting is something which
afflicts a community in which people have bad minds and it accompa-
nies a physical struggle to survive. Conflict is a sign of a degenerate
society.
The sense of order that underlies attitudes to conflict and the yulpas
practices of dispute resolution is founded, therefore, on the idea of the
peaceful, united, harmonious community. It is a similar idea that, I have
suggested, underlies the villagers moral judgments of each other,
including the criticism of those with a sems tsokpo. Order is, therefore,
the responsibility of each individual. It is a human order, one found in
the activities of individuals, rather than a cosmological or divine order,
such as the Hindu order of caste, or an abstract order, such as the
jurisprudential idea of natural law. It is not something to be imposed
THE SACRED SOCIAL ORDER 127
The English translations are, for the most part, those of Cosman (2001). However,
2
she translates interdites as surrounded by prohibitions, which is somewhat loose.
from above and it can only be restored through the voluntary acts of
those involved.
The ideal community is made up of individuals between whom and
between whose households there is a network of harmonious relations.
Cooperation, sharing, hospitality and collective work are their manifesta-
tion. It is a spiders web of delicate, cross-cutting, inter-linked relation-
ships. Like a spiders web, however, this order can easily be ruptured.
Two individuals exchanging harsh words and one woman refusing to
cooperate with another are enough to damage the web and a full-scale
fight will create a tear which the whole community must combine, if
necessary with a social boycott, to mend.
The sacred social
This notion of order accords with the concept of the sacred social
community found in Durkheims (1912) discussion of religion. He
suggests that it is the distinction between the sacred and the profane that
is fundamental to any form of religion (1912: 50). The sacred, he
explains, is that which is to be protected (1912: 56), set apart and out of
bounds (spares et interdites) (1912: 65). Religion is a unified system
2
of beliefs and practices relating to sacred things, which unites its adher-
ents into a single moral community (un systme solidaire de croyances
et de pratiques relatives des choses sacres ... qui unissent en une
mme communaut morale ... tous ceux qui y adhrent). (1912: 65) It is
this, rather than any notion of the supernatural or the mysterious,
including the existence of gods and spirits, that defines religion. Ulti-
mately, it is the idea of society, itself, that is the soul of religion. It is the
social that is sacred, albeit an idealised society, something superimposed
upon the real (surajout au rel) (1912: 602). A similar sense of the
sacred, I would suggest, characterises Ladakhi notions of the ideal
community, that referred to as the nang, the nangosla or the yul, a
concept which is superimposed upon or transcends the real.
The village community is not here the subject of worship, or even the
veneration directed at a crown, flag or other symbols of kingship or
nationhood elsewhere. Nor is it in any real sense set apart. However,
the community is sacred in the sense that it is something that must be
128 CHAPTER SEVEN
As Cosman (2001: xxvii) points out, Durkheim does not, however, reduce religion
3
to morality.
preserved, kept intact and not disturbed or disordered by conflict. It is
surrounded by prohibitions to the extent that conflict is both morally and
judicially sanctioned. It is also a moral ideal and the foundation of the
judicial epistemologies and moral practices I have described in previous
chapters. Moreover, it unites the people into a single moral community,
elevating common above individual interests, that which Durkheim
characterised as profane (Cosman 2001: xxii). It is an ideal that gives
3
rise to moral forces, the subject of aspirations and the sense, on the part
of individuals, of something beyond or transcending the world of
experience (1912: 600-04).
Durkheim also discussed the ritualised nature of the sacred and the
cult (le culte) which supports it (1912: 611). In Photoksar many of the
rituals I described in the previous chapter concern the realm of the spirits
or the dictates of Buddhism, spheres from which, I have argued, the
moral community remains distinct. However, there is symbolism and
formality in the dralgo and the fight to deny social status by which, I
have suggested, people constitute themselves as proper members of that
moral community. The meetings of the yulpa, informal though they are,
and the way in which their activities are reported, symbolise the bound-
aries of the community and the ideal of unity amongst those who consti-
tute it. Durkheim, himself, also emphasised the meetings and congrega-
tions (les runions, les assembles, les congrgations) (1912: 610)
which, as others have pointed out (Just, forthcoming) are more important
in the construction of small communities than the elaborate symbolism
that characterises more complex societies. The social and moral order of
the community in Photoksar is, therefore, defined by the notion of the
ideal community in which everyone lives harmonious lives. The social
is sacred.
What Durkheims theory does not account for, at least on the face of
it, is the separation described in the last chapter between the realm of
moral and social relations amongst the villagers and that of the spirits,
who affect their physical fortunes. Although Durkheim was at pains to
stress that notions of the divine and the supernatural did not form the
basis of religion, he did give an account of the way in which such
notions could develop from the concept of the sacred social, leading to
the formation of the established religions as we know them today (1912:
Bk II, ch 9). The notion of the soul, too, and the associated eschatologi-
THE SACRED SOCIAL ORDER 129
As Allen (2000: 143) points out, Mauss was thinking of gatherings that bring
4
together the whole of society, past, present and future, and everything associated with it.
Losar could be seen as such a gathering in Photoksar, where humans and spirits, judicial,
moral, political and familial relations are brought together. However, as I described in
the previous chapter, the festival also highlights certain tensions between these realms.
cal beliefs derive from the more fundamental concepts of religion (1912:
343). A notion that appears to be central to this account is that the
fundamental categories of thought have religious origins:
It has long been known that until a relatively advanced time in evolution, the
rules of morality and law were indistinguishable from ritual prescriptions. In
short, it maybe said that nearly all great social institutions are born of
religion. (On sait depuis longtemps que, jusqu un moment relativement
avanc de lvolution, les rgles de la morale et du droit ont t indistinctes
de prescriptions rituelles. On peut donc dire, en rsum, que presque toutes
les grandes institutions sociales sont nes de la religion.) (1912: 598)
There is, in this passage, an implicit model of an original, undeveloped
society in which religion is the eminent form and epitome of all collec-
tive life. It is a theory which is echoed in the writings of several other
anthropologists. Mauss, for example, describes the total social phenom-
ena, in which all kinds of institutions are given expression at the same
time - religious, juridical, and moral (1990: 3) while Douglas describes
4
primitive cultures in which there is a lack of differentiation between
persons, their physical environment and the cosmos, and in which
physical forces are thought of as interwoven with the lives of persons.
... The universe discerns the social world and intervenes to uphold it.
(1966: 88) Although their theories are, in many respects, different, the
legal anthropologists Maine (1883, 1909) and Gluckman (1955) base
their accounts of the origins of law and judicial practices on a similar
model of an original, undifferentiated society. Gluckman talks of the
general lack of differentiation in simple society, the extent to which
custom is sacerdotalized to provide the basis for law, and the fact that
morality is a source of legal rulings in adjudication (1955: 264-67).
Samuels notion of the total social whole, as the basis on which
religious forms are to be understood in Tibet (1993: 362), similarly
suggests that religion provides the cultural forms that shape the whole
gamut of social processes.
Photoksar is a small-scale society in which the spirit world is clearly
interwoven with the lives of person, deeply implicated in their physical
and environmental fortunes. However, this world does not have any
130 CHAPTER SEVEN
direct impact on its moral and judicial organisation. The spirits and their
associated rites and rituals have little or no bearing on what I would
characterise as the sacred social. The judicial processes I have described
are part of a separate social realm. Religion, in this sense, provides the
basis for law. However, that form of religion, the sacred social, is not the
realm inhabited by the spirits, and with which the vast majority of the
practices of Buddhism are associated by the villagers. Custom has not
been sacerdotalized.
As I mentioned in the previous chapter, this separation corresponds
to distinct forms of social reorganisation within the village: the ranking
order of the dral, the division of the population into households and the
status and activities of the yulpa all relate to organisation of political and
moral relations between individuals. The notion of a sacred order is
found in peaceful and harmonious relations between people and their
households. By contrast, the phaspun comes together to organise peo-
ples relations with their phalha and their involvement in life-cycle
events, during which the protection of the lha is negotiated. Similarly,
much of the physical organisation of the village and peoples movement
within it, around religious monuments, in and out of the sight of the
yullha, maintaining an appropriate distance from certain shrines, is
determined by the presence of the spirits. Of course, there is some
overlap between these forms of organisation. Phaspun membership is
defined in terms of household membership. The timing of many agricul-
tural events is determined by the onpo and preceded by rituals, but the
event then depends on patterns of co-operation between households. It
is the same with many religious rituals. However, the group of khyimtses
gathering for an informal party has a completely different significance
from the members of the phaspun, often the same people, who gather to
organise a birth celebration.
The separation of realms
As Obeyesekere (1968) noted with regard to what he termed pre-liter-
ate religions (using the term religion, contrary to Durkheim, to refer
to the supernatural rather than the social world), there is a separation
between the secular morality that underpins the norms of social life and
the ideas connected with religion, that is the rites and practices con-
cerned with the supernatural and the afterlife. I would suggest that in
Photoksar the sacred nature of the social accounts for the extent to which
THE SACRED SOCIAL ORDER 131
Among communities of nomadic pastoralists in Amdo, I found a certain similarity
5
in ideas of order to those I observed in Photoksar. However, the fluidity of such
communities and the feuding relations between them, as well as the very different
historical trajectory and forms of political organisation in Amdo, have resulted in the
emergence of very different dynamics of order (Pirie, forthcoming).
it has been protected from external influences, including those of
establishment Buddhism, and also kept apart, in significant ways, from
the controlling hand of the former kings and aristocrats and their equiva-
lents in the modernday world.
In several other parts of ethnographic Tibet, particularly the remoter
Himalayan regions, a similar sense of a transcendent social whole has
been noted. von Frer-Haimendorf (1964: 104), for example, remarks of
the Sherpas of Nepal that, whatever the composition of a village
community, the guiding principle for its government everywhere is that
authority is vested in the totality of its inhabitants. Ramble (forthcom-
ing), in his study of a village in Mustang, also describes the reified
entity that transcends the community as an assembly of individuals and
households. It would, thus, seem that other Tibetan populations
5
maintain the idea of a community that transcends the status of the
individuals and families within it, an idea that also founds the authority
of those charged with responsibility for maintaining order. But that
community is also vulnerable to the encroachment of external forces.
Ramble (forthcoming Ch 7) describes a degree of incompatibility
between aspects of the cults of territorial deities found in this village,
and the soteriological Buddhist creed, to which they nominally sub-
scribed. As he puts it, the villagers do not struggle with the problem of
irreconcilable systems, but deal with the component fragments of these
systems according to whether they are beneficial, harmful, salient or
irrelevant. They do not treat Buddhism as an entire system, rather as
raw material, divisible stuff which is employed in the construction or
elaboration of the local tradition (1990: 194). It is similar, I would
suggest, in Photoksar. The villagers regard the rites carried out for them
by Buddhist practitioners in terms of their efficacy within their own
supernatural world, whose numina are implicated, above all, in their
physical fortunes. The moral condemnation of drinking, adultery and
other sins, which is preached by the monks, represents a distinct set of
concerns, directed at the fate of the soul in the after-life and associated
with the ethical, but largely esoteric and obscure, zhiwa practices carried
out by the monks. Both of these are separate from the set of moral
concerns by which they maintain the social order of their community.
132 CHAPTER SEVEN
The Photoksar villagers, like those of Mustang described by Ramble,
are, thus, pragmatic and somewhat selective in their acceptance and
interpretation of Buddhism: they have assimilated it according to their
own needs and world views. But when the lamas are held in the highest
regard and when they visit the villages to give teachings, why do the
same villagers not accept and assimilate their cosmologies and moral
teachings more readily, especially when these would appear to support
their own moral concerns?
In the summer of 2005 Chado Rinpoche, from Sera monastery in
India, visited Photoksar on his way to Lingshed and stayed for two days
to give teachings and perform a skurims ritual (photos 35-37). During
the teachings he laid considerable emphasis on the merits of helpfulness,
selflessness, and the Buddhist moral virtues, explicitly referring to the
gewa rchu. When I asked a number of people to tell me what he had
been discussing, however, they were vague and merely mentioned his
injunctions about alcohol, the importance of saying prayers and the
benefits of education. They were interpreting his words, that is, in terms
of what they believed to be the activities relevant to their karma. His
teachings were being understood by the villagers in a way which synthe-
sised with their local understandings about the significance of karmic
morality. His explanations did not entirely fall on deaf ears, however.
The more educated villagers, such as Paljor, are knowledgeable about
Buddhist doctrine and attempt to synthesise its teachings with their more
pragmatic village concerns. At the same time, thoughtful monks con-
stantly attempt to interpret local ritual ideas and practices in more
orthodox Buddhist terms. These efforts lead to more or less successful
syntheses and heterogeneous understandings. The contradictory attitudes
towards alcohol found in Photoksar are one example of this: the villagers
both accept the lamas condemnation of alcohol, in the abstract, and
reserve their effective criticism of each other for those whose drunken-
ness leads to antagonism and violence.
Spiritual pollution, drib, is also thought, in some Tibetan contexts, to
arise from conflict (Schickelgrber 1989). Drib is a phenomenon found
widely amongst Tibetan communities and is generally regarded as
arising after birth and death, negatively affecting relations between
humans and spirits. In Photoksar the concept implies vulnerability to
spirit attack: it is because of their susceptibility to drib that babies,
mothers and the family of a deceased have to avoid proximity to, and
even sight of, the shrines of the powerful protector deities, lest they be
struck by illness. The village concept is a pragmatic, supernatural one.
THE SACRED SOCIAL ORDER 133
Kaplanian (1988) describes mi kha as arising from the jealousy of wealth and new
6
babies. The Photoksar villagers told me it arises from gossip, with similar effects to a
mild spirit attack which can be cured by a short prayer reading. Mi kha, thus, has
cosmological connotations. The gossip need not be malicious, however - it could even
include speculating about how the anthropologist is faring back home. Paljor, moreover,
made a firm distinction between mi kha and the enmity that arises when two people
quarrel, which he referred to as khon. The distinction is subtle but, in my view,
Even Paljor shook his head over the explanations of my Tibetan dictio-
nary which link drib with blood, oaths, chastity, and fighting (Das 1998:
244). In Leh, both the monks and other educated informants were
dismissive of the villagers understandings, however. One monk told me
that these were old forms of drib which were not so relevant any more.
What is important is the purification rituals which make everything
clear with the gods, he asserted. In order to explain the practices and
attitudes he found among his monastic informants in Lingshed, Mills
(2003: Ch 8) elaborated a complex theory of drib based on the idea of
dislocation from a world in which divinities, the Buddha, and humans
are in harmony. The notion of drib is simultaneously, then, a concept
with pragmatic, supernatural significance for the Photoksar villagers and
a concept with religious and moral implications for Tibetan elites.
A similarly complex concept, also open to multiple interpretations,
is that of the sems, the mind, which, as discussed in chapter three, has at
least two different connotations in Photoksar. A third is the Buddhist
concept of the disciplined, educated mind that is only achieved after long
training. One Ladakhi monk told me that the Photoksar villagers do not
receive enough teaching about Buddhist morality, as a result of which
they have sems lchinte, strong minds and cannot control their anger. In
the village, on the other hand, the sems lchinte is equivalent to the small
sems chungun, which explains why some people are liable to anger and
fear. When I raised this subject with Paljor, whilst agreeing with the
local description he also told me that education, by which he meant
knowledge of Buddhist texts, leads to a good mind and characterises
those who control their anger. He did not acknowledge the apparent
contradiction between the Buddhist idea of knowledge as the foundation
of proper conduct and the local idea of the biologically determined mind.
Numerous practical and moral concerns of the laity are also the
subject of ritual texts within the Buddhist canon. Idle speech (ngag
*chal) is, for example, one of the mi gewa rchu, the ten Buddhist moral
prohibitions. There are also texts which concern gossip and jealousy, mi
kha (Kapstein 1997: 527-37). Lopez presents several texts that address
6
134 CHAPTER SEVEN
significant. Mi kha can be caused accidentally but khon is a sign of bad personal relations
and has no cosmological connotations.
quotidian concerns of the laity with the object of correcting the image of
Buddhism as a disembodied philosophy (1997: 36). The extent to
which the content of such documents penetrated lay consciousness is not
clear, however. They may simply have been regarded as texts for
recitation.
Certain ideas - the pollution associated with birth and death, the
evaluation of the mind and the dangers of gossip - are, therefore, con-
nected by members of the elite with the principles of Buddhism and
represent a combination of moral and religious ideas. The same concepts
retain an almost wholly pragmatic significance for most of the Photoksar
villagers, however. The Photoksar villagers have incorporated certain
ideas and practices of Buddhism and the authority of the Buddhist
practitioners into their local world in a way which synthesises, albeit not
without tensions, with their own pragmatic, physical and cosmological
concerns.
This apparent triumph of pragmatism over religion can be attributed,
at least in part, to the sacred nature of the social from which these
supernatural concerns remain distinct. It is something that needs to be
preserved from the hegemonic power of Buddhism, whose establish-
ments and leaders, of course, extracted taxes from the lay populations.
But such leaders also offer notions of order, morality and religious
authority which compete with local understandings. There is a funda-
mental resistence to allowing outsiders and those with power, whether
religious, economic or political, from encroaching on the internal spaces
of the village, whether the sacred social or the web of relations they
maintain with their lha.
The ongoing process of religious assimilation is increasing as Ladakh
is incorporated more firmly into the modern world and communications
with Buddhist centres in India are made ever easier. Monks and wealthy
individuals can now easily travel to Dharamsala and other centres of
Buddhist learning to hear the teachings of senior lamas. The Dalai
Lama, in particular, deplores non-Buddhist spirit veneration and
promotes a morally-based form of Buddhism. At the same time, organi-
sations like the Maha Bodhi Society, a Theravada Buddhist organisation,
distribute short, readable texts within Ladakh concerning Buddhist
principles. Some young development workers were reading these when
they visited Photoksar. They disparaged the villagers, to me, as igno-
THE SACRED SOCIAL ORDER 135
rant, attributing their lack of cooperation with a new development
project they were trying to implement, to alcohol drinking. This, they
said, was a sign of their bad minds. At the same time, however, even
the most educated Ladakhis retain a reverence for their religious texts
which places them beyond the realm of practical relevance. Young
people would typically express reluctance to explain religious principles
to me, referring instead to the monks or elders who knew them better.
Even for these groups, therefore, the Buddhism of the texts remains
esoteric. This reification of Buddhist texts serves to distance the ethical
codes, in the eyes of most of the Ladakhi laity, from matters of practical
morality. At the same time, it serves to distance the religious power-
holders from the practical business of village politics. Deference and
distance, I would suggest, characterise all these relationships.
The autonomy of the sacred social in the Ladakhi village is, thus,
threatened by the powerful narratives of Buddhism, as well as internal
tendencies towards hierarchy and conflict. The villagers need actively
to maintain and preserve the autonomy and unity of their community.
Although its achievement is an impossible task, however, they maintain
the ideal. In so doing they pursue patterns of autonomy and deference by
which they distance external forces from their internal spaces of order.
Autonomy
The villagers take it upon themselves to settle even the most serious
cases of internal conflict. A striking example of this occurred in Lingsh-
ed, a considerably larger, but more remote, village than Photoksar. One
summer a group of four boys, ages six to ten, had gone up to the moun-
tains to herd the sheep and goats but only three had returned. They
would not say what had happened to the fourth so search parties were
sent out. They eventually found the missing boys body, partly buried in
the ground. It was not clear what had happened, the boys claiming that
he had fallen and hurt himself and that they had buried the body in a
panic. The family of the dead boy asked the goba and membars to
intervene and a village meeting was called. It was decided that the
families of the three should pay compensation to the family of the fourth
and they were instructed to take care about their children in the future.
Compensation of around Rs100,000 was originally decided upon, a truly
astronomical amount, but the three asked for another meeting to agree
a reduction and it was eventually lowered to something in the region of
136 CHAPTER SEVEN
Rs60,000. According to my informant from Lingshed, this was in
consideration of the wealth of the families and the fact that the boys
were still young and irresponsible. The families of the older two had to
pay more than that of the younger, on the basis that they must have been
more responsible. The villagers obviously considered that the boys were
in some way responsible for the death but the truth was never firmly
established. Nevertheless, the boys families did not attempt to take the
case to a higher authority, to the police or to the court in Leh, even
though they were not at all happy, other informants told me, with the
level of the fines. In the end they accepted the authority of the village
meeting and agreed to pay the fines.
This is a dramatic example of a remote villages maintenance of
autonomy and distance from the central administration by resolving a
serious conflict internally. Like the Zangskar rape, mentioned in chapter
four, it was not referred to the police by the families of the deceased boy
or by the goba, nor by the families of the accused boys. The police have
theoretical status as an external authority and they were often mentioned
to me during conversations we had about village disputes in Photoksar.
When I asked Paljor about the meaning of the phrase shakhs, for exam-
ple, he used the police as the ultimate example of a body which can
achieve shakhs. Likewise, after the meeting that had resolved the two
major fights in Photoksar he explained that if there was any more trouble
between the same men then the yulpa would be able to show the agree-
ments to the police as a record of exactly what had happened. The police
were, therefore, talked about, at least to me, as the ultimate arbiters in
matters of village conflict. In practice, however, it was quite clear that
they were not regarded as either a welcome or a realistic source of
judicial authority. When I asked Paljor, during the same conversation,
what the police would do if they were called to the village he shrugged
his shoulders and said they would probably just beat people up and take
money. Once or twice in the past people had been to the police, he said,
but now we try to settle everything nangosla, among ourselves. Despite
their official status as guarantors of law and order in Ladakh, the villag-
ers are keen to avoid their involvement as far as possible.
The villagers pay lip service, therefore, to the supremacy of the
states authorities, in the form of the police and government officers. In
practice, however, these are treated as little more than distant powers,
whose interference in village affairs must be avoided. It is the yulpa who
have the ultimate authority to maintain order in the village, both by
deciding the tral and by settling conflict. The villagers rhetorically
THE SACRED SOCIAL ORDER 137
acknowledge the authority of the governments representatives, as they
probably did that of the lonpo, but the idea that conflict must be resolved
with a ceremonial reestablishment of good relations serves to confine all
disputes within the village. External power-holders are effectively
distanced from the internal affairs of the village. The resolution of
conflict is very much an internal matter, one which is defined by and
also reinforces the sense of the village as an autonomous community.
This becomes particularly relevant when considering the dynamics of
order in the urban centre, where similar ideas are found among much
more complex social networks, as I describe in chapter nine.
There are also reports from elsewhere in Ladakh of cases in which
the police or other government officers were called to settle conflict and
found themselves drawn into practices of mediation determined by local
expectations. Srinivas (1998: 111-16), for example, records a number of
cases from villages in Nubra, a region to the north of Ladakh, over one
of the many high passes that were traversed by the trading caravans on
their route into Central Asia. Although most of the disputes were
resolved internally, one involved a violent conflict between two villages
which resulted in the intervention of the police. They were, however,
unable to stop the violence until local officials joined with village
representatives to undertake a process of mediation between the two
villages. Pascale Dollfus (1989: 119) records a similar event in the
village of Hemis Shukpachan. A fight was reported to the police by one
of the protagonists. A group of neighbours, with the assistance of the
goba and membar, persuaded the police to come to the village but with
unsatisfactory results and the villagers had to bribe them, collectively,
to achieve the result they considered appropriate with fines, apologies
and khatags. In each of these cases the police acted not as independent
agents of the state but, rather, found themselves drawn into local pro-
cesses of conflict resolution.
Returning to consider the historical developments discussed in
chapter two, it is possible to understand the ways in which the Photoksar
villages must have negotiated their village order under previous regimes.
We know that representatives of the lonpo, who became an official for
the Dogras, visited the village regularly to collect taxes. The villagers
told me of the harshness of these taxes and the way the lonpos retainers
used to enforce their demands with big sticks. These were doubtless
treated with the greatest social respect and the annual party which, the
lonpo told me, his ancestors used to throw was welcomed. It is, never-
theless, probable that the villagers organised the vast majority of their
138 CHAPTER SEVEN
internal affairs without interference from these representatives. There is
certainly no evidence of any great involvement in village organisation
on the part of these or any others, save for the extraction of taxes, the
enforcement of begar obligations and the recruitment of men for the
kings armies. While the lonpo told me that his ancestors used to give
the law to the villages, it is almost certain that the villagers, under their
yulpa and goba, maintained order by settling conflict internally, much
as they do today.
The nature of administrative control changed considerably under the
Dogras, particularly after Kashmir was incorporated into the British
Empire. The mapping of agricultural land and the creation of the land
settlement records was, as described by van Beek (1996: Ch 2), one of
the ways in which the villagers resources became subject to closer
control. From a legal point of view the land settlements had a significant
effect on the definition and organisation of property relations throughout
Ladakh. However, although the Photoksar villagers were well aware of
the maps and records held in Leh they did not regard them as having
altered their property relations in practice, and they never have recourse
to them in cases of doubt. I saw two written records of disputes that had
occurred over property boundaries in the village during the second half
of the twentieth century, although these were few in comparison to the
records of other forms of disagreement. One had concerned a piece of
land that was claimed by one household as its own, but by others to be
communal property. Certain of the older members of the village had
been called upon to give evidence as to the historic use of the land. They
had not referred to the land officials in Leh, however. Nevertheless, the
land records still reflect, remarkably well, the current pattern of house-
hold landholding. There are just a few areas in which fields have been
washed away or abandoned or new ones have been created and the
villagers were not at all surprised that maps created almost a hundred
years previously should closely mirror their contemporary pattern of
land ownership. The sense of immemorial continuity is strong. Doubtless
the land records were drawn up to reflect closely the villagers own
property relations at the time and these have remained the same, with
only minor changes, into the twenty-first century.
As far as the villagers are concerned, therefore, their patterns of land
ownership, household organisation and internal village administration
have remained substantially the same despite, and during the course of,
the dramatic changes that have taken place in the political regimes of
Ladakh since the 1830s, when it changed from a kingdom to an annexe
THE SACRED SOCIAL ORDER 139
to the Dogra state, to a part of the colonial empire, to a marginal region
in the Indian nation state. This sense of internal continuity, also reflected
in the notion of the local and unchangeable trims, is one of the ways in
which they maintain the autonomy of their community against the
influence of outsiders. There is, I have suggested, a pattern of deference
and distance towards external sources of power which runs through
these historic relations between villagers and outsiders. This is exempli-
fied in their relations with Buddhism, whose deities and lamas are
accorded the highest respect and whose religious power is practically
unquestioned, but who are not allowed to impinge on the moral and
social relations that are at the heart of the construction of their own
community.
Autonomy and equality
The root of the practices that distance the influence of outsiders from
these internal village processes is often, I would suggest, to be found in
the same processes by which the villagers maintain a sense of unity and
equality amongst themselves. The dralgo, for example, as well as
symbolising relations of equality between members of village house-
holds, also differentiates members of the village from the aristocracy,
monks and outsiders.
Monks are invariably elevated in the dralgo and even when they are
from village families they are also excluded from meetings of the yulpa.
This includes the youngest novices. While I was staying at Khangltakh,
Orsal, Paljor and Morups second son, was chosen to be sent to Lamayu-
ru monastery, in compliance with the new tral. He and another village
boy, both around eight years old, were despatched with a touching
ceremony which saw the villagers gather on the roof of one of the houses
over-looking the rocky path that descends steeply into the gorge below
the village (photo 34). As they paid their respects with changskyan and
khatags, Morup was typically dry-eyed, but Api Rigzin wept copiously.
Even Paljor wiped away tears as the two small figures took their leave
and receded into the distance behind the donkey carrying their small
packs down the valley and towards their new lives in the monastery.
Some months later they returned on a visit, now proudly wearing the
maroon robes of the novice monk. Paljor had reported tears on Orsals
part when he had visited Lamayuru and this was his first chance to be
reunited with his family. The boys were greeted outside the village by
140 CHAPTER SEVEN
In fact, in the next few days, Orsal joined his brothers and friends in their normal
7
activities and seating places and was soon being scolded by his mother and grandmother
for his pranks. In subsequent years he and his companions learned how to shift easily
between statuses, sitting with the monks during festivals and dancing with the other
children in the evenings.
their mothers and neighbours carrying changskyan and as soon as they
entered the kitchen they were placed at the head of the dralgo. Meme
Sonam fussed around them, pouring tea and deliberately using zhe skat,
the formal mode of address. As a westerner, my heart bled for the young
boys who, to my eyes, must have wanted desperately to be at home,
just to be boys in their families again after the uncomfortable surround-
ings of the monastery. They were being denied this comfort by the
formality of their treatment. What was happening, however, was that
their new status was being publicly and symbolically marked. As long
as they stayed in the monastery they would never be the same as the
other villagers; they would also never enter the ranks of the yulpa.
7
The dral and honorific speech are, thus, used to elevate all monks
socially but also to distance them from village politics, which means
they will never be consulted in connection with disputes and never
attend village meetings. Both symbolically and physically the politico-
moral order of the village is, in such ways, protected and set apart from
the powerful authority of the religious establishments. Maintaining this
sense of distance from the political and religious centres of the region
does not, however, amount to the rejection of established social statuses.
The respect shown to monks and aristocrats in the dralgo and in a
myriad of small hospitality rituals is not cynically or reluctantly be-
stowed. Rather, there is a subtle system of deference and distance here
with regard to those in superior positions. They are elevated in the social
hierarchy but not allowed political influence within the village.
As well as the aristocrats and monks, all visiting officials are placed
in higher positions in the dral, as are social visitors from other villages.
Those that are relatives or members of nearby villages soon fall into the
age-ranking order if they stay for any time. The villagers, thus, mark a
certain affinity with them, as they also did, eventually, with the anthro-
pologist. However, the initial placing of outsiders in superior positions
represents their exclusion from the internal processes of village organi-
sation. When politicians, local officials and workers from non-govern-
mental organizations visit the village to rally political support or institute
development projects they are, likewise, placed alongside the aristocrats
and monks in the seating plan. This symbolic respect is matched by
THE SACRED SOCIAL ORDER 141
deference and acquiescent attitudes on the part of the villagers. How-
ever, when they leave very little effort is normally made to comply with
their directions. Although the villagers may have promised faithfully to
dig the foundations for a new school, which will then be funded by a
development organisation, for example, its representatives are likely to
return the following year to find few, if any, signs of progress. This was
the experience and the object of considerable complaint on the part of
organisations in both Lingshed and Photoksar during, or shortly after,
my fieldwork. It can partly be seen as a function of rotating leadership
in the village and the need for the yulpa to achieve unanimity in major
decisions, which are barriers to decisive leadership and innovation.
However, the physical respect accorded to outsiders also sets them
symbolically outside the cohesive group of villagers and reinforces the
latters passive resistance to external control.
The dral is, thus, used by the villagers to reinforce relations of
equality between households and, to a large extent, between the individ-
uals within them. The same hierarchy supported the authority of the old
political elites and continues to support the social status of monks and
upper classes. It has been adapted to accord similar honour to modern
political and economic leaders, but at the same time it symbolically
distances such leaders and potential authority figures from the bounded
internal structures of village order.
Photoksar, as one of the more remote Ladakhi villages, retains a
greater autonomy than villages closer to Leh, where external influences
are much greater. It is not that the villagers do not engage with external
forces, however. They welcome food supplies, schools and health
services and the maintenance of the roads and paths (such as it is). It is
not just that old forms of autonomous organisation are lingering here,
not yet swept away by the forces of modernity that come through greater
contact with the external world. The Photoksar villagers have always
engaged with this world, changing as it is, but when it comes to internal
organisation their relations are structured in a way that protects the
autonomy of their sacred social space, their own yul. The greatest social
respect is paid to outsiders, monks and representatives of the govern-
ment, but leadership and authority over their internal affairs is limited
to the insiders, to the inclusive group of yulpa.
The Photoksar villagers are, therefore, distancing a number of power-
holders and their associated ideological frameworks from their internal
spaces of social order. They are keeping at bay external frameworks of
order. To put this in Redfields (1960) terms, the little tradition, with its
142 CHAPTER SEVEN
moral and legal domain and associated rituals, is being safeguarded
against the great tradition, or great traditions, with their associated
moral, legal and ritual frameworks. As Millss work demonstrates,
however, aspects of authority may be established by the great tradition
without overwhelming the autonomy of the little. As he shows, the
practitioners of the great tradition of Buddhism, the monks, are them-
selves embedded within the local cosmological domains of the little
tradition. One of the sources of the incarnates authority is their ability
to transcend and re-order that cosmological domain. When it comes to
economic and political relations, the aristocracy and monastic establish-
ments of the great tradition, the Ladakhi kingdom, established superior
positions for their members within the overall Ladakhi social order.
These are recognised in the social order of the little traditions, the dralgo
formed within the villages, which supported their economic and political
power. However, neither they, nor their successors in the modern state,
have firmly established judicial authority over the internal organisation
of these villages. They are distanced from the moral and legal orders of
these communities who are, thus, continuing to retain a measure of the
autonomy, even from the great tradition of the Indian state.
In the next chapter I turn to the wider region to look, in particular, at
the legal practices and ideas that developed within the great tradition
of central Tibet and to assess whether they have had any impact on the
little traditions of either the Ladakhi kingdom or the modern Ladakhi
village.
This initially occurred in the fourteenth century, during a brief period in which they
1
patronised this sect, before the rise of the Phagmodru (Wylie 1978).
CHAPTER EIGHT
ETHNOGRAPHIC TIBET
The Gelukpa sect, which came to dominate the government of central
Tibet under the leadership of the Dalai Lamas, was founded by Tsongka-
pa in the late fourteenth century. In 1641 the Mongol leader Gushri
Khan helped the Gelukpa defeat the Tsangpa kings to become effective
rulers of central Tibet. Their leader, the Great fifth Dalai Lama exer-
cised administrative control by re-organising the system of taxation, in
particular by endowing monasteries with landed estates (Carrasco 1959:
24). The system of succession by reincarnation, which had been devel-
oped by the Karmapa sect and recognised by the Mongols, was ex-
1
panded to apply to a large number of influential monastic positions. The
death of the fifth Dalai Lama was followed by a period during which the
Chinese Manchu regime exercised almost complete control over Tibet,
having defeated the Mongols in 1724. They subsequently established the
seventh Dalai Lama as formal head of government in 1751. With
continuing Manchu support he established a stable, although limited,
bureaucracy based on the exercise of a certain amount of financial and
administrative control and this became what is known as the Ganden
Potrang government. Through this government the Gelukpa effectively
remained in power in central Tibet, under successive incarnations of the
Dalai Lama or his Regent, until the Chinese occupation of the 1950s.
Within this administration, positions of responsibility and authority
were divided between monastic and lay officials. Before the reforms of
the thirteenth Dalai Lama in the early twentieth century, however, the
central government remained small. As Goldstein summarises it:
the government did not maintain a national police force or internal postal
services, and it kept only a very small permanent military force which, in any
case, served as a corve tax obligation. Most of the governments income
was earmarked not for government activities but, rather, for religious
ceremonies. The traditional Tibetan government needed little income
because it did very little. (1989: 85)
144 CHAPTER EIGHT
The begar system in Ladakh operated in a similar way and the two systems were
2
linked in the case of trade between the two regions (Rizvi 1999).
Even after international events, including the British invasion of Tibet
in 1903-04, had prompted the expansion of the bureaucracy and military
by the thirteenth Dalai Lama, the primary focus of government contin-
ued to be the collection of taxes and maintenance of peace (Goldstein
1971a: 175).
The majority of Tibet was divided into estates under the control of
local lords, monasteries or officials sent by Lhasa. The latter adminis-
tered the governments own estates whose revenues were paid directly
to Lhasa. Two officials, one lay and one monastic, were appointed for
a period of years, mainly to collect revenue. They also had to ensure the
functioning of the corve labour system, the obligation to provide both
men and livestock for transport, which was essential to the administra-
tion of this vast and sparsely populated region. Similar functions were
2
carried out by the rulers of the private and monastic estates. As Carrasco
summarises it (1959:25), there was a wide variety in systems of adminis-
tration through time and across the geographical spread in Tibet, with an
underlying pattern of more or less formalised patron-client relationships.
The larger estates, principally Sakya, Trashi Lhunpo and Lhagyari,
enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy, particularly over revenue
collection, which was their main administrative concern. In the outlying
areas, where the lords remained further from governmental control,
many administrative functions were delegated to local hierarchs, who
worked under the loose control of the central government (Carrasco
1959: 133-37).
As Geoffrey Samuel describes it (1993: 62-63), centralised power
remained fragile throughout Tibetan history. Drawing on Tambiahs
(1976) model of a galactic polity, he describes the Dalai Lamas
regime as a mandala-type structure based on an exemplary centre and
regional administrations that replicated the structure of the centre.
These drifted historically between periods of attachment to one or
another centre and periods of autonomy: central rule is as much a matter
of performance (as in the elaborate rituals of the Lhasa administration)
as administration. (1993: 62) The primary focus of the whole enterprise
was the extraction of produce and control of personnel. Michael (1982)
and Dreyfus (1995) argue for a model of bureaucratic control but
Goldstein (1971a) suggests that there was a balance or oscillation
between centralisation and decentralisation of political, economic and
ETHNOGRAPHIC TIBET 145
The use of the term serf to translate mi ser is contentious. Goldstein (1971b, 1986,
3
1988, 1989a) argues, against Michael (1982) and Miller (1987, 1988) for an analogy
between the Tibetan peasantry and the serfs of Medieval Europe, primarily on the basis
of the hereditary ties that bound them to their estates.
administrative control. In any event, it is generally accepted that the
raising of revenue and funding of rituals were the main concerns of
government and that a considerable number of its administrative con-
cerns, including the organisation of the corve system and the mainte-
nance of order, were delegated to local lords, monasteries and adminis-
trators.
Kyirong was one of the estates administered directly by Lhasa. One
of Frenchs informants was appointed as a senior official there and he
told her that his main duties were the collection of taxes, the manage-
ment of border controls and customs (1995: Ch 19). Legal cases brought
to him for resolution mostly involved land - inheritance, monastic
disagreements, land disputes between monasteries and lay people - but
also serious theft and robbery. Officials from the central government in
such places obviously, therefore, carried out considerable judicial
functions. These were only loosely controlled by Lhasa, however.
Carrasco (1959: 93-4), for example, describes an edict circulated by the
central government to district officials every year, which required
impartiality in the administration of justice, in the levying of taxes, the
treatment of the serfs (mi ser), the protection of government lands and
3
the regulation of trade.
Shigatse, location of Trashi Lhunpo monastery and seat of the
Panchen Lama, could be called a semi-autonomous polity, although it
had close ties to Lhasa. Charles Bell made a record of an edict posted in
a district office in Shigatse in the 1920s, which describes the duties of
district officers answerable to the Lhasa government. These primarily
concerned the collection of taxes, the organisation of supplies, the
transport that could be demanded by officials and the maintenance of
order. Crimes, particularly theft, were to be reported by both lay and
monastic estate owners and limits were set on the punishments they
could hand down. There were also restrictions on the interest that could
be charged on loans, provisions for festivals, the reading of chos and the
killing of animals (French 1995: 233-35).
At least in theory, therefore, the Lhasa government exerted control
over crime and punishment in such polities. Nevertheless, it could not be
regarded as having a centralised and bureaucratic legal system by which
it managed the administration of justice, even in central Tibet. Rather,
146 CHAPTER EIGHT
It did not, in fact, spread widely until the time of Tri Songdetsen, in the eighth
4
century, and it had to be re-introduced after the collapse of the empire in 842, under what
is known as the second diffusion in the tenth to eleventh centuries.
The historical details in this section are drawn from Shakabpa (1967: Ch 6),
5
Fairbank (1994: Chs 2 & 5 and 1998: 245) .
it issued guidelines and left considerable discretion in the hands of local
officials.
The legal codes
The founding king of the empire, Songtsen Gampo, is said to have been
responsible for the bringing of Buddhism into the region in the seventh
century. The Old Tibetan Chronicle, dating from the late eighth or early
4
ninth centuries, credits him with the creation of a system of laws and
simultaneously glorifies him for his practice of good religion (Stein
1972: 52-3; Kapstein 2000: 36, 56). Later histories, such as the rgyal
rabs gsal bai me long, compiled in the fourteenth century, and the
mkhas pai dga ston (the Khepa), compiled in the sixteenth, also
describe him as the source of the Sixteen Pure Popular Rules of Con-
duct (mi chos gtsang ma bcu drug) (the mi chos), a code of ethics. The
legal codes used in Lhasa until the mid-twentieth century are described
as being based on the mi chos of Songtsen Gampo, as well as the mi
gewa rchu, propounded at the same time (French 1995: 41-42).
The fragments of legal documents that survive from the time of the
empire contain no references to Buddhism, however, nor traces of the
influence of Buddhist ethics (Kapstein 2000: 56-57). For the most part
they are rather functional, dry, hard-nosed statements of offences and
punishments (Huber 1998: 85). There was, therefore, some system of
centralised laws, of a largely administrative and punitive nature, in the
early Tibetan Empire (Richardson 1989, 1990; Dotson forthcoming) but
an explicit connection between legal provisions and religious principles
did not appear until later.
The death of King Langdarma in 842 led to the collapse of the
Tibetan empire and little is known about the period up to the thirteenth
century, when Mongol forces began to exercise influence in Tibet. The
region had, by then, dissolved into a series of petty states and local
dynasties, often allied to Buddhist sects. Prominent among these were
5
the Sakya, whose ruling family came to exercise political control over
a significant area in the thirteenth century and provided the head of the
ETHNOGRAPHIC TIBET 147
Buddhist sect of that name. The Sakyapa Pagspa lama was largely
responsible for converting the Mongols leader, Khubilai Khan, to
Buddhism and was, in turn, rewarded with political support. Sakya
remained a substantially independent polity into the twentieth century,
although its wider power was overshadowed by that of the Pagmodru
kings, allied to the Drigunpa sect, in the fourteenth century.
The Mongols may have introduced some sort of legal codes into
Tibet, based on the Yan (Ming) imperial codes, but their political
organisation was not highly centralised and they did not establish any
significant administrative structures. The Sakya are reported to have
used the Mongol laws (Tucci 1949: 37) but it was the Pagmodru leaders
who, in the fourteenth century, established the legal codes that were later
to became widespread in Tibet. The Tsang dynasty, based in Shigatse,
which enjoyed power until its defeat by the fifth Dalai Lama in 1641, is
said to have produced its own complex system of laws. These were
designed for a military administration and included provisions for the
duties and promotion of officers and the maintenance of borders (Dreyf-
us 1995:35).
The fifth Dalai Lama adopted the legal codes of the Pagmodru kings
(Schuh 1984b). These are generally referred to as the zhal che churukpa
or chuksumpa (the zhal che), the sixteen or thirteen laws, depending on
the version (Jschke 1881: 473; Das 1998: 1068). The existing copies
are largely similar in their provisions (White 1894; Meisezahl 1973;
Dawa Norbu 1974; Schuh 1984b). They make rules for officials and
official procedures. They provide for the use of the death penalty and
mutilation punishments in cases of patri- or matricide, the murder of a
monk or high status individual, death caused by poisoning or magic,
robbery, offences against the property of the church or state and insur-
rection in times of peace. They also set out the compensation payments
to be applied in a large number of cases, including death, injury, damage
to property, divorce, adultery and the non-return of borrowed animals.
The longer versions add provisions about warfare and the treatment of
the populations of border areas. The vast majority of these provisions are
also found in documents dating from the time of the empire, although
this historical legacy is not made explicit in the later documents and
histories. Rather, they claim that the zhal che are based on the mi chos,
themselves attributed to Songtsen Gampo (Meisezahl 1973: 225; Schuh
1984b: 298). As Schuh (1984b: 299) points out, however, the practical
and often punitive nature of the zhal che is, however, very different from
the statements of general moral principle found in the mi chos. In any
148 CHAPTER EIGHT
As Kapstein puts it (2000: 58), albeit referring to the Empire, the foundation of a
6
universal state, ruling many different people necessitated a framework of universal law,
which Buddhism was able to supply.
event, the mi chos were customs (religion) of men, as opposed to the
religion of gods (lha chos) (Stein 2003: 535). The influence of Bud-
dhism was a retrospective, purely fictitious, ideological construction.
(Schuh 1984b: 300)
As Srensen (1994: 35) suggests, the moral basis claimed for the
codes was part of a project to create a vivid symbol of Tibetan dynastic
history, initially undertaken by the Pagmodru leader Changchub
Gyaltsen. As Dotson (2006) explains, the later rulers were appealing to
the legacy of their predecessors by projecting religious laws (and the mi
chos) onto the religious kings of the empire. Tibetan historiography
initially glorified Songsten Gampo as a great administrator, for his legal
practices and statecraft and his deeds only later came to be interpreted
in Buddhist terms. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, good
customs and a great and heroic kingdom (chos bzang srid mthos) were
replaced by the unity of politics and religion, chsi zungdrel (chos srid
zung *brel) as a legitimating narrative (Stein 2003: 534-39).
This model of the harmony between political power and religious
authority, chsi zungdrel, came to function as the ideological template
for the legal and political systems of Tibet (Dreyfus 1995: 168). Legal
6
documents typically proclaimed that: Tibet is a country in which
political and religious affairs are carried on simultaneously, with its
chief aims the propagation of Buddhism and the seeking of happiness for
all souls on earth. (Carrasco 1959: 80) The process by which existing
legal provisions came to be legitimised in religious terms is evident in
the structure of the sixteenth century Khepa, which has a lengthy section
on law and state (Uray 1972). As Dotson (2006) suggests, the authors
were probably aware of the dissonance between these provisions, which
have little to do with Buddhism, and the legacy of Songsten Gampo as
a great religious king. The story of the Khotanese monks in the preamble
to that section acts as an apologetic for what follows. In this story
Songsten Gampo appears as an incarnation of Avalokitesvara and
explains the evidence of draconian legal punishments as mirages,
manifestations designed to convert his resistant subjects to Buddhism.
A comparable, and more explicit, attempt to legitimise the legal codes
is found in the chronicle written by the fifth Dalai Lama. He explains
that the laws of the Mongols, which provided that the murder of one
ETHNOGRAPHIC TIBET 149
Dreyfuss theory is less convincing when it comes to the administration of justice.
7
He agrees with Samuel that Tibet could be thought of as a loose federation overseen by
a small bureaucracy organized around the charismatic figure of the Dalai Lama, while
the increased bureaucratisation of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries marked a
transition to a more bureaucratic polity, at least for the central part of Tibet dominated
by Lhasa. This evolution, he says, is clearly marked in the Tibetan legal system and
the development of mechanisms of enforcement. (1995: 133) However, as described
here, the administration of justice in Tibet was far from systematic.
person was to be repaid by the death of another, were sinful and required
re-writing to reinstate the old Tibetan practice of compensation (Schuh
1984b: 303). In fact, the principles of both compensation and retribution
are found in the codes, and this statement, like the parable of the
Khotanese monks, must be regarded as part of the programme to provide
religious legitimation for the structures and legal practices of the Tibetan
government.
The codes and legal system, as a whole, Dreyfus says, reflected the
semi-bureaucratic nature of the Tibetan state, which was more sub-
stantive than formal. Rather than insisting on procedures, Tibetan law
emphasized the importance of social harmony, moral and religious
values ... they also stressed the importance of conciliation, and the
relevance of religious doctrines. (1995:136-7) Law, in this sense, was
7
a tool of government. It was a mixture of specific directions aimed at
officials and general principles and values supposed to guide their
activities. It did not amount to a rule of law system, with clear laws and
procedures on which ordinary people could rely, both in their dealings
with one another and with the government.
Legal principles
The legal codes did contain a mixture of administrative directions and
stipulations for severe punishments. Schuh (1984b: 300-02) suggests that
these provisions conform to two fundamental principles. The first is that
of punishment on the basis of retaliation, which is to be found in the list
of crimes said to merit the death penalty or mutilation. The second is
that of reparation by compensation, found in the several sections that
provide for fines in respect of crimes as serious as murder, along with
injury, theft, divorce and adultery. Referring to evidence from eastern
Tibet, where principles of compensation have long been used to settle
nomad feuds (Shih -Y Y Li 1950:132), Schuhs hypothesis is that
150 CHAPTER EIGHT
compensation is the oldest Tibetan legal principle (1984b: 302). He
considers that the criminal provisions, based on the principles of
deterrence and retaliation, were developed later by the rulers of the small
Tibetan kingdoms in order to protect their state and religious establish-
ments.
As evidence from eastern Tibet indicates, however, practices of
compensation invariably formed part of developed systems of revenge
(Ekvall 1964; Pirie 2006b). Mi stong, blood money, is a substitute for
retaliation, as it usually is throughout the world (Stewart and Strathern
2002: 11-13). It is almost inconceivable that the subjects of the Mong-
ols rule or the early Tibetan polities would have exercised one without
adopting the other. Moreover, concepts of retaliation were still found in
the legal practices taking place in twentieth century Lhasa, as I describe
later. Neither retaliation nor compensation, I would suggest, should be
accorded any primacy. Both were part of legal practice in Tibet at
different times and in different places.
A more relevant, but also problematic, distinction is that between the
punitive and physical nature of the justice meted out by Tibetan authori-
ties and practices of conciliation, which were also widespread and
accorded more with religious ideals. There is evidence that justice was
administered in a harsh and punitive manner by Tibetan courts right into
the twentieth century. Luciano Petech (1950: Ch 15), for example,
describes the legal procedures of the eighteenth century as being swift
and that the criminal law was very severe, with capital punishment being
imposed for a large number of crimes. As Dieter Schuh (1984b: 291-93)
points out, there are numerous reports of draconian punishments im-
posed by both local lords and central government to be found in the
accounts of travellers to the region in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. Capital punishment was officially banned in Lhasa in the
twentieth century (Huber 1998: 87). However, Charles Sherring, a
British officer who toured Tibet in the 1900s, records the use of torture
to extract confessions in western Tibet: if the accused did not confess
then the accuser was tortured for bringing a false charge (Sherring 1906:
194).
In contrast to these accounts, in The Golden Yoke, French (1995)
emphasises the moral principles of the mi chos and the Buddhist princi-
ples of gewa rchu as the foundation of the Tibetan legal codes and, thus,
of Tibetan legal practice. She claims that many of the traditional words,
phrases and proverbs that the Tibetans used in their legal proceedings
derived from the ancient law codes. (1995: 99) She frequently cites the
ETHNOGRAPHIC TIBET 151
She also suggests, implausibly, that Tibetan criminal jurisprudence, including
8
considerations of karma, evolved from the administrative rules of the eighth century
(1995: 316).
Neudong code, of the Phagmodru, which apparently contained state-
ments of general moral principle, as well as fifteen substantive laws
(1995: 43) and a collection of law stories and law codes stories,
which illustrated the mi gewa rchu (1995: 83, 92, 95-97).
8
French, thus, presents the mi chos, the zhal che and Buddhist princi-
ples, more generally, as part of an intellectual legal whole. She suggests
that certain basic Tibetan concepts affected the law, including the
Buddhist ideas of reality and illusion, karma, rebirth and non-duality
(1995: 61). She asserts, for example, that Tibetans considered that
disputes were engendered by mental affliction that hinder one from
understanding the perfected aspect of the world (1995: 62), that con-
flict was defined as relating to incorrect visions, to affliction in the
perceptions and abilities of humans (1995: 73) and that conflict was an
inevitable part of samsara...the goal of legal proceedings was to calm the
mind, relieve the anger of the disputant through .... catharsis, expiation,
restitution and appeasement and to rebalance the natural order. (1995:
73) Litigants often analysed their involvement in a lawsuit....in terms
of the religious - in particular karmic - consequences of conflict (1995:
74).
French claims to be describing legal processes from a mundane
perspective: the daily operation of the law in administrative offices and
courts as understood by individual Tibetans - the average as opposed to
the spectacular and influential. (1995:15) Frenchs informants were,
however, primarily members of the central Tibetan elite who had crossed
from central Tibet into exile when the Dalai Lama fled from the Chinese
army in 1959. As Huber comments (1998: 88-89) Buddhism is .... full
of contradictions and syncretisms which the anthropologist finds in the
rituals of a poor village household in Lho kha, or in the values and views
of the A mdo nomadic shepherd. As he puts it, any Tibetan cosmol-
ogy, is saturated with values and categories that are manifestly non-
Buddhist. French does not suggest any social or cultural explanations
for legal practices that are not directly referable to Buddhist doctrine.
She describes, for example, a case of a wandering monk (1995: 65-7)
in which a headman from the Sakya region dealt with a mendicant monk
by absorbing him into his own family and reads underlying notions of
karma, radical particularity and illusion into the particularist response
152 CHAPTER EIGHT
As Anne Frechette (1996) puts it, more theoretically, the lack of social and political
9
context means that legal ideology is conflated with legal processes and legal structures.
In Frenchs (1995: Ch 24) discussion of crime and punishment, for example, she
10
highlights the restorative and karmic aspects of criminal procedures (1995: 319).
of the headman. However, it could just as well be interpreted as involv-
ing a simple and pragmatic solution to an individual problem. By
introducing each of her Reports from the countryside (1995: Pt 3) with
an extract from a law code, French is, therefore, imposing on the nar-
rated events a sophisticated philosophical interpretation based on
complex legal documents which were probably unfamiliar to many
laymen, without evidence that they represented local understandings.
9
Moreover, most Tibetan legal documents are characterised by the total
absence of anything that might remotely be construed as Buddhist,
except for their propagandistic introductions written for purposes of
legitimation and authority (van der Kuijp 1999: 288).
Frenchs analysis of Tibetan legal history, including the uncritical
attribution of the mi chos to Songtsen Gampo, has been justifiably
criticised (Frechette 1996, Huber 1998, van der Kuijp 1999). However,
her account highlights a striking contradiction between the ideas about
justice found in the codes themselves, with their legitimation of the
death penalty and physical punishment, and the religious ideas which
were presented as underlying them, which emphasise the mental causes
of conflict and its karmic consequences. I would suggest that there was
10
a tension between the punitive and conciliatory aspects of Tibetan legal
procedures, and between the promulgation of rules as a means of enforc-
ing governmental control and as a means of enacting religious and moral
principles, which remained significant until the 1950s. There are,
however, other principles to be found within the codes, which also
reflect practices of law found widely within the Tibetan region. These
include a preference for mediation, the use of dice and ordeals to make
decisions and the use of torture to extract confessions.
Legal practices
By the mid twentieth century there were three courts in Lhasa, (French
1995: Chs 21-23): the nangtse shak (snang rtse shag), which had limited
jurisdiction but also acted as a prison, the lhasa nyertsang (lha sa gnyer
tshang), which heard all cases arising within the city boundary, and the
ETHNOGRAPHIC TIBET 153
Although Dawa Norbu uses the word corrupt it is not evident that taking gifts was
11
illegal. Rather it seems to have been expected, on the understanding that it ought to be
done in moderation. That is, such practices were subject to the general moral principles
sherkhang (gsher khang), which heard cases of murder and appeals
brought from the provinces. The second and third of these also carried
out extensive administrative functions, so there does not seem to have
been a clear separation of judicial from other governmental activities.
French (1995: Chs 21 & 22) gives accounts of a number of cases heard
in Lhasa and it is clear that there was some formality in the proceedings
and the presentation of petitions. However, there was also flexibility in
terms of who carried out the investigation into the case and who could
present a petition and each of the cases she records was settled in a
pragmatic way without any explicit reference to legal codes or even to
moral principles.
Goldstein also confirms that there was actually no set of written laws
against which behaviour was compared in legal proceedings (1971a:
175). Evidence from Sakya suggests that there was an ornately bound
copy of the Thirteen Pronouncements ascribed to Songtsen Gampo,
which the Law Officials ceremoniously consulted on complicated or
delicate points of procedure, but to which only the highest officers had
access (Cassinelli and Ekvall 1969: Ch 6). Dawa Norbu, a historian who
lived there into the 1960s, refers to the Thirteen Pronouncements as the
khrims yig zhal lce bcu gsum, which, he says, were highly respected but
only accessible to a few lawgivers and officials. He is able to cite the
code in detail but it is not evident that it was actually referred to during
the course of either of the two cases in which his family was involved.
In a chapter headed The laws delays (1974: Ch 4), he describes
how there was no separate Court or judicial body in Sakya, the Governor
simply appointing two senior officials to investigate each case. The
cases he describes, a theft from his family and a defamation of its social
status, both suffered long delays caused by officials who would deliber-
ately prolong the proceedings in order to extract bribes. There were
some impartial and conscientious law officers, he says, but others had
a big stomach for gifts. Despite these reservations, Dawa Norbu is
relatively positive about the result of the proceedings, saying:
Though a case might take time and money and cause anxiety, the verdict
seldom went against the innocent ... Even corrupt judges knew that ultimately
they had to restore justice, and that they must heed public opinion if they
were to retain their reputation. (1974: 87)
11
154 CHAPTER EIGHT
of fairness and proportionality.
It is also interesting to note the limits of the Sakya governments jurisdiction. The
12
thief in the first case escaped justice by fleeing to the city of Shigatse and even residents
of Sakya who offered their allegiance to Nepal and Kashmiri Muslims were said to be
beyond its jurisdiction.
The defamation case was resolved with a ceremony which took place
outside the gate of the Sakya monastery in which the accuser acknowl-
edged that his accusation had been false and gave chang and a khatags
to Dawa Norbus mother, who had instigated the case.
12
Further evidence of how court cases were handled is found in legal
documents collected by Dieter Schuh (Schuh 1976, 1984a; Schuh and
Phukhang 1979). One of these (1984a: 227), dating from 1861 during the
minority of the twelfth Dalai Lama, records the settlement of two
disputes involving Samtenling monastery and neighbouring villages in
Kyirong, a government estate in southern Tibet. One concerned grazing
rights and the other the ownership of a field claimed by the monastery,
whose harvest, the village maintained, should be used to finance a local
ritual. The parties had originally appeared in Lhasa but had been sent
away to undertake mediation to settle their differences (dpyad mchams).
The parties having failed to do so, the court asked the governor of Dingri
district (in which Kyirong lies) along with two district officials, to
investigate, visit and talk to the parties. When they also failed to achieve
a settlement, the case was heard by the Regent in Lhasa, assisted by
district officials. The Lhasa court was, therefore, reluctant to assume
jurisdiction until all other avenues had been exhausted.
The document records a certain amount of procedural formality with
a summary of the documents put before the court and of an oral exami-
nation and it stipulates penalties for any contravention of the final
agreement. There is also a statement of legal ideology in the opening
section, apparently typical of such documents. It refers to the religious
and civil duties (chos dang srid kyi khrims) of the monks and peasants
respectively. It declares that the parties are living in auspicious times
during which all should be content and relations between monks and lay
donors should be of mutual benefit and solidarity. Even where there is
controversy and hate between the parties, it is said, relations between
them are not to be severed. The document also explicitly refers to the
possibility of examination under torture and the imposition of physical
penalties for the parties disrespect for the laws. Both of these had been
considered but rejected, it was said, on account of the status of the
monasterys founder and the poverty of the villages, lying as they did on
ETHNOGRAPHIC TIBET 155
the borders of Tibet. These statements, thus, assert a religio-political
ideology but also reflect the possibility that physical coercion might,
nonetheless, have been needed both during the collection of evidence
and as a means of punishment.
The outcome is a mixture of judicial decision and compromise. The
evidence in the dispute over the field was held to be clear and led to a
decision in favour of the monastery. However, the court also directed
that the rituals that the village had claimed were being paid for by the
harvest should be continued. It therefore declared that both parties,
monastery and village, should henceforward share the cost, a decision
obviously not consistent with the monasterys ownership of the field. In
the case concerning the grazing the evidence was inconclusive. Rather
than reach its own decision on the basis of the evidence, the court gave
the parties a choice: either they could pay for a ritual in which dice
would be used to decide who was entitled to the grazing or else they
could agree that neither party would use the pasture. In both cases the
parties had to agree to the outcome and sign the document accordingly.
The court, therefore, refused to assert its own authority to decide the
disputed facts. The document records that the parties rejected the dice
but that another minister in Lhasa eventually summoned both parties to
his residence and worked out a compromise.
The approach of the Lhasa authorities to this case is significant in a
number of ways, both procedural and substantive. First is their attitude
that the case should be settled locally, even a reluctance to assume
judicial authority until all other avenues had been exhausted. Secondly,
the document refers to the potential for torture and physical penalties.
However, the court found reasons not to invoke these provisions and
highlighted and invoked the religious principles that were supposed to
govern the behaviour of the parties and guide the ultimate solution. The
third is the emphasis on the need for agreement to be reached between
the parties and the suggested use of a dice ritual in the case of disputed
evidence. All these features recur in the reports of legal cases from
throughout Tibet and point to the existence of a number of important
principles, both explicit and implicit.
Legal principles: adjudication and conciliation
Melvyn Goldstein describes the central Lhasa authorities of the twenti-
eth century as forming a court of last appeals for the whole Tibetan
156 CHAPTER EIGHT
This is one of his reasons for arguing that Sakya was subordinate to the authority
13
and rule of central government, disagreeing with the claims of Cassinelli and Ekvall
(1969) that it had independent status.
polity, including semi-independent states like Sakya. On the basis of
13
his research among Tibetan refugees he states that:
Although lords held primary adjudicatory rights over their serfs, in cases
where the serfs of different lords were involved, or even in cases where the
Serfs of a single lord were not satisfied with their lords decision, the case
could be brought to the central government for adjudication. All Tibetans
living within the Tibetan polity had the right to appeal decisions rendered by
their lords or by lower government officials such as district commissioners.
There have been numerous examples of serfs bringing cases against their
lords and of the central government adjudicating in favor of the serfs. If the
central government reversed an earlier decision of a lord, the lord had no re-
course but to accept it and perhaps reappeal in the future. (1971a: 177)
Goldstein, thus, insists on the adjudicatory role of the Lhasa courts and
authorities, although intermediate lords also exercised juridical control
within their own estates. He does acknowledge, however, that the
adjudicatory role of the centre was a passive one in the sense that it did
not initiate proceedings itself. Goldstein is focussing, here, on the extent
to which the exercise of judicial authority reflected the essence of the
Tibetan political system which involved the delicate balance between
centralized and decentralized (feudallike) political authority (1971a:
171).
Reports from the semi-independent polity of Sakya indicate a similar
approach to legal cases. Goldsteins summary of the judicial power of
the nobility here is that:
Lords held primary adjudicatory rights over their serfs, but did not maintain
any force in their territory whose primary, or even secondary function was to
seek and apprehend violators of criminal and civil norms. In other words,
they maintained no police force. The adjudicatory rights of lords were, thus,
passive. While lords had the right to issue decisions and impose even
corporal punishment and imprisonment, they acted only on cases brought
before them. Civil disputes were initially handled through mediation and it
was only when this failed that cases were brought to the lord for adjudication.
In criminal cases, the initial responsibility for the apprehension of the
criminal suspect fell on the victim, and the case only reached the lord if the
victim was successful in catching the suspect. (1971a: 175)
ETHNOGRAPHIC TIBET 157
Although Goldstein insists on the word adjudication rather than media-
tion, to describe the practices and authority of the Lhasa and Sakya
judges, there is, therefore, even in his own account, evidence that
mediation was preferred over adjudication. The local lords exercised a
passive, rather than an active, authority over the people within their
polities, who were encouraged to settle cases through local mediation.
This point is supported by Cassinelli and Ekvalls account (1969),
derived from interviews with members of the ruling families of Sakya
who had fled into exile and described the situation immediately prior to
the Chinese occupation. The system of government involved, at its
lowest level, headmen who were supposed to be selected by consensus.
One of their duties was to solve disputes. As the authors informants put
it:
In Sa Skya there was always a strong preference for resolving all problems
without reference to formal governmental action; even the very important
Law Officials at the capital welcomed the opportunity to refer to private
mediation cases that they had already begun to investigate. The less fre-
quently a Headman had to refer issues to his superiors the more valuable he
was considered.....Once again the society emphasized harmony and consen-
sus. (1969: 92-3)
The preference for devolving cases to local levels for mediation is also
mentioned by Henderson, who worked with Cassinelli and Ekvalls
informants. He says that although
there was a specialized court and a considerable body of written law and
records in Sakya, conciliation (Bar aDum) was the chief method of settling
both civil and criminal disputes in Sakya. Minor civil disputes were usually
settled locally and privately with ... some neighbor or friend, ... or brought to
the attention of the village headman who would appoint a mediator or in
some cases might try himself to bring pressure to bear on the parties to settle
by agreement. (1964: 1101)
In the urban centre of Sakya instead of headmen there were Group
Officials at the lowest administrative level who, although they had no
authority to make final legal decisions, in fact solved almost half the
cases referred to them (Cassinelli and Ekvall 1969: 122). At a higher
level the same Law Officers would hear disputes that had not been
solved through mediation. Cassinelli and Ekvall describe the practice of
these governmental judicial authorities as follows:
158 CHAPTER EIGHT
The government was willing to ignore situations in which it was assumed that
harmony and regularity could be restored by extragovernmental methods.
When it did intervene, on the request of someone involved in the dispute....its
purpose was not to punish anyone but to obtain a just settlement between the
people directly concerned. Justice was here less a matter of abstract principle
than something acceptable to the disputants; social harmony was to be
restored and future disputes forestalled. (1969: 66)
Cassinelli and Ekvall (1969: 119) thus emphasise the importance of the
principle of social harmony, saying that the emphasis on harmony,
which led to the attempt to resolve minor disturbances through the
process of mediation without resort to the power of government, was one
of the two basic beliefs about the nature of government. The other belief
was the need to concentrate power, leading to the rather pronounced
autocracy of the highest officials. While the first of these statements
undoubtedly reflects the official ideology of the elite, keen to portray
their polity in the best possible light to the authors, the emphasis on the
restoration of social harmony cannot be dismissed. It does, of course, go
against Goldsteins description of law proceedings as a form of adjudica-
tion, rather than mediation, but it supports his theory of conflicting
tendencies between centralisation and decentralisation. On the one hand
there was a concentration of formal judicial authority in the central
government and an assertion of adjudicatory judicial power by them. On
the other, there was a preference for devolving power to local officers,
to whom the task of conflict resolution was, in practice, entrusted and an
emphasis on conciliation and agreement.
While the judicial promotion of agreement is always easier to achieve
at more local levels, where the parties and mediators know each other
and the context of the dispute, in Tibet a preference for conciliation was
also evident at the centre. Goldstein, for example, suggests that although
judges had the power to make decisions they tended to settle cases by
finding a compromise to which both parties would agree (1968: 93).
Frenchs informants also told her that in twentieth century Lhasa a
thick case, where the parties were unyielding or hard in their opinions,
would take a long time to decide: if the parties could not agree, truth
could not be reached (1995: 138). She describes the ceremonial restora-
tion of good relations that took place after a case involving a dispute
between a monastic hostel and an adjoining Lhasa family. This getting
together, was a process of reharmonizing after the dispute, in which
three of the monks went with khatags, tea and bread to the family and
also presented them with money to use for offerings, saying, We have
ETHNOGRAPHIC TIBET 159
both fought for the sake of our houses, not for individuals. We have both
used harsh words and created strife. Now it is over. Let us be patient and
friends in the future. (1995: 278-88) There were also provisions for
such payments in the law codes she cites, which made specific provision
for conciliation (1995: 122).
Henderson suggests that in Sakya homicide was an exception to this
rule. He describes the legal process in such cases as very much an
adversary proceeding between the accuser and accused (1964:1103). At
the same time, however, the judge (khrims dpon) acted as a conciliator
between the families of the two parties because, as he says, a case could
only be settled by agreement between them. Even at the higher levels the
procedure might have been adversarial in form, therefore, but it was
mediatory in practice and aimed at promoting agreement between the
parties.
Similar dynamics have been noted in imperial China, where the rulers
historically favoured substantive over procedural justice, punishments
were often draconian and the formal system was complemented by a
large informal system and practices of mediation (Peerenboom 2002: 38-
68). Informal methods of resolving conflict are clearly necessary when
a legal system does not have a well-developed set of procedures for
decision-making and when it favours the application of general princi-
ples to particular cases, rather than the uniform application of legal
rules. In China such practices were supported by what has been called
a traditional preference for mediation over litigation. There was, more-
over, never any claim to a divine basis for written law; at best there was
an appeal to a transcendent moral order (Peerenboom 2002: 162). In
Tibet, by contrast, an apparently comparable preference for mediation
was promoted, at least on the part of some, by reference to the religious
ideals of harmony and consensus. Thus, the pragmatic requirement for
effective methods of mediation could be used to support the govern-
ments ideology of religious and political harmony.
Legal principles: the search for truth
Mediation and conciliation were, therefore, described as the preferred
methods for resolving conflict. As French puts it, if the parties did not
agree, truth could not be reached (1995: 138). At times, however, torture
of the parties by flogging was resorted to in order to obtain an agree-
ment. The judge, that is, was not able simply to pronounce a verdict,
160 CHAPTER EIGHT
even though the state would doubtless have had the power to enforce it.
There were also cases when agreement could not be reached even after
flogging, in which case, as a last resort, the judges could resort to dice
or forms of ordeal. Cassinelli and Ekvall (1969) give a detailed account
of a homicide case in which neither accuser nor accused would relent,
even after being flogged. The judge, therefore, resorted to the use of
dice. A yak hide was spread bloody side up on the floor and the two men
knelt to roll dice on it. Appealing to the supernatural, calling for
vindication and vilifying the opponent, the two men each threw two
dice. (1969: 176) After three rounds the accused won and so was
declared innocent. As well as the dice ritual offered to the parties to the
Kyirong dispute, there are numerous other references to the use of such
methods in legal cases (French 1995: 134-35; Francke 1998: 116-17).
Cassinelli and Ekvalls informants, for example, referred to the possibil-
ity of drawing pebbles from a jar of opaque oil in order to achieve a
decision (1969: 75-76) and Della Penna refers to the use of boiling oil
(Markham 1876: 324). Provisions are also found in the legal codes
themselves. At least some versions provide for the resolution of insolu-
ble cases by oaths, the roll of dice or picking out pebbles from a bottle
of water or oil (White 1894: 5; Dawa Norbu 1974:75; French 1995: Ch
11).
At times it seems that the use of such methods was associated with
spirits and supernatural forces which could work through dice, as when
the parties to the Sakya murder case made direct appeals to the supernat-
ural to punish the guilty party. At others, however, that link does not
appear to have been made. The essential fact is that the decision was
taken out of the hands of any human agent. Justice was not found in the
decision of a judge but in the achievement of conciliation or by refer-
ence to some extra-human authority.
The problem of how to determine the truth raises issues of both
method and authority that are universal to judicial processes worldwide.
In the legal systems of the west that problem has been resolved by the
development of rules of evidence and standards of proof. These are to
be applied, in criminal cases, by the jury, a quasi-transcendent body
representing the people. In earlier centuries a system of judicial torture
to extract confessions was developed in medieval Europe, where it was
promoted by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 to replace trial by
ordeal, duels and sacred oaths. As Asad (1983) analyses it, ordeals
produced truth, often by means of an appeal to the supernatural. Justice
was found in the outcome of the physical test. The use of torture to
ETHNOGRAPHIC TIBET 161
extract a confession, on the other hand, was a step towards establishing
truth through the spoken word. The physical pain produced the words on
the basis of which the facts could then be established and justice pro-
nounced. Some writers have regarded the development of judicial
torture, in this way, as a step towards the promotion of a rationally-based
form of justice, found in the establishment of truth, rather than direct
appeals to the supernatural (Southern 1959: 101-02; Peters 1973: viii).
Asad also, however, stresses the links between the promotion of
torture by the Lateran Council and the development of bodily practices
of asceticism, penance and physical hardship within Christian practice
and doctrine at around the same time. In Tibet, asceticism has a certain
place within Buddhist practice, but it is not possible to draw such clear
links between religious and judicial practices of bodily discipline. It is
evident from the remarks of the judge in the Kyirong dispute, for
example, that torture, along with physical punishment, remained a
problematic practice for the Tibetans. In the case of intractable disagree-
ment, flogging was presumed to be the solution and physical punishment
was the remedy for many crimes. These were particularly employed in
Lhasa, where the government resorted to both in order to enforce its
authority, especially at times of political conflict and power struggles.
However, this continued to trouble the authorities involved.
Following the death of the thirteenth Dalai Lama in 1933, for exam-
ple, there were political struggles in Lhasa, during which two contenders
for power were deposed and punished (Goldstein 1989b: Chs 5 and 6).
The first was Kumbela, who had been the personal attendant to the Dalai
Lama. He was accused of having played a part in the death of the Dalai
Lama and was tried before the National Assembly, an advisory body
consisting of the highest government officials in Lhasa. He was found
to have been partly responsible for the death by failing to summon
medical assistance but also by deliberately having engaged in black
magic. He was exiled and all his property was confiscated (1989b: 165-
77). A later contender for power was Lungshar, a talented government
official and military commander who had, himself, played a central role
in the fall of Kumbela. His subsequent attempts to secure power were
contested by Trimn, a powerful member of the Kashag, the highest
body under the Regent and Lnchen. Lungshar was arrested and tried by
a committee appointed by the Kashag, who found him guilty of a plot to
kill Trimn and assume power. He was sentenced to blinding and
imprisonment and had all his property confiscated. He sons were also
barred from government office (1989b: 199-212).
162 CHAPTER EIGHT
The removal of eyeballs was, however, so rare that they had no experience of this
14
procedure when they carried it out on Lungshar and the execution went badly wrong
(Goldstein 1989b: 209-09).
She describes how the headmen of Shelkar district called a yearly meeting to draw
15
up the rules to specify appropriate conduct in the fields during the growing season.
Transgressions and also, apparently, other cases of dispute, were heard by the whole
committee. In two cases the parties reached agreement for the payment of fines and
exchange of khatags.
It is, therefore, evident that the Lhasa government had the power to
exercise severe punitive authority and that there were institutions which
supported this, namely the National Assembly and the Kashags investi-
gating committee. There was also an untouchable caste who carried out
mutilation punishments. On the other hand, there was considerable
14
ambivalence about the exercise of such power. The Regent, a reincarnate
lama, clearly endorsed the punishment but refused to sign Lungshars
mutilation order on the basis that, as a monk, it would have been inap-
propriate for him to do so. He was concerned that the exercise of puni-
tive judicial powers was contrary to the religious principles of his
religion (1989b: 208). Even more significantly, however, the members
of the Kashags investigating committee were ambivalent about their
own authority to act as the final arbiters of justice. Despite the fact that
capital punishment had officially been banned, they considered that
execution would be appropriate in Lungshars case. However, they were
afraid that if they ordered execution his vengeful spirit might hinder the
search for the new Dalai Lama, or even harm his reincarnation (1989b:
207). It was not just that execution might have karmic consequences for
them, but that the vengeful nature of Lungshars spirit might have an
effect on more immediate events. While these government authorities
were, therefore, prepared to mete out justice as a direct exercise of
power, rather than by promoting conciliation, they were concerned about
supernatural interference in the judicial process.
There were, therefore, four distinct ways in which cases could be
resolved in Tibet. The first was by accord, that is, the resolution of a
case by conciliation. This was found widely at lower levels, in reports
from Sakya and central Tibet (French 1995: Ch 16). There were also
15
related provisions in the legal codes and it was promoted at higher
levels, as in the Kyirong case, where there was an emphasis on the
ceremonial restoration of good relations. The second was the employ-
ment of ordeals and dice. The use of dice is reported widely, while
references to ordeals are found more often in statements about practice,
ETHNOGRAPHIC TIBET 163
such as those of the codes themselves. In such cases the legal result, or
truth, was determined by the method itself, rather than by agreement
between the parties. These were, however, methods which were said to
be used only as a last resort, after attempts at mediation had failed, as
directed in the Sikkhim code, for example (White 1894: 51). The third
was the use of torture to extract a confession. This followed a different
principle, that is, the establishment of facts through verbal concession.
It was used as a prelude to the making of a judgment, possibly a punish-
ment order, on the part of the judge. However, it sometimes failed, when
it had to be succeeded by the use of dice, as in the Sakya homicide case.
The fourth was adjudication by a judge, who decided matters of both
fact and punishment, as they did in the cases of Kumbela and Lungshar.
Lungshar had previously suggested the use of flogging to establish the
truth.
No one method obviously prevailed. The use of ordeals, oaths and
dice seems to have been rarer in the peripheral areas, where legal
practice was less systematic and reports of conciliation are widespread.
However, a preference for conciliation was also expressed at the highest
levels in Lhasa, while unease was evident about the use of both inquisi-
torial torture and punishment. Asad (1983: 299), emphasising the
importance of socio-economic background in explaining judicial prac-
tice, points out that the establishment of truth by inquisition allowed a
more persistent, more pervasive exercise of centralised control by a
dominating, rationalising power, than did appeals to the supernatural
through the use of ordeals. In Tibet, likewise, it is in Lhasa, where the
government had the most securely-established centralised power, that we
find the rare cases of adjudicatory authority, notably in the cases of
Kumbela and Lungshar. Similarly, the use of torture to extract confes-
sions has most often been noted on the part of government officials and
lords. However, Tibet never developed a systematic set of legal practices
that allowed judges secure methods of establishing the truth, comparable
either to the procedures established by the Lateran Council or to the
rules of evidence and jury systems developed in the west.
Dice and chance
The use of dice to decide problematic cases reflects the use of similar
methods of chance to select leaders and make decisions throughout the
Tibetan region. Such methods date back to the time of the Empire, when
164 CHAPTER EIGHT
In her study of villages in Dingri, central Tibet, Dargyay describes a headman who
16
was elected from among the tre-ba every year. His duties were not extensive, however,
and he could only make decisions in consultation with the rest of the tax-payers and she
talks of selection by an oracle in difficult cases.
Their political system, as Sagant describes, was similar to that found in Photoksar,
17
in that it incorporated ideas of rotation, of equality between clans and ages, and the
headmen did not wield effective power.
the use of dice to make administrative decisions was formalised and
enshrined in statutes, whose correct use was the subject of instructions
granted by the central authorities to those in the provinces (Dotson,
forthcoming). The use of lots has already been noted in the Kyirong
dispute and rotation was commonly used to select leaders and make
political decisions throughout the Tibetan region (Goldstein 1973; Jest
1975; Dargyay 1982). Similar processes have been described in Amdo
16
and Nepal (Walsh 1906; Sagant 1990). Among the Sharwa of Amdo, for
example, Sagant found that the leaders of their expeditions were nomi-
nated according to prowess, seen as a gift from the gods, but that the
final choice was made by lot. The Manangi in Nepal also chose their
headmen by lot. Even within the central Lhasa regime, as Ramble
17
(1993) notes, high ranking individuals were chosen by lot or, as in the
case of the Junior Tutor of the Dalai Lama, by putting candidates names
into dough balls. As Goldstein (1973: 447) points out, even the selection
of the Dalai Lama was, at times, partly effected by lot.
Ramble (forthcoming: chapter 11) discusses the elaborate, but
ultimately random, game by which the headmen of Te, a village in
Mustang, were chosen. This complex ceremony, he suggests, contrib-
utes to the creation of a reified entity that transcends the community as
an assemblage of individuals and households. The selection is, then,
the result of human action but not of human design. The method,
nevertheless, has qualities normally attributed to divinity, namely,
exteriority, transcendence, unpredictability and inaccessibility. As he
points out, the supernatural is an inconsistent element within such
practices (Ramble, forthcoming: chapter 11; Pirie 2005). A more indeter-
minate form of transcendent authority was, rather, appealed to, in the
form of dice, lots and games of chance. However, as Goldstein (1973:
447) notes, the use of lots in the selection of the Dalai Lama was not
regarded as chance by the Tibetans themselves, who were confident
that even when the Manchus were interfering in the process the right
candidate was chosen.

ETHNOGRAPHIC TIBET 165
Thus, the model court house in the United States replicates a Greek temple, with
18
architecture designed to produce an atmosphere of awe, reverence and majesty,
appropriate to a house of worship (Just, forthcoming). Civil order can also appeal to a
secular principle, for example, the justice symbolised by the blind Goddess of Justice
who tops the Central Criminal Court in London with her scales.
Judicial principles and political authority
The Ganden Potrang government in Lhasa, therefore, evolved a form of
political power based on a religio-moral ideology and economic control
and backed by a certain amount of military force. As Just (forthcoming)
suggests, there is a deep-seated desire on the part of the public, wherever
it may be, to see the legal, civil order correspond to a cosmic order. The
ruler can, himself, make claims to divine authority (Hocart 1927). The
18
supernatural authority and religious principles to which the Tibetans
could appeal, however, were either more concerned with the fate of the
soul in the after-life, in the case of the bodhisattvas and the laws of
karma, or dangerously vengeful, in the case of the local spirits and their
practices of revenge. The Lhasa authorities, instead, appealed to the
religious status of the Dalai Lamas and their predecessors and relied
upon the rather vague principle of chsi zungdrel, the harmony between
politics and religion. By claiming that the law codes were based upon
the mi chos of Songtsen Gampo they promoted the moral religious
foundations of judicial practice and their connection with the founding
father of Tibetan civilisation.
Frenchs informants, when explaining legal practices and the signifi-
cance of the law codes, clearly articulated the judicial preference for
mediation and conciliation in terms of Buddhist principles of karma and
non-duality. Such principles could hardly, however, form a basis for the
legal activities of a centralised government, concerned with the practical
business of maintaining order, which often required the use of force, nor
a basis for the principles of punishment found in the codes themselves.
Ideas about mental afflictions, samsara and non-duality were not of great
use in the practical maintenance of order. Despite the twentieth century
development of a more rational form of government (in a Weberian
sense), the Ganden Potrang did not develop a coherent body of laws, nor
a systematic set of legal procedures. There were never clear and certain
rules that could be relied upon by ordinary citizens, as well as members
of the government, let alone laws that they could use to control the
exercise of administrative power. Government officers were allowed
considerable autonomy in the making of decisions, including the resolu-
166 CHAPTER EIGHT
tion of conflict. Their activities were primarily controlled through the
guidelines issued from Lhasa, while they were also supposed to abide by
moral principles, as reflected in the instructions to the Kyirong and
Shigatse officials.
In this way the courts were also able to rid themselves of judicial
burdens, sending cases back to lower levels where, as the evidence from
Sakya indicates, there were effective methods of mediation. The central
governments could then claim moral authority over the subordinate units
without having to engage in the time-consuming business of mediation.
They could claim moral credit, that is, for the judicial practices carried
out by others. Moreover, they could assert, as the informants of
Cassinelli and Ekvall did, and with some justification, that they were
supporting the principles of harmony and conciliation.
The centre, thus, asserted moral supremacy over the provinces, while
allowing them to retain a certain degree of political and judicial auton-
omy. To a large extent this resolved the problem of the ideological clash
between the monastic status of many officials and the punitive authority
needed to support a centralised government. However, it did not resolve
it completely. In particular, the use of torture and physical punishment,
although widespread, caused unease in many quarters. In this, the
Tibetans contrasted with the members of the Lateran Council for whom
bodily pain was, according to Asad, already integral to religious prac-
tice. It was, maybe, the reluctance on the part of the Tibetan elite to
order physical punishment that prevented the development of more
systematic judicial procedures, which would have allowed the truth to
be more readily established as a prelude to punishment.
Tibetan ideas about the nature of justice also retained a darker aspect
alongside its moral and religious ideologies. There were vengeful and
capricious supernatural forces that could be stirred up by the enactment
of judicial power. The legal system in Tibet, therefore, remained unde-
veloped and unsystematic, with a great deal of discretion devolved to
individual officials, who received loose guidance from Lhasa about the
need to act fairly and impartially in their administration of justice. The
practice of mediation was widespread and promoted by some as a means
of achieving the religious ideals of harmony and consensus. At the same
time, however, dice and other methods of chance were widely used,
albeit not in a very systematic way.
ETHNOGRAPHIC TIBET 167
Ladakh: judicial practices, autonomy and power
What can, then, be said or inferred about the great legal tradition of
Tibet and its relation to Ladakhi practices, or about the existence of
wider cultural patterns within judicial practices? Firstly, it is apparent
that the appeal to Buddhist principles in judicial proceedings was not
systematic, nor integrated in any rational way into Tibetan procedures
for conflict resolution. There is, in any event, no evidence that such
principles flowed down from the centre and made their way out to the
periphery in the form of texts or the instructions of monks and lamas or
otherwise. They certainly did not form part of a single, coherent, let
alone Buddhist, cultural system, as both Samuel (1993) and French
(1995) are inclined to suggest.
Secondly, there was a comparable devolution of power to local
hierarchs in both Ladakh and Tibet. The Ganden Potrang government in
central Tibet was a much more centralised administration than that of the
Ladakhi kings, with a more elaborate bureaucracy, legal codes and
political ideology. Nevertheless, it remained relatively uncentralised and
unbureaucratic, as did the polities that emerged throughout Tibet.
Comparable ecological factors, of course, made communications tortu-
ous and centralisation impracticable. It was, therefore, a matter of
necessity that responsibility for order was devolved to local lords and
village communities or allowed to remain with them. It should not,
therefore, be surprising that the Ladakhi phenomena I have described
appear to be rooted in local social patterns, in practices of autonomy and
regional political events, rather than in pan-Tibetan judicial principles,
with religious or other origins.
Thirdly, and despite these reservations, it is apparent that dice, lots
and methods of chance were employed widely in legal proceedings
throughout the plateau. The use of lots is only mentioned once in the
(very sparse) reports I have been able to track down of legal cases
decided at higher levels in Ladakh. Nevertheless, dice are used fre-
quently among the Chang Tang nomads to determine positions of
responsibility (Ahmed 1986: Ch 8) and the use of rotation to select
leaders is still widespread in Ladakhi villages, as it is in Photoksar.
When it comes to judicial decisions, the yulpa in Photoksar, with their
ideology of unity and agreement, are able relatively easily to make
decisions and to promote agreement between the parties to a dispute,
often using a certain amount of coercion. They also do not wrestle with
the fear of the supernatural consequences of their judicial decisions.
168 CHAPTER EIGHT
To talk about the deconcentration of authority, of course, presupposes a certain
19
amount of concentration or centralisation. The operation of the principle of reincarnation
can also be mentioned here. Carrasco remarks that, although reincarnations are often
found among the nobility, a given post is never monopolized by any single family, and
reincarnation in a commoner always kept the noble families from gaining too much
power. (1959: 23-24) However, the system could also be turned to the advantage of the
upper classes. The succession of Regents who held power until the majority of the
thirteenth Dalai Lama in 1895 became fantastically wealthy (Goldstein 1973: 449), and
of the highest lay officials in government, the Shapes, 86% were from aristocratic
families (Goldstein 1989b: 17).
However, they appeal to lots or simply to a list of names to make
administrative decisions. Such methods involve appealing to a transcen-
dent, but generally non-supernatural, form of authority. Evidence from
Mustang and Nepal suggests that similar practices here supported the
authority of local communities over their own political affairs.
Finally, the patterns of deference and distance, hierarchy and equal-
ity, that I observed in Photoksar also have some resonance with relations
of power and autonomy that have been noted in the wider Tibetan
region. Some authors have regarded such phenomena in terms of cultural
patterns. Stein (1972: 94), for example, suggests the existence of two
general principles which, as he says, are interdependent and antagonis-
tic: egalitarian joint ownership and hierarchy. These principles, he says,
are found both in family relations and in structures of authority. The
hereditary authority of one person and a keen sense of hierarchy tends
to be matched by cohesion and the strength of the group. (1972: 125)
When one threatens to dominate, the other appears to counterbalance it.
Samuel also suggests that there was a tendency within Tibetan
institutions to avoid giving power to one person, for example through the
appointment of two men, one lay and one monastic, to many official
positions (1993:152). He refers to Ter Ellingsons (1989) work on
monastic constitutions, which he describes as carefully defining and
controlling the power and authority of monastic office holders and
which, he says, can be seen as part of a tendency to specify and distrib-
ute rights and responsibilities. This resulted in what Ellingson describes
as the deconcentration and distribution of authority (1989: 217-8) and
which, Samuel suggests, is true of Tibetan societies more generally
(1993:153-4).
19
All three authors, therefore, point out the existence of conflicting
tendencies between hierarchy, centralisation and the concentration of
power, on the one hand, and equality, decentralisation and the distribu-
tion of power on the other. Tibetan society was not deeply stratified, in
ETHNOGRAPHIC TIBET 169
a way comparable to caste-based Indian society. Nor is there evidence
of egalitarian individualism. Economic, religious and political power
certainly came to be concentrated in the hands of a few, both monastic
and aristocratic elites, but countervailing forces took the form of the
devolution of power and its distribution through rotation and methods of
chance. Ideologically there were principles that counteracted the systems
of reincarnation and aristocratic superiority, which could legitimate the
concentration of power in the hands of a few.
What has resulted is a certain attitude to leadership and centralised
judicial control, which is still found in twenty-first century Ladakh. The
statement of the Alchi lonpo that his ancestors gave the law to villages
like Photoksar mirrors the assertion of adjudicatory judicial authority
over the regions by Lhasa officials described by Goldstein (1971a). In
both cases this turns out to have been more of a theoretical than a
practical reality, however. In central Tibet the peasants could take their
complaints against the lords to Lhasa and there is evidence that some did
so (1971a: 177). In Ladakh the Photoksar villagers could take their
complaints to Alchi and can, now, have recourse to the police or the
courts in Leh. However, they rarely, if ever, do so and containing and
resolving disputes internally is one of their ways of maintaining a
measure of local autonomy against the great traditions of the centre.
Such practices continue to be a significant force within the urban
dynamics in Ladakh. It is to these to which I turn in the next chapter.
CHAPTER NINE
URBAN PROCESSES AND POLITICAL CHANGE
The social and moral order maintained in the village of Photoksar, to
which the practices of conflict resolution I have described here are
oriented, is defined by an implicit sense of a sacred social community.
This community, I have suggested, is itself maintained by patterns of
equality, which serve to counteract tendencies towards hierarchy. The
containment and resolution of conflict within the village, as well as
safeguarding and preserving that sacred social space, can be seen as part
of a larger pattern of deference and distance towards the religious and
political centres in the region. This explains the measure of autonomy
maintained by the villagers against the powerful influence of kings,
religious forces and development projects. It also, I would suggest, helps
to make sense of the dynamics of order found in the urban centre, Leh.
The attitudes to conflict and dispute resolution that I have described
in Photoksar are found widely throughout Ladakh. The importance of
settling disputes locally was expressed to me repeatedly by members of
different villages, Ladakhi NGO officers and urban dwellers. Informants
were always able to give me examples of disputes that had been settled
through the mediation of family and neighbours or at the instigation of
the goba or village meeting. Such informal procedures even extend into
the socially fluid atmosphere of modern Leh, where concepts of legal
rights are widely accepted but the authority of the Indian legal system
impinges only very lightly on legal practices.
The educated classes are familiar with the political and legal arena of
the Indian state and those who find work with NGOs quickly become
adept at using the language of international development, with its
emphasis on child rights, womens rights, the right to education and
so on. Nevertheless, when it comes to their own disputes, such language
quickly becomes muted. One of the major sources of conflict in the
urban centres of Ladakh, particularly Leh, is now land. With the new
economy have come a great many employment and economic opportuni-
ties. Government jobs, in particular, are secure, well paid and sought
after, but there are also some who take their chances in business, and
others, particularly from the Chang Tang, who simply come to work as
labourers, hoping to escape the hardships of life in the remoter areas
(Goodall 2004). Leh has, in consequence, become a target for migration.
URBAN PROCESSES AND POLITICAL CHANGE 171
There has been considerable development on what was previously waste
land because property is in short supply and the older, irrigated areas of
Leh, where houses have the potential for gardens and can be turned into
guest-houses have become particularly valuable. As a result, children of
Leh families are keen to share in their households property and have
become conscious of their inheritance rights. Even daughters insist on
their shares, especially if they marry a man from outside the capital. In
general, property is the most common cause of serious conflict here,
accounting for the greatest number of civil court cases. As one Leh
resident put it, formerly people did not care about boundaries but now
the slightest dispute is liable to end up in court. I came across more than
one case in which a dispute between two children had resulted in long-
standing, unresolved animosity between their respective, immediate
families.
This, in turn, has resulted in the gradual acceptance of the ideology
of individual property, as enshrined in the State laws, in social obliga-
tions, as it still is in Photoksar and many other villages. However, it is
still rare to hear people talking in terms of their rights to land. Tinles
Angmo, a Ladakhi lawyer based in Leh, told me that members of the
older generation often insist that the elder son should still receive a
larger share. The unease with which many Ladakhis regard the changes
in the nature of their property relations is illustrated by the case of
Rinchen, a man from Nubra now working as a teacher in Leh. His father
was a khardar and a member of an aristocratic family in Sabu, a village
close to Leh. However, his father had abandoned his first wife and
daughter to marry a Nubra girl as a makpa. The Nubra girls family were
lonpos so finding a suitable husband for her had been difficult, Rinchen
explained. They had had five children, including my informant. Since he
was working in Leh, Rinchen wanted to establish a house there and had
asked his half-sister for a share of the Sabu property. She had refused so
he had brought a case in court which had, ultimately, been successful.
However, he narrated his story to me with some embarrassment and was
anxious to stress the fact that he had not been greedy for land. He
genuinely needed it for his family to live on, he emphasised, and it
would have been wrong if he had sold it. Having won the case he had
returned half his entitlement to his sister and they had re-established
good relations. In Nubra, by contrast, his family khangbas land had not
been divided yet. His mother was still alive and she would not like it;
she tells her sons to stay together and would regard a division of the land
as a sign that they were going to fight, he explained.
172 CHAPTER NINE
Rinchens concern to maintain good family relations and reluctance
to be seen to have been asserting his rights, exemplifies the prevailing
attitudes towards property and property disputes. The question that
arises is whether it is possible to see any connection between these
attitudes and the concern with the restoration of order and re-establish-
ment of good relations that I have described in Photoksar. It would seem,
prima facie, unlikely that the latter, bound up, as it is, with notions of
community, is replicated in Leh. Rinchens attitude primarily concerned
the status of his family. Nevertheless, I would suggest that something
similar is at work, even in the far more fluid social structures of Leh,
where people can be seen actively to be creating small spheres of order.
Leh
After Indian independence, as Leh grew in size, the administration
divided it into separate wards. These largely corresponded to the existing
social units, then known chutsoks or mahalla, an Urdu word introduced
by the Dogras. More recently new housing areas have been developed.
The biggest of these, the Housing Colony, was established on non-
agricultural land. It is treated as a single unit by the administration, but
within the Colony the people have organised themselves into smaller
village groups. These select their own goba and also, generally, a
committee, tsokspa. The duties of these representatives include liaising
with authorities over the provision of services and building projects and
organising festivals and ceremonies for the local lha. These are spirits
of the locality which have been established as protectors of these new
communities. One resident explained that if a dispute occurs within the
village then the goba has to sort it out with the help of the tsokspa or
some of the older men. Disputes have to be settled inside, nangkuli, she
insisted, and not allowed to go outside the village. Nangkuli (of uncer-
tain etymology and orthography) is the Leh equivalent of the term
nangosla, used by the Photoksar villagers. The same sense of commu-
nity, as a place with boundaries within which disputes must be con-
tained, as well as with its own lha, has, therefore, been established here.
Each of the villages in the older areas of Leh, where there are fields
and irrigation channels, now has a number of representatives. Typically
these include one chupon, an official in charge of water, one nyerpa, in
charge of festivals and religious activities, and one membar, who is
responsible for calling meetings. There is no man known as goba, but
URBAN PROCESSES AND POLITICAL CHANGE 173
the membar reports to the chief goba for the whole of Leh. A man who
had recently been chief goba told me that the post used to be hereditary,
but that in the early 1960s the next in turn declined to take up the
position and it had remained vacant for over twenty years. Then, in
around the early 1980s, a delegation of men, including the Leh kalon, the
head of the highest aristocratic family, had persuaded him to take up the
office, initially for one year, and then to continue in the post. Ultimately
he had held the job for 14 years. The government departments and
Deputy Commissioner (DC) consult the goba on matters such as the
building of roads, bridges and other infrastructure developments and the
allocation of new areas of development land. His duties also include
liaising with the chief onpo over the days on which agricultural activities
should take place and settling disputes, principally those which concern
land. Another member of Leh town told me that the goba was selected
on the basis that he knew the fields, knew the irrigation system, knew
how everything worked and could sort out any problems. Tsewang
Dorje, a former Assistant Commissioner, the second highest government
officer in Ladakh, spoke very highly of this goba: He was a very good
man. He knows every village, every field, every street and malla (irriga-
tion channel) in Leh. Although he had no official status, the kalon who
died around the turn of the century was also informally regarded as a
representative of the town by the administration and sometimes known
by them as chief citizen. He was often consulted by government
officials, including the DC. Although, therefore, the administration of
Ladakh is officially under the control of a government bureaucracy,
headed by the DC, informal Ladakhi posts, including that of the kalon,
are still recognised and have considerable significance for the day-to-day
maintenance of order.
Serious arguments and fights, the former goba told me, are his
biggest responsibility. It is often difficult to resolve them, he said,
because he does not have much power: he can only impose fines of Rs
400 or Rs 500 and some people are selfish and will not accept his
advice. The problem, therefore, is that he has to find a solution with
which everyone agrees. However, if cases go to court they are usually
sent back to him to resolve. In the end, he thought, he was generally
successful in his job because he knew and understood the people.
As well as the goba there are twelve chupon in Leh, one from each
village, selected on the basis of rotation between households. They used
to be paid in kind by the villagers, as did the goba, but now they receive
a small government allowance. They choose a chief chupon among
174 CHAPTER NINE
Tiwari and Gupta (forthcoming) describe the system and its recent evolution.
1
themselves every year when they organise the ceremony that marks the
beginning of the agricultural year. This system, one of the chupon told
me, was a matter of mirabs tradition, and the complex system of water
distribution represents the chui trims, water customs, that had been laid
down by the kings. Every year the chupon are called upon to settle
1
minor disputes over the water distribution but, he said, there is rarely a
question of who is in the wrong because everyone knows the trims. His
job is to make the wrong-doer apologise, pay a fine, and, if there has
been an argument, sign an agreement not to quarrel in the future. This is
generally confirmed with an exchange of khatags. He can threaten to
beat an offender or ask the village membar or some elders, rgadpo, to
assist him and if there is a serious problem he will call in the Leh goba
who, in turn, can call other membars to assist him. Cases are almost
always settled, he told me, because the wrong-doers are ashamed, trelba,
and they do not allow disputes to go to the court because this would be
even more shameful. Disputes have to be settled internally, nang kuli, he
insisted.
The Leh goba made similar remarks when talking about the new
panchayat system that was being introduced at the time, which I discuss
further below. When I asked him whether the new panchayats would, if
they replaced the old goba system, undertake dispute resolution he
replied that they would have to do so. Disputes must not be allowed to
extend beyond the village boundaries, he emphasised. If a dispute goes
to court it can take four or five years to decide and usually ends up back
in the village for the goba to sort out anyway.
In practice, therefore, the police, courts and lawyers are marginal to
the majority of the processes by which conflict is resolved in Leh. They
get involved in high profile fights, property and marital disputes, but the
day to day business of maintaining order is organised by these semi-
official Ladakhi post-holders.
Conflict and community
The statement that disputes should be solved within the village commu-
nity was emphasised by all these informants. It was also evident from the
chupons descriptions that, in practice, the community, including the
goba, membar and elders, puts pressure on any wrong-doer to come into
URBAN PROCESSES AND POLITICAL CHANGE 175
line. The idea that wrong-doing and quarrelling are shameful, trelba, is
also a potent force. Within the communities into which Leh is divided,
even the relatively new structures of the Housing Colony, therefore, a
dispute is conceptualised as a problem for the community which must,
at all costs, be contained.
At the same time, the existence of long-running disputes can often be
traced to structural divisions within or between communities. Although
the villages in the remoter regions, such as the Lingshed area of Sham,
tend to be distinctly bounded, separated by acres of waste land, good
relations, cemented by kinship ties, are generally maintained between
them. This means that disputes can be resolved in a similar manner to
those arising within the village. The Photoksar villagers, for example,
told me of one dispute that had arisen between a Photoksar household
and some villagers from the neighbouring Nyeraks, a village with which
Photoksar has many kin ties. A yak had been lost from herds grazing
together and it was not apparent to whom it belonged. The Photoksar
goba was called in to find a solution and, unable to determine which of
two animals was missing, decided that the Photoksar household should
keep the remaining animal but pay half of its value to the Nyeraks house.
His decision was accepted by both parties. In this situation, where there
were long-standing relations of cooperation over pasture-land as well as
extensive kinship ties between the two villages, it was possible to
mediate between the two distinct communities, despite the lack of an
overarching judicial authority.
On the other hand, there is a history of animosity between many
villages in other areas and even dissent between village sections. The
document published by Schuh and Phukhang (1979: Doc LIII), men-
tioned in chapter two, indicates that there had been a conflict between
the different parts of Shara, a village close to the Indus valley in upper
Ladakh, in the early nineteenth century. In the late twentieth century, I
found that an extended dispute was also dragging on between the three
sections of this village. These had come to function, in many respects,
as separate communities. The primary bone of contention was the
benefits of a development project undertaken by the Ladakh Ecological
Development Group (LEDEG), an NGO set up by Helena Norberg-
Hodge, a prominent western environmentalist, to promote ecological
development in Ladakh. One of my informants from the village claimed
that this was not a historic problem, rather attributable to three or four
of the current leaders. However, it does seem as if the cleavage between
village sections has historic antecedents. In Sabu village, closer to Leh,
176 CHAPTER NINE
there was also a conflict between village sections over the distribution
of water. This lead to a boycott against one section of the village by the
other two, who refused to cooperate with it over ritual and agricultural
activities. A Leh-based NGO worker, who had undertaken numerous
projects for LEDEG, told me of several other cases in which the advent
of development projects had caused rupture between the semi-autono-
mous sections of a village or groups of villages.
In most of these cases it is, therefore, possible to trace conflict to
existing cleavages in community structures. Most Ladakhis sense of
attachment to a wider community outside their immediate village, is
weak, save when it comes to their religious identity. This was also
apparent in Photoksar. One evening, for example, a group of men was
enjoying some chang around the stove. One of them began to make up
verses in antonyms about the villagers: tellers of truth, is what we are;
tellers of lies, is what we are; builders of our yul, is what we are; de-
stroyers of our yul, is what we are, and so on. He used the phrase
ngatang mi, literally we people, but when someone challenged him to
explain exactly who ngatang mi were he hesitated, Photoksarpa, no
Ladakhspa, no Shamma (the area of lower Ladakh)...., he suggested.
Beyond the village he was unwilling to assert any firm sense of identity.
This, I would suggest, accounts for what occasionally seemed like
contradictions in the attitudes to conflict expressed in the village. Anger
and conflict are unequivocally condemned and when we discussed
fighting in the abstract or All India Radio reported on the conflict in
Kashmir, for example, Paljor would always shake his head and declare
it to be tsokpo. One day, however, he returned from Leh, proud to have
taken part in a demonstration organised by the LBA to demand auton-
omy for Ladakh. This was occasioned by the move, on the part of certain
political parties in Kashmir, to obtain a measure of self-rule from India.
He described the demonstration in surprisingly aggressive terms as
having been against Farooq Abdullah, leader of the Jammu and
Kashmir State government. At other times he joked that he would not eat
the bread I had bought for the journey back to Photoksar from the Balti
bakeries in the town. His willingness to express opposition and even
antagonism towards the Ladakhi Muslims, despite the general horror of
all forms of conflict articulated by the villagers within their own commu-
nity, reflects his lack of a sense of attachment to a wider political entity,
Ladakh, encompassing both Buddhists and Muslims. He identified,
rather, with his religious community. Fighting, in the abstract, might be
bad, but he was not slow to identify with the communal antagonism
URBAN PROCESSES AND POLITICAL CHANGE 177
She was referring to the Abolition of Polyandrous Marriages Act 1941, mentioned
2
in chapter two.
expressed towards people with a different religious identity. The
Photoksarpa identify themselves as Shamma and nangpa, rather than
Ladakhspa.
Among certain members of the elite in Leh, I did, by contrast, find an
idea of community which extended to encompass the wider region of
Ladakh. These urban elites would talk about Ladakh itself, as a small
community and the need to maintain harmony within it. Wangchuk had,
for example, described his decision to settle the SECMOL dispute as one
taken in the interests of our community, in which everyone knows
everyone else. He was, thus, expressing an ideal of harmony within
even the heterogeneous community of Leh. Tinles Angmo, my lawyer
informant, also talked about the impossibility of polyandry prosecutions
in the small Ladakhi society. She explained that polyandry had been
officially abolished by the Act of 1941 and would now be charged as
2
bigamy or adultery. However, she added, she had not known a single
prosecution in Ladakh. Such a thing would not be possible in such a
small society, she said. Even Tsering Samphel, President of the LBA and
supporter of his organisations anti-Muslim policies, used the phrase yul
chig, one country, when mediating in a conflict between different
villages.
In all these cases my informants were, therefore, expressing a sense
of belonging to the wider region of Ladakh, a community which would
be disrupted by conflict. The history of Ladakh has been punctuated by
warfare with external forces, which might have been thought to have
created a sense of regional unity under the king. However, there has also
been antagonism between its constituent parts and their rulers and a
constant movement of traders, monks and other outsiders coming from
all directions through the Indus valley. For a multitude of reasons,
political, historical and ecological, there is little sense or symbolism of
unity or of regional boundaries around Ladakh as a whole. Even today,
Kargil Block has an ambiguous status. Is it part of greater Ladakh, in
which the people share linguistic, ecological, agricultural and cultural
similarities, or is it a separate Muslim area? The political division
between Blocks seems to be pushing it towards the latter.
The communal tensions of the 1980s and 1990s are just the most
dramatic example of the divisions that characterise the Ladakh popula-
tion. The question, then, is, what impelled these elites to create a sense
178 CHAPTER NINE
Five out of the nine cases I saw concerned marriage and children, one concerned
3
inheritance to land and the others miscellaneous disputes.
of regional unity, and with what effects? It was in fact, the President of
the LBA, the body most responsible for the communal tensions, who
acted as mediator in the SECMOL dispute, and his organisation had
been running the Shakhs Khang, an important forum for the resolution
of conflict in Leh, since the 1980s.
The Shakhs Khang
In the 1980s and early 1990s the LBA became, and has remained, a
campaigning organisation whose activities also led to drastic divisions
between the Buddhist and Muslim populations of Ladakh and to violent,
communal antagonism between them (van Beek 1996, 1999, 2000a,
2001; Bertelsen 1996, 1997; Aggarwal 2004). Nevertheless, the LBA
has always carried out a certain amount of dispute resolution. In their
early days considerable time was devoted by the LBA and its predeces-
sor, the YMBA, to arbitrating in disputes concerning etiquette, in
particular the difficult question of seating hierarchy (van Beek 2000a:
176). LBA officials told me that at first people simply used to consult
the President, Vice-President or Secretary with their problems. However,
in 1990, following the LBAs rise to power and the setting up of regional
groups, and as part of a boycott of the states bureaucracy, a formal
dispute resolution committee was formed. Its hearings, which continued
after the end of the boycott in 1992, are popularly referred to as the
Shakhs Khang (place of mediation).
Cases are heard weekly at the LBAs offices in Leh. These are
generally brought by the sending of a letter setting out a complaint, after
which the committee summons all relevant parties to a hearing. Three of
the elder members of the LBA generally conduct the hearings but the
President and other members may join or replace them. The majority of
the cases, they say, concern family matters and land division and they do
not deal with criminal matters. However, this statement was little more
3
than a gesture towards the authority of the police and the courts. One
case I saw had involved an assault and the committee was concerned to
resolve it themselves so as to ensure, they expressly said, that the police
complaint was dropped. Like the Photoksar villagers, the LBA is ready
URBAN PROCESSES AND POLITICAL CHANGE 179
to acknowledge the authority of the police but quick to ignore it in
practice.
The hearings are always informal, the parties sitting around a room,
with no particular place for the mediators or either party and no set
procedures. When a dispute comes to them from within a village they
often call for the villages goba to attend the hearings and they defer to
his knowledge of the context and the people involved. The parties are
allowed to have their say and the mediators ask them to speak in turn,
but they often interrupt each other or the mediators intervene and friends
and relations contribute to the discussion. The mediators are accorded
an astonishing (to me) lack of formal respect, allowing themselves to be
interrupted and contradicted. There are no references to precedent, law
or custom but the mediators seem quickly to reach a common view
without consultation, even in cases of disputed evidence. The bulk of
their work then consists in trying to persuade the parties to accept
whatever solution they suggest. Acceptance is crucial and they may put
considerable moral pressure on both parties to agree. In one case a
woman had made an allegation that she had become pregnant by a man
from her village, a charge he denied. The mediators clearly thought that
the man was lying and spent most of the hearing trying to make him
admit this, pointing out the weaknesses in his story. Eventually they sent
everyone away and told the two principal witnesses to look at them-
selves carefully in a mirror and realise that if they lied once they would
have to lie another hundred times. As in most of the Tibetan cases, there
is no question of simply making a judgment against one party.
The whole ethos of the hearings is to get the parties to agree to a
solution. The concept of individual rights and claims never enters the
discussion. The mediators are primarily concerned to find a workable
arrangement for the future. So, in one case, a woman was saying that she
wanted to divorce her husband on the grounds that he was a drunkard but
the mediators exerted considerable pressure on her to stay with him for
the sake of their four children and discussed how she might deal with his
alcoholism by locking up the drink. In another, a couple had already
separated but were arguing over the children and the wife was, again,
complaining of her husbands alcoholism. The husband, on the other
hand, had promised not to drink any more and the mediators were
suggesting that he sign a written undertaking to this effect. In yet
another, the wife was spending time away from home, because of her
work, which was making her husband suspicious. The mediators told me
later that the real problem was that the husband had a straight mind,
180 CHAPTER NINE
believing whatever pernicious gossip people suggested to him, so they
were trying to make him understand the wifes position.
The informality of the hearings and the rhetoric of the mediators both
represent an orientation towards agreement and towards the wider
community. The parties are encouraged to see their dispute in the
context of its effects on their family and village but also, in appropriate
cases, on Ladakhi society as a whole. The mediators evidently see their
Shakhs Khang as a type of court of appeal for disputes that cannot be
solved at village level and they were anxious that I remind the Photoksar
villagers that they should follow this route in similar cases. However, the
President was quite frank about the LBAs recent decline in power.
Between 1989 and 1995, he told me, when the LBA was strong, and had
to be strong for its political fight, the committee could simply give a
judgment and people would comply. Now they have to use more negotia-
tion in the process and cases take a lot longer to resolve. They are using
the traditions of the people more, he said.
Although the LBA had initiated the most dramatic political agitation
undertaken in Ladakh in the recent past, its concern, when resolving
disputes, was said to be to prevent the escalation of any conflict that
could have political overtones. The most serious case that I saw, in that
every hearing was attended by the LBA President, Tsering Samphel, had
started as a simple assault on a bus driver by a group of youths in the
village of Nimmu, where his bus had temporarily halted. One of the
drivers relatives was in the Khaltse police force and had, they said, used
his influence to secure a letter from the chief goba of Khaltse block
alleging a history of harassment by the Nimmu youths. This letter was
sent to Nimmu village, to the police, the LBA, the bus drivers union and
a number of politicians. The LBA committee took the matter very
seriously and called not just the Nimmu villagers who were very keen to
resolve the affair, but also the chief goba of Ladakh, the chief officer of
the Khaltse police and the head of the bus drivers union to a series of
hearings. The President told me before the first hearing that he was
anxious to prevent this from becoming a big dispute and that his primary
interest was in correcting any misunderstandings between the chief goba
and the Nimmu people. During the hearing the President, backed up by
the other LBA members and the Nimmu villagers, put pressure on the
chief goba and the drivers father to settle the matter then and there.
They told the parties that the dispute should first have been brought to
the LBA, who could have resolved it by calling evidence. This was
supported by the Nimmu villagers who said that they could have in-
URBAN PROCESSES AND POLITICAL CHANGE 181
volved the village elders and made the boys responsible understand and
apologise for their misdeeds.
The President talked, during the hearing, about the size of the dispute
and how bad it was that two villages should be in conflict, frequently
using the phrase yul chig, one country. The head of the Nimmu tsokspa
backed this up by saying that it was the gobas action in going to the
police that had been trelba, shameful. All these speakers, thus, expressed
a concern about unity within the general Ladakhi community. The case
was ultimately resolved by a letter to be written by the chief goba to the
Nimmu villagers in which he acknowledged that he had used harsh
language in his previous letter, that he did not want to cause bad rela-
tions between the villages and that it was important to maintain peace
and harmony.
The Shakhs Khang provides the Ladakhi population with an effective
alternative to the states courts which, as my informants invariably
commented, are expensive and prone to delays and corruption. Ahmed
(1996: 305), for example, describes a long running disagreement be-
tween the nomads of Rupshu and those of Kharnakh over the salt lake,
Tsokhar, on the Chang Tang plateau. This dispute, she says, was settled
by an agreement in 1982 but erupted again with fighting in 1987. The
Rupshu nomads then took the case to the Leh court, which decided that
the land records demonstrated Rupshus ownership and determined that
Kharnakh should pay a fine. However, the Rupshu nomads were still
dissatisfied so they approached the LBA. The LBA engineered a com-
promise under which Rupshu would make a fixed supply of salt to
Kharnakh for a small payment. It also achieved a settlement on the
question of access to the grazing land around the lake. The nomad
communities eventually, therefore, accepted the mediation of the LBA
in the interests of settling their dispute, having rejected the authority of
the court to determine the question of ownership.
The interests of harmony within Ladakh were presented as a persua-
sive reason for reaching agreement in the Nimmu case. By using the
phrase yul chig the LBA mediators were taking an ambiguous concept,
yul, normally applied to a village community, and extending it to apply
to the whole of Ladakh. In this way they were actively promoting a sense
of Ladakh as a unified whole. This clearly suited their purposes as a
body agitating for regional autonomy, which finds it difficult, as Tsering
Samphel admitted to me, to encourage a sense of regional identity.
While the former kings could use their military power, backed by their
social status and religious patronage, to extract taxes and muster armies,
182 CHAPTER NINE
contemporary leaders have to use different tactics to carry out the
activities they see as being in the best interests of Ladakh. The resolution
of disputes can be seen as one of the ways in which they establish their
moral authority to do so. In the process they have to strengthen the sense
of community identity by drawing on and expanding the sense of order
and harmony found within the smaller village units.
The Anjuman
At the same time as the LBA is providing mediation services for the
Buddhist populations, parallel activities are being undertaken by the
Muslims organisations. Leh has a substantial Sunni and a rather smaller
Shia Muslim population. The Sunnis have an Anjuman-e Muin-e-Islam,
which is the main policy-making body for their community, and a
Shariat committee which includes all the Molvis, religious leaders of
high status. The Shias have an Anjuman-e Imamia, equivalent to the
Sunnis Anjuman-e Muin-e-Islam, and there is a Muslim Coalition
Committee, which includes members from both and is chaired by the
Presidents of each Anjuman. Mohammed Shafi Lassoo, the president of
the Sunni Anjuman, told me that his organisation exists to promote
religious and cultural ideas and harmony, both within the Muslim
community and between that community and others. Both the Shariat
Committee and Anjuman are involved in the resolution of disputes, the
Committees formal role being to interpret and decide upon the applica-
tion of Shariat law, and the Anjuman being more concerned with imple-
mentation.
Several people told me that disputes that occur amongst Muslims in
the villages are generally solved at local level, with the help of family,
neighbours and elders. Village Muslims generally have a village Muslim
committee to whom they can turn for help, but they often use the village
goba, and only resort to the Shariat committee or Anjuman in Leh in
extreme cases. I did not witness the hearing of any such cases, but three
of the Sunni Anjuman members, the President, Mohammad Shafi
Lassoo, the Chairman of the Shariat Committee, Molvi Abdul Qayoom
Nadvi, and the Anjuman Secretary, Shabir Bande, were very willing to
talk about their procedures for dispute resolution. Before they get to the
stage of a formal complaint many disputes are taken to one of the
community elders for resolution, they told me. The Committee hears
property, family, maintenance and commercial cases, around twelve in
URBAN PROCESSES AND POLITICAL CHANGE 183
In fact, Martijn van Beek, who has undertaken research in Leh over several years,
4
has seen cases where both physical force and threats of exile have been employed
every year. The law applied is Shariat, said Shabir, but they do not mete
out harsh punishments, as in Saudi Arabia. Lassoo said that they applied
a lenient, moderate form of Shariat, using their own discretion and
incorporating local, customary law. Qayoom also confirmed that they
cannot adopt the whole method of Islamic law but have to recognise
elements of custom and tradition, many of which have come from the
Buddhists.
Even though the Shariat Committee is talked of as a court, giving
verdicts in accordance with Shariat law, it is evident that its procedures
for dealing with disputes are primarily designed to make the parties
themselves reach agreement and many of the practices and ideals are
similar to those of the LBAs Shakhs Khang. Qayoom, in particular, told
me that although the principles of land distribution are fixed by the
Koran, the Committee tries to reach a settlement on the basis of mutual
understanding. They do not go too deeply into religious decrees, he said,
but aim to find a solution that maintains good social relations. The
Committee acts like an investigator, calling evidence, contacting the
goba and other members of the parties village. They tell the parties who
they think is right and wrong but then suggest a middle point that will be
best for all concerned. Shabir said that the Committee hearings were
designed not to feel like a court, with the parties all accorded respect
rather than treated as opponents. The important thing, he said, is to get
the parties to shake hands, to say that what has passed has passed and
that they are now brother and sister again.
The Anjuman, for its part, is concerned with implementation and acts
like a negotiator, said Lassoo, bringing in other members of the parties
families and communities, aiming to keep the parties together and bring
them to an agreement. Qayoom stressed the fact that they cannot force
the parties to comply with any ruling and they have to use persuasion,
explaining the draw-backs of a divorce, for example, and often involving
other people in the solution. Shabir told me that it acts by persuasion, by
making recommendations, but he also said that it also used forms of
persuasion that are similar to those employed in the villages. They can
use harsh words and threats and bring in the relatives to persuade the
parties. They cannot use physical force, he said, but the ultimate sanc-
tion of a social boycott is stronger than any physical threat. He has only
seen it used once. These solutions are similar to the village and LBAs
4
184 CHAPTER NINE
(personal communication).
practices, a point expressly made by Lassoo. Where an apology is
appropriate khatags and tea (rather than chang) are given or exchanged.
Agreements and decrees may also be drawn up in which conditions are
imposed.
Like the Tibetan cases and the LBAs practices, therefore, the idea
is to get the parties to reach an agreement, even if strong tactics are
necessary to achieve this. Likewise, the orientation is outwards, involv-
ing other members of the family and the larger community, appealing to
the interests of others and relying on the ultimate threat of a social
boycott.
The existence of the separate bodies, the LBA and the Anjuman,
which both carry out quasi-political functions is, of course, an indication
of a divided population in Ladakh and peoples sense of religious, rather
than regional, identity. Nevertheless, the LBA, in particular, uses
narratives of a single Ladakh, yul chig, during its practices of mediation,
thereby strengthening its authority within the Ladakhi population. The
same idea is reflected in the rhetoric of the elite mentioned earlier. At
the same time the urban dwellers are creating small new communities in
the expanding and heterogeneous capital. In all these ways, different
sections of the Ladakhi population are actively creating new forms of
community, both small and large, and associated spheres of order. They
are also creating boundaries which serve to exclude, to some extent, the
states forces of law and order.
Ideals of order
A sense of community as a social space which is to be protected from
harm, both internal divisions and external threats, is, thus, to be found,
I would suggest, in the urban as much as the rural setting. The overriding
concern is with the harm that conflict and antagonism will inflict on that
community and the harmonious relations that have to be maintained
within it. At the same time, however, the goal of peace or harmony, as
an abstract ideal, is remarkably weak. Largely absent in Photoksar, it is
only heard occasionally in elite circles in Leh. For example, I had many
conversations with Tinles Angmo, the lawyer, about the courts, legal
system and practices of dispute resolution, during which she invariably
expressed the opinion that Ladakhis do not like to be in conflict, they
URBAN PROCESSES AND POLITICAL CHANGE 185
like to settle their disputes. She said that she herself always encourages
her clients to try to settle their cases, especially those that concern
maintenance for children and other family matters, because of the time
and expense involved in the court procedure. She also uses the radio to
appeal to families to give their daughters their due shares in property so
as to avoid lengthy court cases. Like Rinchen, therefore, she was keen
to paint a picture to me of the ideal Ladakhi society.
Spalzes Angmo, a lawyer turned politician, expressed similar senti-
ments and told me that older practices of land division (or non-division)
persist because children are prepared to compromise and adjust to the
views of their parents. They respect their elders, she said. She was also
concerned to present the Ladakhi people as peace-loving, telling me
that Ladakhis generally wanted to avoid disputes. She attributed this to
the principle of compassion at the root of Buddhist society: you cannot
have peace without compassion, she explained. This was the only time
that any of my Ladakhi informants made an explicit, or even implicit,
connection between attitudes to conflict and religious ideals. Having
done so, however, Spalzes paused. Of course my brother is a high
lama, she admitted, so my attitude may have been influenced by the
Buddhist view. In other words, she was expressly acknowledging that
her views had been influenced by the ideas promoted by contemporary
religious leaders and doubting the legitimacy of offering a religious
explanation for local attitudes towards conflict.
Other educated Leh-based Ladakhis were more pragmatic. One told
me that it is the immigrants to Leh who are usually the ones who end up
taking their disputes to the Court or to the LBA. The problem is that if
their relatives try to intervene, he explained, they do not know the people
involved, they do not understand the rights and wrongs of the case and
cannot make proper judgments. In the villages, he said, it is as if every-
one is related. Other people can then make unbiased decisions, they
care for all the people. A similar opinion was expressed by Tashi Morup,
the magazine editor, who told me that Ladakhi society was close knit,
that disputes tend to be solved at family level with the use of apologies
and that decisions made at community level were generally right because
the elders understood the society. His reflection on the Shakhs Khang
was that as a court it was primitive, and it was never certain that the
result would be right, but that it still performed a valuable function.
Sonam Wangchuk, of SECMOL, was also quite sceptical about the
Ladakhis being peace-loving. Leh used to be like a big village, he said,
with fights resolved through the intervention of the goba, the giving of
186 CHAPTER NINE
khatags and chang, but now it has grown enormously and is no longer
such a close-knit community. There are fewer fights because there are
not so many neighbourhood parties, he said, but those that occur are not
sorted out and people tend to remain enemies. A similar attitude was
expressed by my informant from Shara describing the conflict within his
village. He commented that the problem was that people in the village
who stand to gain most from the project are bad, selfish and prone to
fighting. This is attributable to three or four of the current leaders,
influential men who dominate the village committee, the tsokspa. They
have negative attitudes, he thought.
Whilst in some of these accounts, therefore, the Ladakhis are ideal-
ised as peace-loving, other informants were quite prepared to be
negative about the fighting and animosity that breaks out among their
compatriots. The Leh goba and chupon, described earlier, and many
development workers expressed similar attitudes. The process of dispute
settlement, moreover, was invariably described to me in pragmatic
terms, with doubts expressed by the English speakers familiar with the
western notion of justice about whether the right results were usually
achieved. Settlement is simply something that has to be achieved. The
implicit idea of order tends, therefore, to be more closely expressed in
the negative appraisal of conflict, rather than being directed at any
idealised form of justice or fairness or the maintenance of a form of
harmony inspired by Buddhist morality. As in Photoksar the sacred
social is a largely implicit ideal. Nevertheless, it is a potent one, I would
suggest, which shapes the attitudes to conflict and practices of resolution
which are found throughout Ladakh.
Status and power
Old forms of status are still strong in Ladakh. Aristocrats and rinpoches
dominate the political positions, membership of the Ladakh Hill Council
and even higher administrative positions. In Photoksar the villagers
successfully distance most such power-holders from their internal
political organisation. Nevertheless, when the SECMOL dispute erupted,
the parties involved turned to both political and religious leaders, in the
form of the LBA and LGA for mediation. The issues of status and power
affect the processes by which Ladakhis maintain order in the urban
centres and surrounding villages to a much greater degree than they do
in Photoksar.
URBAN PROCESSES AND POLITICAL CHANGE 187
This was part of the LBAs education campaigns of the early 1990s (van Beek and
5
Bertelsen 1995).
The development of the economy and the new opportunities it has
provided for the acquisition of wealth have lead to new forms of status
and power for a number of Ladakhis. Money does not tend to bring
status and influence, per se, but the power and opportunities of the
centralised economy mean that the ability to deal with the centre and to
negotiate with development organisations and government representa-
tives gives certain individuals an important position within their villages.
This is largely effected through the tsokspa, the village committee,
which is now a common feature of village life and allows them to
exercise power without the responsibility that traditionally attaches to
the posts of goba and membar.
Originally set up by the LBA as cultural committees, and used by it
to try to obtain a measure of control over the villages and support from
their leaders, the tsokspa are now usually concerned with development
matters. In the larger villages close to Leh there has been a proliferation
of youth tsokspa, ame tsokspa (womens committees), tsokspa responsi-
ble for festivals and others for agricultural development. Many of these
only concern themselves with development work and defer, in the case
of important decisions, to the village meeting. Elsewhere, however, the
tsokspa, especially the youth groups initially set up by the LBA, are
politically active and have become a source of village conflict. Some
young Ladakhis working for a local NGO in Leh, for example, told me
that in their three villages the youth groups were taking an assertive
stance, demanding changes to certain rituals. In one, it was making new
rules and regulations, stipulating that every household was allowed to
have only two light-bulbs, for example, and taking it upon themselves to
break any others. Another told me that in his village there was a conflict
5
between the youth and development tsokspa, which the goba could not
resolve because half the village was behind each. Previously, one of my
informants told me, when the goba had managed everything, things had
gone in a straight line.
Aggarwal (2004) describes numerous forces of disruption and
division which, she says, have characterised Ladakhi society in recent
years. As well as the activities of the LBA, which cause communal
tensions in several villages with mixed populations, she discusses the
divisive force of caste, including inter-caste conflict, gender divisions,
which are exacerbated by modern Indian stereotypes, and the rivalries
188 CHAPTER NINE
Aggarwal highlights important aspects of Ladakhi society, in particular the effects
6
of the LBAs campaigns and continuing caste divisions. I consider, however, that she
overstates the nature of such divisions in many ways, alleging that women are ritually
repressed in their natal homes (2004: 137), for example, and characterising the dral as
a site of subversion and struggle fraught with political activity (2004: 163). One of
the aims of the present work is to balance out this picture by focussing on parallel
processes of community construction and conflict resolution.
engendered by Indian party politics. She demonstrates the ways in
6
which such tensions are played out at local level in the mixed Buddhist
and Muslim village of Achinatang, close to the disputed Kashmiri line
of control. Elsewhere, as I found, similar tensions can be exacerbated or
supplemented by the activities of the NGOs, who have considerable
influence in even the remotest villages and are usually regarded as an
important source of money and other benefits. They invariably channel
their resources through the tsokspa or elected village committees, whose
membership is not generally marked by burdensome responsibility. It is
inevitably men who are already used to dealing with the centre, because
they have education or government jobs or are from upper-class families,
who obtain these positions. In the opinion of local NGO workers this has
enabled, or even encouraged, many of them to use their positions to
wield power and influence to their own advantage.
Photoksar, further removed from the opportunities offered by Leh
and from the attentions of development organisations, has not experi-
enced the factionalism that occurs elsewhere. However, even here,
external funds have been abused. The Education Department had given
the contract for the construction of the local school to a village man, in
consultation with the teacher. The school had not been properly finished,
however, and a couple of villagers told me they thought that the teacher
and contractor had been dishonest over the money. But what can we do
about it? they shrugged. On the one hand it was not their money to
control, but on the other, they obviously did not want confrontation with
a member of their village. This unwillingness to enter into confrontation
is, I would suggest, crucial in explaining many of the tensions and
conflicts that have occurred as a result of economic development and
NGO activity.
The dominant idea in development circles is that the elected commit-
tee is the most suitable type of village organisation to oversee and
manage projects and take charge of funds. However, Ladakhi villagers
often seem unable to operate a simple committee system, electing
inappropriate representatives and failing to vote unsatisfactory members
URBAN PROCESSES AND POLITICAL CHANGE 189
off the committee. Given their traditions of inclusion and agreement that
I described earlier and the means they employ, along with Tibetan
populations elsewhere on the plateau, to rotate power and counteract
forces that promote status and hierarchy, why is this so difficult?
The unwillingness to criticise, expressed to me by the Photoksar
villagers, is, I would suggest, crucial. The villagers use of rotation to
choose their leaders is a particular method of controlling the use of
power, similar to the principles of government and selection that found-
ed the participatory democracy of the Athenian city-state. Here, laws
were made by the Assembly, open to the whole body of citizens, who
numbered between 30,000 and 45,000, amongst whom unanimity was
preferred. There was also a Council of 500, whose members were
selected by lot, but membership was restricted to two terms and there
were very few elected officers. Athens was, of course a large and
complex society with disparities in wealth, patronage and de facto
leaders (Hornblower 1992). Similarly in Ladakh, practices of consensus
and inclusion do not rule out conflicts, gender differences and inequali-
ties in wealth. Neither lives up to any ideal of participation and equality.
However, the ideologies that guide their political processes - rule by the
demos, the authority of the yulpa, the principle of inclusion, the duty on
citizens to participate, the ideal of unanimity and the use of lots to fill
positions of authority - are the same.
Representative government, by contrast, is based on the use of the
ballot box. The idea is that elections should clarify matters of public
interest and the elected few would be likely to be competent and capable
(Held 1993: 19). Yet such a system relies upon the electorate being able
and willing to criticise and deselect incompetent leaders. Some Ladakhi
NGO workers told me of a village meeting in which people had gone as
far as opposing the election of their headman to a new committee.
However, although they had articulated their complaints to my infor-
mants in private they had not been prepared to explain their reasons
publicly. In response to a challenge to do so, one of them had quoted a
Ladakhi saying: if you talk at night you will not be heard. They
consider there is something shameful, my informants explained, in
talking about past conflicts or bringing them into the open.
This fear can be linked, I would suggest, to the perception that all
disputes are dangerous to the social order. As I found in Photoksar, even
expressing distaste and disapproval were frowned upon. Yet this is what
is required, as a matter of public activity, in order to implement a
successful committee system. Bad leaders must be criticised and pub-
190 CHAPTER NINE
licly removed from office. Selection by rotation, lot, games and dice, on
the other hand, abnegates responsibility for choosing and deselecting to
an external force. It does not require the villagers to select on the basis
of merit nor, even more significantly, to depose on the basis of perfor-
mance.
In Leh and the surrounding villages, those close to modern develop-
ments and the economic opportunities of the capital, therefore, old forms
of status remain strong and new ones are emerging. Moreover, opportu-
nities for wealth creation and development activities are giving rise to
new forms of status within established communities, which disrupt older
forms of organisation and controls on the exercise of power. Neverthe-
less, the emphasis on conflict resolution remains an important compo-
nent of the sense of community found at different levels throughout the
region, often promoted by the elite.
Elitism and hierarchy have long characterised many aspects of
Ladakh society, therefore, and old forms of status continue to be drawn
upon by those who become involved in modern politics. The 1980s and
90s saw the worst communal tension for decades. Moreover, economic
and administrative developments, coupled with the introduction of new
micro-processes into village politics, have had the effect of creating new
factions and power struggles. Nevertheless, in the midst of these pro-
cesses, the groups I have described, both in Photoksar and the villages
closer to or within the urban centre, maintain a sense of community
boundaries and, at times, create new ideas of belonging. In each case the
idea of community imports a sense of order and a feeling that conflict
needs to be contained and resolved inside, nangkuli, and ultimately gives
rise to the practices of dispute resolution that are still, as I found,
widespread within Ladakh.
Such practices also serve to reinforce the boundaries of the commu-
nity and to safeguard it from the interference of external power-holders.
This, I would suggest, should be understood in the light of the relations
of deference and distance I have described on the part of the Photoksar
villagers and which doubtless characterise many local communities in
Ladakh, towards the power-holders in the political, economic and
monastic centres of the region. All these processes are evident in the
collective reactions of local communities to the introduction of the new
panchayat system of local government.
URBAN PROCESSES AND POLITICAL CHANGE 191
The Hill Council and panchayats
The resilience of the goba system of local organisation and conflict
resolution was recognised by many of my informants. However, talking
to certain members of the elite in rather different contexts yielded almost
diametrically opposed views. NGO workers, when discussing recent
administrative changes, told me that the gobas now have no power and
I heard the same view from several other people. The context was
generally an explanation of or reference to either the Ladakh Hill
Development Council (LAHDC) or the new panchayat system of local
government. Each body is supposed to manage matters of local adminis-
tration to some extent, thus taking over the traditional role of the goba
and supplanting his authority, at least in the eyes of the central adminis-
tration.
The LAHDC was established in 1994 as a result of the extended
campaign led by the LBA for a measure of regional autonomy for
Ladakh. In theory, matters such as rural development, health and educa-
tion are all under its control. This means that it can give directions to
officers in the relevant government departments, although there can be
power struggles between the Council and other government officers. The
Council is made up of elected representatives from each area of Ladakh.
Photoksar, for example, is represented by the Wanla councillor, who has
very little knowledge of or interest in the village according to my
informants.
The panchayats are supposed to act on a much more local level.
Under the Panchayat Raj Act 1989, a halqa panchayat has been estab-
lished in each village, or group of small villages, with elected members
and a leader, sarpanch, who is supposed to sit on the District level adalat
council. Representatives of each of the district bodies are supposed,
then, to make up a Block-level panchayat council. Powers to draw up
development plans and to organise education, health, agricultural and
irrigation services are supposed to be devolved to the panchayats. In
practice, by 2005, there were just a few programmes that had already
been devolved: watershed (agricultural and pastoral) development,
SGRY (Sarvodaya Gram Rozgar Yojana, a rural employment scheme)
and CD, community development. Elections for the panchayats were
held in April 2001 and some had already proved to be effective in
obtaining benefits for their villages. Photoksar, however, forms part of
the Wanla area, with a single panchayat, and Paljor was critical of the
results. It has not worked, he told me in 2005, the sarpanch is no good,
192 CHAPTER NINE
There is also considerable overlap between the powers and duties that are supposed
7
to be exercised by each body and the existing government departments. This is one of the
reason for the very slow implementation of the panchayat system. In particular, it would
seem that the Block-level council would be a direct rival for power to the LAHDC and,
as of 2006, it had not yet been established.
he does not achieve anything for us. He regarded the panchayat as a
form of liaison with the central authorities, whose business it was to
secure what funds and resources are available. In Lingshed, by contrast,
the former Hill Councillor had been elected as sarpanch and, skilled at
negotiating in Leh, he had achieved many things for his area.
The idea that the panchayat members have to fight for what is due to
them was echoed by members of the Ladakhi Development Organisation
(LDO), a local NGO that has taken it upon itself to educate the public
about the new system and advise the councils on how to proceed, in the
absence of useful information and assistance from the authorities. They
have to keep pushing and shouting or else nothing will happen, one told
me, describing the role of the panchayat members. This means travelling
to Leh to negotiate with the Chief Executive Councillor of the LAHDC
to obtain the funds they are due. Of course, this is just the type of
activity for which people in the remoter villagers, such as Photoksar, are
ill-prepared, in terms of time, money and experience.
The legislation also makes provision for a panchayat adalat, a body
that is supposed to administer justice in each panchayat area. The
Panchayat Raj Act 1989 contains provisions for the selection of mem-
bers (all of whom have to be literate, a qualification that would rule out
the majority of the female population) and for the types of cases that
should be heard by them, while the Jammu and Kashmir Panchayati Raj
Rules 1996, provide for procedures. The framework is supposed to be
informal, but it follows the adversarial format of the state courts, with
statements from each party, evidence and judgments. The names of
prospective members of the panchayat adalat have to be put forward by
the sarpanch and this has now been done, LDO told me, although they
were not aware of what activities, if any, they had yet undertaken.
There is, therefore, a confusing proliferation of positions and respon-
sibilities in the villages. There are Hill Councillors, panchayat members,
a sarpanch, members of the panchayat adalat, the tsokspa, the goba and
membars. The Councillors and halqa panchayat are supposed to be in
charge of development, while the panchayat adalat takes care of justice
and the goba remains in charge of social relations. It was in this context
7
that several of my informants told me that the goba now has very little
URBAN PROCESSES AND POLITICAL CHANGE 193
One of these is, in fact, Photoksar, where the panchayat includes all the villages in
8
the Wanla area, some of which are more than a days walk apart and normally maintain
little contact. It is recognised by both villagers and officials that this is unsatisfactory, but
whether the panchayat will be divided in the future remains to be seen.
power. He is just a tax collector, said one member of the LAHDC,
reflecting his official government position, which is now practically
insignificant given the very limited taxes that most villagers pay.
From an official point of view, therefore, the system of village
administration has been almost completely transformed by these new
developments. Nevertheless, when I pressed my informants, they always
acknowledged that the goba do still play a role in conflict resolution, the
implementation of the old trims, as one of them put it, and that a good
goba can do very good work in his village. The members of LDO said
that the halqa panchayat and panchayat adalat were now supposed to be
playing the political and judicial roles that had formerly been the
responsibility of the goba. The problem, they thought, is that the legisla-
tors were not properly aware of the traditional system and Ladakh now
faces a dilemma of whether to reject the panchayat system or do away
with the goba. Ideally, of course, they should work together, they said.
This dilemma is not, maybe, so stark in reality as it seems on paper,
however. In practice, as the examples given above have shown, Ladakhi
villagers are quite capable of distancing officials from their internal
affairs, even in the urban centre. There is, in fact, no evidence that the
panchayat adalats have begun to take a proactive role, displacing the
social and judicial roles of the goba and yulpa, and it is not considered
to be a priority by bodies such as LDO to encourage them to do so. In
Photoksar they have chosen one of the few young men with a modicum
of formal education to be the panchayat member and he is now hon-
oured, along with the goba and membar, at the new year celebrations.
However, the villagers clearly see his role as being quite separate from
that of the yulpa, who are more concerned with internal relations.
Moreover, although panchayat members are supposed to be elected, the
Panchayat Officer in Leh, recognising the limitations of the ballot box
within village politics, has allowed villages to present their members to
him according to their own methods of selection. For the most part,
village meetings have unanimously agreed on these appointments and it
is only in a few cases, generally those in which a panchayats constitu-
ency crosses village boundaries, that elections have been necessary. It
8
is important, therefore, not to regard the new political structures imple-
mented in Leh as representative of the reality everywhere, which is what
194 CHAPTER NINE
LDO thinks this is very important and a material change to the old system. In fact,
9
in some villages, like Likir, the village meeting is now dominated by women, although
in others, like Hemis Shukpachan, the meeting has rejected the possibility of admitting
women and in Photoksar the issue has not even been raised. As LDO told me, in many
villages the men are practically absent, with jobs in the town or army, so women should
be on the panchayat. However, in Photoksar, men are very much present and well aware
of the needs of the women, such as the demands of water collection and spinning.
Moreover, at present, women still have far less experience of and confidence in dealing
with outsiders, matters in which even the men mostly feel inadequate. Demanding
women representatives runs the risk of exacerbating the differences between remoter and
less remote villages, whatever the laudable aims in terms of elevating their position in the
villages.
is being done by those who declare that the goba and the old trims are
no longer relevant.
The panchayat system is based on quite different principles from
those that historically govern the organisation of the village meeting and
the selection of the goba. Instead of rotation and inclusion they demand
election, representation and forms of justice handed down by an edu-
cated elite. They also demand the involvement of women. In practice,
9
panchayat members also have to work within the structures of state
government. The ideology of the legislation, as set out in the preamble
to the Act, is local self-government, participation in decision-making and
the better implementation of development programmes. The new repre-
sentatives have to fight for funds, however, and to ensure the proper
implementation of the panchayat structures. This requires people with
knowledge, time, money and, above all, experience in dealing with Leh-
based authorities. As with the committee systems introduced by NGOs,
this will favour the individuals and villages with easier access to the
centre, thus reproducing existing patterns of inequality between remoter
and more central communities and between better and less well-con-
nected individuals. It also reinforces the dependence of most villages on
the centre and on the few individuals able to deal with it.
One can, therefore, see the new system coming into conflict with
existing expectations, providing opportunity for personal gain on the part
of a few individuals, but also being adapted according to local expecta-
tions (in the villages) and the assessment of needs (by local NGOs).
Quietly and unobtrusively, and throughout decades of political change,
Ladakhi villagers have been continuing to maintain their own form of
judicial practices, linked to their ideas of community and order. This is
not to say that their forms of village organisation will not, in the long
URBAN PROCESSES AND POLITICAL CHANGE 195
run, be affected by these new developments. But nor should it be as-
sumed that the changes will be unequivocally negative.
The Photoksar villagers have already accepted the idea of a new
village post, someone responsible for dealing with the panchayat system,
and have incorporated his status into the social hierarchy during the new
year celebrations. These new systems are undoubtedly forces for change,
but the old pattern of deference and distance towards external influences
remains. The chances are that Ladakhs villages will strive to safeguard,
or to create anew, a sense of local order, a sacred social space from
which the multitude of external forces is distanced. The extent to which
they succeed in doing so remains to be seen.
CHAPTER TEN
CONCLUSION
Ladakh is a region that has long been pulled in different directions by
political, economic, religious and cultural forces on all sides. For
centuries Tibet, to the east, was the source of the religious and cultural
influence of Buddhism. Its texts and teachers offered the Ladakhi people
a sophisticated philosophical framework, with elaborate images of moral
and cosmological order, and its leaders interfered in Ladakhs internal
power struggles. The all-powerful Tibetan monasteries have now
substantially been relocated to India, but the identity of Ladakhi Bud-
dhists with their religion is strong and they are conscious of a shared
religious and cultural heritage with Tibet.
Kashmir, to the west, was long seen as a military threat, whose
leaders not only tried to dominate the region but also to convert its
people to Islam. The resulting interface between the Buddhist and
Islamic worlds has created a sense of split identity for many Ladakhis,
especially those of the Kargil region, who feel culturally and linguisti-
cally part of Ladakh but tied by religion to Kashmir. This religious
divide has been exploited by Ladakhi politicians agitating for regional
autonomy, giving rise to communal violence and lingering mistrust.
Despite these historic tensions Kashmir has always been a source of
trading opportunities. The descendants of Kashmiri traders form a
distinct group in and around Leh, where they mingle with contemporary
entrepreneurs and governmental administrators.
From the north and east traders used to arrive from central Asia and
Tibet, having crossed monumental passes with their horses, donkeys and
sheep before travelling on into India, bringing salt, pashm, cloth, rice
and exotic goods and bearing away apricots, barley, wool and butter.
These routes also provided the opportunity for Ladakhi traders and
monks to travel, bringing back religious knowledge, foreign ideas and
wealth.
Now the old trade routes have been closed and consumer goods are
trucked in from the south and west, along roads that also take Ladakhi
pilgrims south into India and transport tourists in large numbers during
the short summer months. The construction of the airport means that
politicians and development workers, traders and administrators can fly
in throughout the year, bringing opportunities for business and employ-
CONCLUSION 197
Baltistan must not be forgotten. The Balti people share considerable linguistic and
1
historical features, especially with the people of Kargil and they previously represented
important trading partners for the whole of the western part of Ladakh. My older
informants in Photoksar recalled taking grain to trade in Baltistan, where they could just
about understand the dialect, returning with locally-made earthenware pots. Since the war
between India and Pakistan, the line-of-control has severed the two regions but in the
summer of 2005 some Balti scholars were, for the first time, able to travel to Kargil. They
made the arduous journey via Islamabad, Lahore, Amritsar, Delhi and Leh, to arrive, after
three days, at a point less than 140 kilometres (via the old Indus valley trade route) from
Skardu. Here they were greeted with immense excitement by the Kargilis, who were soon
listening enraptured to their songs and stories, all familiar from their own cultural
heritage.
ment and the values of consumerism and international development, as
well as the democratic processes and ideals of the nation state.
1
Among all these influences Ladakhis have found numerous sources
of order, both in the controlling hand of leaders and in the more ideolog-
ical influence of iconic events and ideas. The Ladakhi kings struggles
with their powerful neighbours shaped the nature of the polity and the
power they wielded over its population; Buddhist monks, colonial
leaders and Indian administrators have all sought to impose their own
models of order on the region. Order has, at times, been imposed as a
matter of command, as part of the control exercised by a powerful leader
or state. In Webers (1968) terms these have included patriarchy (in the
case of aristocratic families), feudalism (in the case of their relations
with the kings), charisma (in the case of certain influential lamas) and,
now, the rational bureaucracy of the modern nation state. Wars, commu-
nal tensions and the regions incorporation into India have shaped a
Ladakhi sense of identity or, rather, given rise to multiple and varying
ideas about regional autonomy, religious allegiance and communal
differences. There has been a simultaneous distancing of external power-
holders and the embrace of the economic opportunities provided by
trade, the market economy and tourism. There is both distrust and
acceptance of consumerism, competition and the new forms of status
they provide. Nevertheless, more localised forms of order have simulta-
neously been maintained within the numerous small communities of
which Ladakh is composed, supported by local social and moral norms.
These, in turn, have developed alongside the powerful ideological forces
of Buddhism and the economic, ecological and material values of the
late twentieth century.
In this book I have not attempted to map out all these forces. Rather,
my task has been to investigate the ways in which Ladakhi people have
198 CHAPTER TEN
negotiated their own order amongst them. Looking from the inside
outward, I have analysed the experiences of members of two very
different populations, those in a remote village and those of the urban
centre. My ethnographic focus on disputes and processes of conflict
resolution has been the means by which I have explored fundamental
ideas about order on the part of the Ladakhi populations and their
expectations of how it is to be maintained.
The hermeneutics of order
Living in Leh, the young men of SECMOL were caught in the midst of
these influences when they found themselves in conflict with members
of the powerful religious establishment. The approach taken by different
members of their organisation to the resolution of this dispute illustrates
the dilemmas and opportunities faced by many urban, educated Ladakh-
is. Their social values had been shaped by ideas of belonging and
identity formed in their local communities, the values of the modern
world, their own organisations agenda for the preservation of Ladakhi
culture and their relations with both the ancient and the modern elites of
the region. Their approach to this dispute highlights the paradoxes of
their situation: that they have embraced the secular ideas of justice and
individual rights, while self-consciously turning to religious leaders and
employing traditional tactics during the mediation process; that they
were prepared to accept the primacy of the interests of their community,
in this case the small region of Ladakh, over their own individual
interests and rights; and their acceptance of the authority of both reli-
gious leaders (the LGA) and modern political elites (the LBA), while
avoiding representatives of the state and the authority of its courts and
lawyers. This event is just one example of the ways in which urban
Ladakhis negotiate their modernity, in this case by maintaining what
they see as the order that should characterise their region.
My suggestion is that, to make sense of the way this dispute was
handled, we need to analyse the processes, dynamics and
epistemological, moral and ontological concerns that govern Ladakhi
ideas concerning conflict. The attitudes expressed by the parties to the
SECMOL dispute reflected the procedures I observed in Photoksar, a
remote Ladakhi village, where the people are physically, economically
and intellectually far removed from the social milieu of the urban elite.
Analysing the sense of sacred community found here sheds light on the
CONCLUSION 199
way in which both rural and urban Ladakhis draw upon and construct
ideas about conflict and disorder, actively creating spheres of order in
their own communities and distancing themselves from the influence of
centralised power. There are similarities, I have suggested, between the
ways in which both populations negotiate their way amongst the inter-
secting spheres of power and influence that make up their worlds.
The attitudes towards conflict that I found in Photoksar were domi-
nated by a perceived need to resolve any overtly antagonistic dispute
with a ceremonial restoration of order. Good relations between individu-
als had to be publicly re-established in order to return the community to
a state of normality. Conflict was approached by considering and
elevating the interests of the community above those of the individual,
restoring harmony rather than determining individual rights. Resolution,
therefore, needed agreement between the parties, not a judgment by
some form of judicial authority. This order was supported by a strong
sense of the moral duty each individual was under to maintain harmoni-
ous relations within the community. It was a similar set of concerns that
was apparent in the attitudes of those involved in the SECMOL dispute,
namely the need to restore order in the interests of the community as a
whole, rather than to determine the respective rights of the parties.
Similar concerns and ideas about conflict were influential in the pro-
ceedings of the Shakhs Khang and the attitudes of its mediators. Indeed,
they were apparent in almost all the descriptions and discussions about
conflict that I had in Ladakh, whether with members of the educated
elite in Leh or villagers from one of the even more remote communities
I passed through on my journeys.
Implicit in these concerns was the idea that conflict represents
ruptured social relations, a dangerous tear in the fabric of the community
and the web of order that constitutes it. The nature of the judicial
process among these Ladakhis, the ways in which they understand,
approach and react to conflict and antagonism, is, therefore, shaped and
defined by their epistemology of conflict, itself supported by ontological
and moral concerns. This is to regard law, or legal practices, as a matter
of local knowledge (Geertz 1983). In Local Knowledge: fact and law
in comparative perspective, Geertz advocates the adoption of a hermeneu-
tic, rather than a functional approach to the study of law, arguing that
law is a distinct manner of imagining the real (1983: 184). Different
adjudicative styles have imaginative power ... They do not just regulate
behaviour, they construe it. (1983: 214-5) As Just (1992) points out,
however, this hermeneutic approach to the study of law contrasts with
200 CHAPTER TEN
Fuller does not elaborate on what type of study would avoid such criticism, although
2
he cites with approval certain work on legal pluralism and studies, such as that of Nader
(1990), which place law within a wider political context. It should also be pointed out
that Geertz, himself, emphasises Webers insistence that ideas must be carried by
powerful social groups in order to have social effects; that they must be institutionalized
to find a material existence in society (1973a: 314).
the hegemonic approach, which analyses law in the context of wider
relations of power, domination and political control, and has character-
ised much legal anthropology of the late twentieth century. A number of
writers in this tradition have been critical of Geertzs approach. Moore,
for example, has said that:
[it] does not take one very far in understanding what people actually do on
the ground or why they do it at particular times and places. Presenting the
traditional categories of legal discussion without the context of discourse
offers statements without speakers, ideas without their occasions, concepts
outside history. (1989: 278)
Yngvesson (1989: 1690) makes similar points, while Fuller suggests that
this approach is open to the familiar criticism that it is also idealistic;
after all, law is about repression just as much as imagination. (1994: 11-
12) It does not, in other words, take into account the wider power
relations that surround the legal process and the ways in which these
constitute and support or oppose one another. He does not, however,
2
present this as a ground for dismissing the hermeneutic approach
altogether. Ideally the anthropologist should take into account the
political and the repressive as well as the imaginative reasons for legal
behaviour.
As Just (1992) points out reviewing the literature in legal anthropol-
ogy, however, this is rarely done. It seems, he says, that we must choose
between moving outward into the grand historical machinations of class
and cash, power and privilege, or moving inward to the nubs and slubs
in the fabric of meaning and belief.(1992: 376) In the present study I
have sought to do both, on the one hand to investigate the ideal aspects
of judicial processes and their consonance, or not, with the moral and
religious world of the Ladakhis amongst whom I lived. On the other
hand, I have analysed these same processes in the context of the power,
gender and economic relations in the village, as part of the relations
between local communities and centres of power in Ladakh and, ulti-
mately, as relating to the macro-political processes that have impinged
upon the region. Nevertheless, at least to some extent, the two ap-
CONCLUSION 201
proaches remain opposed. They suggest alternative means of analysis,
alternative insights into the processes of order, and it would be a mistake
to try to unify them into a single, overarching explanatory model.
The sacred in the social
To puruse the hermeneutic approach, it is apprent that the sense of order
that underlies judicial processes in Photoksar remains largely implicit
and unexpressed. There are powerful, but inexplicit, ideas about order,
the realms in which it is defined and their boundaries. Nevertheless,
these give shape to a set of ideas about how such order can and must be
maintained and how the disputes that threaten it must be resolved.
These, in turn, relate to ideas about the status and duties of the individ-
ual within the community, the role of the yulpa as representatives of the
whole community and the relationship between them. The judicial
processes I observed in Photoksar were defined by implicit understand-
ings about what conflict was, that is, by an epistemology of order; but
they were also shaped by ontological understandings and moral con-
cerns.
The best way to make sense of this web of ideas is, I have suggested,
in terms of a sacred social space. In this case it is the local community,
whether the village of Photoksar, the village sections of the Housing
Colony in Leh or the small region of Ladakh invoked by my SECMOL
informants, that represents the social. In Durkheims terms the social is
sacred to the extent that it is that which must be preserved, that which is
supported by ritual, namely the dralgo, the village meeting and the
ceremonial resolution of disputes. It is also that which unites people as
a moral community, here exemplified in the attitudes which, as I have
described, are directed at maintaining integrity and order within it. In the
case of Photoksar, that community is represented by the us of the
yulpa, who exert authority over the individuals who constitute it, most
notably when called to restore good relations after conflict. This body
has a transcendent quality, able to exert authority over the individuals
within it.
It is one of the central findings of this study that the sacred that
defines this social community is distinct from the sacred of the religious
realm associated with Buddhism, in all its various forms. It is also
distinct from the realm of the spirits who exist outside the Buddhist
pantheon. The multitude of practitioners, rituals, deities and ideas of
202 CHAPTER TEN
Buddhism have, over the centuries, been assimilated and are continuing
to be assimilated deeply into the lives of the Ladakhi populations.
Buddhism has provided them with a soteriological framework and a set
of ritual practices and prohibitions which now define their concerns with
the afterlife: its rites and deities can assist the soul in the vital process
of rebirth. Nevertheless, the spirits are still closely linked with the
pragmatic concerns of the villagers, their health, fertility and physical
fortunes. The Buddhist protectors have come to occupy superior posi-
tions within the realm inhabited by these numina and they are here
primarily concerned with the physical and environmental fortunes of the
villagers. The community as a moral whole, by contrast, is maintained
through a host of social and moral norms, expectations and practices,
with which the spirits have little or nothing to do and which remain
distinct from their concerns with the afterlife.
The autonomy of the social
This separation of realms and the tensions it sets up is central, I would
suggest, to the dynamic way in which order is maintained in Photoksar.
The sacred social has to be actively constructed and maintained in the
face of competition and conflict between the individuals who constitute
it. It also has to be preserved against hegemonic external influences,
including the moral framework of Buddhism. This accounts, I would
suggest, for the resilience and re-emergence of distinct social spaces in
the much more fluid and complex world of the modern urban centre of
Leh.
Within the village a complex pattern of hierarchy and equality is
found and there is a constant need to achieve a balance between the two,
in order to maintain the community as a body of equal individuals.
Similar tensions have been noted by other writers in different contexts
throughout the Tibetan plateau (Stein 1972; Samuel 1993). The wide-
spread emphasis on conciliation and agreement for the resolution of
disputes and the methods employed to control and distribute power,
principally those of rotation, games and other forms of chance, contrib-
ute to these dynamics and serve to counteract the influence of more
powerful hierarchies. In the Ladakhi kingdom a centralised, hierarchical
form of judicial power was asserted by the king and his ministers, while
in central Tibet the Ganden Potrang government developed a centralised,
bureaucratic administration with complex structures of political and
CONCLUSION 203
economic power, matched by monastic hierarchies. Nevertheless, the use
of dice and chance to make judicial decisions and appointments within
these structures served, to some extent, to counteract the tendencies
towards centralisation and hierarchy. In Tibet, moreover, despite moves
towards a Weberian type of rational bureaucracy, a correspondingly
rational legal system never developed, whether based on Buddhist
principles or otherwise. Rather, there was a preference for devolving
power and discretion to regional offices and lower bureaucratic levels
and an emphasis on the value of mediation, which came to be expressed
in terms of Buddhist ideology. In Ladakh, as in Tibet, those at the
judicial centre, such as the Alchi lonpo and representatives of the Indian
legal system, asserted and assert authority over judicial processes but
local communities have always maintained considerable autonomy over
their own practices.
In Photoksar, village autonomy against external forces constantly has
to be maintained but individuals also actively engage with many of them.
There has always been a stream of individuals who have left the village -
to take part in the kings wars and in trading expeditions, to negotiate
with the kings representatives and to enter monasteries. Now they go
back and forth to the town to trade, to buy household goods, negotiate
with authorities, pursue education and go on pilgrimage to India. Such
activities, of course, can give status to those who engage in them and
they also serve to import the influence of outsiders into the village, the
superiority of aristocrats, the religious ideas transmitted by senior
monks, the material values of traders, the requirements of government
administrators and the ideals of NGO workers. I have described the
relations of deference and distance that characterise the villagers
relations with many of these outsiders. In particular, while adopting the
social and religious hierarchy that was established over the centuries,
they have also adapted it to distance the aristocracy and monks, those to
whom it gave status, from their own internal procedures. It is a dynamic
and continuing process, by which they maintain the integrity of their
own social community.
There are parallels between these processes and the ways in which
local forms of religious practice are safeguarded from the hegemonic
influence of Buddhism. The religious superiority of the Buddhist
establishments and practitioners has been accepted by the villagers. So
was the social superiority of the kings, aristocrats and monks. The
statuses of the emergent political and economically successful classes in
twentieth-century Leh are now recognised in the dral and the use of zhe
204 CHAPTER TEN
skat. Nevertheless, such individuals are distanced from internal village
processes, not invited to the village meeting, ignored when it comes to
internal decisions and symbolically set apart through the use of the same
markers of respect. The economic, ecological and democratic ideals of
the late twentieth century are only cautiously adopted. In a parallel
process, the philosophical and moral ideas of Buddhism have been
accepted, but adapted to supplement, and only partly to replace, the ideas
associated with the local spirit world. There is deference and distance in
all these realms.
The dynamism found in these processes goes a long way, I would
suggest, to explaining the events now taking place in the urban centre
and the emergence of the new spheres, patterns and processes of order
that I have described there. These are clearly derivative, in many re-
spects, of village processes and concepts. There have always been
hierarchies and inequalities in the urban centre, in wealth, social status,
political power and religious connections. Now, as the result of political
and economic developments in the late twentieth century, new forms of
status and economic opportunities are adding to the inequalities and
imbalances. Different individuals are able to dominate while old statuses
are reinforced and new divisions are created. However, the processes of
equality, autonomy, deference and distance that I observed in Photoksar
allow the creation of new forms of community and the strengthening of
existing ones. Thus, attempts by the LBA to create new forms of village
administration and leadership have been resisted, disputes are contained
and settled nangkuli, within both the old and the new communities that
have emerged in Leh. The goba and chupon are recognised as having the
authority to take charge of disputes in the town outside the structures of
the government administration, including the potentially serious irriga-
tion disputes that arise every summer. In a similar way, members of the
Shakhs Khang and the Anjuman committees ensure that disputes are
kept away from the courts. At the same time, the LBA is promoting a
new form of Ladakhi identity in its mediation processes, drawing on the
concept of yul found in the villages. New instances of the sacred social,
the place within which disputes must be contained and resolved, have
been created in the midst of the divisions and power struggles of the late
twentieth century.
CONCLUSION 205
Legal processes and political relations
There has been no shortage of power relations in Ladakh. The Ladakhi
kings, foreign invaders, aristocrats, traders, religious leaders, modern
bureaucrats, development workers and foreign ecologists have all
exercised influence in the region, through military might, bureaucratic
control and economic power. Each has shaped the dynamics of power
and order, bringing wars, foreign influences, religious idioms, economic
development, bureaucracy, democratic processes, communal tensions
and the glitter of modernity to the populations of Ladakh. However,
none of these has been defining or dominant in the construction of order
amongst the Ladakhi populations.
Nader (1990) analysed the harmony ideology that she found among
the Zapotec of Mexico as an anti-hegemonic force, one developed in
response to the hegemonic influence of Christian missionaries, as well
as to that of more recent state control. To an extent, a similar dynamic
can be identified in Ladakh. The containment and resolution of disputes
within the local community distances the authority of the police, lawyers
and courts from the internal organisation of the remote village communi-
ties, as well as those of the newer configurations in Leh town. A similar
attitude to conflict served to avoid the involvement of state agents in the
relations between those caught up in the SECMOL dispute. Comparable
dynamics almost certainly characterised the villagers internal organisa-
tion at the time of the kingdom, distancing the aristocrats from village
administration. The Leh goba and chupon, like their counterparts in the
village communities and the members of the Shakhs Khang, quietly
maintain their own forms of authority over processes of order. However,
there is much more going on here than a dynamic of domination and
resistance. There are more complex interactions found in the creation of
new communities and more positive processes in the formation of the
new spaces that come to be regarded as the nangkuli. Dynamics of
deference and distance, not just domination and resistance, characterise
the relations between these internal and external forces.
The village community, even one as remote as Photoksar, cannot,
therefore, be regarded as some sort of village republic, as a bounded,
self-contained, wholly autonomous dorpsrepubliek, successfully
resisting the domination of the centre, to cite the image of the Balinese
village thoroughly discredited by Clifford Geertz in Negara (1980).
Geertzs descriptions of the theatre state in Bali, with its expressive,
elaborate, exemplary centre, is famous but his fine ethnography also
206 CHAPTER TEN
contains a compelling analysis of the relations between the centre and
local spheres of influence. He describes the interlocking spheres of
influence - notably the ritual, economic and political - that made up a
composite political order at the local level (1980: 47). For each there
were separate, although not unrelated, institutions to manage the public
aspects of community life, the regulation of irrigation facilities and the
organisation of popular ritual. In a similar way in Ladakh, I would
suggest, the village communities with their yulpa and ideas of internal
order, the monasteries with their lamas, komnyer and Buddhist ideals
and, now, the NGOs with their local development workers and notions
of rights and development ideals, provide separate, but related, forms of
ordering. The yulpa distance the monks and development workers from
some, but not all, aspects of village organisation.
Geertz describes the relations between the centre and local institu-
tions in Bali as a complex and interlocking web of power. The ritual
organisation was matched by the technical, the centripetal was matched
by the centrifugal and the integrative by the dispersive (1980: 85).
Custom flowed down from the elaborate exemplary centre while power
was surrendered up and cumulated from below (1980: 63). In Ladakh
the kings performed significant ritual functions (Ribbach 1986: Ch 7)
and the Indian state sponsors new ceremonies and festivals as part of its
process of rule (Aggarwal 2004). The exemplary role of the centre is far
less elaborate than that of the extravagant Balinese state, but there is a
comparable, selective granting of authority to outsiders. As in Bali, those
exercising power in the centre have never fully established the type of
authority characteristic of those in a Weberian, ideal-type of state,
whether bureaucratic, feudal or patrimonial. On the contrary, there are
parallel and overlapping spheres of order - the aristocratic, the religious,
the village yulpa, the NGO committees, the modern democratic struc-
tures - which create a web of specific claims and interests. As Geertz
describes it, the political centre of gravity sat very low in this system,
as it does in all such systems. (1980: 85) In Ladakh the authority of the
yulpa, the goba, the chupon, the mediators of the Shakhs Khang and
Anjuman committee derive from local spheres of order. Adjustment and
consensus characterise their activities, as they did the hamlet and
irrigation groups of Bali. Authority is claimed by outsiders, often
successfully in the cases of those with new status in the urban economy.
However, such individuals are in many, if not all, contexts distanced
from local spheres of power: they are only selectively allowed to claim
authority over local social organisation.
CONCLUSION 207
Geertz repeatedly acknowledges his debt to Weber (e.g. 1983: 233). In his (1973b)
3
article, Politics past, politics present, which foreshadows much of his analysis in Negara,
he explicitly draws upon Webers (1968) discussion of patrimonialism and subsequent
writings in the same tradition for their insights into the nature of traditional polities and
their authority structures (1973a: 328-29).
The insights of Durkheim and Geertz need to be brought together, I
would suggest, to make sense of the way in which order is constructed
and maintained amidst the complex pattern of political, economic and
religious forces that characterises contemporary Ladakh. Doing so
combines the different traditions inspired by Durkheim and Weber
(within which many of Geertzs writings can be counted), the different
3
models of order identified by Roberts and the hermeneutic and hege-
monic approaches to law distinguished by Just. The aim is not to unite
or synthesise such approaches, which would fail to do justice to any of
them. Rather, it is to draw on aspects of each, in order to provide com-
plementary insights into the subtleties and complexities of the Ladakhis
own webs of order.
As Durkheim suggests there is a sense of the sacred in the social
which I found among all the Ladakhi groups I studied. A sphere of order
is actively constructed and maintained in the village, in the new urban
communities in Leh and also in Ladakh as a whole, particularly by those
conscious of its position within the Indian nation state. The sense of
community and order found in these spheres is maintained from below,
with a power-base in the community itself. It is a precarious order, easily
disrupted by the powerful forces of government intervention, money and
status, but it can be adapted to incorporate or distance new power-
holders, such as the new panchayat members in the villages. It can also
be created anew in complex situations, such as the new Housing Colony
of the urban centre, with its diversity of inhabitants. On a more abstract
level the sense of community embodied in the concept of the yul can be
drawn upon by those in positions of power, those involved in the SECM-
OL dispute and the mediators of the Shakhs Khang to create a new sense
of identity and belonging defined by the image of a pan-Ladakhi commu-
nity.
In Photoksar it is the gap between this sense of the social, as a moral
community, and the realm of the spirits, involved as they are in the
physical fortunes of the villagers, that is the main reason, I have sug-
gested, that Buddhism has not been able to dominate its social order. The
principles and practitioners of the religion have been physically, politi-
cally and conceptually distanced from the sacred sphere of social order.
208 CHAPTER TEN
In Ladakh, as a whole, the power structures of successive rulers, reli-
gious leaders, those at the top of the social hierarchy and the new
educated classes who staff the NGOs, intersect with and influence the
organisation of the village community, but none is able to dominate it as
the locus of order. They are distanced from the processes by which
conflict is contained and resolved, placed outside the moral order of the
community, just as the monks have always been kept apart from such
processes. Likewise, in the urban centres new spheres of order are being
created in which, almost imperceptibly, people are insulating themselves
from the interference of external forces. These are dynamic processes,
as new forms of community are added to the interlocking spheres of
order. A constant tension between the opposed forces of control and
autonomy, hierarchy and equality, characterises their internal structures.
Processes of deference and distance have long dominated the Ladakhi
populations relations with the holders of power and are continuing to
do so amidst the manifold changes of the twenty-first century.

GLOSSARY


Romanized Ladakhi and Tibetan words are followed by the Tibetan or
Ladakhi spelling, where known, and then the sense in which they are
used in the text.

aba
__
father
alamdar boys masked dance at Losar

ama
__
mother

amchi
___
practitioner of Tibetan
medicine

api
__
grandmother
babar ritual figures representing storma

offerings at Losar

bando offering for the lha

barmi
__
mediator
barsam
___
middle/between world
beda
__
itinerant musician
begar transport labour tax

bele, belpo, belmo male/female storma offerings

bumskor
___
ritual procession
with religious texts

cham
__
religious dances
chams
___
love, affection
chang
_
Tibetan beer
changskyan
___
vessel for pouring chang
chig
___
one
chowa
___
to do/make
chod khang
____
shrine room
chodpa
___
religious offering




210 GLOSSARY


chsi zungdrel
______
the harmony of religion and politics
(Tib.)

choktse
___
small table
chonme
____
butter lamp
chorten
_____
stupa (Buddhist monument)
chos
__
religion, doctrine, text, ritual
chos-sil
____
chos reading
chu
_
water
chu len me len
_______
social boycott (literally to stop
chad the lending of water and fire)

chug
__
to cause
chupon
___
water official
chutsoks
_____
village division
drao dul
____
to conquer or subdue
dralgo
___
(head of the) seating or dancing
line
dras
__
rice
dre
_
evil spirit
drib
__
spiritual pollution
drig
__
all right
drongpa
_
commoner
duk sum
_____
the three poisons
dulwa
__
to subjugate
garba
___
blacksmith
gegs shad
_______
to exorcise the evil spirits (gegs)
genbo
__
elder (Tib.)
goba
__
headman
gokpo
__
old, ruined, damaged
gonpa
___
monastery
gyalla
_
good
gyalrabs
___
history of the royal genealogy
(r)gyalpo
_
king
gyazhi
___
exorcist ritual
gyongpo
_
stubborn
GLOSSARY 211




kalon
____
high ranking minister
kha
_
mouth
khangba
__
(main) household
khangu
__
subsidiary household
khatags
_____
offering scarf
khon
__
jealously, resentment
khor
_
round, circle
khyimtses
_____
neighbour
komnyer
____
caretaker monk
lama
__
Tantric teacher, monk
lan
_
answer
las
_
work, karma
lha
_
spirit, deity
lhaba/lhamo
__
/
__
male/female spirit medium
lha khang
__
shrine room for the lha
lhandre
__
ghostly spirit
lhato
__
shrine to the lha
lha trug
___
child lha
lhende/lhenpa
__
stupid, lazy, unhelpful
lonpo
__
minister
lopchak
__
triennial trade mission from Leh
to Lhasa

lora to guard the fields from

livestock

losar
__
New Year festival
ltanmo
___
festival, spectacle
lu
_
water spirit
makpa
__
in-marrying husband
mangpo
_
much, many
membar
__x
village official (probably from
the English)

meme
__
grandfather
meto
__
bonfire

212 GLOSSARY


mi
_
man, person
mi chos (tsang
______
ma chu ruk)
____
the sixteen moral rules
mi gewa rchu
______
the ten religious prohibitions
mi kha
__
pernicious gossip
mimangs
____
commoner
mirpon
___
village official
mi ser
__
peasant, serf (Tib)
mon
__
musician
monlam
___
prayer, prayer festival
nama
___
in-marrying wife
nangpa
_
insider, Buddhist
nangkuli inside, within

nangla
_
inside, within
nangosla
__
inside, within
nga

I, me
ngatang
_
we
ngati
_
my, our
nyams
___
harm, injury, suffering
nyanba
___
to hear
nyerpa
_
village official in charge of
festivals
onpo
___
astrologer, ritual specialist
paba dough made from parched

barley flour and dried peas

pang gong shrine to the lu

patimo girls masked dance at Losar

perak
_
married womans turquoise-
studded head-dress

pha lha
_
spirit of the house and pha spun
pha spun
__
group of households
worshipping the same pha lha

res
_
turn, roster



GLOSSARY 213



rgadpo/ rganpo
__

/rgansum
_____
elder, older man
rigsngan
___
lower caste
rokspa
__
friend, helper
sadag
____
spirit of the earth
sakha
__
spring festival
sangs
___
purification ritual
sems chenmo/
______
/
chungun/lchinte
__
/
___
large/small/strong mind
shaks
____
settlement of a dispute
shakspon
______
judge, mediator
shakhs khang
_____
place of mediation, court
shkyen
__
misfortune, ill-luck
shesnying
________
protective ritual with exorcist
(dud lok) element

shimi tsalma
____
meal for the deceased ancestors
shnamtok
____
aberrations of the mind
shnyen
___
relative, relation
sho (yongs)
__
(to become) angry
shpungba
_
shoulder
shubla ear of unripe corn

shukpa

shpoches
_____
to change the juniper
skangsol
____
autumn purification ritual
skudrak
___
upper classes
skurims
__
religious ritual
skyabdro
____
to take refuge
skyu
_
noodle stew
snganme
___
old, former
spera
_
speech
stanglha
__
an upper realm inhabited by the
lha
ston zang
____
meal eaten on the eve of Losar
storma
___
exorcist offerings

214 GLOSSARY

tanka
__
religious painting or hanging
tap
__
stove
tagi flat bread (Hindi)

tangba
___
to give
trakpo
_
strong, powerful
tral
_
tax
trangpo
_
straight
tre-ba
_
tax-payer (Tib)
trelba
__
ashamed, embarrassed
trims
___
custom, rule
trimspon
_____
judge
trulku
__
reincarnate lama
tsitu cold-like illness

tsokpo
___
bad, dirty, reprehensible
tsokspa
___
group, society, association
tukpa
__
noodle stew
yal (tangs) (to give) chang as a mark of

respect

yoklu
__
the underworld inhabited by the
lu
yongba
_
to come
yul

village, land, country

yulpa

villager, inhabitant
zhal che

(churuk/
______

chuksum pa)
_____
the thirtee or sixteen laws

zhe skat
____
honorific speech
zhidag
_____
spirit of the locality
zhing
_
field
zhiwa
__
peaceful
GLOSSARY 215




Proper names


Chado Rinpoche
____

Changchub Gyaltsen
_______

Choron
____
Deldan Namgyal
_______

Drigung
__

Dro
_

Druk
__

Galden Ngamchod
________

Ganden Potrang
_____

Geluk
____

Gyalpo Dragspa
____

Gyalsas Rinpoche
_____

Gyaltsen
____
Gyelrab Salwe Melong
_______

Jamyang Namgyal
________

Kargyud
_____

Katog Rigzin Tsewang Norbu
___________

Khangltakh
___

Khanpo Rinpoche
_____

Kumbela
____

Kushok Bakula Rinpoche
________

Kyirong
___

Langdarma
___

Lhachen Gyalpo
____

Lhachen Morup
_______

Lotsava Rinchen Zangpo
_______


Lungshar
_

Morup
____

Nyingma
__

Orsal
___
Pagmodru
___

Paljor
__
216 GLOSSARY


Phuntsog Namgyal
_______

Rigzin
___

Sakya
__

Sengge Namgyal
_____

Sonam
______
Songtsen Gampo
______

Staktsang Raspa
____

Togdan Rinpoche
_______

Trashi Namgyal
_______

Tsepal Namgyal
_____

Tsewang
___

Tsongkapa
__

Trimn
___
Wangchuk ___
Yangzes _____
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INDEX
Achinatang, 188
Acts of Parliament,
Abolition of Polyandrous Marriages
Act, 33, 177
Hindu Law of Succession Act, 33
Ladakhi Succession to Property
Act,
33
Panchayat Raj Act, 192
adjudication, 85, 155-59
See also mediation, settlement
administration,
of Ladakh, 33-36, 135-39, 172-74,
191-95
of Ladakhi kingdom, 20-25
under Dogras, 29-33
of Tibet. See under Ganden Potrang
village, 29, 63-67, 137-39
administration of justice,
in Ladakhi kingdom, 22-25
under Dogras, 31-33
administrators. See under officials
Aggarwal, R. 88, 178, 187-188, 206
agreement. See under consensus, settle-
ment, unity
Ahmed, M. 38, 167, 181
alamdar, 117-18, 120-21
Alchi, 17, 24-25, 39-40, 54
See also lonpo
alcohol, 34, 37, 72, 132
Allen, N. 74, 129
amchi, 44, 49
Amdo, 131, 164
anger, 8, 68-77
Anjuman, 182-84
anthropology, legal, 10-14, 199-201
Api-Meme, 115-122
aristocrats, aristocracy, 21-22, 27-28,
39-41, 186
Tibetan, 168-69
army, 35
Asad, T. 160-61, 163
Athens, 189
authority, 206-07
categories of, 7
in contemporary Ladakh, 40, 167-
69
political, 165-66
judicial, 136, 155-65
of Ladakhi kings, 20, 25-28
monastic, religious, 28, 108, 140
of officials, state, 136-37, 178-179,
198, 203
in village, 131, 134, 141-42, 201
of yulpa, 51, 55, 63-64, 67, 83
autonomy, 135-42
of the social, 202-05
Ladakh and Tibet compared, 144,
167-69
in village, 63-67, 135-42
See also LBA
Babar, 115-122
Bachofen, J. 119
Bagatam, 113
Bakula Rinpoche, 34, 39
Baltistan, 18, 32, 197
van Beek, M. 14, 29, 30, 33-39,
138, 178, 183, 187
begar, 22, 32, 53, 138, 144
See also corve labour
bele, belpo, belmo, 98-99, 118-19
Bell, C. 145
von Benda-Beckmann, K. 6, 12
Bertelsen, K. 14, 33, 37, 178, 187
Bloch, M. 32
blood money. See under mi stong
boycott, social,
in Leh, 46
in village, 54, 84
by Anjuman, 183-84
Brauen, M. 113
Bray, J. 1, 22, 29-30
Britain, British, 12, 20, 32, 76
Buddhism, 9-10, 90-92, 105
deities, rites, rituals, 88-89, 105-10
doctrine, orthodoxy, philosophy,
10, 41, 88-89, 131, 150-52,
165, 185
in village, 88-90, 105-10, 132-35,
201-02
228 INDEX
See also morals, monasteries,
monks
bumskor, 100-01
bureaucracy,
in modern Ladakh 173, 197
in Tibet, 144, 149
Ladakh and Tibet compared, 167,
203
Carrasco, P. 9, 21-23, 143-145,148,
168
Carrithers, M. 74
Cassinelli, C. 153, 156-158, 160, 166
caste. See under class
Chado Rinpoche, 132
chance, 163-64
Chang Tang plateau, 1, 181
chang. See under alcohol
change. See under modernisation
Chanock, M. 32
China, 159
chod offerings, 93-95
chsi zungdrel, 148, 165
chos, 4, 100, 107
See also mi chos
chupon, 172-74, 204-06
class, caste, 27-28, 40, 48-49, 188
in Tibet, 168-69
See also aristocrats
codes. See under legal codes
Collier, J. 12
committees,
in village, 123,
in Leh, 172
NGO, 188-90
See also tsokspa
communalism, communal tensions and
violence, 14, 37, 176-78
community,
boundaries of, 8, 15, 66, 102-03,
125
interests of, 5-6, 87, 199
in Leh, 112, 174-75, 190
membership of, 44-45
sense of in village, 8, 48, 125-27,
176, 190, 194-95, 205-08
sense of in Ladakh, 175-76, 180-82,
184, 190, 198-99, 207
symbols of, 88-89
See also nang, sacred social
compensation, 135
absence of, 85
in Tibet, 149-50
See also settlement
compromise. See under settlement
conciliation, 150, 155, 158-66
See also settlement
conflict,
condemnation of, 8, 65, 69, 70-72
definition of in village, 78-79, 84-
87, 126
in Leh, 171, 173-74, 184-86
over land, 23, 171, 178, 181, 183
and religious ideals, 150, 159, 185
conformity, 62-64
See also individualism
consensus, 52, 157-59, 166, 189
See also harmony
corve labour, tax, 143-45
Cosman, C. 127-128
cosmology, 10, 151
cosmology of law, 10, 151
cosmological order, 88-89, 100-02,
108, 165
courts, 6, 10, 165
in Ladakh 136, 171, 174, 181, 184-
85,
in the Ladakhi kingdom and under
Dogras, 23, 31-32
in Lhasa, 151-57
Cowan, J. 87
Crook, J. 1, 30, 33, 36, 46
Cunningham, A. 21-24
customs, 53-58
old, 45-46, 94, 122-24
and traditions, 180, 183
See also law, norms, trims
Dalai Lamas, 4, 19-21, 26, 41, 106,
134, 143-44, 164-65
fifth, 143, 147-48
seventh, 143
thirteenth, 143-44, 161
fourteenth, 106, 134
Dargyay, E. 164
Dawa Norbu, 141, 153-154, 160
Day, S. 88, 97
deference and distance, 170, 190, 195,
203-05, 208
deities. See under Buddhism, spirits
Delhi, 2, 197
Denwood, P. 9, 77
INDEX 229
development,
issues of, 3, 36
economic and legal in Ladakh, 33-
36
language of, 170
projects, 65, 141, 175-76, 188
in villages, 187
workers, 41, 64-65, 134-35, 141,
205-06
See also panchayats
dice, 38, 152, 155, 160, 163-64, 167,
190
disorder, 16, 87, 101, 103-04
See also order
disputes. See under conflict
Dollfus, P. 26, 43-44, 46-47, 58-59, 61,
88, 90, 97,102-103, 113-114, 120-
121, 137
drib, 89, 97, 132-34
Dogras, 2, 9, 20-21, 29-33, 138
domination and resistance, 12-13, 15-
16, 200-05
Dotson, B. 146, 148, 164
Douglas, M. 129
Dreyfus, G. 144, 147-149
dral, dralgo, 48-50, 66, 88, 139-42,
188
duk sum, 105, 109, 111
Durkheim, E. 6, 127-128, 130, 201,
207
education, 35, 50, 188
Ekvall, R. 150, 153, 156-15, 160
equality, inequality,
and autonomy, 139-42
and hierarchy, 58-62
and political ideals, 189
under panchayat system, 194
in village, 48-50
in Ladakh, 204
Ladakh and Tibet compared, 168-
89
elders,
and conflict resolution, 5, 185
in Ladakhi kingdom, 22-23
in village, 51, 80
genbo, 51
rgadpo, rganpo, 28, 174
rgan sum, 21
eldest son, 46, 49, 61-62, 171
elections, 3, 189, 194
elites,
authority of, 6, 198
in LBA, 6
in Leh, 40-41, 177, 184-85
in Tibet, 158
religious ideas of, 91, 134
Ellingson, T. 168
embarrassment. See under trelba
empire, Tibetan, 9, 146-48, 164
epistemology,
of conflict, 84-87, 199
of order, 201
Epstein, A. 85
ethical practices. See under zhiwa
exorcism, exorcist rituals, 97-98, 101,
108, 112, 117, 120
fear, 73-74, 76, 133
fertility, 88, 92-94, 101-03, 117-20
fines, 4-5, 52, 81-84
food offerings. See under chod
Francke, A. 9, 17-18, 21-22, 26, 29-31,
160
Frazer, J, 119
Frechette, A. 152
French, R. 152-153, 158-160, 162, 165,
167
Fuller, C. 200
von Frer-Haimendorf, C. 89, 104, 131
galactic polity, 144
Galwan, R. 31-32
Gandren Potrang, 165, 167, 202
Geertz, C. 89, 199-200, 205-207
Gellner, D. 107
Gellner, E. 91
Gelukpa sect,
monasteries in Ladakh, 17-19
monks and rituals, 100, 108
in Tibet, 143
genbo. See under elders
gender. See under women
van Gennep, A. 120
gewa rchu, 105, 109-10, 132, 133, 146,
150-51
Gluckman, M. 129-130
goba,
in Ladakhi kingdom and under
Dogras, 22-24, 29-30
LBA and, 38
in Leh, 173-74
and panchayats, 191-94
230 INDEX
role in politics, 63-67
role in mediation, 80-83, 135-38,
170, 172
and yulpa, 50-53
gods. See under spirits
Goldstein, M. 143-146, 153, 156-158,
161-162, 164, 168-169
Gombrich, R. 91
Goodall, S. 170
Gordon, T. 29
Grist, N. 58
Guha, R. 12
Gulliver, P. 85
Gupta, R. 174
Gutschow, K.
Gyatso, J. 22-23, 90
gyazhi, 99-101, 107
Haarh, E. 25
Hamid, A. 125
Hanlon, H. 31
harmony,
and concepts of order, 126-28,
130
ideals of in Leh, 177, 181-82, 184
ideals of in Tibet, 157-59, 166
indifference of spirits, 103-04
in village relations, 69, 72
harmony ideology, 10-13, 205
Harrison, S. 11
Held, D. 189
Hemis, 18, 21, 23, 28-29, 33, 52, 54,
99, 101, 106, 114
Hemis Shukpachan, 26, 58, 92, 103,
137, 194
Henderson, D. 11, 157, 159
Hertz, R. 119
hierarchy, 168-69, 202-03, 208
religious, 91-92, 100-03, 107-08
social, 27-28, 40, 121, 141, 178
in village, 58-62, 88-89, 170
See also equality
Hill Council. See under Ladakh Auton-
omous Hill Development Council
Hocart, A. 26, 165
Hornblower, S. 189
households, 44-48
khangba and khangu, 43-66, 69, 80
Housing Colony, 172, 175, 201, 207
Howard, N. 18
Howell, S. 11
Huber, T. 91, 146, 150-152
ideology,
of Buddhism, 85, 203
legal, 152, 154-55
political, 158-59
of unity and agreement, 58, 168
See also harmony
India,
Ladakh as part of, 1-3, 196-97
legal system of, 6
party politics, 187-88
See also laws
individuals, individualism,
moral obligations of, 109
in Leh, 5
in village politics, 51-53
within the sacred social, 127-30
concepts of the person, 74-78
See also conformity, mind, rights
inheritance. See under primo-geniture,
rights
insiders. See under outsiders
irrigation, 53, 54
in Leh, 172-73
See also chupon
Islam, 1-2, 9, 18-19, 196
See also law
Jammu, 2, 41
Jammu and Kashmir state, 14, 33, 176,
192
Jest, C. 164,
judges, judiciary, magistrates,
in the Ladakhi kingdom, 23, 25,
30, 31
in Sakya, 153
in Tibet, 154-63
judgment, legal, 163, 179, 189
Just, P. 165, 199-200, 207
justice, 11, 125-26, 150-66, 186
kalon, 20-24, 27, 33, 39, 173
See also aristocrats
Kaplanian, P. 44, 46, 48, 58, 95, 103,
112-113, 133
Kapstein, M. 133, 146, 148
karma, 75, 83, 105-06, 109-10, 132,
151-52, 165
Kaul, Shridhar, 30
Khaltse, 36, 44, 80
khangba, khangu. See under house-
holds
INDEX 231
Khanpo Rinpoche, 39
Kargil, 42, 58, 177, 196
Kargyud sect, 18
Karsha, 17, 27
Kashmir. See under Jammu and Kash-
mir state
Khetsun Sangpo, 107
kingdom, of Ladakh, 17-28
kings, Ladakhi,
Deldan Namgyal, 19, 25
Gyalpo Dragspa, 24
Jamyang Namgyal, 18, 22-23, 27
Lhachen Gyalpo, 17
Lhachen Morup, 26
Namgyal dynasty, 18-22
Nyima Namgyal, 27
Phuntsog Namgyal, 20
Sengge Namgyal, 19
Tsepal Namgyal, 20, 21
komnyer,
activities in village, 92, 99, 101,
113-14
conflict with in village, 122-24
exclusion of, 51
Klein, A. 107
Kumbela, 161, 163
Kyirong, 144, 154, 160-162, 164, 166,
Ladags Melong, 3
Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development
Council (LAHDC), 34, 37-8, 186,
191-93
Ladakhi Buddhist Association (LBA),
6, 37-41, 178-88, 191
campaigns of, 58, 204
demands for autonomy, 14, 37-38,
176
Ladakhi Gonpa Association (LGA), 4-
5, 34, 37
Ladakhi kingdom. See under kingdom
Ladakhi kings. See under kings
lamas, 13, 107-08
in Ladakhi kingdom, 21
in Ladakhi politics, 28, 38-39
Lamayuru, 30, 44, 122
komnyer, 54, 66, 99, 122
monastery, 51, 55, 92, 139
land. See under property
land settlement, records, 29, 31-32, 61,
138
law, laws,
customary, traditional, 31-32, 129,
183
under Dogras, 31-32
of India, 33-34, 177
international, 12
Islamic, 182-83
See also local knowledge
LBA. See under Ladakhi Buddhist As-
sociation
Leach, E.119
legal codes,
in Ladakh, 24
of Mongols, 147
in Tibet, 146-49, 149-52, 153, 160,
163, 165
legal principles, 4-5
and Buddhism, 9
in Tibet, 155-63, 165-66
Levine, N. 33
LGA. See under Ladakhi Gonpa Asso-
ciation
lha. See under spirits
lhaba, 75, 97, 106, 107, 116
lhato, 92, 95-97, 102
Lingshed, 42, 99, 100, 102, 107, 133,
135-6, 141, 175, 192
local knowledge, 63, 199
lonpo, 21-27, 30, 39, 49, 137
Alchi lonpo, 30, 38, 39, 137-38
See also aristocrats
lopchak, 19
Lopez, D. 133
lots, casting lots. See under dice, chan-
ce
lu. See under spirits
Luczanits, C. 17, 77
Lungshar, 161-63
magistrates. See under judges
Maine, H. 129
makpa, 46
Malyon, T. 77
Manali, 35
Markham, C. 160
marriage. See under polyandry
Mauss, M. 74, 129
mediation,
in Ladakh, 137
in Leh, 5
in Tibet, 154, 155-59
in village, 78, 80-83, 175
232 INDEX
See also Shakhs Khang, Anjuman
meetings, village. See under yulpa
Meisezhal, R. 147
membar,
in Leh, 122-23
in village, 47
See also goba
Metcalf, P. 120
mi chos, 105, 146-48, 150-52
mi kha, 133-34
mi gewa rchu. See under gewa rchu
mi stong, 150
Michael, F. 144-45
Miller, B. 145
Mills, M. 9, 47-49, 75, 88, 91, 93, 97-
98, 100-03, 106, 107-08, 110, 133
mind,
concept of sems, 133-34
and morality, 72-75, 126, 135
and physical illness, 98
modernity, modernisation, 2-3, 13, 16,
112, 122-24, 198, 205
Moghuls, 18-20
monasteries,
in Ladakhi kingdom, 21, 26
in traditional Tibet, 143-45
relations with villages, 41, 92
See also specific names
Mongols, 19, 143, 146-47, 148
monks,
in Ladakhi politics, 9
Gelukpa, 100, 106
novices, 139-40
social status of, 4, 8-9, 203
and yulpa, 51, 66, 140
See also komnyer, lama, zhiwa
Moorcroft, W. 20
Moore, S. 200
morality, morals,
of anger, 70-72
and Buddhism, 89-90, 105-10,
134, 150-52, 201-02
and mind, 72-75
and responsibility, 75-78, 199
and spirits, 90, 103-05, 110-11,
123
separation of realms, 130-35, 142,
207
codes, See under mi chos
See also gewa rchu
Muslim,
populations, 13-15, 33
and Buddhists, 37, 84, 176-78
customs of, 35, 58
See also Anjuman, Islam, Kargil,
Kashmir
Mustang, 131, 164, 168
Nader, L. 11-13, 200, 205
nama, 45-46, 56, 59
nangla, nangosla, nangkuli, 8, 125-27,
136, 172, 174, 204-05
nangpa, 9, 177
Nawang Tsering Shakspo, 9, 17
networks, village, 46-47, 58, 82, 127
NGOs. See under non-governmental
organisations
Nimmu, 180-81
nomads, 38, 131, 149, 167, 181
non-governmental organisations
(NGOs), 170, 175-76, 188-89, 192-
95
Norberg-Hodge, H. 36, 175
norms, 6, 7-8, 104, 130, 197, 202
See also customs, order
Nubra, 38, 137, 171
numina. See under spirits
Nyeraks, 44, 96, 175
oaths, 22-23, 160-63
Obeyesekere, G. 104, 130
officials,
government, 30-36, 41, 136-38,
140
judicial. See under judges
local, 23, 30, 51, 64, 172-74, 180,
191-94
in Tibet, 143-49, 154, 156-58, 161-
63, 166, 168
onpo, 49
in Leh, 173
in village politics, 64
Nyeraks, 96
ritual practices of, 107-08
Sumdo, 99-100
ordeals, 24, 152, 160-61, 163
order,
biological, 121
dynamics of, 7, 13, 16, 170, 172,
184, 199, 202-05, 208
hermeneutics of, 198-201
law and, 32, 137
INDEX 233
in Leh, 174
in Tibet, 165-66
models of, 6, 11-12, 207
sense of, 8, 199, 201
in Leh, 5-6, 13, 182, 184-86,
190
in village, 48, 77, 125-27
sources of, 16, 28, 196-98, 205-08
web of, 3, 111, 124, 127, 199, 207
See also cosmology, sacred social
Ortner, S. 9, 89
Osmaston, H. 1
outsiders,
and insiders, 123-24
exclusion of, 51, 66, 134, 139-41
relations with, 203, 206
status of, 66
Pakistan, 1, 35, 197
panchayats, 174, 191-95
See also Acts of Parliament
Parkin, D. 76-77
patimo, 117-21
peace, peacefulness,
ideals of, 58, 67, 126
in Leh, 181, 184-85
of Ladakhi kings, 24
peace-loving, 10, 185-86
Peerenboom, R. 159
person. See under individual
Petech, L. 17-23, 27, 50
Peter, Prince, 33
Peters, E, 161
phalha. See under spirits
phaspun, 46-47, 62, 93-95, 104, 114-
15, 130
Phyang, 39, 96, 107
Phylactou, M. 34, 43, 44, 88
Pirie, F. 9, 65, 104, 131, 150, 164
Pocock, D. 76
police, 4-5, 136-37, 178-81
politicians, 2, 13, 41, 140, 196
pollution, spiritual. See under drib
polyandry, 33-34, 37, 45, 58, 177
See also primo-geniture
Primo-geniture, 33-34
See also polyandry
property,
division, 33-34, 61-62, 80
ownership, 138, 171-72
protection. See under spirits
punishment, 23-24, 83-84
in Tibet, 145-66
Quigley, D. 27
Ramble, C. 89, 131-32, 164
Ramsay, H. 9
rebirth. See under karma
reconciliation. See under settlement
Redfield, R. 142
reincarnation, 104-05, 143, 168
retribution. See under revenge
revenge, 76-77, 149, 150, 162
rgadpo, rganpo. See under elders
Riaboff, I. 9, 25, 46, 88, 95
Ribbach, S. 26, 31, 206
Richardson, H. 146
Ridzong, 44
Rigal, J-P, 112-13
rights,
sense of,
in Leh, 5, 170, 179,
in village, 85-87, 126
inheritance, 171, 178
rites of passage, 112, 119-22
Rizvi, J. 1, 19-20
Roberts, S. 6-7, 207
rotation, 50-51, 65, 141, 164, 169,
189-90
See also tral
sacred social, 127-30, 201-02
sacrifices,
animal, 18, 34, 92, 96, 113
human, 96
Sagent, P. 164
Sakha, 93
Sakya, 144, 146-47, 153-54, 156-57
Samuel, G. 8-10, 89-91, 107, 129, 144,
167, 168
sangs, 92, 95-97, 106
Schickelgrber, C. 89, 132
Schuh, D. 147-50, 154
Schweieger, P. 20, 24
SECMOL. See under Students Educa-
tional and Cultural Movement of
Ladakh
sems. See under mind
settlement,
compromise, 5-6, 11, 155, 158, 185
conciliation, 84, 149, 155-59, 162-
63
See also agreement, adjudication,
234 INDEX
mediation, shakhs
Shakabpa, W. 146
shakhs, 78, 84, 136
Shakhs Khang, 15, 178-82, 185
shame. See under trelba
Shara, 175, 186
Sherring, C. 150
Shigatse, 145
shrine. See under lhato
skangsol, 100-01, 108
Skardu. See under Baltistan
skudrags. See under aristocrats
skurims, 98-99
Snellgrove, D. 91
social boycott. See under boycott
Sonam Wangchuk, 4-6, 186
Songtsen Gampo, 146
Southwold, M. 91
spirits,
dre, 98
evil, 97-100, 121-22
gegs, 97-99
lha, 92-93,
lu, 88, 92, 94-95, 102-03
phalha, 46-47, 92-95
yullha, 92, 95-98, 102, 106-07, 116
and Buddhism, 105-10
in Leh, 106-07, 172
and moral order, 103-05, 110-11
protection of, 44, 47, 91 of,
realms of, 88-89
See also lhato
Spituk, 17, 34, 39, 106
Srinagar, 34
Srinivas, S. 38, 89, 102, 137
Starr, J. 12
Stein, R. 90, 109, 168
Stongde, 27
storma, 98-99, 115, 118-19
Students Educational and Cultural
Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL),
dispute, 3-9, 16, 186, 199
members of, 10-13, 15, 198
Tambiah, S. 144
taxes, taxation,
in Tibet, 143-45
in Ladakhi kingdom, 21-22, 25,
27
under Dogras, 29-30
village, 45-46, 53-55, 59, 137-38
See also tral
temple, village, 51-52, 92, 114-15
texts, religious, 111, 133-34, 135
Thupstan Chhewang, 39-40
Tibetan empire. See under empire
Togdan Rinpoche, 39, 98, 113, 123
torture, 150, 152, 154-55, 160-61, 163
trade, traders, 1-2, 17-20, 197, 203, 205
trakpo, 96
tral, 45, 53-55
transcendent, transcendence, 131, 164,
168, 201
Trashi Lhunpo. See under Shigatse
trelba, 62-63, 174-75, 181,
tribunal. See under courts
trims,
meanings of, 125
under Dogras, 23
irrigation, 174
in Ladakhi kingdom, 25
in Leh, 193-94
in village, 55-58
trulku. See under reincarnation
truth, 125-26, 158-63
Tucci, G. 90-91, 98, 99, 147
tsokspa, 172, 187-88
LBA, 187
unity, idea of,
in Ladakh, 181
among yulpa, 53, 58, 167
in village, 139
symbolised by yullha, 102
Uray, G. 148
yal, 81-84, 86, 103
See also settlement
yul, 127, 176-77, 207
yul chig, 181
yullha. See under spirits
yulpa, 50-53, 201
authority of, 55, 57, 66-67, 123
Walsh, E. 164
Wanla, 42-43, 55, 191-92
Wangchuk. See under Sonam Wangch-
uk
Wazirs, 29-32
wealth, 59-61, 187, 190
Weber, M. 6-7, 165, 197, 200, 203,
206-07
women,
and morality, 70,
INDEX 235
roles of in village, 50, 52
social status of, 48-49
under panchayat system, 194
vulnerability of, 95, 97
Wylie, T. viii, 143
Yngvesson, B. 200
Young Mens Buddhist Association
(YMBA), 33-34, 37
See also Ladakhi Buddhist Associa-
tion
Zangskar, 27, 82, 95
See also Karsha
zhal che. See legal codes
zhe skat, 66, 140
zhiwa practices, 108-110, 135, 100, 106
BRILLS
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1. Martin, D. Unearthing Bon Treasures. Life and Contested Legacy of a Tibetan
Scripture Revealer, with a General Bibliography of Bon. 2001.
ISBN 90 04 12123 4
2/1 Blezer, H. (ed.). Tibet, Past and Present. Tibetan Studies I. 2002.
ISBN 90 04 12775 5
2/2 Blezer, H. (ed.). Religion and Secular Culture in Tibet. Tibetan Studies II. 2002.
ISBN 90 04 12776 3
2/3 Ardussi, J., & H. Blezer (eds.). Impressions of Bhutan and Tibetan Art. Tibetan
Studies III. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12545 0
2/4 Epstein, L. (ed.). Khams pa Histories. Visions of People, Place and Authority.
2002. ISBN 90 04 12423 3
2/5 Huber, T. (ed.). Amdo Tibetans in Transition. Society and Culture in the Post-
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2/6 Beckwith, C.I. (ed.). Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages. 2002.
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2/7 Klimburg-Salter, D. & E. Allinger (eds.). Buddhist Art and Tibetan Patronage Ninth
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2/8 Klieger, P.C. (ed.). Tibet, Self, and the Tibetan Diaspora. Voices of Difference.
2002. ISBN 90 04 12555 8
2/9 Buffetrille, K. & H. Diemberger (eds.). Territory and Identity in Tibet and the
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2/10 Eimer, H. & D. Germano. (eds.). The Many Canons of Tibetan Buddhism. 2002.
ISBN 90 04 12595 7
3. Pommaret, F. (ed.). Lhasa in the Seventeenth Century. The Capital of the Dalai
Lamas. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12866 2
4. Andreyev, A. Soviet Russia and Tibet. The Debacle of Secret Diplomacy, 1918-
1930s. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12952 9
5/1 Joseph, U.V. Rabha. 2007. ISBN-10: 90 04 13321 6,
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5/3 Opgenort, J.R. A Grammar of Jero. With a Historical Comparative Study of
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5/4 Tolsma, G.J. A Grammar of Kulung. 2006. ISBN-10: 90 04 15330 6,
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5/5 Plaisier, H. A Grammar of Lepcha. 2006. ISBN-10: 90 04 15525 2,
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6. Achard, J.-L. Bon Po Hidden Treasures. A Catalogue of gTer ston bDe chen
gling pas Collected Revelations. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13835 8
7. Sujata, V. Tibetan Songs of Realization. Echoes from a Seventeenth-Century
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8. Bellezza, J.V. Spirit-mediums, Sacred Mountains and Related Bon Textual Traditions in
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9. Bray, J. (ed.). Ladakhi Histories. Local and Regional Perspectives. 2005.
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10/1 Beckwith, C.I. (ed.). Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages II. 2006.
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10/2 Klieger, P.C. (ed.). Tibetan Borderlands. 2006. ISBN-10: 90 04 15482 5,
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10/5 Ardussi, J.A. & F. Pommaret (eds.). Bhutan. Traditions and Changes. 2007.
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10/6 Venturino, S.J. (ed.). Contemporary Tibetan Literary Studies. 2007.
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11. Karmay, S.G. The Great Perfection (rdzogs chen). A Philosophical and Meditative
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13. Pirie, F. Peace and Conflict in Ladakh. The Construction of a Fragile Web of
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