Thursday 31 May 2012

Ms.Rigzin Chodon

 (On literature of Ladakh) 


Ms.Rigzin Chodon have a penchant for Books on Ladakh. No not on the flashy magazines on Ladakh to lure domestic and international tourist , but the one which she feels every Ladakhi must  read , to see how the literature of ladakh evolved , in a way how  we evolved ! 


There are books written in English, German, French, Urdu, Bodyig and many more languages. I am going to take a closer look at the literature of Ladakh. We all know that Ladakh had a background of the Silk Route Trade. Ladakh was the hotspot where traders would meet, exchange goods; rest and hire ponies, overseers and potters for their journey either towards Kashgar, Yarkhand or towards Mongolia, Tibet, and Afghanistan. So along the trade route while important trading transactions took place the route actually played a vital role in integrating the kind of people that we are today, reflecting our glorious past as a meeting ground for various people. We have historians who say that Ladakhis are a blend of the Mons, the Dards, the Aryans and the Tibetans. If you look properly at our background, we can actually see that the Ladakhis from Nubra are different; while people from Changthang are similar to Tibetans. Ladakhis from Sham and the Hanu-Pas have Aryan features. Our identity can be shaped from how distinct we are even when we all call ourselves ‘Ladakhis’. We are a confluence of many races.

The first written source that I came across was Alexander Cunningham’s book ‘Ladak’ written in 1854. It was written in English and covers almost all aspects on the region of Ladakh. We have many other authors who wrote on Ladakh from the beginning of the nineteenth century. What I’m pointing out is that we had the German Missionaries and the British officials who employed people to survey and write chronicles on Ladakh. Since they saw a different and a unique culture in our region many more eager and enthusiastic lot got drawn towards Ladakh and from the 19th century onwards we have actually got a very good collection of books on Ladakh.That is just the contribution from the European side, the kind of books that are written by the westerners, the explorers and the adventurers.

Apart from that when we look at the religious aspects, we can see that we have lots of books on Tibetan Buddhism, we also have books related to Islam but I have really not looked into either of them in detail so I won’t discuss it right now.

 Ladakh also has archeological evidences to prove our historic pedigree, even now if you look carefully in your villages I’m sure you will be able to find one or two instances where signs on the rocks somewhere or some petrogylphs can be seen which is actually a marker of our past. I saw shapes of stupas carved into two boulders near the main road towards my village. After talking to the elders of my village, I found out that there was a particular trader who used to come and trade in and around my village (Kairy, Changthang, 110 kilometers away from Leh). I got to know from my elders that he came from Kashagar side (present People’s Republic of China). In order to communicate while trading they made use of ‘pidgins’ which can be defined as, ‘artificial language used for trade between speakers of different languages.

So I would like to request each and every individual to make it a point to get a copy of any books on Ladakh and read it and encourage others to read a book on Ladakh and see it for yourselves how we are depicted in those books. The kind of literature that is evolving on Ladakh is in its nascent stage, but I can see that we can contribute in our own special ways through magazines, novels, poems, articles etc. and develop a genre of literature in the English language, using English language as a medium to put across what some of us have not been able to do in our regional language i.e. Ladakhi/Bodyig.

Thank You.

Ms.Rigzin Chodon is doing her Mphil (Centre for English studies)  from JNU Delhi can reach her on rigzone316@gmail.com and for more information join her facebook group page with the name ‘Books on Ladakh and More’ (https://www.facebook.com/groups/180162595427470/)









Wednesday 30 May 2012

Ms.Chemet Ladol

 (Chemet Ladol on Feminism in Ladakh.)
  
Chemet spoke meekly on the issue of feminism in Ladakh. She objects that in Ladakh women has equal status as we generally perceive. After joining JNU she had totally different view on this issue, and when she went back to Ladakh she could easily see where and how patriarchal things are working.
She cited specific instance of Tangtse Village where they were constructing a Gompa and women were doing all the manual work and man just instruct the work to women. The crowd cheered for her brave speech...
Her small speech gave much sense to our slogan yes “We dare Speak

Ms.Sonam Angmo

(Speaking on the impact on Environment of Ladakh through blind influx of tourism)
 
Nature made cycle for every resources and also runs this cycle beautifully (water cycle)  , but somehow human disturb this cycle for his own greed . we do not follow the nature's rule of cycling things for sustainable growth .We need to reuse the water we extract from underground. The water we use excessively should get back to underground so that the water gets recharge.

We are extracting gallons of water for flushing system in toilets used by tourists lowering  the underground water table extensively without doing anything back to it for recharging the water table.despite receiving as low as 50mm annual precipitation.
I think we are ignoring the fact that why a tourist visit a place ?....they visit to see how we live without causing any harm to nature, so if so they visit us they should have to accept us the way we have been living and the way we are living not the way they want to.

We expect her complete researched speech soon on this issue on our speak Ladakh platform.
Ms.Sonam is doing her research from JNU Delhi , can reach her on sonamwangmojnu@gmail.com

Tuesday 29 May 2012

Mr.Muzaffar Hussain Tangrhong





Speak Ladakh" conveys two ideas, idea of speaking and idea of Ladakh. Idea of Ladakh tells how we imagine ourselves as Ladakhi and what exactly means to be belonging to Ladakh particularly in modern world and here I feel there’s a break--there’s an evolution in terms of "the society" we were from our past. The important aspect we need to understand is that, the world we live is compressed, in terms of space ,in terms of time. So we are very much part of the global village.Though we have been part of  the trans-Asian trade route but now the impact is very much more. We need to see the connection with whatever
happening across the world. Because we are living in a world where any kind of incidence, any kind of issue have implications for us. Say for example, the problem of tourism in Leh. Here we need to see how can we
build local and global initiatives and how we can join these initiatives to create an alternate model of tourism or some model which is very much sensitive to Ladakh. We tend to oversimplify things and see things in isolation--these problem is in Ladakh so we have to deal within Ladakh. While we are living in a world where the actual cause can be located somewhere in Europe, somewhere in New Delhi. Here I feel like whenever we say about "speaking", the challenge is we should not narrow down ourselves or limit ourselves to the barriers of Ladakh, we need transcend those imagination and see the actual cause of that (beyond in the inter-connected world). Second thing is about speaking, as Chorol has spoken about. This century where we have all kinds’ conflicts, and here we need to see, what is the role of "dialogue" and "speaking". Human civilization is in process and the first thing which separated us from the animals in cultural term was language. What is important thing about language, speaking generate ideas, ideas as EMERSON quoted “Ideas rules the world” and here we need to see how we convey our ideas among ourselves and how we actually resolve issues or how we try to find solutions to issues in terms of dialogue and I think since the time is very much limited, probably I would like to speak in depth in some of the other discussion.... probably following up.
Thank you

Muzaffar is pursuing his phd in International Relations from JNU Delhi 
Can reach him on  muza.ladakh@gmail.com

Mr.Konchok Paldan

Mr. Konchok Paldan
( On his research on four Border areas in North-West of Ladakh )


From very long time we heard and we still hear the grievances of Partition between India and Pakistan from Punjab to Kashmir.
But here Mr.Konchok Paldan reveals the grievances of partition, no not the partition of 1947 but lesser known to common people the partition of 1971.The region of Pakistan that came under India in 1971 war.

In his own words :

During partition in 1947, the entire Baltistan including Turtuk areas of Khapulu district then was in Pakistan until the split occurred in the aftermath of 1971 war, followed by cease-fire which came into force with effect from 1700 hours on December 17. The focus in the 1971 Indo-Pak War was on East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, although the war was also fought along the Cease Fire Line (CFL) in Turtuk area on Ladakh’s north-western border with Pakistan. Chalungka was until then (1971) the last border village of Pakistan. In 1971 Major Chewang Rinchen of the Ladakh Scouts and his troops captured four out of the 14 villages in Baltistan, with a total area of 804 sq km, before the ceasefire was declared on December 17. Those four villages are Thang, Tyakshi, Turtuk and Chulungkha. There are voluminous literature on partition of India as a unique event and the collapse of the state of Pakistan creating Bangladesh in 1971. However, scholars and specially partition's have shown laxity in bringing the partition event of 1971 in Ladakh within the realm of intellectual and academic discourse. When the border was drawn it was drawn all of sudden resulting division of hundreds of families. Its been more than four decades people are longing to meet their relatives stranded across the border, yet no arrangement has been made by both the states (India and Pakistan).

We Request Mr.Konchok Paldan to prepare a concrete speech on this whole issue.Konchok Paldan is doing his PhD from JNU New Delhi and can reach him on aldanjnu2012@gmail.com





Ms. Tsering Chorol

Tsering Chorol 
On why speaking is Important



Why is it important to speak out.To have great thoughts is one thing but to put them in action is a completely different thing. no matter how high we think, until and unless we give our thoughts shape in the form of words, our thoughts will serve no real purpose. Its time people stand up and speak out what they think in their heads to bring about real changes around them..

Her speech was mixed with impeccable Hindi which was giving more intense to her speech and comprehensible for audience.A moving and mind boggling speech from Ms.Tsering Chorol.

We expect her complete speech in future as well.
She is doing her M.Phil (hindi translation) from JNU New Delhi can reach her on tseringladakh2@gmail.com

Monday 28 May 2012

Speech of Sunday on Saturday !  
Date: 26-May-2012
Venue : JNU New Delhi 




Thursday 3 May 2012

Preparation of speech



Does the preparation means getting together of some faultless phrases written down or memorized ? No Does it mean the assembling of few casual thoughts that really convey very little to you personally? Not at all. It means the assembling of your thoughts , your ideas , your urges. And you have such thoughts , such urges .You have them every day of your waking life . They even swarm through your dreams.Your whole existence has been filled with feeling and experiences. These things are lying deep in your subconscious mind as thick as pebbles on sea shore.Preparation means thinking , brooding , recalling , selecting the ones that appeal to you most.
While preparing , study your audience first. Think of their wants and wishes - that is sometimes half the battle.