Abstract
This article analyses the socio-cultural dynamics of the multi-religious communities in the Western-Himalayan Zangskar (Zanskar) region, in which identities based on religious exclusivity, including the political aspirations grounded in them, are rejected in favour of communal identities, which transcend the religious allegiances of their members. The area studied is the Zangskar Valley, where the main locality, Padum, the focus of my research since 2002, was for a long time the only community in the valley where two religions, Buddhism and Islam, were practised. In this paper, I outline how external factors, such as pressure from the Indian State and tourism activities, have affected the socio-cultural dynamics and sense of identity among the Padumpa (the people of Padum). I show the original elements on which Padumpa identity is built, describe these new external influences, and demonstrate how these factors interact in defining the socio-cultural community.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Administrative sub-division of a district.
- 3.
Assistant collector at the tehsil i.e., sub-district level.
- 4.
According to the parental theory (Levi Strauss 1949), it is always the same group which is ‘wife-giver’ and the same group which is ‘wife-taker’.
- 5.
See Testart (2007, 96): “If leaders are prestigious to give, they are powerful in what they lend.” [“Si les chefs sont prestigieux de donner, ils sont puissants de ce qu’ils prêtent.”] In Zangskar, testimonies attest that those women who converted to Islam through marriage were converted only for their lifetime. They could choose to be buried or incinerated upon their death. In other words, from the Kashmiri Muslims’ point of view, the King was giving them women, but from the Buddhists’ point of view, these women were lent for their lifetime. The King was thus establishing his power over all Zangskarpa.
- 6.
The Lambardar or Nambardar [number] is the revenue collector at village level.
- 7.
See Clastres, (1974: 19): “The stumbling block of classical thinking on power: it is impossible to think apolitics without politics, immediate social control without mediation, in other words, society without power.” [“La pierre d’achoppement de la réflexion classique sur le pouvoir: il est impossible de penser l’apolitique sans le politique, le contrôle social immédiat sans la médiation, en un mot la société sans le pouvoir.”]
- 8.
See Down to Earth (2003) Panchayati Raj: a good beginning, but will there be a place for traditional institutions in modern local self-governance?
- 9.
See also Mankelow, Chap. 14, who documents a general harvest race that has developed in recent decades between Padum’s households as a result of growing economic independence of individual farming estates and a lessening of community cooperation.
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Deboos, S. (2023). Influences of Tourism, Indian Administration and Army on Community Identity Processes in Padum (Zangskar). In: Humbert-Droz, B., Dame, J., Morup, T. (eds) Environmental Change and Development in Ladakh, Indian Trans-Himalaya. Advances in Asian Human-Environmental Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42494-6_15
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