On 16th March, a press conference and protest was held under the banner of the Zanskar Coordination Committee headed by Ladakh Buddhist Association Zanskar in Jammu– the winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir as an extension of the protest of 11th March held amidst snow-covered Zanskar. With the recent protest in Zanskar, it becomes indispensable to revisit its political history as a site of oppression to have a clear understanding of the present crisis. Zanskar sub-division, one of the first three tehsils of Ladakh was merged with Kargil District with its creation in 1979.
Spread over an area of 7000 sq. km, Zanskar, a Buddhist dominated region with a minuscule Muslim population is a part of the Muslim populated district of Kargil whereas Muslims are in minority in the Leh district of Ladakh. For the namesake, there is Zanskar Constituency but until today not a single leader from Zanskar has represented it from the same constituency. The sole reason is the gerrymandering of the densely populated region of Suru Valley with sparsely populated Zanskar. The bifurcation of Ladakh into twin districts on religious identity has been easy prey for Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists in Ladakh. The influence of Rashtriya Swayam Sevak and Imam Khomeini in Leh and Kargil is a visible dividend of this polarisation. This polarisation of Ladakh on religious identity has resulted in various problems in the past if one revisits the history of Ladakh.
Different narratives deluged social media from the twin districts on religious line in the favour and against the legitimacy of the demand of Zanskar. Jamyang Tsering Namgyal, the Bhartiya Janta Party Chief Executive Councillor of Leh district supported the separate district for Zanskar and put forwarded this cause before Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his recent visit to Leh in February, 2019. On the contrary, Sajjad Kargili, a prominent journalist from Kargil has termed the protest a brainchild of RSS and alleged that it is being organised to disrupt the peaceful environment of Ladakh. The dialectic of solidarity and disagreement do not stop here.
Rinchen Namgyal –President of Ladakh Buddhist Association Youth Wing has also supported the cause of Zanskar and accused Kargil district of discrimination with Zanskar. Needless to mention, many people from both the districts of Ladakh have shown their solidarity for the cause without religious and regional differences. Still, many people from Kargil are in disagreement with this demand for a separate district. This disagreement and skepticism arise from the timing of the demand for the separate district just before the general election and the experiences of the last five years of Bhartiya Janta Party in Centre and State. BJP with its Hindutva politics harbours a soft corner for Buddhist people of Ladakh and this politics of religion has resulted in its hatred in Kargil. BJP and RSS have supported the cause of the trifurcation of State and UT demand of Ladakh whereas Muslim dominated Kargil flaunts the idea of Greater Ladakh.
A fine example of BJP’s love for Ladakh in the guise of religious intimacy is the grant of long pending demand of division status to Ladakh with its base in Buddhist dominated district of Leh. Was Division granted to address the agonies of the people of Ladakh or was it only a political gimmick to isolate Kashmir in the interest of the bigger politics of India. After the declaration of Ladakh Division, people of Kargil mass protested and accused BJP of playing divisive politics on religious identity. Kargil demanded the rotational basis headquarter of the division in Leh and Kargil to have an equal share of Ladakh division. In this parlance, one can question why is it bothering some section of Kargil if Zanskar is demanding separate district unequivocally cutting across religious and regional differences for its holistic development? This epistemic gap in their approach exposes the double standard of people who are against the district’s demands of Zanskar.
Moreover, the people of Nubra and Changthang have also been seen raising their demands for a separate district. In such impasse, it will not be a cake walk for the people of Zanskar to materialise their goal and have to march along for their final destination. This protest has raised the election fever in Ladakh and shifted the battlefield to the marginal region of Ladakh (Zanskar, Nubra, Changthang) from the twin districts of Ladakh- Leh, and Kargil which have attracted the eyes of the government for a long time.