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Radhika Gupta is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology & Global Sociology in Leiden University. She received her PhD in sociocultural anthropology from Oxford University in 2011. Her research interests are wide-ranging and include the study of borderlands, politics of security, anthropology of religion (with a focus on Islam), tourism, environmental humanities and critical theory. Her research focuses on South Asia. Radhika has also worked in international development organizations (2000-2007) on social inclusion with a focus on community-based water management, environmental justice and indigenous peoples’ rights across South and Southeast Asia. Her book Freedom in Captivity: Negotiations of Belonging along Kashmir’s Frontier examines how borderland dwellers negotiate regimes of state security and their geopolitical location in everyday life. She has been a Research Fellow at Centre for Modern Indian Studies, Goettingen University, Germany and a Post-doctoral Research Fellow (2011-2013), Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany.
Prof. Gupta has been interviewed by Jaishree Chouhan.
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Q1. Would you like to recall your personal experiences while working with or around the tribal population of various South Asian borderlands? What are the social or cultural patterns that is common for them all?
Radhika: Tribal people in India and in the borderlands in South Asia cannot be subsumed within a singular socio-cultural paradigm. During the colonial period, the category of ‘tribe’ was produced in contradistinction to caste even though the two terms were often used interchangeably in ethnographic writings. The term ‘tribe’ was generally used to classify communities that claimed descent from a common ancestor, lived in primitive conditions, and practised animism. The recognition of tribal communities was predominantly an administrative exercise that was not grounded in consistent definitions. In the Constitution of India, over 400 groups have been accorded the status of Scheduled Tribes (STs). The criteria for recognition as an ST as laid out by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs in India include “primitive traits”, “geographical isolation”, and “backwardness, reflecting a colonial legacy. This recognition is, however, an important avenue for affirmative action for historically marginalised groups such as Adivasis.
I have conducted research primarily in the Ladakh borderland and cannot speak for other south Asian borderlands. Eight tribal groups in Ladakh received ST recognition in 1989 as part of a struggle for autonomy within the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. Being identified as ST was important for shoring up their political identity and was also an important avenue to make material claims upon the central government. Ladakhis do not, however, identify themselves in terms of essentialised traits attributed to popular conceptions of ‘tribe’ such as primitivity. There is enormous cultural diversity in the Ladakh borderland underpinned by linguistic differences among different ethnic groups. In my research, I found a vibrant competitive cultural politics among different ethnic groups rife with debates about identity and language. Every group was eager to be heard and recorded by a researcher. It was a wonderful experience to learn about the poetry and folksongs of the region, hear legends about ‘ancient’ Ladakh and see how history is presented through the prism of contemporary cultural politics.
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This interview is published in the book compiled under TMYS Review June 2023 project, themed on
TRIBAL HISTORY & TRIBAL REPRESENTATION IN HISTORY
in collaboration with Centre for Asia Pacific Initiatives (CAPI), University of Victoria.
TRIBAL IDENTITY & CULTURE - I
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Q2. Ladakhi tribes are custodians of a vibrant cultural legacy and rich heritage, and women are crucial to that legacy. Do you think this legacy is under threat because of modernisation, migration and religious conversion?
Radhika: I want to be clear that when I refer to Ladakh’s cultural identity, I refer to both Buddhists and Muslims, and to Leh and Kargil district. Certain cultural traditions and practices in Ladakh have been threatened by the forces of modernisation. But with increasing (unsustainable levels) of tourism in the region, many cultural traditions have also been commodified and put on display for consumption by outsiders. On the one hand, this has led to the revival of festivals such as Mamani held in the coldest time of winter every year that puts on display and celebrates traditional food in the region. On the other hand, the performance of tribal identity in state-endorsed formats of representation such as song and dance in traditional costumes has also led to the production of culture as artifice, which does not always correspond to the way people lead their lives every day. Nevertheless, there is immense consciousness about the (potential) loss of culture among Ladakhis and the younger generation is experimenting with creative ways of preserving certain traditions.
The spectre of religious conversion in public discourse in mainstream India and among politicized Buddhist constituencies in Ladakh is part of a larger politics in contemporary India that stokes demographic anxieties. Culture and heritage in Ladakh is more under threat from rampant ecological destruction and uncontrolled tourism than from imagined religious conversion.
Q3. Ladakh and Himalayan region are demographically unique in many senses, so are the tribal communities and their issues of livelihood. Kindly shed some light on the specific issues of tribal women from these areas.
Radhika: The issues faced by Ladakhi women cannot be disentangled from the larger politics and socio-economic changes that have swept through the region since the 1980s. Militarization, tourism, and modernisation have resulted in massive changes in land use patterns in the region with an impact on agriculture and pastoralism that have historically been resilient sources of sustenance. These forces have diminished food sovereignty and self-sufficiency. Ladakhi women’s labour has always been at the core of agriculture. Due to a combination of anthropogenic changes (e.g. rampant construction) and climate change, in rural areas women struggle with sustaining agriculture amidst declining water sources for irrigation. Out-migration of the younger generation to urban areas has added to their burden. In urban areas women also bear the burden of simultaneously working in the tourism industry and the governmental sector besides tending to the small plots of land that continue to be cultivated
Another challenge that women in Ladakh have to face, especially for those living in villages distant from urban centres such as Leh and Kargil, has been access to healthcare facilities. Primary health care centres, as in many other parts of India with tribal populations, are poorly equipped. Women’s health and freedom to make reproductive choices and control over their bodies also has been directly impacted by the politicization of religious identities. Demographic anxieties among Buddhists have manifested in de facto pronatalist policies and led to increasing moral policing of women to prevent inter-religious marriages.
Q4. Borderland politics between nations and territories has been affecting lives and movements of these tribes. How do you see the political situation with respect to the tribal women in Ladakh and border areas of the region?
Radhika: Ladakh is sandwiched between two highly geopolitically sensitive and contested borders – with Pakistan in the West and with China in the East. In contrast to other South Asian borderlands, there is virtually no cross-border mobility in Ladakh. In the eastern sector, ongoing and recently escalating conflicts with China have led to a loss of grazing land along the LAC (Line of Actual Control) for pastoralists. The concomitant impacts on the pastoral economy have exacerbated livelihood challenges that these communities were already facing due to denuded pastures because of climate change.
There are many villages along the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan in western Ladakh and in proximity to the LAC in eastern Ladakh with “divided families” – families that have been separated by shifting borders during the 1947, 1965, and 1971 wars. In Kargil, where I have conducted long-term research, I met a few women from the generation that experienced 1947 partition who were never able to meet their natal families after the border was sealed or women who were forced to get divorced from their husbands because they were split by the border. Little has been written about the damage wrecked by the serial partitions resulting from the wars between India and Pakistan in this region. Any disturbance along its borders generates immense fear of another war.
Q5. The Himalayan tourism industry saw recent expansion at the rate never seen before. This economically viable opportunity has different dynamics for tribal communities of the region. How does this affect Ladakhi tribal women?
Radhika: The unsustainable expansion of tourism in Ladakh can be seen as a temporary blessing but a long term curse. Especially for educated women living in urban areas such as Leh, tourism has offered new entrepreneurial opportunities such as running an all-women’s café or a women-run trekking agency. In villages where people have converted their homes to guesthouses or offer homestays for tourists, more money in the family also means more daily comforts for women. In the long run, however, rampant tourism that is completely unaligned with the ecological capacity of the region will ultimately threaten the livelihoods of all Ladakhis. Too much reliance on tourism will enhance the risks mitigated by the co-existence of diverse livelihoods, destroy the environment (now one can smell diesel pollution in the air in Ladakh during the peak tourist season), exhaust scarce water resources (from the tube-wells that have been dug by hoteliers), and create new health problems. As a Ladakhi woman friend of mine put it, “Earlier in Ladakh, no one had tension ki bimari (the illness of tension). Now everyone has tension”. She attributed this to everyone chasing money.
Q6. Your chapter titled “Asad Ashura: An Indigenous Cultural Tradition” in the book, Recent Research on Ladakh edited by J. Bray and M. Ahmed (2009) fascinates us immensely. Please share your insights and experiences.
Radhika: When I started a year of PhD fieldwork in Kargil district in 2008, I was surprised to see that many villages held a mini-Muharram at the hottest time of the year towards the end of July and early August. It was referred to as Asad Ashura and was held to recall the martyrdom of Imam Husain on the battlefield of Karbala in 680 CE. Asad Ashura is a remembrance of the intense heat in Karbala and the thirst experienced by Imam Husain and his companions when their enemies cut off access to water. In my reading of scholarship on Shi‘as I had never come across a reference to Asad Ashura. This fascinated me and I tried to find an explanation for why it seems to be – to the best of my knowledge – indigenous to Ladakh and Baltistan. Going to Asad Ashura gatherings in 2008 was the first time I experienced the ritual mourning of Muharram. I found it very moving. I also learnt a lot about the rich material culture of Shi‘ism through Asad Ashura commemorations in Ladakh and then later in the year during Muharram.
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Interviewer: Jaishree Chouhan
Jaishree Chouhan is a Junior Research Fellow at Department of English, University of Rajasthan. Her areas of study entails comparative narratology of mediums and dynamics of discourses on new emerging mediums of expression. Being an Assistant Professor on Guest faculty, she has also presented and published papers on intersections of digital humanities in national-international conferences.
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This interview is published in the book compiled under TMYS Review June 2023 project, themed on
TRIBAL HISTORY & TRIBAL REPRESENTATION IN HISTORY
in collaboration with Centre for Asia Pacific Initiatives (CAPI), University of Victoria.
TRIBAL IDENTITY & CULTURE - I
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