Challenge moves to change the demography of Ladakh

There are all-out efforts by anti-national elements to change the demography of Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir. It would be instructive to first get a background on the region’s topography. The terrain is sandy, lacks oxygen and is generally inhospitable.

Ladakh is divided into two districts, Leh and Kargil. While Leh is Buddhist-dominated, Shia Muslims are the largest population in Kargil. The area is not overly populated, given the rough terrain. There are roughly 1.15 lakh Shias and about 1.35 lakh Buddhists in this area. Hindus, Sikhs and others constitute about 10,000 of the population. Women outnumber men when it comes to numbers. The Shias in the region are followers of Imam Ayatollah Khomeini. There are a number of foreign Islamic NGOs who are active in the area and there is regular and substantial funding of local Shias.

In the Buddhist areas, the tradition of sending one son to become a lama (monk) continues. In some families, girls are also sent for baptism.

The history of Islam reaching Ladakh goes back roughly to 1000-1100 AD. But the religion started to make its presence felt in the 16th century, when the King of Ladakh Raja Namgyal got stuck in Skardu, faced with blinding snowfall. Waiting for the snow to melt, he became a guest of the local Nawab of Skardu for a few months.

Such a long stay obviously meant matrimonial alliances. The Raja returned with the daughter of the Nawab as his wife and a few women slaves as dowry. For the first time, a mosque came up on the banks of the Sindhu river and another at the central Leh market.

Since then, Islam has grown by leaps and bounds in the region. Today, there are all-out attempts to convert Buddhists to Islam using vast amounts of foreign funding. Except for a couple of towns, there is dire poverty in the region, making it a fertile ground for conversion through allurement.

Post-Independence, awareness levels among the Buddhists has gone up. In 1989, they launched an agitation against Kashmiri Muslims which went on for two years, but given the close ties between the two communities, the stir petered out.

In 1992, Shia Muslims and Buddhists reached an accord that Muslim boys would not marry or run away with Buddhist girls. But this agreement proved to be temporary. Between 1992 and 2000, 24 girls were abducted in Leh district and till 1995, 45 Buddhist girls had been abducted in Kargil. These are all figures provided by the police.

Thanks to the state government, there is also a surreptitious attempt to take over jobs and land in the region, in addition to seats in engineering and medical courses. In Ladakh, Muslims are much better placed than Buddhists and occupy virtually all important positions in the region. Its impact was most evident during the Kargil War when Pakistani intruders were provided shelter and Indian Army deliberately misguided, leading to unnecessary casualties on the Indian side.

Things have reached such a pass that these high officials turn a blind eye to any cases of conversion, voluntary or enforced, of Buddhists to Islam. But when it is the other way round, meaning if a Buddhist man marries a Muslim girl, he is subjected to all sorts of harassment by the state machinery. In other words, there is a clear mandate to convert as many Buddhists as possible to Islam so as to change the demographic character of the region.

In Kargil, there are reports of 50-plus conversions of this kind in recent times, leading to an agreement between the Buddhist Sangh and the Ladakh Islamic Sangh not to bless any more inter-religion marriages. Sadly, the latter have not stuck to their bargain.

The modus operandi to effect such conversions is quite simple. The police administration goes out of its way to provide protection to the Muslim boy who has married a Buddhist girl, harass the girl’s family and prepare marriage documents in such a way that if the case reaches a court of law, the girl has no option but to admit that the marriage is legal. This way, the whole process of allurement and marriage is foolproof.

The Buddhists are absolutely right in demanding that the state government introduce anti-conversion laws as they exist in Madhya Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh. Unless stern steps are taken, the Buddhist population in the Ladakh region stands seriously imperilled.

It is also instructive to remind readers that while Kargil is dominated by the Shias, there is a smattering of Sunni Muslims there as well and there is no love lost between the two groups.

But the fanatics are reassured that the rest of India is not too concerned about what is happening in a remote part of the country. If the Buddhist population is coming down, be it so. The Ladakh Buddhist Sangh has published a list of 45 conversions, all of which have long narratives and sordid backgrounds.

There is also immediate need for the police to identify and curb activities of extremist Muslim organisations who have made converting Buddhists their main agenda. The record of the police, mostly dominated by local Shia Muslims, has thus far been to look the other way when a conversion case is registered. Unless the government pays heed to this troubling and recurring feature in this sensitive border state, the consequences in the long run could be terrible.

The writer is an RSS leader