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- Who knows why you did all this. Perhaps to benefit large Indian farmers who needed places to sell surplus grain. Perhaps to benefit trucking companies and road building companies, who would make lots of money by opening up new “markets.” Or perhaps because you sincerely believed that Ladakh was poor and needed to be “developed.” Whatever the reason, the effect was to devastate the Ladakhi culture.
- Your permission was needed for any tourists to come, for any stores to be built, for any factories to be built. Apparently, you didn’t consider the impact that this would have on Ladakh.
- You also ruined Ladakhi indigenous education by forcing young people to attend schools that taught them to feel inferior to “developed” cultures that had dams and industry and huge plantations and big cities and cars and . . . .
- There may be others who are guilty, but without you, none of the bad stuff happens.
3. The Ladakhis
- Yes, you had a wonderful culture in many ways, but ironically it was the weakness of that culture that is leading to its decline. Your leading philosopher, Tashi Rapkis, says, “We should not fight.” If you can’t fight, then how can you save your culture? You needed to organize to stop development, to stop the roads, to stop tourism, to stop movie theaters from being built, to stop the factories. Unless you can fight there is no way to preserve your way of life.
