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ABSTRACT
This article examines the relationship between affect and the state in post-colonial India, foregrounding sympathy as a feeling that arises from the embodied encounters and interactions between the state and a local population through state-building in the Himalayas. It establishes the emergence of sympathy in the materiality of the Himalayas and in the historical conjuncture of the passage to Indian nationhood in Ladakh, which was marked by the mobilisation of the local population in the defence of the territory of India amid the first Indo-Pakistani war (1947–48). This article argues that sympathy, in leading the state to reimagine the population of Ladakh, is integral to the reconfiguration of the region into a border area and to the rethinking of the sovereignty of the Indian state at its Himalayan frontier.
Acknowledgements
This article has benefited from suggestions by two anonymous reviewers. I am grateful to Rune Bolding Bennike for the invitation to contribute to this special section. This research was made possible by the generosity of the people of Sham in Ladakh. I am grateful to them for answering my questions and sharing memories of the war with me. Any shortcomings are my own.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Martin Louis Alan Gompertz, Magic Ladakh (New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, [1928] 2000), p. 66.
2. Virendra Verma (ed.), A Legend in His Own Time (Chewang Rinchen) (Dehradun: Young India Publications, 1998), p. 138. The term ‘Nunnu’ is the colloquial and affectionate term for Ladakhis. It means ‘younger brother’ in Ladakhi, most commonly encountered as ‘nono’. Of particular significance here is that Colonel Chewang Rinchen, a celebrated Ladakhi soldier, called his soldiers Nunnu. As one reviewer of this article pointed out, its use by an Indian officer could be seen as an expression of the paternalistic perspective Indian officers had for their local/tribal troops, which furthered colonial attitudes towards Ladakhis. While I agree with this observation, my point here is to highlight the qualitative shift in the conception of the Ladakhis’ attitude that this comment expresses, and which, as I describe below, is characteristic of many depictions of Ladakhis by the Indian army and in the popular media.
3. Shafqat Hussain, Remoteness and Modernity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015).
4. See, for instance, Mona Bhan, Counterinsurgency, Democracy, and the Politics of Identity in India (New York: Routledge, 2014); and Martijn van Beek, ‘True Patriots: Justifying Autonomy for Ladakh’, in Himalaya, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, Vol. 18, no. 1 (1998), pp. 35–46.
5. Gunnell Cederlöf and K. Sivaramakrishnan (eds), Ecological Nationalisms: Nature, Livelihoods, and Identities in South Asia (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006).
6. Rune Bolding Bennike, ‘Governing Landscapes: Territorialisation and Exchange at South Asia's Himalayan Frontier’, in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol. 40, no. 2 (June 2017).
7. ‘Soldiers of the Soil: The Ladakh Scouts Regiment’, in Ladags Melong (Summer 2005), pp. 28–9.
8. Fernanda Pirie and Martijn van Beek (eds), Modern Ladakh: Anthropological Perspectives on Continuity and Change (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2008). For the economic impact of the military versus the tourist industry in Ladakh, see Tsering Tashi, ‘The Green Primitives of the Himalayas Revisited’, in Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education: Studies of Migration, Integration, Equity, and Cultural Survival, Vol. 2, no. 4 (2008), p. 299.
9. ‘Soldiers of the Soil’, p. 29; and Tsewang Rigzin, ‘The Impact of the Army in Ladakh’, in Ladags Melong (Summer 2005), pp. 24–30.
10. See, for instance, David N. Gellner (ed.), Borderland Lives in Northern South Asia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013); and Sahana Ghosh, ‘Cross-Border Activities in Everyday Life: The Bengal Borderland’, in Contemporary South Asia, Vol. 19, no. 1 (2011), pp. 49–60.
11. Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).
12. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (New York: Pantheon Press, 1985); and Elizabeth Povinelli, The Empire of Love (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).
13. Nils Bubandt, ‘From the Enemy's Point of View: Violence, Empathy, and the Ethnography of Fakes’, in Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 24, no. 3 (2009), p. 566.
14. Danilyn Rutherford, ‘Sympathy, State Building, and the Experience of Empire’, in Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 24, no. 1 (2009), pp. 1–32; and Ann Laura Stoler, ‘Affective States’, in Daniel Nugent and Joan Vincent (eds), A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 4–20.
15. Rutherford, ‘Sympathy, State Building, and the Experience of Empire’, pp. 4–5.
16. Ibid., p. 8.
17. Ibid., p. 6.
18. The limits of Sham (from gsham, meaning ‘lower’ in Ladakhi), also referred to as Sham Ilaqa (‘area’ in Urdu), or sometimes ‘lower Ladakh’ in the literature, or even ‘Sham Valley’ by Ladakhis, appear to be fluid—some Ladakhis suggest that the area extends from Nyemo to Khaltse, while others consider that it reaches Skurbuchan village and even the border with Pakistan.
19. The Dogra were a Hindu Rajput dynasty.
20. Ravina Aggarwal and Mona Bhan, ‘Disarming Violence: Development, Democracy, and Security on the Borders of India’, in Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 68, no. 2 (2009), p. 521.
21. Nayanika Mathur, ‘Naturalizing the Himalaya-as-Border in Uttarakhand’, in David N. Gellner (ed.), Borderland Lives in Northern South Asia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), pp. 72–93.
22. Alexander Cunningham, Ladak: Physical, Statistical and Historical (Varanasi: Pilgrims Publishing, [1854] 2005), pp. 41–81.
23. Martijn van Beek, ‘Identity Fetishism and the Art of Representation’, PhD dissertation, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 1996, pp. 97–104.
24. Ibid., p. 89.
25. See, for instance, the ‘Introduction’ written by Francis Younghusband in Ghulam Rassul Galwan, Servant of Sahibs (New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1923), pp. ix–xi.
26. Gompertz, Magic Ladakh; and Walter Asboe, ‘Farmers and Farming in Ladakh (Tibetan Kashmir)’, in Journal of The Royal Central Asian Society, Vol. 34, no. 2 (1947), pp. 186–92.
27. Abdul Ghani Sheikh, ‘Economic Conditions in Ladakh during the Dogra Period’, in Martijn van Beek, Kristoffer Bertelsen and Poul Pederson (eds), Ladakh: Culture, History, and Development between Himalaya and Karakoram (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1999), p. 342.
28. Benjamin D. Hopkins, ‘The Frontier Crimes Regulation and Frontier Governmentality’, in Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 74, no. 2 (2015), p. 370.
29. On the Frontier Crimes Regulation, see ibid., pp. 369–89.
30. Until 1947, the Ladakh wazarat (district) included Baltistan. Hence, although the joint commissioner was present in Ladakh year round due to a presence in Baltistan, in what constitutes today's Leh District, this presence (and interest) remained limited.
31. These explorers were often on private missions, but ended up acting as official envoys of the British colonial administration. While some were motivated by patriotism or money, others were seeking fame or adventure.
32. See Prem Singh Jina, Famous Western Explorers to Ladakh (New Delhi: Indus Publishing Co., 1995).
33. Sir Francis Edward Younghusband, The Heart of a Continent. A Narrative of Travels in Manchuria, across the Gobi Desert, through the Himalayas, the Pamirs, and Chitral, 1884–1894 (Memphis, TN: General Books, [1904] 2009), p. 114.
34. Ghulam Rassul Galwan, Servant of Sahibs (New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, [1923] 2005).
35. It should, however, be noted that Galwan's account, although ‘first-hand’, received the editorial interventions of his American and British sponsors. For a discussion of the editorial framing of Ladakhi caravaneers’ accounts, see Martijn van Beek, ‘Worlds Apart: Autobiographies of Two Ladakhi Caravaneers Compared’, in FOCAAL, Vol. 32 (1998), pp. 55–69.
36. See, for instance, Fanny Bullock Workman, In the Ice World of Himalaya (New York: Cassell & Co. Ltd, 1900).
37. See also Ravina Aggarwal, Beyond Lines of Control (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), pp.114–6.
38. See Jina, Famous Western Explorers to Ladakh, pp. 15–7.
39. Peter Bishop, The Sacred Myth of Shangri-La (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).
40. The spelling of this village is sometimes Nimoo, Nimmo or Nimmu.
41. The raiders were Pathans and Gilgit Scouts, the latter a military group that the British had organised to defend against Russia during the Great Game, and who pledged allegiance to Pakistan after Independence. See Kim Gutschow, ‘The Politics of Being Buddhist in Zangskar: Partition and Today’, in India Review, Vol. 5, nos. 3–4 (2006), p. 473.
42. S.N. Prasad and Dharm Pal, History of Operations in Jammu and Kashmir (1947–48) (Dehradun: Natraj Publishers and the Ministry of Defence, Government of India, [1978] 2005), p. 346.
43. The Indian State Forces were troops that had been recruited by the princely states. They operated alongside the Indian army.
44. Verma, A Legend in His Own Time, pp. 24–5.
45. Lt. General Manohar Lal Chibber, Pakistan's Criminal Folly in Kashmir (New Delhi: Manas Publications, 1998), pp. 144–50.
46. Ibid., p. 8.
47. Verma, A Legend in His Own Time, p. 15.
48. Chibber, Pakistan's Criminal Folly in Kashmir, pp. 159–60.
49. Ibid., pp. 155–6.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid., p. 183.
52. Ibid., pp. 183–4.
53. Laurent Berlant, ‘Introduction: Compassion (and Withholding)’, in Laurent Berlant (ed.), Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion (New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 7.
54. Chibber, Pakistan's Criminal Folly in Kashmir, p. 155.
55. Shamma is the name given to the people who live in the Sham area of Ladakh.
56. For more on this, see Karine Gagné, ‘When Glaciers Vanish: Nature, Power and Moral Order in the Indian Himalayas’, PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Montreal, Canada, 2015.
57. Rutherford, ‘Sympathy, State Building, and the Experience of Empire’, p. 5.
58. Verma, A Legend in His Own Time, p. 138.
59. Although Ladakh was arguably a border area under Dogra rule, the experience of this border, which was poorly enforced in Ladakh itself, differed in many ways from the tracing of post-colonial borders that followed the creation of the new nations of South Asia and which, as David Gellner points out, are associated with a process of territorialisation, often through militarisation, that changed interactions between people and the state. See David N. Gellner, ‘Introduction’, in David N. Gellner, Borderland Lives in Northern South Asia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), pp. 1–23.
60. During the 1950s, India and China conducted discussions over the control of Aksai Chin. For China, the territory's strategic importance was that it provided a link between Xinjiang and Tibet, circumventing the impenetrable Kunlun Massif. The Chinese claim refuted the McMahon Line, which had established the frontier between India and Tibet at the beginning of the twentieth century. Despite these unsettled issues of sovereignty over Tibet, the Chinese built a segment of the Tibet–Xinjiang highway in Aksai Chin in 1956–57. As this part of Ladakh was poorly monitored by the Indian authorities, they only found out about the construction of the road when it was published on a map in 1958.
61. Although geographically, in Ladakh, the Karakoram constitutes the northernmost border, the belief that the Himalayas, which stretch for 1,500 miles across the north of the subcontinent, are a natural border for India has long prevailed See, for instance, Census of India 1931, Vol. 1, cited in van Beek, ‘Identity Fetishism and the Art of Representation’, pp. 111–2.
62. Neal A. Kemkar, ‘Environmental Peacemaking’, in Stanford Environmental Law Journal, Vol. 25, no. 1 (2006), pp. 75–8.
63. Jatinder Singh Bedi, ‘World's Highest, Biggest Junkyard’, in Tribune India (29 Aug. 1998) [http://www.tribuneindia.com/1998/98aug29/saturday/head2.htm, accessed 4 Feb. 2017].
64. Rutherford, ‘Sympathy, State Building, and the Experience of Empire’, p. 25.
65. Verma, A Legend in His Own Time, pp. 51–2.
66. Dr. Renu, ‘Battle Tested Ladakh Scouts’, in Asia Defence News, Vol. VIII, no. 5 (15 May 2013), p. 31.
67. The Ladakh Scouts were formally raised by amalgamating the 7th and 14th J&K Militia Battalions and included many Ladakhis who had joined the army during the first war with Pakistan.
68. Verma, A Legend in His Own Time, pp. 136–8.
69. These officers come from various regiments and are attached to the Scouts for a period of two years.
70. Lionel Caplan, ‘“Bravest of the Brave”: Representations of “the Gurkha” in British Military Writings’, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 25, no. 3 (1991), p. 594.
71. Ibid.
72. Also noteworthy is that the Pakistani incursion that triggered the war was discovered by a local Ladakhi while he was grazing his sheep on a pastureland that overlooks the India–Pakistan border. His sharp observation received extensive media coverage too.
73. Eric S. Margolis, War at the Top of the World (New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 69.
74. I found that dissatisfaction towards the presence of the army in Ladakh is generally directed at the encroachment of military installations onto common land, rather than calling into question the deeply geo-political position of Ladakh and the presence of the army itself.
75. Stoler, ‘Affective States’, pp. 4–20.
76. Willem van Schendel, ‘Making the Most of “Sensitive” Borders’, in David N. Gellner (ed.), Borderland Lives in Northern South Asia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), pp. 396–404.
77. See James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).
78. See Aggarwal, Beyond Lines of Control; and Aggarwal and Bhan, ‘Disarming Violence’, pp. 519–42.
79. It should nonetheless be noted that the relationship between civilians and the army in Ladakh is not comparable to that in the Kashmir Valley, where the law of exception grants the Indian military extensive power in dealing with the civilian population and where military mistrust towards civilians prevails. Moreover, state–society relationships in the Kargil district, which has a Muslim majority, differ from those in Leh district, which has a Buddhist majority. See, for instance, Bhan, Counterinsurgency, Democracy, and the Politics of Identity in India; and Radhika Gupta, ‘Allegiance and Alienation: Border Dynamics in Kargil’, in David N. Gellner (ed.), Borderland Lives in Northern South Asia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), pp. 47–71.
80. Stoler, ‘Affective States’, p. 6; emphasis added.
81. Rutherford, ‘Sympathy, State Building, and the Experience of Empire’, pp. 6–7.
82. For a Ladakh-specific context, see van Beek, ‘Identity Fetishism and the Art of Representation’; for the Kashmir Valley, see Shubh Mathur, ‘The Perfect Enemy: Maps, Laws and Sacrifice in the Making of Borders’, in Critique of Anthropology, Vol. 33, no. 4 (2013), pp. 429–46.
83. Ravina Aggarwal notes how this long-prevailing situation only started to change after the Kargil War in 1999, when the Indian army realised it needed more personnel who could cope in the high mountains. See Aggarwal, Beyond Lines of Control, pp. 218–9.
84. Gupta, ‘Allegiance and Alienation’, p. 108.
85. Bhrigupati Singh, ‘The Headless Horseman of Central India: Sovereignty at Varying Thresholds of Life’, in Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 27, no. 2 (2012), pp. 383–407.
86. Rutherford, ‘Sympathy, State Building, and the Experience of Empire’, p. 4.
87. See P. Stobdan, ‘Army's Ingenious Frontier Diplomacy’, Institute for Defence Studies Analyses (5 Feb. 2014) [http://www.idsa.in/idsacomments/ArmysIngeniousFrontierDiplomacy_pstobdan_050214, accessed 4 Feb. 2017].
88. On this, see van Beek, ‘Identity Fetishism and the Art of Representation’, pp. 97–104.