Inverted Grounds; Tethered Geographies
The Indus river is a primary connector of agricultural and transportation networks. Pictured here is Stakna Monastery, which is located southeast of Leh (image: Tushar Verma).
In 2019, the Government of India made two major changes to the nation’s constitution: it amended Article 370 and abrogated Article 35A, dissolving the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories. Prior to these changes, Article 370 had accorded Jammu and Kashmir a constitution and legislative authority, while Article 35A granted special rights to permanent residents of the state, including employment and property. The government’s unprecedented and unilateral move to amend the constitution will indelibly alter socio-political relationships and urban development in the region.
Of the two new territories created through the changes, one bears the name of the former state, while the other is Ladakh: a bucolic and resource-rich region that abuts the country’s disputed borders with Pakistan and China on the Tibetan plateau. Historically, India’s central government has provided special protections for Ladakh’s population, deeming its idiosyncratic socioeconomic and political identity in need of safeguarding. The constitutional reform is likely to be profoundly experienced in Ladakh’s built environment, which is now vulnerable to rapid urbanisation and national interests. The political changes have accelerated development proposals in the region, where advice from local conservationists and scholars is being overlooked in the pursuit of political power, capital and economic growth to support an expanding middle class. The demands for infrastructure and the national interests that are now pressuring the region threaten Ladakhis’ venerable construction wisdom with hightech homogeneity.
Resistance toward external investment has attracted a broad range of academic, economic and political stakeholders; efforts to implement the reinterpreted knowledge of indigenous Ladakhi structures and ways of living may help to maintain autonomy of regulation by the region’s historical patrons. Ladakh exhibits a strong regional identity – characterised by inaccessible mountain areas, fuel and material limitations – and sensitivity to population change. These elements, among others, have resulted in paths to urbanisation that are markedly different from those in lowland areas or more “Western” settings. Most importantly, there exists in Ladakh a tradition of human and ecological interdependence – a generational ideology of environmental maintenance that must be neither overlooked nor overtaken. In terms of the constitutional revision, the most significant change that Ladakhis may experience is alienation from their previous dominion over matters of land ownership.
As a result, planned urbanisation in Ladakh contrasts with pre-existing construction ecologies, which resist recognition as “urban”. The region’s pastoral and agrarian counterparts to its largest city and co-capital Leh[1] are often not designed by planning professionals or the state, and the means and methods of urban aggregation should remain controlled by small and local private and political entities. The situation in Ladakh, while culturally unique, reflects a wider global debate about prosperity derived from development. For whom are its benefits intended and how can exogenous investment be harnessed while still preserving indigenous forms of governance and management that sustain ancient knowledge of ecological stewardship?
Silk Route Islands
Historically, the liminal position of Ladakh was its raison d’être. Much has been written about how the territory was a conduit for the formidable trade routes that crossed the Himalayas, connecting India and Tibet to central Asia. These routes, found amidst the highest mountain chains in the world, cultivated a seasonal convergence of political, religious and economic connections to which Ladakh contributed labour – porters as well as beasts of burden. Due to its tethered but isolated geography, Ladakh became an intersection of the Islamic and Buddhist worlds, and of Tibetan and Indic cultures; as a corollary, the Ladakhi people adapted to external influences while maintaining their own identity and autonomy.
The present-day expanse of Leh (looking north), axially aligned to the historic caravan route serving the Khardung La pass (top-of-photo), which connected Leh to Central Asia, on the Silk Route.
Prior to their conquest in the 1840s by the Dogras, then the rulers of Kashmir, Ladakh was an independent kingdom that had been governed by a line of hereditary rulers. The region was thus profoundly heterogeneous, especially in the Kashmir Valley, which was predominantly Muslim and Ladakh Buddhist, while the Jammu region exhibited a Hindu majority. Jammu and Kashmir merged with India in 1947 under the Indian Independence Act, which partitioned British India into independent India and Pakistan. As a result, Ladakh’s geopolitical terrain was irrevocably transformed by the tightening and subsequent closure of its international borders with China, Tibet and Pakistan. This process eventually shuttered the region’s strategic commercial networks.
Jammu and Kashmir’s designation as an integral part of India, as established through the 1947 Instrument of Accession with India, was formally reinforced by evolutionary, legal affirmations in the form of Article 1, Article 370 and Article 35A in the Constitution of India. Through this shift of governance, Ladakh transformed from a peripheral area of the Dogra kingdom to part of the frontier of the Indian nation. As a result, Ladakh was subject to the administrative control of Jammu and Kashmir, which chose to retain an independent constitutional structure that allowed for autonomy in decision-making regarding internal affairs, with the exception of foreign policy, defence and communications (all of which remained under the purview of India’s central government).
“To this day, superimposed modernism continues as a predominant paradigm in design and development discourse throughout India.”
Ladakh was the biggest of Jammu and Kashmir’s constituent regions in terms of area but the smallest in terms of population, and this asymmetry created uneven Ladakhi representation in state-led politik. A shifting framework of political alignments created demands – largely for regional autonomy – that were directed toward the central government and the state, as noted by Martijn van Beek in his 1998 paper ‘True Patriots: Justifying Autonomy for Ladakh’. The Ladakh Buddhist Association (LBA) was the primary lobbyist and, while its precise political aspirations may remain a point of contention, van Beek describes how the group’s struggle for sovereignty was incrementally achieved. The result of one such process of political manoeuvring and agitation was the Ladakhis’ gradual success in establishing a status of Scheduled Tribes through Schedule 6(a) of the Indian constitution, which provided new protections and economic opportunities to a majority of Ladakh’s indigenous peoples.[2] Ladakh, however, has not yet received designation as a “Scheduled Area under Schedule 6(a)” which remains, to many, a more important step towards local governance. This would allow the region to benefit from special legal protections for indigenous land rights.
Ancient Borders and Modern Politics
The new union territory designation will precipitate a shift in the urbanisation of Leh, which has, since 1974, already undergone transformations resulting from the impacts of tourism, a growing population, endemic water stress, increased regional mobility, changing family structures, waning dependence on agriculture as a mode of subsistence, reliance on imported goods, and a boom in loan-driven investment capacities. These shifts have accorded some groups a record rise in personal wealth and standards of living, especially in the lowland areas around Leh, where political power is concentrated. In tandem, planned infrastructural development that was initially dedicated to supporting the region’s vast network of defence and military encampments is now being used to connect a constellation of villages with asphalted roads and steel bridges. These developments may seem progressive for a previously isolated region, but the unfettered invitation to foreign investment may have long-term effects that benefit tourists,the military and others at the expense of Ladakh’s environment, its people’s autonomy and their customs.
Ancestral properties in Ladakh have largely retained their integrity, remaining intact and opposing the property fragmentation-by-inheritance models exhibited in other regions hosting rapid urbanisation.
Ladakh’s new political reality offers the possibility of elevated autonomy but with an almost-certain commensurate rise in temptation from neoliberal market models that are designed to benefit investors and developers. As a result, the burgeoning future of the region’s built environment will stand as an informal referendum on whether or not heightened sovereignty and increased investment can strengthen the political, economic, social and spiritual structures of Ladakhi society, while still preserving the traditional wisdom that has heretofore safeguarded the region’s ecologically interdependent construction practices.
Indigenous Ladakhi Building
Habitable areas in Ladakh were traditionally settled for soil fertility and proximity to sustainable sources of water, such as melting glaciers or snow fields. As a result of the constraints of climate, terrain, and altitude, a range of demographic groups with varying traits emerged. A pastoral nomadism developed in the higher terrain, and a subsistence agrarian economy flourished in the more fertile lowlands. Climatic forces thus engendered, in each of these areas, a unique ecological equilibrium of habitation.
In many ways, Ladakh is a sedimentary paradise, due to a convergence of the Himalayan orogen, numerous lakes and the valleys of the Indus, Zanskar, Shyok and Suru rivers. Even the barren plateaus and badlands that can be found between its green bursts of cultivated valleys exhibit a diversity of rich soils. The clay-rich, lacustrine “moonlands” of Lamayuru and the friable red and white sediment of Basgo, are some examples of this regional expression. Where these regions are inhabited, their soils are often compacted into massive structures that bear the ornament of their sediment. These buildings are typically constructed with little financial or ecological cost, while also thermally adapting and regulating habitable spaces to the region’s microclimatic forces.
Soil composition historically precipitated two primary building techniques in Ladakh: rammed earth and sun-dried mud bricks, the latter of which is more prevalent. Bricks, sized 125x200x400mm, were traditionally made with soil, sand from the Indus, and chopped straw and yak dung. These bricks were almost exclusively unstabilised, meaning they were made without cement. Monolithic earthen walls were as thick as 750mm at their base, tapering to 600mm. The mass of these walls, often supported by raw stone foundations, captured heat during the day, gradually warming interiors throughout the evening. Openings in earthen walls were small and strategic, surgically placed high in exterior walls to provide natural light where needed, while minimising unwanted heat transfer. The efficacy and cultural ubiquity of massive earth construction in Ladakh are referenced in a local proverb, shared by Tashi Namgial, a Ladakhi artist: “tsam shik lhung-char phog na, saa deyzam srantey cha chan” (“the more time-related weathering that is endured by the earth, the more it is strengthened)”.
Roofs were often built from soil spread over wood beams and protected with markalak, a Himalayan clay. As noted by John Harrison, a conservation architect who has worked on a range of projects in Ladakhi villages and Leh through both local and foreign groups, markalak is “an off-white or light grey coloured clayey silt with a low sand content, rich in illite,” which comes from regions ranging from Shey to Basgo. Harrison’s drawings, one of the few foundations of documentation in the region, demonstrate why traditional Ladakhi roofs are typically flat because “the [roof] clay absorbs water and swells, holding moisture in the upper layer,” which dries quickly in Ladakh’s dry climate. In the summer, the roofs are used to support an array of domestic tasks, most notably the drying of crops. Buddhist households commemorate the symbolic highest point of the house by installing colourful, ornate prayer flags. At times, these roofs are punctured in the centre by the smoke holes (tokskya) of winter kitchens (rgyamthong). The roof parapet (chharlen), is usually built from mud-brick or stone and is layered with external cladding that uses locally grown willow sticks (talu) or extra feed in the form of brushwood from local bushes (bursts) or dry grass (yagzes).
Colourful, ornate prayer flags are commonly installed on the roofs of local households across the region (image: Tushar Verma).
Wood has historically been scarce and expensive, and thus used selectively in Ladakhi construction. Furthermore, it was commonly worked and dressed by hand, which required time and skill. Wood was employed structurally for floor joists (dungma), beams and posts (ka) on upper levels. Besides these structural uses, it was used liberally as ornament and for cladding at the parapet, or installed as wood chips between ceilings embellished with woven talu and earthen slabs in order to absorb excess dust. Internal wooden decorative elements were either carved or painted, expressing derivations of Kashmiri or Tibetan influences. Wood was employed on the external faces of the building in the form of narrow cantilevered balconies or expressed wooden frames and lintels. Often, given the dry and cold climate of Ladakh, it is possible to salvage and reassemble old timber elements.
While clay, stone, and wood were used ubiquitously in the lowlands, the pastoral nomads living at higher elevations primarily inhabited tents sheathed in fabrics threaded from yak hair. Where possible, these were huddled together to form closeknit, labyrinthian networks that supported healthy social, thermal and resource-related interdependence. Though architecturally divergent from the massive structures of the lowlands, these structures were no less intertwined with an ecologically reciprocal system of procurement and fabrication that was easily sustained.
A Fractured and “Modernised” Ladakh The increasingly incongruous relationship that has emerged between Ladakh’s indigenous methods of habitation and modern architectural palettes was preconditioned by the promotion of architectural modernism that engulfed India when the country emerged from colonialism. The epistemic and ethical challenges of post-colonialism became intertwined with modernist urban planning theories, which reoriented the social and spatial dynamics of the city toward an industrial economy. Development paradigms were often equated with Western models, such as those praised by prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who insisted that India catch up with the West.[3] These principles produced a split between elite nations and their subaltern counterparts, as well as between elites and subalterns within national boundaries.[4]
“A pastoral nomadism developed in the higher terrain, and a subsistence agrarian economy flourished in the more fertile lowlands.”
As the first foundations of a post-colonial Indian working class were developed, a subset of rural subalterns remained cocooned within an autonomous domain of cultural life and political action. Imported planning ideologies were used to devise modern Indian architecture and urban areas constructed by mechanised production; to this day, superimposed modernism continues as a predominant paradigm in design and development discourse throughout the country, and this underlying aspiration maintains a tabula rasa mentality with respect to local customs. Despite the decline of modernism, the rise and fall of post-modernity, and, eventually, the emergence of digital design and fabrication, the production of architecture in India has remained rooted in the same standards that sparked the modern movement. In Ladakh, this has heightened a tension between cultural homogenisation and heterogenisation, where an accelerated copying of “Western” approaches and foreign subsidies challenges the preservation of heritage and creative potential in the Ladakhi landscape.
Ladakh’s ecologically and socially interwoven methods of extraction and construction began to splinter in the 1980s and 1990s, as noted by van Beek and John Bray (both prolific scholars of the region), with the proliferation of boundary walls intended to mark property. These new walls, which were often built as a response to increased migrant labour and a perceived heightened need for security, introduced private thresholds to a landscape that was previously unmarked and open. The high barriers, which often included barbed wire and gates, stood where there had once been only earth, or low-lying stone walls (built so as not to obstruct the movement of local wildlife). This pattern of demarcation occurred in tandem with an agenda for modernisation, hastening the development of tourist facilities, military encampments and other structures that were all painted with the modern palette of glass, steel and concrete.
A narrow, covered pedestrian pathway in Leh’s Old Town (image: Tushar Verma).
While remote settlements, geographically isolated from this development, resisted the mass importation of foreign materials (mostly as a practical rather than ideological matter), the built environments of many villages were significantly altered by the proliferation of concrete. As a direct result, earthen walls and roofs were frequently replaced by synthetic and hybrid counterparts (typically brick constructions supported by reinforced-concrete frames), ranging between 150mm and 250mm thick. As demonstrated the world over, concrete can be poured relatively quickly and cement-based construction as opposed to clay-based assembly. Chief among these, as Paul Jaquin notes in ‘Clay: The First Cement’, is the increased embodied energy in concrete, as well as the inferior ability of cement-based structures to regulate humidity and the thermal condition of enclosed spaces, which are better managed by clay-based assemblies.
Perhaps the most alarming indicator of this material shift coincided with the 2016 renovation of Leh’s main market: a project that was executed for its “beautification”. In the process, the architectural heritage and cultural history of the market was relinquished as a range of landmarks, domestic earthen buildings, pedestrian passages and local businesses were dispossessed and demolished. They were replaced by a series of unfinished, concrete shells that were stacked and offset on either side of an axial pedestrian path. The cost of this project, ultimately, was unproductive indigenous upheaval and the loss of the Leh market’s genius loci. However, this concern was not shared by the region’s administration, as noted in the District Commissioner’s praise for the project, as described in a 2013 article titled ‘Leh Beautification Project Worth Rs 217 Crores Inaugurated in Leh’, which was published in Reach Ladakh, a local newspaper: they deemed its success “incomparable in the history of Leh”.
Executed under the umbrella of the ‘Urban Infrastructure Development Scheme for Small & Medium Towns’ (UIDSSMT, Ministry of Urban Development 2009), the beautification plan is what one might call a canary in the coal mine for the rest of the region. In 2008, Leh’s old town, known locally as Kharyog, was declared a slum under the Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) programme, an extension of the national Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). The RAY and JNNURM engines are enabled by regional councils and public-works departments with the self-proclaimed mission of providing “equitable” development, access to infrastructure and distribution of services. The predicament is outlined in Judith Müller and Juliane Dame’s 2016 journal article ‘Small Town, Great Expectations: Urbanization and Beautification in Leh’ in which they note RAY’s conviction that, “the old town historic area [in Leh] has gross infrastructure deficiencies and poor housing conditions as a result of which it is in a slum-like state, despite being historic in nature on the lines of religious towns in other parts of India.” The insistence on progress has created an intrinsic insensitivity within RAY’s conservation and restoration paradigms, which local experts Tashi Morup and Rigzin Chodon described as, “introduced without taking into account the terrain of the land and heritage value of the town”. These notions have since reverberated, giving form to a range of incoherent development patterns, which were most recently reflected in the demolition of two historical Manikhang stupas in Leh’s old town.
The imposition of neoliberal incentives and investments is holistically understood through cost comparisons (both financial and ecological) between indigenous Ladakhi construction techniques and contemporary development methods. Subsidies and supply models have decreased the cost of cement, encouraging the proliferation of concrete construction, while earthen buildings face issues of perceived material scarcity, rising costs of labour and technical immaturity. Local timber from willow and poplar trees faces similar neglect and expense due to the overwhelming supply chains of imported timber from other states. These manipulated markets and politics of procurement, especially in the Himalayan region, also deny a wide subset of the population affordable access to local wood. The favouring of imported models and materials at the expense of local customs creates a value imbalance where concrete buildings assume higher property values than earthen and wooden structures.
A narrow alleyway in Leh’s old town, abutted by two properties that have been restored by LOTI, THF, and other partners.
Technologically deterministic solutions are still employed by national urban development engines, which operate with outdated agendas based on a capitalist system that manifests “weakly and unevenly”, as observed by Rajnayaran Chandavarkar in his book History, Culture and the Indian City (2009). But subsidised, foreign models fail to acknowledge what Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet noted when in conversation for Dialogues II (1980), that “tools always presuppose a machine, and the machine is always social before it is technical.” The social significance of construction industries invariably demonstrates how external models mirror colonial patterns of harmful ecological extraction and profit return at the expense of local customs. If unchecked, this type of urbanisation would indelibly and adversely alter the landscape of Ladakh. An alternate approach for the region might eschew urban homogeneity in favour of grassroots projects and regional construction ecologies that preserve historical knowledge and prioritise adaptability, rather than subjugation to foreign investment and increased development.
Revitalised Forecasts from the Community
Alternative futures for Ladakh’s built environment have been and are being promoted by many different community organisations. Van Beek has described how Ladakh has historically experimented with the legal enforcement of cultural traditions, from mandates that schoolchildren and government officials don “traditional dress” to strict building codes, including specific regulations such as bans on sheet-metal roofs. But these efforts were often short-lived and laws are not as natural as community-driven efforts, in which vernacular techniques are more readily accepted when they are included in process demonstrations that sustain skills and traditions within the local workforce. Grassroots efforts do not categorically overcome alternative cost or time incentives promoted by imported models, but vernacular methods have been successfully demonstrated in parts of Old Leh and select villages, where local organisations promote the conservation and adaptation of older structures to incorporate contemporary uses – particularly where historic structures can be marketed with higher touristic value.
“An alternative approach for Ladakh might eschew urban homogeneity in favour of grassroots projects and regional construction ecologies.”
The Ladakh Ecological Development Group (LEDeG)[5] and the Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL), which is led by Sonam Wangchuk, promote hybrid models of rehabilitation, invention, and construction. Spanning scales, their experiments have ranged from Wangchuk’s monumental ice-stupas – artificial glaciers that store winter water to contend with the regional crises of water paucity and groundwater contamination – to solar thermal solutions and dry-composting toilets. Of these, the most widespread model is the LEDeG trombe wall, which is a 225mm black-painted and glass-covered, south-facing, mud-brick wall that absorbs solar radiation during the day and releases it to cooler interior spaces. The trombe wall’s structure is supplemented by a “sandwich” of earth walls with 150mm compacted earth on the inside, followed by 150mm of insulation. The inimitable capabilities of the trombe wall system to regulate and create comfortable interior thermal conditions during the winter has led to its widespread adoption.
LEDeG has recently been developing sanitation structures using Compressed Stabilized Earth Blocks (CSEB) which are unfired mud-bricks fabricated on site by compressing mixtures of soil, sand, stabiliser and water into moulds.[6] These blocks – capable of providing stability up to four storeys without concrete frames – allow LEDeG to experiment with a range of building methods that might have the potential to engage local construction techniques. However, unlike the trombe wall, CSEBs entail higher embodied energy and diminished recyclability, and impose an insidious image of “advanced” development over indigenous methods through the use of a stabiliser (cement). This practice differs from those employed by some of the most renowned earthen designers and contractors, most notably the Austrian builder Martin Rauch, who advocates for the omission of cement in earthen construction, which, in an ideal case, as he described in 2017, is “formed from regional materials, processed on site, and potentially reused without loss of quality or returned directly to the earth at the end of a building’s life cycle”. The hybrid techniques being used by LEDeG nevertheless demonstrate that the composition of clay-based and cement-based binders exist on a spectrum of practices, all of which possess both benefits and compromises in ecological procurement, respect toward ancient traditions, and the ability to meet the requirements of a specific site and project.
Among the most progressive conservation ventures in Leh is the restoration of its Munshi and Gyaoo houses (whose original constructions can be traced back to the early-17th century) as a headquarters for the Ladakh Arts and Media Organisation (LAMO). The Munshi and Gyaoo houses were part of a cluster of two communities, skyanos tukchu and gog-sum tukchu, which hosted the abodes of prominent aristocrats and merchants. The restoration was spearheaded by Monisha Ahmed of LAMO and Harrison, who, along with his team, executed the project over a period of five years from 2006 to 2010. During this period, construction was restricted to the months between May and September (which is typical for the region, due to extreme weather conditions that trigger an annual exodus of migrant workers and shutter most vehicular paths). Despite the labour and climatic restrictions, the project was accomplished with a commitment to the revitalisation of Ladakh’s construction heritage.
A Lamayuru local guides his dzo along the village’s main thoroughfare. Lamayuru, located in western Ladakh, is best known for its monastery (far-left-of-photo) and a unique landscape that results from lacustrine deposits from the Cenozoic era.
In contrast to the restoration work that has been undertaken in Ladakh before and since this project, Harrison describes how its “building elements – walls, beams, pillars, and windows – were to be repaired in situ rather than replaced or rebuilt. Where rebuilding was necessary, materials were salvaged and reused. Intact bricks were relaid; broken bricks remixed and remoulded.” Their process, which drew the attention of locals and tourists alike, launched a much-needed dialogue regarding construction integrity and conservation thought that exceeds the outdated notions of preservation codified by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), an institution which remains adherent to the 1964 Venice Charter, an outmoded set of guidelines for the conservation and restoration of historic buildings.[7] The team “wanted to demonstrate that generous, positive spaces for a 20th-century public use could be created in a ‘traditional’ building,” while also employing Doda masons and utilising historic Ladakhi building methods, materials and details.
The processes and ethics of conservation demonstrated by LAMO were entirely different from the Leh palace conservation, a comprehensive overhaul that was undertaken in incremental phases from 1982 by ASI; its failure to respect material cultures resulted in a landmarked relic that is effectively isolated and hollow outside of ticketed tourism. Rahul Mehrotra, architect and professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, has previously criticised this institution’s perfunctory process of “stabilizing monuments to ensure their continued survival rather than examining, questioning or even discussing ways in which their temporary relevance can be reinterpreted or reinvented”. Amongst other issues, for example, timber beams, sills, lintels and other elements from the palace that were salvageable were instead replaced by imported counterparts. In doing so, the ASI’s intervention may have embalmed a heritage building and cost the structure the chance to evolve and adapt its significance beyond just “continued survival”.
Following the conservation of the Munshi and Gyaoo houses and other revitalisation projects, many residents, including local artists and architects, have recently occupied older, previously neglected city clusters, just south of Kharyog. While this trend risks gentrification, it also holds potential for revitalisation. Some examples include the artist Tashi Namgial, a painter, who works out of his studio space in Old Leh, and Chimat Dorje, who runs his sculpture studio just up the hill. Both Namgial and Dorje have signed 10-year leases with their buildings’ owners, who are the hereditary patrons of these properties that have been preserved for over a century, and proceeded to renovate the spaces.[8] Namgial executed his project independently of institutional partners and collaborated with a team of local Doda masons, his grandfather (a former mason) and migrant labourers in a process that followed the resourceful remixing logic of Harrison’s work for LAMO. On the other hand, Dorje sought the expertise of the Leh Old Town Initiative (LOTI), a conservation programme that is led by the Tibet Heritage Fund (THF),[9] which subsidises restoration efforts for local owners and residents and has contributed extensively to the restoration of domestic properties and landmarks in Leh’s old town, as evidenced by various placards.
These projects define the relationship between indigenous and contemporary construction models as one of tenuous coexistence, characterised by slow, disparate (although promising) efforts and projects that seldom generate enough economic traction to incentivise local participation. Nevertheless, these ventures expose residents to hybrid models of renovation and rehabilitation that defend local customs and respond to regional ecologies, maintaining morality in the practice of architecture. While these restoration efforts may lack the technical maturity developed in natural building globally, Rauch has previously argued that this need not diminish the value of projects such as these: “the really political aspect of pure earth building is that it can be implemented anywhere fully independently of lobbies, share prices, and industrial price controls, with simple craftsmanship being used to construct high-quality, ecologically appropriate buildings.” Ultimately, however, the various grassroots projects and organisations that currently practice and advocate for regional construction ecologies and localised models of growth, require stronger support from local governance to contend with foreign investment and the development models multiplying in Ladakh’s newfound autonomy.
Towards Non-modern Governance
The governance structures that have created the current conditions in Ladakh reflect the situation of other Indian cities and villages, which today face unaffordability, environmental decay, material erosion, inequitable access to resources and confrontations between hegemonic and subaltern cultures. These trends warn national and local decision-makers of the “fragility of utopian projections of an earlier modernity,” as described by Dilip Gaonkar in his 1999 book Alternative Modernities. Other scholars, such as Ravi Sundaram, have similarly chronicled this historical paradigm as a “pirate”, “recycled”, or “alternate” modernity, ideas that are productively mirrored in the philosopher Bruno Latour’s argument in We Have Never Been Modern that “we are not emerging from an obscure past that confused natures and cultures in order to arrive at a future in which the two poles will finally separate cleanly owing to the continual revolution of the present. We have never plunged into a homogenous and planetary flow arriving either from the future or from the depths of time.” Latour’s interpretation of an ever-present non-modern world is a useful theorisation of a construction and governance ecology that has been – and in India’s case should remain – intimately interdependent between environmental and cultural foundations of the country, its ecosystems and its peoples.
The “lunar” landscape of Lamayuru results from lacustrine deposits from the Cenozoic era. These soils are part of traditional Ladakhi building material culture.
Speculation on new or revitalised non-modern governance provides a possible method of heritage preservation in the wake of increased neoliberal investments that are defined by their rapacious ecological consumption and capital accumulation. In Ladakh, there exists a structure of concentric governance authorities, in which the union territory (UT) government now forms the outermost layer. To date, however, the UT government’s attitude toward local stakeholder groups and the regional council has been characterised by a low level of participation,[1o] in which there is a risk of Ladakhi citizens being administered solutions on the basis of what Sundaram has termed a reductive, interpreted “homogeneous nationality”. An unfortunate reality of this complex governance model means that regional planning policies may lack local expertise.
The Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC), established in 1994 by the LBA’s campaign, is second to the UT government in the concentric political model. Today, the Leh and Kargil districts (Buddhist-majority and Islamic-majority, respectively) have their own autonomous hill councils, through which Ladakhis elect representatives who oversee rural development, health, education and property. The entire Leh region is divided into 12 smaller sectors, each of which has its own representative councillor. Even the hill councils, however, seem removed from granular movements, as shown by their inefficiencies in advocating for thoughtful environmental, planning, and economic policies.[11] In this realm of bureaucratic inefficiency, how might “institution building” measures that affect development regulation be converted into a political narrative of self-governance? And how might this be put into action in a region with economically and electorally marginalised areas that require a revitalisation of local subsistence, sustenance and substance? These are questions that have long preoccupied urban-planning scholars: the social theorist Murray Bookchin aptly argued in his 1995 book From Urbanization to Cities that “our chances for a natural and ecological society are much better in this [local and citizen-oriented] approach than in those that ride on centralized entities and bureaucratic apparatuses.”
The innermost layer in the concentric governance structure is embedded within the region’s most remote villages, where the vast majority of Ladakhis reside. While some villages are home to fewer than 30 families, others host upwards of 150 households. The manageability implied by these small population bundles introduces a means of effective decisionmaking that prioritises the agenda of village residents. These populations operate as dual citizens: they participate in regional and national elections, as well as partake in the consumer economy from afar, but simultaneously retain a distinctly local affiliation. Revisiting the issue of grassroots activism here is thus productive, not simply as a form of resistance to “the state [which] has lost its role as an agent of transformation, or even as a mediator, in the affairs of civil society,” as political theorist Rajni Kothari described it, but as an active and creative process that ensures progressive growth and the preservation of local customs by design, rather than by default.
“There is a risk of Ladakhi citizens being administered solutions on the basis of a reductive, interpreted, homogenous nationality.”
Local governance in Ladakh has historically been undermined by discrimination, and disparities between local and national politics. The perspectives of outsiders who entered Ladakh as teachers and patrons rendered a view of Ladakh as an “underdeveloped” society, lowering the self-esteem of locals and compromising the status of local governance. These opinions were reiterated by Nehru in the Amrita Bazar Patrika newspaper on 8 July 1949, where he commented that “in Ladakh you are backward and unless you learn and train yourselves you cannot run the affairs of your country.”[12] With this view so brazenly expressed by the new nation’s leader, how was Ladakh to overcome prejudice and assert itself?
Despite decades of misrepresentation, young Ladakhis have sought to overcome these connotations and attain greater control of their ancestral customs and regional affairs, and have often been persuaded to forfeit a spiritual and anthropocentric worldview in favour of capitalist materialism. This disparity is reminiscent of Gandhi’s proposed revolution by the charkha (spinning wheel) and his contention that “the salvation of India is impossible without the salvation of the villages.” The advantages of a localised governance structure are further contextualised by the principles of decentralised, human-scale economies promoted by E.F. Schumacher, who claimed that “economics of scale, which may well have been a 19th-century truth, can be shown to be a 20thcentury myth.” Ignoring this perspective – and overlooking local resources in favour of carbon-intensive material cultures, design paradigms, climate conditioning systems and aspirations for “modern” ways of living – provides only superficial sustenance, ultimately damaging an existing wealth of ecology and tradition.
Clustered, earthen dwellings in Thiksey village, as seen from Thiksey Monastery.
nd tradition. In contemporary discourse, however, the rhetoric of villages is at times located as a site of alterity to the modern world. Proposals for alternative economic development, revised governance and rescaled expectations of modern life, especially in contexts parched of economic stimulation, typically receive pushback. At a time when other Indian towns are witnessing prosperity tethered to employment at industrial scales, propositions to operate in smaller, tangible ways are anathema to a public seeking to expand the economic basis of its existence. However, in the case of Ladakh, this apparent contradiction may form the basis of a new logic, as described by Kothari, which is “meant to rejuvenate the State and to make it once again an instrument of liberation from ineffective structures (both traditional and modern)”.
The strength of the Indian model is that remote villages are already equipped with unique and direct governing entities that represent their citizens at a local level. The Panchayati Raj Act of 1989 enabled self-sustaining modes of political and legal management at a village scale through the establishment of halqa panchayats (village councils) and inter-village adalat (court) systems. This intricate framework comprises groups of elected members, overseen by an elected leader (the sarpanch), who preside over matters of governance within individual villages or groups of small populations. The panchayat model in Ladakh co-exists with an inherited, Buddhist system of local governance, where the goba (elected village treasurers and representatives) and membars (patrons of intravillage geographical divisions) are additional members in the system.[13] These political representatives, ranging from LAHDC councillors to the intra-village panchayat members, also perform duties within the realm of development, conflict-resolution and social relations. Thus, from a socio-political perspective, there are multiple checks and balances in place for even the smallest of communities. Therein lies a potential model to revive and operationalise effective modes of localised decision-making about regulation.
The argument to protect and restore the salience of place and identity through rigorous democratisation at a granular level has seen success elsewhere in India. The 1973 Chipko movement in Uttarakhand, which was a landmark revolution in national forest conservation efforts, and the 2015 creation of protected, wildlife conservation zones in Bera, Rajasthan, both obliged adversarial actors to mitigate or terminate activities that were complicit in environmental damage and indigenous upheaval. These are both examples of peoples’ movements paving the way for greater corporate and bureaucratic accountability, in turn becoming forms of advocacy for productive, localised modernity and reinforcing the effectiveness of a transscalar approach. In order to shepherd a future in symbiosis with local ecologies, can Ladakhis pull off similar transformations through grassroots movements encoded in architecture (the manifestation of cultural aspirations and the enabling economic climate)?
The mountainous landscape of Ladakh presents just as many challenges as it does opportunities. During the cold, dry winter, the quiet lives of Ladakhis go mostly unnoticed by outsiders. Yet, when the city of Leh is abustle during summer, hosting an inconceivably vast population of visitors, it is difficult not to be subsumed by the chatter of international exchange (people, goods, ideas) and wonder whether or not Leh has already been irrevocably, culturally transformed by tourism and broader forces. The recent change of union territory status will escalate these external forces and indelibly alter outside investment, the preservation or neglect of cultural heritage, and the fabric of urban development in Ladakh. The region’s governance models and community organisations must be supported if they are to withstand the forthcoming market pressures and investment opportunities that might otherwise threaten the ancient wisdom and ecological balance of Ladakh’s built environment. It is an endeavour that needs to be undertaken posthaste. Ladakh is too precious a land not to try.
1 This article specifically focuses on Leh, but the territory’s joint Section through Skurbuchan Khar in Skurbuchan, Ladakh (illustration: John Harrison). district of Kargil also urgently requires care.
2 Schedule 6(a) of the Indian Constitution provides greater powers to indigenous peoples (termed “Scheduled Tribes”). As noted by Charisma M.S. Kundan in her article ‘Ladakh, Another Tibet?’, the Constitution of India currently recognises more than 97 per cent of Ladakhis as Scheduled Tribes.
3 For information on Nehru’s aspirations for a new, modern India, see Romi Khosla’s ‘The New Metropolis: Nehru and the Aftermath’, published in Social Scientist, Volume 43, 2015.
4 The definition of “subaltern” most applicable to the region can be found in David Arnold’s essay ‘Subaltern Streets: India, 1870-1947’ (2019): “Today, India’s subalterns are seen to belong essentially to communities not primarily identified with urban society, including landless laborers, and adivasis or tribals.”
5 LEDeG was established by Helena Norberg-Hodge, author of Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh but is now an autonomous, local group. Norberg-Hodge has worked extensively in Ladakh and is a leading proponent of localisation through Local Futures, an NGO that is active in the region.
6 LEDeG relies on manually operated Auram 3000 presses from the Auroville Earth Institute and engineering firm Eureka.
7 In his 2007 article ‘Conservation and Change: Questions for Conservation Education in Urban India’, Rahul Mehrotra criticises ineffective “institutions such as the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which were established in the colonial period, propagate the European view codified in many of the earlier charters and in particular the Venice Charter,” where, “the articles (of the Venice Charter) direct the restorer to sharply distinguish, on the surface of the monument where he is intervening, the elements of the past from those of the present”.
8 This is representative of a local ethic to retain the integrity of ancestral properties, which stands in strong opposition to the property fragmentation-by-inheritance models that other regions experiencing rapid urbanisation largely exhibit.
9 THF is currently led by Pimpim de Azevedo and Yutaka Hirako. Similar conservation projects have also been completed regionally by the Achi Association.
10 “To recapitulate and enlarge upon the argument already made,” writes Rajni Kothari in State Against Democracy: In Search of Humane Governance (1989), “it is a context where the engines of growth are in decline, the organized working class is not growing, the process of marginalization is spreading, technology is turning anti-people, development has become an instrument of the privileged class, and the State has lost its role as an agent of transformation, or even as a mediator, in the affairs of civil society. It is a context of massive centralization of power and resources, centralization that does not stop at the national Centre either and makes the nation state itself an abject onlooker and a client of a global world order’.”
11 Alex Jensen of Local Futures has noted the prolific issuing of building permits for hospitality and tourism-based activities, with little regard for projective planning and the establishment of adequate standards. The result of this is a series of crises relating to sanitation-mismanagement, toxic groundwater and unhindered development, among others.
12 In his 1998 article ‘Hill Councils, Development, and Democracy: Assumptions and Experiences from Ladakh’, Martijn van Beek elaborates further on such political perceptions of Ladakh.
13 This applies to villages with a Buddhist majority in the Leh district. The panchayat model in Kargil district most likely differs.
Words Oorvi Sharma
Photographs Oorvi Sharma and Tushar Verma
Many thanks to Alex Jensen, Dushyant Dave, Chimat Dorje, John Bray, John Harrison, Martijn van Beek, Monisha Ahmed and Tashi Namgial for sharing their wisdom about Ladakh and the issues at hand.
This article was originally published in Disegno #31. To buy the issue, or subscribe to the journal, please visit the online shop.