Barren Frontiers, Pristine Myths

The Cultural Politics of Wildlife Conservation in the Indian Trans-Himalaya

Alka Sabharwal

B.Sc. (Hons) Anthropology, University of Delhi, 1991 M.Sc. Social Anthropology, University of Delhi, 1993

M.Phil. Environmental Anthropology, University of Delhi, 1996

This Thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

of The University of Western Australia

School of Social Sciences Discipline of Anthropology and Sociology

2015

 

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Thesis Abstract

By moving away from the ‘parks versus people’ paradigm, my research in the Changthang

Wildlife Sanctuary, Ladakh, reframes thinking about the changing relations among states,

markets, social groups and their bio-physical environment in the Indian Trans-Himalaya.

The framework of cultural politics draws attention to the variety of complex cultural work

involved in the conservation contestations in this border region between India and China

that has been neglected in traditional political ecology approaches. My ethnographic

research focusing on such contingent processes thus argues for treating culturally

productive identities, interests and resources as emergent from continuing struggles rather

than as pre-determined givens.

The idea of a monolithic State implementing unfriendly protected area policies in the

Trans-Himalaya is challenged when more complex representations of organs of the Indian

State with contradictory agendas and enmeshed State-Community relations are revealed

through widening the perspectives. The relative absence of overt protest by the Changpa

nomads to the sanctuary cannot be interpreted as passive acquiescence in the State project

to transform Changthang into an orthodox conservation site. Only through nuanced

analysis anchored in the perspective of cultural politics is one able to appreciate the

complexities and contentiousness with which Changpa nomads continues to secure their

access to the resources that are now part of the sanctuary.

At stake in Changthang are those concerns that relate it to the wider structures of

meanings held by a number of constituencies. Therefore, the stationed military desire to

produce Changthang as an ecologically sustainable landscape must also be understood in

the context of military efforts to seek legitimacy for managing it as a militarized border,

while distracting detractors from the military’s operational practices that may be

ecologically rapacious. The consistent undermining of local culture and livelihood

practices by a heterogeneous group of metropolitan conservationists also implicates

notions about civility and wildness embedded in the conflict around the sanctuary. In

order to reveal how such dynamics of the struggles over resources in Changthang have

played out, I have observed those everyday lived realities where actors constantly

collaborate and look for alliances to stake their claims over the sanctuary. Using the lens

of cultural politics to view such sites of cultural production, I argue for

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aiming attention upon the complex material and symbolic dimensions that render

intelligible how Changthang has come to be imagined, appropriated and contested in the

conservation conflict.

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Statement of Declaration This thesis does not contain work that I have published, nor under review for publication. Student Signature…………………………………………………  

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Acknowledgements The idea of being on my doctoral research journey would not have shaped without my

extended relationship of the last two decades with the people in Korzok and Tegarzung.

Ever since my first anthropological field visit in 1994 and two major field work periods

since then, I am completely indebted to the acceptance and cordiality which the Changpa

people have continued to bestow upon me, especially to Tenzing Angchen, Gurmet

Dorjee, Tenzin Gyatso, Phagwa Tak, Tashi Tundup, Reingzin Dolma and their

respective families. I would like to sincerely thank Greg Acciaioli, as I could not have

hoped for a better supervisor and a greater mentor during this research journey,

especially for the umpteen sessions of thought-proving recommendations and scholarly

advice. Special thanks to my co- supervisor Katie Glaskin, whose invaluable ideas and

critical support shaped the research in many interesting ways. Amita Baviskar’s kind

acceptance to be my external supervisor entirely changed my intellectual bond with

anthropology and my research stances. Her fine analytical discernments have been a

catalyst in shaping my cultural political inquiry and methodological confidence.

I would like to specially recognize the critical support of the Australian Postgraduate

Award and the Completion scholarship that enabled me to give my entire focus to this

research. I thank Joyce Riley and also the Ford Foundation for their belief in my research

project and providing financial assistance at different stages of my research. I also would

like to express thanks to Nick Smith, Michael Pinches and Nicholas Harney for

providing their valuable time and academic expertise to help me sort through some of

the complicated concepts at different stages of my research. I would also like to

acknowledge my fellow postgraduates to provide me with an active informal intellectual

space for various lunchtime chats. My earnest thanks also go to the ever-helpful

administrative staff of Anthropology and Sociology for supporting me sail through all the

organizational aspects of my research at the UWA with ease.

I would like to acknowledge my association with the Institute of Economic Growth

(IEG) at Delhi University for the year of my fieldwork. My research in the Indian Trans-

Himalaya owes a great deal to the scholarly knowledge of K.Sivaramakrishnan, Prakash

Kashwan, S.Saravanan, Vasant Saberwal, Doug Hill, Mahesh Rangarajan, Sudha Vasan,

Monisha Ahmed, Michael Gilligan, Ghazala Shahabuddin, Trent Brown and (Late)

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Rinchen Wangchuk who also allowed me to have informal online and offline discussions

with them at different times of my research. After an extremely sad and untimely demise

of Rinchen, his Snow Leopard Conservancy (SLC) office remained a place for me to

constantly engage and learn about the local conservation issues in Ladakh.

I would like to especially acknowledge my friend and acho Dr. Ishey Namgyal (and also

Gyalpo (Chushul) from the Jammu and Kashmir state Department of Animal Husbandry

through whom I have understood the everyday workings and intricacies of the local

Ladakhi bureaucracy in the Leh district. For the amount of time I was in Leh, Aba le,

Ama le, Kunzang, Thupsthan, Dolma, Ache Mrs. Namgyal and Chyang remained a

family and supported my research un-selfishly.

In the end, my loving thanks go to dearest Lyela Raavi, my daughter who accompanied

me to Changthang for the fieldwork, not a very convenient place (at 15,000 feet with

temperature dropping to -20 degrees) to be for a toddler. She made friends and

acquaintances with a smile and having her with me during my doctoral fieldwork kept

everything in perspective. I want to thank both my parents for their eternal blessings and

love. Last, but not the least, my thanks to Paramjeet for all his meta-logical thinking and

much love.

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Contents Thesis Abstract ii Statement of Declaration iv Acknowledgement v Contents vii Glossary x Acronyms xii List of Figures xiii CHAPTER ONE Introduction 1 Constituting Ladakh as a Frontier 1 The Indian State and Ladakh 1 Reframing ‘Parks Versus People’ 5 Anthropology and Environment: Changing Perspectives 9 Cultural Politics as an Approach to Studying Conservation 15 Research into Changthang and Changpa Nomads 17 Multisited Research 21 Research Setting 24 Chapter Outlines 28 CHAPTER TWO The Changthang Frontiers: Precolonial Contexts to Recent Transformations 33 Concept of Frontier 34 The Precolonial Period: Changthang to 1835 37 The Colonial Period: Changthang from 1835 to 1947 39 The Early Postcolonial Period: Changthang from 1947 to 1962 48 Post-Transitional Independence: Changthang in the Post-War Period from 1962 to 1994 51 Changthang from the 1990s: Schedule Tribe Status, Tourism and the Imposition of the Wildlife Sanctuary 54 Conclusion 59 CHAPTER THREE The Quest of Community in Conservation 61 The Community Perspective in Wildlife Conservation 63 A Critical Review of the Biological Reports 65 Korzok Village or a Community? 70 Community-Based Tourism Through the Korzok Village 77 Conclusion 80

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CHAPTER FOUR The Politics of the Metropolitan Conservationist’s Agenda 83 Background 84 The Metropolitans and Changthang 87 Elite Conservationists 87 Conservation Biologists/Scientists 93 State Bureaucrats 102 Conservation Professionals 108 Conclusion 112 CHAPTER FIVE A Marriage of Convenience: Civil-Military Relations in Changthang 115 Constituting Changthang as a Frontier 116 The Military Authority and the Inner Line Area Policy 117 The Politics of Development 120 Development in Changthang 121 Lopsided Development 125 Development Through The Military 128 The ITBP’s Arrival in Korzok 131 Frontier of Control vis-à-vis Frontier of Conservation 134 Conclusion 140 CHAPTER SIX Mirage of Boundaries: State and Community Relations in Conservation 141 DoWP: Appearances and State effect 142 Multi-Layered State 142 Local Imagery 144 Conservation Implementation 146 Physical Boundaries and Noticeboards 150 Science and Power 152 Encountering the DoWP – Everyday practices and representations 155 Subversions 157 Dual Loyalties 164 Local Politicians and Bureaucracy 167 Conclusion 171 CHAPTER SEVEN Military and Environmentalism: Spectacle and Concealment 173 The Spectacle of Siachen 174 Military Environmentalism in India 178 Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary 182 Military-WWF Collaboration 185 DoWP and the Military 187 Unpacking the Military 189 Conclusion 200

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CHAPTER EIGHT Conclusion 193 Bibliography Appendix

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Glossary1

Ama le Mother

Ane le Father’s sister/generic term often used for elderly women

Ama Chospa A formal alliance of women

Bal Sheep’s wool

Changyot Head monk

Cherpo Sun-dried cheese

Goa Tibetan gazelle

Gompa A Buddhist monastery

Goncha Local male robe

Gowa Traditional/elected chief

Godmang The annual religious festival at the Korzok monastery

Gyagharpa Gyaghar referring to India [the country], whereas the nominal particle ‘-pa’ means ‘belonging to’ and may be translated by ‘those from’. Dwelling or inhabitants are the other words used here in translation.

Jetpo Snow leopard

Kiang Tibetan wild ass

Lugzi Hired shepherd

Mar Local butter

Mukhbir Spy

Patwari Land Development Officer

Potpa Those from Tibet

Phu Valley

                                                                                                               1This glossary transcription of the Changpa words devised into Roman orthography is mostly derived from

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Raluk Domestic animal/livestock

Rebo Yak hair tent

Rebopa Dweller in a yak hair tent

Ridhak Wild ungulates

Rinpoche Reincarnated of a Buddhist monastery in Ladakh

Shankhu Tibetan wolf

Solja Butter tea

Singe Khab Indus River

Thukpa Dumpling soup

Thung Thung Karma Black-necked crane

Yulpa Those from the settlement or village

Ying Cultivable land

Wazir Royal surveyor

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Acronyms

BADP Border Area Development Programme

BRO Border Roads Organization

CII Confederation of Indian Industries

CO Commanding Officer

DoWP Department of Wildlife Protection

IFS Indian Forest Services

ITBF Indo-Tibetan Border Force

ITBP Indo-Tibetan Border Police

KGPD Kashmir Game Prevention Department

LAC Line of Actual Control

LAHDC Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council

MoEF Ministry of Environment and Forest

MoHA Ministry of Home Affairs

MoD Ministry of Defense

NBWL National Board of Wildlife

NCF Nature Conservation Foundation

NGO Non-Governmental Organization

PDS Public Distribution Supply

SDM Subdivisional Magistrate

SLC Snow Leopard Conservancy

SOP Standard Operating Procedures

WII Wildlife Institute of India

WTI Wildlife Trust of India

WWF World Wide Fund for Nature

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List of Figures No. Title Page 1.1 Map of Jammu and Kashmir state showing 3

Changthang in the South East of Ladakh region.

1.2 Tsomoriri, A freshwater to brackish lake at 4595m 66 above sea level, known to be the only breeding ground outside China for the Black-necked crane (Grus nigricollus).

1.3 A Satellite image of the Korzok Settlement 79 1.4 Map of the Administrative Blocks, Leh District 122

 

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Chapter 1 Introduction –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Constituting Ladakh as a Frontier

A story in The New York Times, published on May 3, 2013, could not explain why the

Chinese military had invaded Indian territories, as compared to the apparent reasons for

its other recent territorial assertions in Asia, say with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines,

where presumably oil and gas deposits are at stake. The Indian strategic analysts,

according to the story, were puzzled by the choice of China’s squabble over a trans-

Himalayan ‘barren moonscape’ frequented only by nomadic herders. A few decades

earlier, in the prelude to a humiliating defeat in a military conflict with China in 1962, the

then Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, also known as the architect of modern

India, put forward a similar argument. In order to calm his political opponents in the

federal parliament, he stated that there was not even a blade of grass which grows on

India’s border and hence the nation had lost little by its seizure by China. If this

interpretation of the India-China border is to be believed, then it is difficult to explain the

Indian State’s investment of enormous resources to maintain an extensive military

deployment to defend these ‘barren’ frontiers or, in Tsing’s (1993) terms, the ‘out-of-the-

way-places’. The threat of foreign conquest does shape a nation’s frontier such as the

India-China border, but how a nation’s frontiers function is never simple (Geiger 2008).

The declaration of the same ‘barren frontiers’ as a significant ‘pristine site’ for the

conservation of wildlife in the recently declared Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary points to

those complex political processes which could not be defined merely through physical or

simplistic attributes, such as barrenness or pristineness.

The Indian State1 and Ladakh

Ladakh is located in the northernmost part of India bordering with Pakistan on the west

and China on the east. As a quintessential national borderland, lying in the state of Jammu

and Kashmir, Ladakh has attracted considerable State attention from the time it has

                                                                                                               1‘State’, here and thereafter, refers to the Central State and to the abstract theoretical notion of the State whereas ‘state’ denotes to the Jammu and Kashmir state.

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become part of the Indian State. The rich literature on frontiers suggests that the role of

the current State as a locus of territorial sovereignty make sites such as Ladakh into an

often-ambitious State-building project. Geiger (2008:107) explains that ‘state designs’ at

the frontiers make ‘themselves felt with vigour and the influence of state policies and

regulations on the lives of those inhabit the margins… can be considerable’. In the

Ladakh context, the 1962 war fought in the Changthang region between India and China

brought a more penetrating State attention towards the region, otherwise considered a

distant and neglected region within the Indian State (Aggarwal 2004). It is said that when

China launched massive strikes on the Ladakh borders in October 1962, the Indian

military was caught off guard. This month–long Himalayan war ended in a rout of Indian

forces with a claimed loss of more than 30,000 square kilometers of Indian land to China.

It is against this backdrop that the ‘central government… [gained] power over important

strategic areas in the region and the national security establishment in New Delhi…

[obtained] the capacity to monitor and control political developments’ in Ladakh (Baruah

2003:921). This enabled the Central State to obtain the powers to become pivotal in the

reorganization of the management, control, and exploitation of the Ladakh frontiers. As

part of this reorganization, the particular regions in Ladakh by virtue of their strategic

locations were bolstered with a centrally managed and controlled military. Changthang

was one of them.

Lying in the southeast region of Ladakh, spread across the two administrative blocks of

Nyoma and Durbuk, Changthang was declared an Inner Line Area after the 1962 war by

putting restrictions on property ownership or free movements of the outsiders. The Inner

Line Area Policy2, framed to provide exclusive rights to the military authority and

controlled by the distantly located central ministries of Home Affairs and Defence in

Delhi, has influenced the region in many ways. The lack of routinized government, also a

typical characteristic of frontiers of control (Geiger 2008), restricted the capacity of the

Jammu and Kashmir state to provide basic infrastructure to the Changpa nomads, a local

pastoralist group that has lived in the Changthang region

                                                                                                               2The inner line areas are regions near India’s borders that restrict access to outsiders for security reasons. Special permits are required by non-residents to travel into these zones, and they are characterized by a military presence. The system of declaring certain areas restricted was created by the British government in 1873 with the Bengal-Eastern Frontier regulation for the hill areas in the northeast parts of India in order to prevent people from the plain from moving there (Aggarwal and Bhan 2009:521).

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for a very long time. The war, which also redefined the Indian borders, has reduced their

pastoral resource base, abruptly making them dependent on the modern Indian State and

its resources. Being border residents, Changpa nomads have benefitted from the central

development schemes, as well as those of Jammu and Kashmir state. Even though the

State representatives have been incapable of fulfilling their promises entirely, it has not

deterred the local Changpa nomads from continuing to see the State as a ‘hope generating

machine’ (Monique Nuitjen, cited in Hansen & Stepputat 2001:36). In the

circumstances created through the new arrangement of the Inner Line Area Policy and

the reduced pastoral resource base after 1962, the State has become the only source of

development and general welfare for the local Changpa nomads in Changthang.

In 1987, under the Indian Wildlife Act of 1972, a large part of the local pasturelands in

Changthang had been converted into a wildlife sanctuary in order to protect the habitat of

the endangered local wildlife species such as the Tibetan gazelle and the Black-necked

crane. Following up on the 1997 Supreme Court landmark judgment on wildlife

conservation, the Jammu and Kashmir state has issued a proclamation notification in

2002 to settle all the local rights over the 4,000 square kilometers of the Changthang

Wildlife Sanctuary. This proclamation under the section 21 of the Wildlife Act had meant

to complete the process of determination of rights and acquisitions of land or rights as

contemplated by the Act within a period of one year. This State action to conserve the

Changthang borders has been detrimental for the pastoral livelihoods of the Changpa

nomads and has generated a whole new gamut of political action in this frontier region of

Changthang. The scholarship on frontiers has argued for the potential role of biodiversity

conservation as a means to tame or reverse the perceived processes of exploitation

embedded in the frontier context, especially by conveying the benefits to the local people.

However, scholars have also shown concern towards those States that have not adopted

the protected area doctrine in its more enlightened version and have become ‘glaring

illustrations of how State–espoused environmentalism [could] degenerate into a strategy

of displacement in the familiar frontier mould’ (Geiger 2008:177). Related claims are made

by the Jammu and Kashmir state to propagate the view that wildlife conservation stands

to benefit the local Changpa nomads. However, it is obvious from the Supreme Court’s

judgment, that in its present form, State conservation is not in favour of the Changpa

nomads living inside the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary. In fact, it is quite evident that the

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State conservation is relying on the much-disputed ‘wilderness’ concept in shaping its

protected areas in ways not so different from how the frontier’s Inner Line Area policy

was implemented by the Central State.

The views expressed in most of the scholarship on either frontiers or biodiversity

conservation do not, however, completely reflect the complex realities that Changthang

endures. Especially in the conservation literature, the tendency to view the engagement of

the State and Society as two opposing forces does not allocate much space to complex

and contingent processes where the concerned State and non-State actors negotiate and

exercise their interests without precipitating a conflict. In the case of Ladakh, Martijn van

Beek (2001:367) has fruitfully demonstrated in his research how the struggle for regional

autonomy in Ladakh has, in fact, ‘not evoked either compliance or resistance [towards the

Indian State], but more complex practices of representation, performance and belonging’

in stating its identity 3 . By using similar lines of thought in the context of state

conservation I see how the local Changpa nomads and the Jammu and Kashmir state are

mired in complexities of diverse kind and therefore their relationship cannot be

demonstrated through an overtly simplified mutual resistance or compliance paradigm. In

this context I find van Beek’s (1998:35) suggestion useful: ‘Ladakhi politics… [is] a

complex process of negotiation, contestation and representation…’. Therefore, I also

believe that in the case of conservation politics in Changthang, the instances of de-

notification of the sanctuary by the paramilitary forces, the protection of endangered

species through a wilderness approach by the state department of wildlife protection,

public interest litigation (PIL) by the Delhi-based non-governmental organisation, WWF

efforts to convert Tsomoriri wetland into a sacred gift for humanity to be placed under

the Ramsar convention, deployment of the paramilitary forces in the sanctuary and

Korzok residents’ refusal to allow outside tour operators and their demolition of the

conservation fencing around the Tsomoriri wetland, and a number of other social and

                                                                                                               3  When Ladakh carried forward the autonomous hill council agenda in the late 1980’s, the scholars working on Ladakh did not see it as a threat to the hegemony of the nation-state. Van Beek (1998:36) explains how the Ladakhi’s representation justified their autonomous claims in terms of ‘backwardness and patriotism’. When in 1995 The Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council was sworn in, it was seen to be more in response to the history of Kashmir politics and not in opposition to the nationalist ideology or against the union with India (Van Beek 1998). Van Beek (1998) reiterates that the image of Ladakhis being the true patriots and dedicated to the nation also came from the local need to project their distinctness from the Muslims of Kashmir and to assert Buddhism as being naturally part of India.

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economic factors represent those complex political processes that are critical to grasp in

order to render the environmental debate in Changthang more intelligible.

Reframing ‘Parks versus People’

The tendency of the political ecology framework to characterize conflict of parks and

people as a confrontation between ‘vicious states’ and ‘virtuous peasants’ is exemplified

by a diverse scholarship in India and abroad (Igoe 2003; Saberwal & Rangarajan 2003).

This scholarship has examined how States deploy conservation as a means of

overpowering rural people and monopolizing control over land (Peluso 1992; Gadgil and

Guha 1995; Bryant 2001; Neumann 1998). This growing literature on the dynamics of

parks and people has produced arguments on local resistance against State–sponsored

conservation (Neumann 1998; Bryant 2001; Saberwal et al 2001), whereby poor people

seek to fight against authoritarian State policies. With reference to India, the focus on

issues such as social equality and justice has been invoked in such scholarship to defend

threatened livelihoods against the incursions of State conservation (Guha 1989). When

the Indian Supreme Court issued a notification to all the Indian States, including the state

of Jammu and Kashmir, to settle all the local rights in their respective protected areas, the

story of the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary was similar to most of the other protected

areas in India. Given the earlier inconspicuous processes through which Changthang had

been declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1987 with no engagement with or any reference to

the local people living inside the sanctuary, the Supreme Court notification was similar in

its approach. The Supreme Court notification was a judicial order in the form of a State

directive that came through the Jammu and Kashmir state administrative offices in order

to settle the rights of the local Changpa nomads on the sanctuary. However, the story

took a different turn in the case of Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary when the subdivisional

magistrate of the administrative block office in Nyoma, mandated to implement the

sanctuary notification as part of its larger planning and development portfolio, decided

not to completely reveal the implications of the notification to the local people. For the

magistrate, the idea of a militarized Changthang border becoming a wildlife sanctuary, in

the presence of a weak Jammu and Kashmir administration, was in any case contradictory,

and impossible tasks ensued. This did not prevent, however, the state Department of

Wildlife Protection from using the notification to announce Changthang as now falling

under its jurisdiction. Juxtaposed with the actively managed pasturelands by the Changpa

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nomads and also the pervasive Indian military’s bases and training fields across

Changthang, the sanctuary however, did face its challenges. Perplexed by the idea of

Changthang being a wildlife sanctuary, the local Changpa nomads have been raising

various questions about this notification and State wildlife conservation. Why is the

overriding of local rights necessary for the State to conduct wildlife conservation?

Concerns in regards to the rising number of kiang after the hunting ban in 1991 and their

impact on the local pastures have also been aired. Certain residents of Korzok, mostly

elites, have shown frustration about the constraints in accessing the faceless State

authorities to register their dissent about the sanctuary decision. However, more people

think about how the sanctuary project can benefit them than those who resist the State

for bringing a policy detrimental to Changthang.

The implementation of State conservation in Changthang has led to a diverse range of

local responses. Over the course of my field work for almost eleven months between

2009 and 2010, I observed some of the local consequences of the Changthang Wildlife

Sanctuary and recorded the reactions of the local residents. My study revealed that the

Korzok residents are not usually protesting against the sanctuary and they are also not

prepared to move out of the sanctuary in a fashion that is similar to the decision of the

Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) post, located in Korzok. The continuation of banned

livelihood activities, such as livestock grazing, and even military activities on some of the

areas defined to be ecologically fragile constitute glaring local responses to the sanctuary

notification. The state Department of Wildlife Protection in its eagerness, has demolished

a state guesthouse and constructed a concrete fence around the ecologically sensitive

shores of the Tsomoriri wetlands in the sanctuary, but has not paid much attention to the

many other banned activities in the sanctuary. In the midst of all this, various social

actors, with their different alignments and affiliations, have started to come together to

make collaborations and partnerships with each other; in order to stake their claims over

the sanctuary and negotiate the new terrain of State enforced conservation to safeguard

their interests. The presence of such dynamism and creativity of the social actors has

turned State conservation in Changthang into a complex and contingent project.

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In this way, the struggle over Changthang resources clearly defies the ‘parks versus

people’ or ‘vicious state versus virtuous communities’ frame of interpretation. Moose

(1993:398) points out how ‘binaries are relations of power reproduced at many different

levels’. In this regard one should not be misled by what appears to be a dichotomization

of interests and alliances in Changthang between the local pastoralists, on the one hand,

and, on the other, the various State actors, such as state bureaucrats, the Ministry of

Environment and Forest and conservation biologists, who are perpetually advocating for

an orthodox protected area concept for Changthang where either Changpa nomads are

required to be moved out of the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary or are required to draw

their subsistence from ‘fickle economic incentives’ (Persoon 2003, cited in Geiger

2008:172). Yet, in this case the Jammu and Kashmir state’s existing inability to influence

its allied Central State actors, such as the ITBP border post in Korzok, has raised

considerable doubts on making the sanctuary completely people–free. This complex

representation of the State demonstrates how the mandate of wildlife conservation in

Changthang is pursued by the same State that also allows large-scale militarization, with its

enormous ecological impact, in Changthang, even though both projects claim to serve

some kind of public interest. Other factors, such as how the Jammu and Kashmir state

conservation implementation process has often been influenced by subversions and dual

loyalties, as influenced by the local politicians, challenges the projected image of an

authoritative Jammu and Kashmir state, as distinct and separated from the communities.

Indeed, in this struggle the diverse State and non-State actors are thrown together in

various alliances that include Changpa nomads from Korzok and Tegarzung, the ITBP,

the Indian army, the block development office, the central Ministry of Forest and

Environment, the central Ministry of Defence, the central Ministry of Home Affairs, the

state Department of Wildlife Protection, Leh–based conservation NGOs, international

conservation NGOs, conservation biologists and conservation activists. Therefore, the

State conservation on Changthang frontiers is not a matter merely between the district

wildlife authorities and the local Changpa nomads. The oppositional framework inherent

in the ‘parks versus people’ paradigm compels us to identify the problems originating

from the local Changpa culture and pastoral livelihoods and State incompetence rather

than from other quarters. Int this way, the framework of resistance has obfuscated the

issues of class interest and ideological orientations present around the Changthang

Wildlfie Sanctuary. The powerful legacy of metropolitan conservationists, as distributed

across bureaucrats, scientists, activists and conservation professionals, in advocating for a

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‘wilderness’ concept for wildlife conservation in India is now often being scrutinized in

the conservation debate (Guha 2003; Sivaramakrishnan 2003; Rangarajan 2003; Mawdsely

et al 2009; Baviskar et al 2006; Baviskar 2012). In the process, the various alliances

amongst actors have invoked issues of backwardness, nomadism, civility, local self-

sufficiency, overgrazing, overstocking, development and civil–military relations; it is in the

middle of these that State conservation is also challenged. The failure of the ‘parks versus

people’ paradigm to account for what happens around the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary

mandates a rethinking of the paradigm that recognizes greater complexity in the

heterogeneity of State projects in Changthang and the constantly changing allegiances of

different social actors. The Changthang context challenges the political ecologist’s analysis

to come up with ‘complex and contingent narratives that do justice to the dynamism and

creativity of the social actors they seek to describe and to the complex material and

symbolic dimensions between people and resources’, as Baviskar (2006:192) recommends.

While in dialogue with the scholarly works produced in the recent political ecology and

cultural politics schools of thought, my ethnographic research analyzes the gamut of

political action and complexities produced around the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary.

This is in order to bring in those connections between frontiers and environmental

conservation that characterize every frontier, but are always under ‘particular conditions

and in specific modalities’ (Sodikoff 2012:5). My focus on the complex and contingent

processes on the Changthang landscape clearly suggests an intrinsic diversity in the parks

and people dynamism essentially characterizing the political context of Ladakh, being a

frontier region of the Indian nation-state.

Anthropology and Environment: Changing Perspectives

Emerging from my present research on the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary is one central

and related concept: the nature-culture paradigm. Once considered as a theoretical

foundation of anthropology, the nature-culture divide translates as the seeming

differences between culture, as a social entity, and nature, as a biophysical entity. Despite

critiques of this dichotomy from feminist anthropology and others, the vast majority of

anthropological work on this paradigm in the Global South context explores what I refer

to as politics of conservation through describing how conservation is a powerful interface

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between nature and culture, containing a vast network of sites and actors through which

concepts, policies, and ultimately cultures and ecologies are contested and negotiated

(Escobar 1998). In this body of work, conservation is consistently defined as political in

the sense that the focus is on how discourses of conservation are mobilized to inflame

practices of local exclusion and inequities. As Chhatre and Saberwal (2006:10) state in the

Indian context:

The basic centrality of politics to the outcomes of conservation comes through the … conflict over natural resources … a harsh state, bent on the exploitation of nature and labour. And yet, the notion of the omnipotent state, capable of exerting its will over disparate, fragmented communities, has come under serious attack.

The view of seeing conservation as a political tool or a relational trope with shifting

criteria has also been interpreted in other ways. Tsing et al. (2005:37) write:

Conservation is a human enterprise and as such there is political debate over its ultimate goals. Some who place maximum value on species’ rights hold the line at total preservation of all species and habitats, but most accept the goal of maintaining acceptable levels of species and habitats to ensure biodiversity for the future well being of our planet. Conservation can be viewed as an overarching goal of resource management. Conservation is a social and political process aimed at maintaining biological diversity, and thus both biological and socio-political information are important for conservation decision making.

In anthropology, the debate about balancing socio-political process and biology was

revisited recently. Adam Kuper and Jonathan Marks (2011) published an essay in Nature

entitled ‘Anthropologists Unite’ in the year 2011, discussing the American

Anthropological Association’s dropping of science from the wording concerning the

association’s range. The essay declared the need for anthropologists to unite again as a

field after several decades of culture/biology and post-modernism/science splits. When

one follows the trajectory of anthropology as a discipline, one finds that anthropology has

often been divided amongst those who use biological theories to illuminate the behaviour

11  

of human societies, and those who take a more interpretive and descriptive approach. My

research on the politics of conservation seeks to be located in the latter. To bring more

clarity to this particular positioning, I attempt to trace the trajectory of anthropology’s

engagement with the nature-culture paradigm as it has been employed to grapple with

conservation contours, becoming integral to many anthropology field sites such as mine.

My past research in Changthang constitutes the prior foundation for my present research,

for which fieldwork was conducted in 1994-95. Therefore, it is appropriate that my

present research takes cognizance of this past research and brings it to the present analysis

too.

Since anthropology as a subject is rooted in the activities and conceptualizations of

human beings, the reality that is generated through the nature-culture paradigm has often

been primarily anthropocentric (Biersack 1999). In this regard, comprehending the

Changpa’s socio-cultural institutions of nomadic pastoralism as influenced by their

dominating high altitude mountainous environment was also the basis of my earlier

research completed in 1996. Changpa nomads mostly herding sheep and goats live on the

Changthang plain, which spans a few thousand miles from the Indian State of Ladakh in

the west to the Chinese province of Qinghai in the east. In early anthropology, many

scholars examined the biophysical environment of their field sites, with the primary

purpose of using the knowledge of adaptation to this environment to draw conclusions

about patterns in human evolution. Often described as harsh, barren and inhospitable, the

trans-Himalayan location of my fieldwork intellectually provoked me to explain how

Changpa nomads lived in these climatic and terrestrial conditions. Located at an average

elevation of 5000 meters in a Himalayan rain shadow area, the combination of aridity and

high altitudes had made the land usable only as alpine pastures. The undertones of

environmental determinism in my earlier research, guided by the idea that I could explain

the whole gamut of the cultural institutions of Changpa society through their adaptation

to the environment, since nature in such places was powerful and inescapable, felt

inevitable in my research. The same would not have been applicable to any other

anthropological site, for example, a site like Delhi, a densely populated urbanized location.

However, the proposition that ‘environment always influences culture’ was not a

completely encompassing framework for Changthang, despite its dominating ‘nature’. The

12  

influences of the local trade activities with Tibet and Himachal Pradesh were also highly

influential for the cultural life of Changthang.

Julian Steward (1955), proposing the concept of cultural ecology, brought a fundamental

shift from earlier simplistic determinism by ‘differentiating’ cultural institutions in their

adaptation to the environment. The ‘cultural core’ was constituted by those institutions

that were most closely related to subsistence activities and economic arrangements and

were thus more directly linked to environmental factors than others. I understood in my

earlier research on nomadic pastoralism that the nomadic life of migrating with livestock

from one campsite to another was also due to a high altitude environment where

cultivation was not possible. But I also realized that if nomadic pastoralism as a

subsistence activity was to be regarded as the cultural core, its character was clearly

defined by the social and cultural institutions of family, kinship and marriage. Changthang

nomadism was not necessarily similar to the nomadism in western Rajasthan, although the

influence of the desert landscape and its characteristics could be compared. Therefore, in

my research I constantly considered Changthang’s nomadic pastoralism as a social

practice much influenced by its history, culture and most importantly, its surviving trade

linkages with Tibet and Himachal Pradesh. I think there was less scope in my research to

conclude that local nomadism in Changthang was a core subsistence activity solely

defined by the Changthang environment. My research differed from Steward at this stage,

as I did see how the reliance on the public distribution system (PDS) for food supplies

run by the state of Jammu and Kashmir to compensate local people after losing their

borderland pastures to China could become a reason for the nomads also to sedentarize.

When I discussed the barter trade exchange between Changpa nomads from Korzok with

the five high–altitude agricultural communities in the Spiti Valley of Himachal Pradesh, I

explained how critical these interlinkages were and how they are also the defining features

for the kind of nomadic pastoralism being practised in Changthang.

The assumption in cultural ecology that the adaptation model could only be envisioned

with respect to a human society that is bounded, stable, self-regulating, local, or at best a

regional entity led to its criticism later. Until my initial fieldwork in 1994-1995,

Changthang was still defined by the Indian State as an Inner Line Area, restricting access

13  

to outsiders for security reasons. It had therefore remained isolated from many economic

changes that occurred in the rest of Ladakh. So there were stronger probabilities that it

could have appeared to me as an isolated, unchanging community. However, the trade

exchange with the neighbouring Himalayan communities (lying within the Indian borders)

remained an essential part of my enquiry, as I was keen to situate the Changpa nomads in

a regional self-sufficiency domain of the high Himalayan region as a whole, rather than

through simply local subsistence.

I can see that my past research in Changthang was insufficiently grounded in the larger

context of Changpa nomads within Ladakhi society or for that matter Changthang within

the Indian nation-state, a national border site. By the time I completed my research in

1996, a new wave in anthropology had entered the field with an applied dimension, built

on the primary approaches within the contemporary ecological anthropology. It was just

after the time when the discipline of anthropology became influenced by structural

Marxism, political economy, interpretive anthropology, and later by post-structuralism

and other perspectives in 1970s and 1980s (Clifford 1988; Ferguson & Gupta 2002;

Marcus 1995; Rosaldo 1993; Brosius 1999; Baviskar 2008), which brought new insights

into the anthropologist’s engagement with environment. Drawing its insights from such

changes in the discipline, contemporary environmental anthropology, as it came to be

called, was relatively more alert to issues of power and inequality, to the contingency of

cultural and historical formations, to the significance of regimes of knowledge production,

and to the importance of the acceleration of translocal processes.

However, the sources of new enlightening research fields were not entirely academic for

me. After completing my MA degree in 1996, I started to work in the NGO sector in

India. This experience of my direct action and also applied research helped me to situate

the Himalayas in a new light. However the anthropological understanding that I had

managed to collect in my academic years did not have much scope to flourish in my work

choice in the development sector. My development colleagues mostly remained

appreciative of my anthropological point of view about the local complexities, but were

not sure how to use this knowledge in their applied development programmes. Despite its

serious pitfalls, development discourse emerging from the NGO world was raising some

14  

actual questions about the marginalized poor in these mountains and their status within

the Indian nation-state. I am sure mountain poverty is still as fresh an agenda as it was

during my years of working on its ambiguous yet peculiar contours. Therefore, I see my

PhD research gives me an opportunity to situate and settle both my academic and applied

experiences. During my association with especially the NGOs, I viewed my collaborations

with practitioners from other disciplines, such as geography, political science, sociology,

and conservation biology, as a welcome opportunity to seek more nuanced

understandings of the relations of nature and culture in a broader context of

environmental anthropology.

The association of environmental anthropology with political ecology is often linked to

common aims and understanding in thinking about the relations of nature and culture.

Political ecologists emphasize that their framework does not rely on the common

categories of environment or culture as in cultural ecology, ecological anthropology or the

sociologically oriented nature and society paradigm (Escobar 1999:4). They are of the

opinion that ‘both the non-modern and the postmodern domains find nature and society

absent conceptually, and the attempts to construct an analysis that does not rely on these

categories has political and epistemological dimensions’ (Escobar 1999:4) In a way, this

approach understands the complex amalgam as implicated and incorporated in the

domains of biology and history. Escobar (1999:4) explains political ecology’s

representation of the ‘ancient articulations through agriculture and forestry to molecular

technologies and artificial life’ and understands that each articulation with ‘its history and

specificity is related to its modes of perception and experience, determined by social,

political, economic, and knowledge relations, and characterized by modes of use of space,

ecological conditions, and the like’. Seen to be a production of social nature, political

ecology was considered to be conducive to more just and sustainable social and ecological

relations. With social movements seen as the complex representations of the nature-

society dialectic, the emphasis in political ecology is more on discourses and practices,

particularly those involving resistance and social movements (Peet and Watts 1996), as

well as local, regional and national particularities, as they stand in relation to global

linkages and flows or in relation to one another. In more recent works in political ecology

succinct accounts of how ‘power relations mediate human-environmental relations’

(Biersack 2006:3) have been produced. In this respect, I borrow heavily from this

15  

framework to understand how conservation contestations are shaped through the

‘asymmetric workings of power’ embodied in State wildlife conservation in Changthang.

However, my research remains cautious in regard to the limitations of this framework

when these claims are understood through structurally determined categories such as State

and Society. My focus on the discrepancy between the representations and the actual lives,

or being sensitive to the politics of representation, makes my research move away from

this otherwise rich framework with an unwavering focus on the issues of social inequality

and justice at stake in conflicts over natural resources (Baviskar 2008). The Changthang

region comes about in a much more dynamic and complex fashion than allowed by many

of the singular narratives used in defining resource struggles in the political ecology

framework. The fluidity and contingency which I encounter in my field site and which I

deem critical in understanding how these claims are not only made, but also deflected by

various actors, raise some deeper questions about constantly changing identity and

positionality which many analysts using the political ecology framework until recently

have taken for granted.

Cultural Politics as an approach to studying Conservation

While Baviskar (2008:4) considers political ecology to be the most critical conceptual

rubric to understand the politics of conservation and its contribution to study social

inequality and justice issues, she nevertheless finds that some of the assumptions that

govern political ecology need to be cautiously reworked. According to her, ‘while

asymmetries of power are clearly identified as crucial in political ecology’s analysis, they

tend to be viewed through the binaries of civil society versus state, “virtuous” peasants

versus “vicious” states framework’ (Baviskar 2008:5). Through such ‘simplified political

representations’ political ecology, according to her, ‘may not only fail to offer much

analytical purchase, but may also be complicit in the continued political marginalization of

those excluded by dominant narratives of environmental movements’ (Baviskar 2008:5).

Baviskar addresses the grounded realities of an Indian tribal group named ‘Bhilala’

affected by the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the river Narmada in Madhya

Pradesh. She argues that the intelligentsia has misrecognized Bhilala’s cultural values by

romanticizing ‘indigenous communities’ as an alternative to ecologically destructive

development. Understanding of the complex issues faced by the Bhilala community helps

Baviskar to reveal the inherent contradictions between religious beliefs and their

16  

unsustainable daily practices. She looks at how the romanticization serves the pursuit of

political-economical benefits by the individuals/groups under the garb of Andolan (the

protest movement).

Similarly, Brosius in his anthropological study of a transnational campaign against the

logging in Sarawak, East Malaysia, finds himself quite disturbed by the images being

purveyed by Euro-American environmentalists. The images of the Penan, a group of

hunter-gatherers who have been deeply affected by logging, are presented as a portrait

that is obscurantist and romantic. While making them FernGully4 icons, using images that

dehumanize and objectify, the environmental campaigns choose to obscure rather than

reveal structural domination (1999). In this way, political ecology’s way of seeing ‘cultural

identities as pre-formed, derived directly from an objective set of interests based on

shared locations in terms of class, gender or ethnicity that challenge

nationalism/capitalism’ might not reveal how environmental discourses and campaigns

actually shape and pave their ways in real situations (Baviskar 2008:6). The alternative

approach Baviskar suggests, cultural politics, thus argues for identities and interests to be

seen as mutually formed through ‘contingent lived experiences of situated cultural

practices and sedimented histories of people and place’ (Baviskar 2008:6).

The assumption of political ecology that ‘cultural identities are pre-formed, derived

directly from an objective set of interests based on shared location in terms of class

gender or ethnicity that challenge nationalism and/or capitalism’ (Baviskar 2008: 6) is also

argued by the cultural politics approach. The idea that identities and interests are mutually

formed through the contingent, lived experiences of ‘situated cultural practices and

sedimented histories of people and place’ (Moore 1999:658) is seen more reflective of the

‘messy process… [that] creates contradictions as subjects are formed within multiple , if

unequal, fields of power’ (Baviskar 2008:6). Similarly, the political ecology paradigm that

assumes the primary significance of natural resources resides in their material use value is

seen as problematic. The underlying idea of the several roles that natural resources

                                                                                                               4FernGully icon is an expression used by Brosius (1999) to explain how Penan the local people were considered to represent a conservation area but failed to be portrayed themselves as authentic political actors in the conservation progammes. Originally, the term alludes to a 1992 environmentally themed, Australian-American animated fantasy film ‘FernGully: The Last Rainforest’, directed by Bill Kroyer, which featured fairies and sprites saving a forest in Australia.

17  

perform is well illustrated by the thesis of the ‘social life of things’ in David Moose’s study

of village water tanks in Tamil Nadu. For Dalits, a traditionally marginalized group,

holding a political post in controlling the village water tank association is critical, perhaps

‘more [so] than the material gains from water’ (Baviskar 2008:6). Therefore, while cultural

politics shares political ecology’s commitment to understand social inequities, it argues for

a greater appreciation of the complex and contingent conditions where ‘identities,

interests and resources, [are regarded] not as predetermined givens, but as emergent

products of the practices of cultural production and reproduction’ (Baviskar 2008:7).

I see this approach as suited to understand and problematize the gamut of political action

emerging around the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary, generated when multiple groups lay

claim to natural resources. Throughout my PhD field work, I have observed how the

nature of claims made by the multiple groups over Changthang’s resources kept changing

with historical times and political processes. In this way, the social affiliations and

alliances cutting across the familiar categories, such as State and Society, are made and

remade in Changthang constantly. Especially, when the threats of Chinese invasion

loomed large on India’s borders, Central State agencies and military forces colluded

against the claims of the Department of Wildlife Conservation and conservation

biologists and denotified the sanctuary. On the other hand, these were the same biologists

who played a critical role in conjunction with the Central State agencies to declare

Changthang as a wildlife sanctuary in the first place. These shifting alliances and

fragmentations are part and parcel of the everyday lives as experienced in Changthang.

Similarly, the Changpa’s alignments with the ITBP in Korzok has illustrated various

contextual issues of military authority and also how such collaborations have helped to

secure their access over the sanctuary in the light of the Supreme Court notification. Such

an intermeshed process has created several contradictions in the lives of Changpa

nomads, as loyalties and animosities are made and constantly remade by Korzok families

and the others who spend more time on the nomadic campsites than in Korzok. In order

to understand how such significant shifts and their discursive practices play a role in

conservation contestations, I have begun to see my role and the purpose of my work

along the same line that Baviskar (2008) uses to describe in the cultural politics approach.

18  

To recapitulate briefly, the cultural politics framework ‘treats identities, interests, and

resources, not as pre-determined givens, but as emergent products of the practices of

cultural production and reproduction’ that essentially relies on understanding the

‘complex and contingent conditions under which people make history’ (Baviskar 2008:7).

Research into Changthang and Changpa Nomads

There are numerous reasons why a cultural political analysis of conservation contestations

is timely and valuable. The events that have unfolded around the Changthang Wildlife

Sanctuary over the past decade echo the practice of wildlife conservation practised across

India. It was in 1997 that the Supreme Court of India delivered a judgment requiring all

the Indian States to settle, within a year, all existing rights within the protected areas. It is

estimated that the implication of the Supreme Court judgment would affect more than 3

million people who live within Indian national parks and wildlife sanctuaries (Saberwal &

Rangarajan 2003). The ‘debate has gone back and forth over the years, with an

exclusionary conservationist lobby arguing, that with less than 5 percent of the Indian

land-mass under protected area status, all of it should be given much better protection

than it has been so far, and that all resource use by humans within national parks should

cease as mandated by the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act’ (Saberwal and Rangarajan

2003:1). Social activists have ‘retorted that people who have lived in these areas for

generations have a right to remain where they are, and that an elite environmentalism is

calling on the rural poor to make all sacrifices’ (Saberwal and Rangarajan 2003:1). The

wildlife scientists and environmentalists have argued that if people are not kept out of

protected areas, the biodiversity of such areas will decline, with consequences for both

people and nature. Social activists and others have contended that scientific knowledge is

unsuitable for an effective management of local issues, in much the same way that State

agencies and conservation biologists have often dismissed local knowledge as having little

or no role in the management of wilderness resources. In recent times, displacements

from protected areas, which are being planned on a much larger scale now involving

several villages at a time (Shuhabuddin 2010), have more intensely polarized the debate on

conservation. The scholarship on Indian conservation has repeatedly asked for a more

balanced policy framework for wildlife conservation, to which this research has a potential

to contribute.

19  

Another reason for my regional focus is that there is still far more scholarship within

anthropology on the nomadic communities across the world than the trans-Himalayan

context in India. In India various nomadic pastoralists such as Rabaris, Gaddis and Gujjar

groups, have been subject to many anthropological studies, in contrast to only two

detailed ethnographic studies on nomadic pastoralists in Ladakh, with only one resulting

in a publication i.e. Living Fabric: Weaving among the nomads of Ladakh Himalayas (2002). This

paucity of publication is not coincidental, but derives from the general tendency to

explore those field sites that are relatively conflict-free and easier to access. At the time of

my earlier fieldwork in 1994-1995, Ladakh itself was an established site for studies on

folklore, mythology, and cosmology in anthropology. Anthropologists from Europe and

America took advantage of the Indian government’s decision to reopen Ladakh to the

outside world, which led to ethnographers flocking there, attracted by its status as one of

the very few areas of Tibetan culture open to foreign researchers or as a component of

wider Indian and South Asian research on smaller societies. Changthang, with its

geographical location on the India-China border, though, remained an exception as it was

strategically closed for any research by foreigners. It was only the extensively pre-planned

visits, painfully worked through the central ministry of Home Affairs approvals in Delhi,

which could render an admission into these plains for research, and then even for a very

short time. These were restrictions from which I was exempted as an Indian national.

Before my attempts to describe the research methodology in details, I think it is pertinent

to discuss the ways in which Changthang and Changpa nomads have been imagined,

perceived and experienced in the more general setting of Ladakh.

At a higher altitude and experiencing more extreme weather than the regional capital of

Leh, and above all being much closer to the India-China borders, Changthang is not a

place easy to access for outsiders and people arriving from ‘down’5. The Indian soldiers

posted in Ladakh would often beseech their respective gods and goddesses not to be

posted in Changthang, where their fellow soldiers have died not in war, but as a result of

                                                                                                                5 ‘Down’ an English common term locally used in Leh to denote Indian people from outside Ladakh, mostly from lower altitudes – hence the term ‘down’.

20  

high altitude sickness and extreme weather. Despite employing the latest technology to

protect its borders, the Indian defense establishment is perplexed by these military

causalities, known as environmental-deaths, caused more due to the extreme climatic and

terrain conditions than battle itself6. The region is physically difficult, but the infantry

posts are often known for their abundance of resources, such as food, cold weather

clothing, sleeping bags, equipments and infrastructure to deal with the extremes of the

climate and high altitude. Field posting regulations not permitting soldiers to bring their

respective families to Ladakh also adds to the reluctance of serving on these borders. All

these factors combined make Changthang a difficult place for soldiers, a place from which

they would like to return soon. For example, the ITBP soldiers posted in Korzok, mostly

hailing from the lowland provinces of India, wait eagerly to finish their maximum 60-day

period in Korzok and safely return down to lower altitudes. The uniformed soldiers

staying in equally distinctive military barracks in the local context not only exemplify a

particular system of local and official distinction, but also act as a bridge between the

military/State and local people in Changthang, as discussed in Chapter 5.

Traditionally Changthang has been a difficult place to travel to even for central Ladakhis.

Characterized by remoteness and a prevalent nomadic lifestyle, Changthang is still an

enigma for many people who belong to Leh. I remember that the long journey of almost

230 kilometers from Leh to Korzok, passing through the Indus gorge and then onto the

sprawling valley floors, used to take a considerable time to reach, depending on unreliable

road conditions and non-existence of public transport. Travelling to Changthang meant a

strenuous journey, and it also meant carrying your own food and supplies and your own

place to stay, such as a camping tent. My adopted Ladakhi family in Leh would always be

concerned about my decision to go off to Changthang. Ane le (a term for father’s sister in

Ladakhi, but also often used to address elder women) would often comment that it is an

extremely cold place, full of bandits, with nothing to eat and nowhere to stay, and would

often wonder why I had wanted to put my life in ‘danger’? The relief upon my safe return

would be obvious on everyone’s face, but how I had become dark (sunburnt) and lost the

colour of my face or lost weight would be a common topic of dinner talk. Changthang

simply was not considered good. Ama le’s (Ladakhi term for mother) umpteen supplies of

                                                                                                               6 http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/846-indian-soldiers-have-died-in-siachen-since-1984-112082802005_1.html

21  

hot cups of milk and special meals before and after my journey to Changthang were a

curious mix of care and affection she projected towards me. That also made me think that

it was not the physical distance from Leh, that made Changthang remote, but also that the

cultural differences between places which made the Leh pa (those from Leh) see

Changthang the way they did. Geiger (2008:95) similarly argues that frontiers are often

associated with ‘remoteness and forbidding terrain ...significantly in other terms than just

geographical distances’. Changthang is considered remote because of different customs,

rituals and above all the nomadic lifestyle of the Changpa nomads, which meant they

would have a certain status within the social hierarchy of Ladakhi Buddhist society. How

Changthang was pictured socially in Ladakhi society exercised considerable influence on

the bureaucrats from Leh serving in Changthang. It was reflected in the pejorative tones

used to describe the Changpa nomads who were often summoned when bureaucrats

visited Changthang.

Changthang is, however, much more than these images that outsiders perceptions have

produced. Changthang has experienced various histories, trade treaties, border

development strategies and now wildlife conservation all of which make it quite distinct

within the Indian State. Spread over a large 22,000 square kilometers of landscape, this

high altitude terrain, successfully occupied for centuries by the Changpa nomads, is

located along the national border of India with China. The 19627 war, which decided the

Line of Actual Control (LAC) between India and China, also drew borders through

customary pasturelands, meaning that local nomads lost most of their winter pastures to

China. After the war, the intake of Tibetan refugees into Indian territory was felt most

directly by the Changpa nomads who after losing the pastures to nation building were also

pushed into sharing their remaining pastures with Tibetan refugees and their

accompanying livestock. This sudden and dramatic shift in the local nomads’ life led to

realignments and refurbishing of their pastoral lifestyle, which also included out-migration

and sedentarization. Outmigration from Changthang was also triggered due to the trade

decline with Tibet as a result of the closure of the India-China border, and the

introduction of vegetable peas as a cash crop by the state of Himachal Pradesh amongst

                                                                                                               7Aksai chin – a high altitude desert/pastureland covering an area of 37,244 square kilometers has been entirely administered by China since the India-China war of 1962, although claimed by India. This region had also constituted the local winter pastureland and became inaccessible to the local Changpa nomads after the borders were declared closed (Dollfus 2013; personal communication 1994, 2009-2010)

22  

its high altitude villages from where Changpa nomads accessed barley and other cultivated

produce. Given the various imaginations and experiences, how Changthang has become

what it is today presents a complex picture. In order to gain a nuanced understanding of

‘conservation contestations’ around the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary then, cultural

politics provides me a lens to see through the many avatars of Changthang and associated

perceptions juxtaposed into these ‘contestations’, which have been shaped by one set of

actors or the other at particular times in its history.

Multisited Research

Ethnography, to use Falzon’s (2009:1) wording, ‘privileges an engaged, contextually rich

and nuanced type of qualitative social research, in which fine grained daily interactions

constitute the lifeblood of the data produced’. It provides a strong basis for the ‘dramatic

upsurge in interest amongst anthropologists in doing research on environmental

management of their field sites’ (Brosius 1999:277). Ethnography, with its ability to

produce nuanced understanding across temporal and spatial frameworks, is a useful

overall methodology for my field site, where diverse contested visions of the

environment, environmental problems and forms of alliances are constantly conjured. I

embarked on my research aware of the limitations embodied within the traditional

conceptions of ethnographic practice and its heuristic need for such as a locality. In this

context, international borders such as that between India and China provide fertile, but

challenging ground for anthropological research. In the case of Changthang, it was not the

matter of increased mobility and displacement across the international borders that made

me move beyond its single locality, but, rather the political adherence and location of

Changthang within the Indian State. In previous anthropological research, a locale like

Changthang was seen as a contextual subject of the world system framework (Wallerstein

1974), but in my research it becomes integral to and embedded in multi-sited objects of

study. In contemporary ethnography, as well as in other social science circles, the long

tradition of representing the relation between people and place as a spatially bounded

reality is now being challenged. McCay (1999:187) who refers to Michael Goldman (1998)

for drawing attention towards those who contribute field-based case studies ‘…for being

too focused on social and ecological relations in local sites and not enough to the dialectic

relations between local and nonlocal’. In recent research, anthropologists like Acciaioli

23  

(2010) reveal through a careful ethnographic lens how the non-local frameworks and

interventions affect the parameters of the local exercise of agency in dealing with the

conservation politics around the protected areas of South East Asia. In that sense,

conservation, a global cultural movement which I see as a socially constructed

phenomenon, cannot be accounted for by focusing merely on Changthang. Therefore, in

my research, I also follow people, connections, associations and relationships across

space. However, I remain cautious, as ‘following’ does not assume a pre-existing field of a

‘given’ space or an already constituted set of trajectories produced by people, goods,

information, and so on (Falzon 2009:5).

Falzon (2009) argues how multi-sited research can only be appreciated fully with an

understanding of how space is socially produced with ‘merits of interrelatedness,

multiplicity and the fact that it is always under construction’ (Massey, cited in Falzon

2009:6). Changthang, as a frontier space, is invariably, inevitably and self-evidently located

within the larger reality of nation-states. In that sense I approach Changthang as a site

where the global collapses easily into locally manifested situations rather than something

monolithic or external to them, whether in relation to its frontier status or its status as a

site of conservation interventions. Therefore, it is not the usual local-global contrast I

invoke in my research, but how Changthang evokes the global within itself. With

reference to Wolf’s remarkable book titled Europe and the People without History (1982), I see

the Changpa nomads and their social institutions as being radically transformed by the

postcolonial and globalizing forces that require greater attention. They deserve careful and

accurate analysis of the conditions under which the local institutions arose and were

sustained or lost and the conditions under which their common pool resources were used,

abused, managed and mismanaged, or simply ignored.

Similarly, another significant insight of multi-sited research that I bring to my own

investigation influences how I attempt to ‘decentre’ the resistance and accommodation

framework that has organized a considerable body of valuable research in early

anthropology. Marcus (1995:101) emphasizes:

…reconfigured space of multiple sites of cultural production in which questions of resistance, although not forgotten, are often subordinated to

24  

different sorts of questions about the shape of systemic processes themselves and complicities with these processes among variously positioned subjects.

This perspective is critical to my research where I see the subjugation of nomadic

pastoralists as primarily a matter and consequence of how they are positioned in a

particular discourse. As I discuss in Chapter 5 this subjugation, which is inherent in

romanticizing (and a basic premise for their displacement from the Changthang Wildlife

Sanctuary), also occurs when we dichotomize knowledge as indigenous or traditional, on

the one hand, and technical or modern, on the other. I draw upon a number of systems of

knowledge – the law, sciences, policy making, NGO visions and so – on to generate

understanding of what I call environmental knowledge to configure how Changpa

nomads can be talked about, and more easily interpreted. The ‘…vision of small,

integrated communities using locally evolved norms and rules to manage resources

sustainably and equitably’ needs to be deconstructed to decentre the resistance and

accommodation framework. (Agrawal & Gibson1999:7). Such representations of

community undermine the potential long-term goal of increasing the role of communities

in conservation, but also tend to dichotomize the actors into locals and the government.

Being perceived as a localized community does not make Changpa nomads ‘wise and

adept’ in how they manage the resources, reciprocally, just because certain people work

for government does not mean that they are particularly uncaring and ‘inclined towards

ineptitude and avarice’ (McCay 1999:182). This multi-sited methodology gives me not

only space to entertain a more nuanced perspective on the nomadic pastoralists in this

research, but also an ability to differentiate the powerful community actors from the less

powerful ones. In this way, my multi-sited research perspective assists me to see

Changthang as a space, constituted by a number of metaphorical, scientific, legal

locations, and articulated at a range of scales.

The critics of multi-sited ethnography hold that ‘no matter how fluid and contiguous a

research object, it is best studied by focusing on a limited slice of the action’ (Falzon

2009:6). In this respect, due to my research being distributed across two decades, my

present fieldwork emerges more as a process rather than a mere event. Borrowing the

term of ‘spiraling cumulative experience’ (Falzon 2009:9) as a part of a long-term research

trajectory, I bring the different times of my association with Changthang into my present

25  

research. My past research, even though locally specific, provides a strong foundation for

my present research.

Research Setting

With the difference of fifteen years between my two anthropological research visits to

Changthang in 1994-95 and 2009-2010, I have noticed growth and change in my field site

as well in anthropology, not to mention the trajectory of my own perceptions and

understanding about both. I first arrived in Changthang to conduct anthropological

research with the Changpa nomads in July 1994. I conducted research on the livelihoods

of the Changpa nomads through tracing their ecology, economy and trade exchange

systems. After five years, I also conducted participatory conservation fieldwork with

conservation practitioners and biologists of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)–

Leh office, with the goal of understanding how Changpa’s view their natural world and,

specifically, their wetlands.

The present research is based on eleven months of fieldwork from July 2009-May 2010.

My research was predominantly oriented to participant-observation accomplished through

living amongst the Changthang people and spending time in the private domains of their

home and in their campsites. I spent a significant part of the year between May and

October in Korzok which was the prime location from where I would visit the nomadic

campsites, which were up to 50 km away. Almost half of my fieldtrips included staying in

Leh, Delhi, Dehradun and Hyderabad for professional meetings and interviews, attending

global conferences on protected areas, participating in wildlife talks and environment and

conservation seminars. In Delhi, I was affiliated with the Institute of Economic Growth

(IEG), Delhi University, which also provided me a refuge for spending time in the

institute’s library and giving me an opportunity for casual conversations with the

institute’s experts.

In conducting this research on wildlife conservation, I drew my informants from a wide

cross section of the local people, including inhabitants with both migratory and sedentary

households, as well as the local bureaucrats, military soldiers and officers on duty and

26  

visiting domestic and international tourists. The sites outside the ‘local’ included actors

such as Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC) officers, district level

bureaucrats responsible for wildlife conservation and rural development in Changthang,

Indo-Tibetan Border Police officers, NGO professionals from international groups such

as the World Wide Fund for Nature, national NGO experts from Kalpavriksh and the

Nature Conservation Foundation, local NGO actors from The Student’s Education and

Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) and Ladakh Ecology Development Group

(LeDEG), the Leh Nutrition Project, researchers from the Centre for Science and

Environment, the secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) and the

Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA), and conservation professionals, including activists

and elite/urban conservationists and wildlife biologists, both those affiliated with the

government and those not.

Before I embarked on my research in Changthang, I spent time visiting the Department

of Wildlife Protection (DoWP) in Leh in addition to following my usual practice of

accessing research permits from the local government office of the District Collector,

Leh. This time the DoWP insisted on getting an approval from the state office of the

Environment and Forest based in Srinagar. Given that I was seeking permission to do

research, I was required to submit my research proposal to the Srinagar office. The

approvals took more than three weeks to arrive and granted me research permission for

three months at a stretch. This meant I had to come back to Leh to renew my research

permissions to complete my fieldwork in Korzok and related campsites. These research

permit slips were checked at various Inner Line check posts, the first one being at Mahe,

20 kilometers short of Nyoma, close to the borders, and the second one at Korzok itself,

by the ITBP soldiers.

On the first day of my arrival in Korzok, I was cordially invited by the chagdzod, the local

religious head and also the local wildlife guard, to conduct a meeting to share my

understanding of the rules and regulations of the Indian protected areas and how these

differed from the policies of the International Ramsar convention in regards to the local

people. This meeting was timely, as this was also the event when I formally sought local

27  

permission to conduct my research, which was fortunately granted very easily8. A similar

meeting was also called for the Changpa nomadic groups in Korzok phu campsite by the

ex-councilor at a later stage, where wildlife protection issues were discussed and recorded.

For my fieldwork I resided for the most part as a paying guest in Korzok with Reigzin

Dolma, a widow of the ex-Tulku (a reincarnated religious head) who was living by herself.

Most of the households in Korzok were aware of me through my association of several

years of visiting and conducting research. This time I was there with my two-and-a-half-

year-old child, and this did open up some new social spaces. Since my initial research in

Changthang, I have returned to Changthang several times: first between 1997-1998, 2000-

2001 and then in the winter of 2004. Over this time period, the new marriages, births and

deaths have created new kin relationships within the circle of families with whom I have

maintained close connections. One such family was that of Tashi Takpa; his son’s

marriage and birth of grand children provided the grounds for new experiences and

connections. Similarly, Tsering’s now adolescent daughters would often lend a hand to

baby-sit my child when I sometimes was over-occupied with my field research. Kunzang,

Tashi Dorjee’s wife, knitted a pair of warm socks for my child while we spent some very

cold nights in Changthang, when the temperature dipped to -20 degrees. A café opened

by a local friend Reigzin and run by two Himachali cooks was a place my child could find

refreshment or food any time of the day while I spent some time of my everyday routine

there. Therefore, I serendipitously ended up observing and conversing with the tourists

and soldiers visiting the café more frequently than I expected. One of such bizarre

meetings was with a visiting army Major General from the Punjab regiment, who was

visiting the region for a ‘recce’ (i.e. reconnaissance) trip with his battalion, who strongly

opined that bringing my child to such a ‘difficult’ place was not an intelligent act. As a

result, during his regiment’s temporary stay in Korzok I was extended gifts of army

rations a few times, in addition to a lunch invitation to their camp located next to the

ITBP post on the shores of Tsomoriri. It was certain that such hospitality was not offered

to the local people, and the Major General’s initiative to be friendly with me originated

more because of me being a nonlocal. Such hospitality visits, however, helped me to

                                                                                                               8 A recent study attempt in Changthang by an Australian university in collaboration with WWF was not granted permission by the local people in Korzok. As a result, the researchers had to shift their field site to another settlement.

28  

interact with the soldiers whose camp would otherwise have remained completely

inaccessible due to the reasons of security and secrecy.

During the course of my field work, I frequently met Tibetan refugees either on a

religious occasion or otherwise, especially with the acquaintances made during my past

visits to Tibetan refugee-dominated settlements such as Sumdo and Chumur on India’s

borders with China. Although Changpa nomads and Tibetan refugees both use the

Changthang pastureland that encompasses the wildlife sanctuary, my work is

predominantly concerned with the Changpa nomads. A challenge I face, one common to

all social scientists as they write up their research, is applying a language that does not

misrepresent the complexity in Changthang. I do, however, remain cautious of my

analytical expression and clarify wherever required to differentiate between these two

groups as there remains significant differences between the two. Also, I do not use terms

such as ‘indigenous people’ to refer to the Changpa nomads, as I believe, that remains a

political construct implying contentious meanings. In 1989, the Constitution’s (Jammu and

Kashmir) Scheduled Tribes Order declared Changpa nomads along with Balti, Beda, Bot/Boto,

Brokpa/Drokpa/Dard/Shin, Garra, Mon, and Purigpa as Scheduled Tribes constituting

more than 80% of the whole Ladakhi population. However, the scholars have raised

theoretical and practical difficulties in applying the terms such as ‘tribal’, adivasi9 and

‘indigenous people’ in the Indian context. Despite its common political and administrative

usage since colonial times, Beteille (1986) points to the problems in distinguishing the

term such as caste from adivasi given the long historical cultural exchange amongst the

two social groups. Similarly, the characteristic attributes recognised by the United

Nation’s Working Group for the Indigenous Populations, including the criterion of

continuous existence, can potentially mean excluding a large number of adivasi or tribal

people in India. As a signatory, the Indian government is bound by several of such

conventions and has given protection for the rights of the ‘scheduled tribes’ under the

fifth and sixth schedule of the Indian Constitution. Therefore, due to reasons of an

absence of precise meaning and applicability of the term indigenous in the Indian context,

I refer to the social group I researched on Changthang as the Changpa nomads and not as

an indigenous group.

                                                                                                               9 Adivasi is the Indian term for social groups designated as ‘Scheduled Tribes’ in the Indian Constitution.

29  

During the summer months of my stay, most of the Changpa nomadic families were

located in Korzok phu, approximately 3 kilometers from their Korzok settlement. Now

Korzok phu accessible via a motorable road, I could reach the summer camping site of

the Changpa nomads on a vehicle while continuing to stay in Korzok. Given the close

proximities, the constant flow of people from the campsite to Korzok and vice-versa, also

helped me to meet people and talk to them. Most of the days, I would be gone in the

morning to the summer campsite and would return in the late afternoons and evenings. I

have used a rucksack child carrier in which I could make my child sit and carry her to

those campsites and locations, which required hiking. I also participated in the annual

festival and other everyday religious functions at the Korzok monastery where my child

and me were eagerly accepted and made to feel comfortable. In Changthang, children of

the age of my child are free to roam quite comfortably, and there would be times when I

would sit in my room writing my field observations while my child be playing with the

other children of her age on the street and casually watched over by the local elders

without any formal arrangements to do so.

Over the years since my initial fieldwork I have come to regard Changpa nomads as

friends, and as part of the diverse conservation and development projects targeted for

Korzok. This association has assisted me to both see and make sense of the complex

world where Changpa nomads and the recent conservation projects as embedded and

generative of transnational social and ecological relations.

The Chapter outlines

In Chapter 2 I outline how the structural context of Changthang as a frontier site is

critical in interpreting the dynamism generated around the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary.

Drawing on a typology of frontiers, I purposefully maintain a focus upon the historical

efforts made at different times by the State to reorganize, monitor and develop

Changthang as a frontier. I trace how the various trajectories of frontierization in regards

to control, extraction, settlement, and – in more recent times – conservation have

intersected to constitute the history of Changthang. Ultimately, attention to this constant

30  

State gaze since precolonial times reveals how the identity and organization of the

Changpa are not those of a romantically isolated entity; what has been produced and

reproduced through State efforts is therefore not external to the State, but is an integral

part of it.

In Chapter 3 I focus on how the essentialized imagery and rendering of the local Changpa

nomads in the conservation context are at variance with the not-so-fixed identity of the

Changpa nomads. In the first section of the chapter I discuss how the biologists, with

their sole emphasis on local livestock grazing, invoke the Changpa ‘community’ as an

entity for constructing a conservation discourse of Changthang. I see how in this literature

Changpa nomads are romanticized by characterizing them as self-sufficient & unchanging.

In the second section of the chapter, I examine the construction of Korzok as a village

and how it is a political construct fashioned to represent the Changpa community in the

community-based conservation programme. I conclude the chapter with an example of a

community-based tourism programme implemented in Korzok and how the concept of

community defined by WWF-India in this programme has become a source of local

conflict and cultural homogenization.

My fourth chapter focuses on the metropolitan conservationists, an analytical category

that has remained absent in the political analyses of wildlife conservation in Changthang.

Instead of seeing them as a homogenous group, I unpack the group into elite

conservationists, conservation biologists, state bureaucrats and conservation professionals

in order to understand the different mechanisms and strategies they employ to take

forward their conservation agenda in the form of Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary. I also

analyze what this agenda means for the local Changpa nomads.

The focus of my next three chapters (Chapters 5, 6, and 7) is to highlight those complex

and contingent processes invoked around the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary that are

often lost if seen through the binaries of State and (Local) Community. These chapters

seek to display the full gamut of political action produced when these multiple actors have

participated together to collaborate and forge alliances, particularly after the judgment of

31  

Supreme Court notification in Changthang, in ways that would not be visible through the

parks versus people paradigm. The varied and changing political agendas and contexts

make Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary into a complex and dynamic terrain of contestation

and multiple alliances. The three case studies are deployed to reveal how matters of

military authority, nomadism, centralized State policies and control, trade exchange and

development intermesh with each other to make Changthang what it now is.

In Chapter five I explore a particular collaboration realized between the local Changpa

nomads and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), an Indian paramilitary force. I

examine how the fragmented nature of the State and supremacy of the military authority

in Changthang foster certain conditions that set the parameters of this relationship. While

this alignment specifically explains those contextual factors and politico-economic

interests that benefit Changpa nomads, it also explains how this alignment, where

Changpa nomads are more prone to liaise with the ITBP than the Department of Wildlife

Protection, becomes a symbol to protect local access over the Changthang Wildlife

Sanctuary. In making this point, this chapter also demonstrates how ultimately it is the

supremacy of the frontier of control in Changthang that overrides the frontier of

conservation.

In the sixth chapter I continue to problematize the binaries of the State and community

and examine a partnership pursued between the local Changpa nomads and the

Department of Wildlife Protection (DoWP) to implement conservation policy. On the

basis of this collaboration, I argue, the assumption of the State being autonomous and

separate from the Community is misleadingly imagined in conservation discourse. The

chapter explores how subversions, dual loyalties, and political influence continue to affect

how DoWP implements conservation policy in Changthang.

Chapter seven furthers the argument that it is only through problematizing the binaries of

the parks and people paradigm that one is able to reveal how the Indian military is

successful in accomplishing a better control of the borders through finding its role in

environmental projects. How the military adopts and naturalizes its role in environmental

32  

protection in Changthang is also explored through analyzing the relationship of the Indian

military with the conservation NGOs such as WWF. The analysis of environmental

spectacles created through such relationships is critical for unpacking the military as an

institution and discovering how it conceals its actual purposes in such moves as effecting

the denotification of part of the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary.

The thesis concludes with a further reflection on how the dynamics of resource conflict

cannot be understood through the limited optic of the parks versus people paradigm. I

argue that simplistic assumptions underlying this paradigm inhibit a complete grasp of the

complexities and contested nature of the struggle over Changthang resources. The

presence of multiple actors with different agendas operating to stake their claims on

Changthang resources forces the analysis to encompass the specificities of Changthang,

including local contingencies and complexities, that are generally eclipsed in that

paradigm. Although this is specifically an ethnography about the Changthang Wildlife

Sanctuary on the India-China border whose conclusions are not all generally applicable to

other protected areas in India or Asia, the themes that arise from my research are,

nonetheless, relevant to contemporary issues surrounding resource conflicts in many

regions. Ultimately, the contestations surrounding Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary are

largely inflected by its border context, which fosters the conditions and complications

reflected in this resource conflict.

33  

Chapter 2

The Changthang Frontiers Precolonial Contexts to Recent Transformations _____________________________________________________________________

In order to suggest that Changpa nomads could build and extend new versions of

environmental and social advocacy, the environmental literature on Changthang has

invoked a distinct imagery of the Changpa community depicting harmonious relationship

with their environment, if not today, then in the distant past. While these assertions derive

primarily from the uncertain and ambiguous depiction of a blissful traditional society

ravaged by the evils of development, there are few Changpa nomads or even historical

records that share this simplistic view of Changthang. In July 1949, while on his first visit

to Ladakh, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had put it bluntly: ‘In Ladakh you are

backward and unless you learn and train yourselves you cannot run the affairs of your

country’ (Amrita Bazaar Patrika 1949, cited in van Beek 2001:372). Nehru’s remarks, not

long before the first major wave of development in Changthang triggered by the defeat in

the India China war in 1962, were probably oriented to establishing the fact that Ladakh

needed much help from the Indian nation. He also asserted that India need not regret

having lost that part of Changthang where ‘not even a blade of grass grows’ (see Chapter

1), as it was basically not productive. The perceived marginality expressed in Nehru’s

statement in 1949, as well as in the oral testimonies of Changpa nomads who have been

striving for State development since the time they lost their pastures to China, represents

a different version of Changthang than the picture of harmonious self-sufficiency the

environmental literature attempts to imagine. In this chapter, I attempt to demonstrate

how Changthang as an Indian frontier has been similarly constructed through the pre-and

post-independence periods of India and how the historical imperatives of the particular

‘State and Communities’ relationships in fact prefigure the way in which the local nomadic

pastoralists have related to the Changthang environment. In this chapter I use the

framework of the ‘frontier’ examined by Tsing (2005) & Geiger (2008) to argue for a

more complex and nuanced understanding of the local past and the present context of

Changthang. The chapter illustrates the ways in which State and communities relations

have been changing over time throughout the Ladakh kingdom from prior to the late 19th

century in the period of Dogra rule, up to the postcolonial Indian State to date.

34  

The Concept of Frontier

Despite the undertones of Social Darwinist leanings in Turner’s (1893) hypothesis, his

highlighting of the concept of the frontier has remained of value to academia for decades.

Other than popularizing the term and drawing attention to the significance of the fringes

of American nation in shaping its identity, it also conveyed other insights, such as the

succession of different sorts of frontiers existing simultaneously in any one region.

Moving away from the overarching American exceptionalism embodied in Turner’s

hypothesis, and taking its clues from the biases and omissions of Turner’s frontier notion,

Geiger (2008:78) further elaborates the frontier notion as ‘a powerful framework for the

comparative analyses of conquests and colonization at state fringes’. Taking it away from

the immutable antagonism between cultural monoliths embodied in Turner’s hypothesis,

Geiger emphasises the reciprocal nature of the interactions at the frontier and gives space

to the historical agency of the less dominant actors in his concept of frontiers. On the

other hand, Tsing (2005) in her book Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection tends to

continue with a more abstract relevance of Turner’s conceptualisation of the frontier as a

meeting place of ‘savagery’ and ‘civilization’. She regards the frontier as neither a place nor

a process, but a project, in which a particular region is envisaged. In addition to defining

the uplands of South Kalimantan as a resource frontier, she does note the existence of

other type of frontiers – the nation-making frontier, the techno-frontier, and the salvage-

frontier – that characterize the current situation in Kalimantan, Tsing’s fieldsite, as an

unstable mix of both the resource frontier and salvage frontier.

In order to accommodate a broader range of phenomena and think more specifically

about the issues of power, agency and accountability in frontier-settings, Geiger (2008:96-

98) suggests three principal frontier types - ‘frontiers of settlement’, ‘frontiers of

extraction’, ‘frontiers of control’. Frontiers of settlement, often referred to as ‘settlement

frontiers’, ‘land frontiers’ or ‘agricultural frontiers’ in the literature, occur where State

power establishes itself through an introduction of settlers, constituting the main arenas

of struggle between indigenous peoples and settlers in contemporary times. Frontiers of

extraction or of exploitation or, more succinctly termed, resource frontiers are seen to be

formed when the main purpose of invading is to prospect for and extract natural

resources. These are not mutually exclusive categories; Geiger notes that frontiers of

35  

extraction co-exist and overlap with frontiers of settlement. Frontiers of control are a type

of frontier where neither settler colonization nor the exploitation of minerals or other

natural resources is a major objective of incursion, but are a result of essentially the State’s

control. Borderlands in that respect are quintessential frontiers of control where they

constitute the zones of territory lining the boundaries of State and therefore the State’s

gaze is more directed outwards, towards the adjacent domain of a rival State, rather than

its own frontier territory. Despite the differences amongst frontiers, Geiger frames them

commonly as entities which share the ‘essential quality of being geographical regions with

peculiar political economic, social and cultural characteristics, which are not found in the

core areas of state control’ (Kopytoff 1987, cited in Geiger 2008: 99). Emphasizing the

governance structures, Geiger (2008:99) sees them as ‘administrative low-pressure areas’

where ‘institutions of government are rudimentary when compared with the core areas’.

Therefore, they are still characterized by having a resident population with collective

forms of identity; in order to control these frontiers, State policies continue to be geared

towards changing this. Kopytoff (1987, cited in Geiger 2008) makes it clear that the

frontier is a political fact, an outgrowth of the State’s purposive utilization of geographical

space.

Regardless of their specific types, Geiger characterises frontiers as conflict–ridden by their

very nature. Described sometimes as being the violent edge of empire (Ferguson &

Whitehead 2000) these frontiers are known for exhibiting conflicts over meaning, space

and territory and power. Some scholarship has attributed such conflicts to the State as an

agency that is often the fundamental generative source of conflict on international borders

such as India’s northeast borders with China (Baruah 2003). Unlike the core areas, here at

the State’s remote ends, ‘concerns for state and nation building outweigh considerations

for political stability, biodiversity conservation or, local communities’ rights’ (Baruah

2003:12). Therefore, the conflicts on borderlands do not appear as a ‘lamentable

breakdown of social order, but as the noble beginning of it’ (Baruah 2003:12).

In competition over frontier resources, multiple actors formulate and strategically deploy

values and ideas suited to strengthen their respective positions. The State’s ability to

construct or draw upon certain ideological discourses other than just deploying its usual

36  

economic wealth and physical force to assure legitimacy among competing claims to

frontier resources is critical in this respect. For example, the frontiers that are located at

international borders, ‘the state tends to employ a discourse that appeals to patriotic

notions and national security, the sanctity of national borders, and the sovereignty of the

motherland in order to control frontier resources’ (Geiger 2008:98). Similarly, in recent

times, ‘democratization and the ascendancy of the discourse of nature conservation and

human and minority rights’ are claimed to have led to a noticeable shift in power relations

between indigenous people and outsiders on many State peripheries (Geiger 2008:98).

The Indian context has also demonstrated similar trends where the Indian State has taken

a less confrontational view of the ‘dangers and merits of cultural diversity at their margins’

(Jonsson 2001, cited in Geiger 2008:165-66) and passed the autonomy status to Ladakh in

1995. In pursuing the notion of biodiversity conservation, the appeal is made not only to

Ladakh, to contribute to the national, but even the global ‘common’ good (Bryant

2001:11). As a result, the global nature of this new agenda has brought environmentalists

from the Global North and South to come together to ‘lend visibility and legitimacy to

both traditional livelihood systems and the alternative views of needs fulfilment and

human development’’ (Schmink and Wood 1992, cited in Geiger 2008:166-167). Referring

to this trend as the ‘greening of frontier politics’, Geiger (2008:170) believes the move

towards sustainable development and conservation is a sign of a new era where there is a

potential to ‘balance out to some extent’ the erstwhile subjugation of the indigenous

communities inhabiting the frontiers.

According to Bryant (2001: 11), the ascendancy of the discourses of nature conservation

has introduced the ‘more complex discoursive agenda’ where unrestrained natural

resource exploitation as a major feature of frontiers has given way to the notions of

biodiversity conservation. The re-orientation of development and land-use priorities in

these frontiers has expressed itself in the form of the creation of nature reserves to

protect endangered species. For the past two decades or so this paradigm shift has started

to reflect changing public images that attribute a positive and necessary role to indigenous

people, casting them and their resource-use practices in a more favourable light (Dove et

al 2003, cited in Geiger 2008:168). However, this much heralded paradigmatic shift has

often been difficult to detect in practice and instead of ‘taming’ the frontiers, under such

circumstances, the frontiers are constantly reproducing themselves and becoming

37  

perennial phenomena (Little 2001). Some scholars have opined the rise of the new

ecological paradigm as more of an ‘environmental twist’ to the old frontier politics

(Bryant 2001:11). Tsing (2005) along with others who have doubted the intention of these

‘inroads’ into frontier politics have argued caution in the gullibility of policy changes

towards indigenous people and the environment. In the case of South Kalimantan, Tsing

observed that the protected areas were becoming the preferred region for the operation of

military companies and other enterprises run by cronies of the State. Similarly, novel

environmental arguments are being used in the case of the Indonesian State under

Suharto regime for the old policy obsessions such as tying-down of mobile populations

and the replacement of ‘primitive’ by ‘modern’ and ‘rational’ forms of resource use

(Geiger 2008:175-76). Therefore, the new politics of the environment clearly is

ambiguous: protected areas are seen as the regulatory instrument for frontier spaces to

bring sensible restrictions on opportunistic forms of resource-use, while the possibility of

them being turned into weapons of more general exclusion is also always present (Geiger

2008).

This chapter seeks to illustrate the usefulness of the frontier approach to highlight the

dynamics of various historical phases of frontierization processes in Changthang.

Perpetually cast as a frontier of control since pre-colonial period, Changthang has recently

become a notified wildlife sanctuary to protect the endangered wildlife species endemic to

the trans-Himalayan regions. Tracing this frontierization process of Changthang, it helps

to unfold how the State and the Society in Changthang have been constantly constructed

since the pre-colonial times, an essential dynamic that has not deemed critical to be

incorporated in the current environmental discourse emerged on Changthang and

Changpa nomads are seen as a territorially and socially bounded group distinct from the

State.

THE PRECOLONIAL PERIOD

Changthang to 1835

By the late fifteenth century, the intermediate position of Changthang, lying between

Tibet and Ladakh, had led to its becoming a potential disputed ground for the traders and

38  

rulers. Changthang, a culturally and geographically unique region, constituted by most of

western Tibet and its extension into Ladakh, formed a frontier province in the Ladakh

state. These political borders of the Ladakh state, were redefined in 1684 when the ‘Peace

Treaty of Tingmosgang’ brought an end to a war in which Ladakh, ‘as a result of its

intervention in a quarrel between Tibet and Bhutan was invaded by a mixed Tibetan-

Mongol force’ (Rizvi 1999:53-54).

Ladakh’s ability to rule its frontier zones suffered from the countervailing authority of the

Buddhist monastic establishment, aristocracy, and officials in pre-colonial times (Sheikh

1999). In the absence of Ladakh’s own permanent military/army (Sheikh 1999:339), the

inhabitants of the Changthang on the frontiers were presumably expected to be the

cordon sanitaire for Ladakh, impeding foreign invasion and promoting its trade interests.

Cunningham (1854:275) says how an absence of a regular army made every Ladakhi

family ‘obliged’ to furnish ready-made soldiers at the call of the government across

Ladakh. Ladakh’s territorial borders could only be retained and controlled through the

strong physical presence of defending local communities; in this case it would have to be

the local inhabitants of Changthang, that is, the Changpa nomads defending their

historical grazing rights and being mobilized as a ‘community’ to perform such State

duties. The anecdote that Tsering Tashi Namgyal, the ancestral claimant to the position of

Rupshu10 gowa, impressed the Ladakh king of the time by lifting a yak high up in the air to

throw it across Singhe Khab, the Indus River, retains its legendary status amongst the

Changpa nomads (Sabharwal 1996:3). Finding him suitable to protect its territory and

impressed by his strength, the Ladakh king asked him to become the Rupshu gowa,

delegating the control of the south eastern region of the province of Changthang,

bordering Rudok and Chumurti regions of Tibet and also the valley of Spiti. Migrating

from the Kham region of eastern Tibet, the Rupshu gowa and a few herders settled in

Changthang about four hundred years ago, playing a critical role in protecting Ladakh’s

ever altering territories as a result of warfare with Tibet (Sabharwal 1996; Ahmed 2002).

                                                                                                               10A distinct group of Changpa nomads in the Changthang plain, defined by the physical territories of their pasturelands.

39  

As the earliest account used to demarcate the borders between Ladakh and Tibet, the

Peace Treaty of Tingmosgang is a critical document (see Appendix), even being used by

the Indian government up to now to claim the borders with China. The Peace Treaty also

stipulated certain agreements, such as making the Ladakh king cede the only product

deemed to be of real value in Ladakh, pashmina wool, to the certain privileged traders

who had also helped to settle the dispute between Ladakh and Tibet. Ladakhi rulers, it

seems also expected the Changpa nomads, to organize periodic tribute to them in the

form of livestock produce - Mar (Butter), Cherpo (dried cheese) and Bal (wool).

Hence Changthang, as subject to the impacts of border treaties between Ladakh and Tibet

in the pre-colonial period, would have been under the State’s gaze for a long time.

Territorial agreements in the form of treaties and periodic tribute do provide some basis

for assuming the region to have been functioning as a frontier of control for a long time.

On the other hand, the geopolitical situation and the monastic and aristocratic influence

meant that the Ladakh state was unable to exercise its control effectively in the peripheral

regions, thus somewhat in accord with Geiger’s (2008:98) characterization that the

circumstances in pre-colonial times frequently dictated a ‘policy of non-interference’ with

tribal polities residing in the belt of territory that lay between the boundaries of formal

jurisdiction and those of effective administration. Nevertheless, however apocryphal the

story of Tsering Tashi Namgyal’s casting of the yak across the Indus River, the account of

his appointment as gowa by the Ladakh state and the subsequent migration of his band of

herders to the region does in fact encode the intensification of the imposition of a frontier

of control on the region and, as part of that strategy, its transformation into a frontier of

settlement endorsed, if not sponsored, by the controlling State.

THE COLONIAL PERIOD

Changthang From 1835 to 1947

Lamb (1960) and Huttenback (1961), as well as Datta (1970, 1973), demonstrate that it

was the hope of laying hands on the lucrative trade in pashmina wool that provided the

motive for the Dogra, a royal dynasty hailing from the Punjab, to invade Ladakh in 1834.

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The Dogra rule in Ladakh coincided with the British colonial period in the rest of India.

The aspirations of the Dogra to conquer Tibet to expand their control over the pashmina

trade took them to Changthang and ended up in conflicts and wars with their Sino-

Tibetan counterparts. Ultimately, the Battle of Chushul in 1846 between the Sino-Tibetan

army and the Dogra rulers of Ladakh redefined the cross border trade in Changthang

once again. The Treaty of Chushul reinforced the fact of the weak presence of the

Ladakh state on its territories. As the Treaty of Chushul declared:

On this auspicious occasion, the second day of the month Asuj in the year 1899 we – the officers of Lhasa, viz. firstly, Kalon Sukanwala, and secondly Bakshi Sapju, commander of the forces of the Empire of China, on the one hand, and Dewan Hari Chand and Wazir Ratnu, on behalf of Raja Gulab Singh, on the other – agree together and swear before God that the friendship between Raja Gulab Singh and the Emperor of China and Lama Guru Sahib Lassawala will be kept and observed till eternity; for the traffic in shawl, pasham, and tea. We will observe our pledge to God, Gayatri, and Pasi. Wazir Mian Khusal Chu is witness. 11

As Geiger (2008) notes, frontiers do not represent mutually exclusive categories; rather,

they frequently overlap in a particular place, and changes in the relative importance of

invader’s interests in a frontier lead to a transition from one type to another. During the

early years, the intensity of the Dogra state’s involvement in frontier expansion was

reflected in the invasion of Tibet and its ultimate re-defining of the Changthang borders

through the Treaty of Chushul. This era can be defined as the epitome of Changthang

being a frontier of control, reflected in the waging of wars amongst rulers. However, as

such control was directed toward the ever-increasing trade activities, the opening up of

the region for new intruders indexed its increasing importance as a frontier of extraction

as well. Hence, this era of Dogra rule witnessed a greater traffic of Punjabi traders

travelling through Changthang to Leh and Yarkand, as Drew (1875) writes:

                                                                                                               11http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Sikh_War#The_Treaty_of_Chushul. [Accessed 23 April

2014].

41  

Of late years there has been a greater through traffic from the Panjab to Leh, and even Yarkand, by the road that goes through Rupshu. Panjabi, Pathan, and Yarkandi merchants have all passed this way, which, indeed, as the road is concerned, now the best by far between Eastern Turkistan and the Panjab (Drew 1875:289).

Rizvi (1999:73) also declares that how ‘by 1870, the pattern of trade between Ladakh and

western Tibet, as it existed till the 1950s’, was established. The impact of risen trade

activities across the borders under the Dogra rule also meant changes for Changthang.

According to Rizvi (1999), during this time, certain privileged traders and even the

royalties such as Maharajah of Kashmir owned considerable numbers of livestock that

were maintained on Changthang pastures. She corroborates her understanding by citing

the observation of a sportsman who went on a game hunting expedition to Changchenmo

valley in Changthang where he came across a caravan of sheep tended by 14 men:

500 [out of 1500] of these sheep belonged to the Maharaja of Kashmir, or, let us say, to his officials. In this way he has large flocks of sheep all over the country. The profits of the salt-trade on this number of sheep go to him: the only advantage the owners get is the produce of the sheep, but the number belonging to the Maharaja must never diminish (Cited in Rizvi 1999:73).

Rizvi (1999:77) similarly writes about one of the major Leh-based Buddhist players in the

Changthang trade, Rigzin Namgyal Kalon, whose

…family’s flock at 500 sheep, pastured in the Aksai Chin, near the hot springs. Year and year, they took the wool of that number of animals, while any increase became the property of the herdspeople, who also had to make good any loss.

Rizvi (1999:73) infers that it was the arrangement that arose from the ‘ancient customs’ or

Tingmosang Treaty ‘where the merchants [the ‘court merchants’ and the ‘government

traders’] of the Leh area, probably numbering no more that 25 or 30… as the heirs and

successors of the Tingmosang monopolists’ possessed livestock in Changthang, grazed by

42  

the Changpa nomads. For the Changpa nomads, this arrangement also included providing

free services in carrying merchandise for the privileged class during the Dogra rule when

the number of merchant traders crossing Changthang also rose. As Drew discovered

during his visit to Rupshu in 1871:

…the Rupshu people are great carriers. Between Central Ladakh on the one hand and Gar in Chinese Tibet or Lahol in the British country on the other, they are kept well employed in helping forward merchant’s goods. For this service they get good payment; sometimes it is in cash sometimes in grain…The intermediate position of Rupshu is such that many travelling merchants come through the country. The tea-merchants of Lhasa- a shrewd eager set of men- yearly come this way with their venture of brick tea for Le`; their merchandise is carried free by the Rupshu people, according to an old arrangement between the authorities of Lhasa and of Le`…From Kunawar in the Sutlej valley…have in many cases their own sheep to carry their merchandise (Drew 1875:288-89).

Despite relinquishing Kashmir to the Dogra by this time, the British government

maintained a resilient interest in the region of Kashmir and Ladakh. In a commercial

treaty of 1870, the Dogra let the British gain joint control over the main trade route

through Ladakh, which also ultimately led to reworking the tax arrangements (Drew

1876:370). van Beek (2001) who believes that this time in the history of Ladakh marked

the emergence of a new kind of State, and he draws attention to the explorations of the

Boundary Commission in Ladakh, established by the British state. This Boundary

Commission, according to van Beek, led to several publications, such as Cunningham’s

encyclopedic Ladak: Physical, Statistical, and historical (1854) and Frederic Drew’s The Jummoo

and Kashmir Territories (1875), which probably indicated the rise of a modern concern with

population and economy.

As an appointed ‘wazir’ of the Maharaja of Punjab, describing the physical characteristics

of the Changthang region, Frederic Drew (1875:286-89) wrote:

With an elevation of 14,000 and 15,000 feet for the valleys, the climate is necessarily extremely severe in point of temperature; it is at the same time of an extreme dryness. …Rupshu possesses so inhospitable a climate, though it

43  

is at one and the same time both parched and bleak, though its valleys are barren and desolate.

While finding the local climate inhospitable and harsh, Drew also declared the local

Changpa nomads hardy, as a remarkable example of the ‘power of adaptation that the

human race possess[ed]’ (Drew 1875:290). Although coming from different quarters, the

observations of the Leh traders, who had ventured in the Changthang region in greater

numbers by this era, appeared a bit different. As Rizvi (1999) writes about one of the few

traders whose experience of Changthang was:

The grass…was a carpet of green; and the freshwater inlets to the salt lakes that they passed every stage or two were home to thousands of ducks…The streams teemed with fish, to the extent that when you drew water, you had to strain it into another vessel, throwing the fish back… (Rizvi 1999:99).

The difference in perceptions about Changthang only goes on to demonstrate how the

Changthang space was gradually being streamlined with official data and documentation

for purposes that were administrative in nature, in a modern way. Therefore, a more overt

description was produced to define Changthang region. Drew identified ‘Karzok’ to be

the ‘headquarters’ of Rupshu and gave a descriptive sketch, about Korzok in the following

words:

Karzok, which is the headquarters of Rupshu, is situated near the shore of the lake [Tsomoriri]. Here is a house and a monastery. The house belongs to the chief man of the district and the tribe. The monastery is for about thirty-five Lamas…There are, besides, eight or ten small houses – more hovels – where some old and sick remain when camp has gone to the Indus valley. The summer encampment is not close to Karzok, but it is made two or three miles up the side valley…fifty black tents of the Champas… Karzok is one of the two or three places in Rupshu where there is cultivation…(Drew 1875: 307-8).

By categorizing Korzok as headquarters, Drew inspected it more as a bounded and

singularized entity, also in terms of what it included that could be counted and recorded,

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and ultimately how it could be invoked as a rudimentary administrative village. Korzok

had a notional significance in terms of the presence of the religious monastery, and the

few houses mostly serving the monastery. However, in terms of practical significance

Korzok seems to had never been prioritized by Changpa nomads even for the summer

months when the pasturage was abundant. In his publication Drew does not identify with

any of the nomadic campsite as a basic unit of the local Changpa life, the way he attempts

to see Korzok, although the yak hair tents as objects of exoticness do catch his attention

and he describes them in detail:

The tents are of a black hair-cloth, made from either yak’s or goat’s hair. They are of a peculiar form; they are constructed in two pieces, which are not closely united, but put together so as to leave an opening of six inches all along the top;…The space within the tents is enlarged by the hair-cloth being pulled out here and there by extra ropes…The tent is ornamented with little flags and yaks tails fastened to the poles. I have no measurement, but from memory should say that the tents are about 14 feet long, 10 feet wide, and 6 feet high; in one of these lives a whole family (1875:287-88).

Drew (1875) also attempted to describe the local people and established a local census, as

he wrote:

In the whole area of the district, which is about 4000 square miles in extent, there are but 500 souls. These, as will have been understood, are Champas; they are dwellers in tents… This small tribe, the Rupshu Champas have about 100 tents, one to a family; they are divided into two camps, which separate in summer, and frequent distant pastures, but reunite in winter. [As a footnote to 500 souls he wrote:] These people practise polyandry as the Ladakhis do; to this we must directly attribute their small numbers. The necessity felt for polyandry arose from the number of sheep, goats…being limited by the winter feed (Drew 1875:287).

The noticeable part of this observation is also about how Drew (1875) had associated the

low population of Rupshu with polyandry. He described the polyandry form of marriage

being practised due to the circumscribed environment of Changthang, thus, by taking

away any conscious decision whatsoever present amongst Changpa nomads in practising

it as other than restraining population growth and homeostatic adjustment. This was true

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to his appointment as a surveyor on a mission to bring physical, social and demographic

characteristic of the places and people that existed within the State’s territory of the

Dogra Raja. Therefore, the diverse observations and recorded data compiled by Drew and

also other British surveyors was information through which the State ultimately came to

perceive the places like Changthang during this era. Therefore, this period in the

Changthang history reflected a process of change in the rationales informing State

control. For instance, van Beek (2001:371) writes about how ‘a central element in the

legitimizing strategies of the late colonial State… has been the “upliftment” of

“backward” sections of the population’. Certain social groups ‘deemed to be characterized

by particular disadvantages’ were singled out for both as a ‘strategy of control and the

paternalistic desire to protect the “primitive and backward” tribal populations’ (2001:371).

This categorization of the population had a major impact in the years to come, when the

Changpa nomads those in the Changthang plain were considered ‘backward’ because of

the attribution of their cultural practices, such as nomadism.

Hussain (2010) recognizes that once the Kashmir region was pacified and its boundaries

with Russia fixed and stabilized in 1895, its representation among British and other

Europeans began to undergo a transformation. From its status as a battleground for the

control of the mountain States, by the early twentieth century it had become a sporting

ground for the big game hunters of the British Raj. A range of hunting accounts and

sports guides substantiate the popularity of the trans-Himalayan region as favourite

hunting grounds for the British. Such places as Hanle, the Tsomoriri Basin, Phirtse and

Puga constituted important hunting grounds for them in Changthang (Jina 2002:116). The

British sportsmen travelled to Ladakh and to Chinese frontiers for a defined period of

between two to five months at a time (Jina 2002:116). The wildlife in Changthang was

noted by hunters such as Stockley (1936, cited in Fox et al 1991:181) who declared: ‘goa

[Tibetan gazelle] is often to be found in Changthang though not north and east of the

Indus. The Hanle district is the best area for them.’

Sport hunters also sought Tibetan antelope found in the northern parts of Changthang as

a game trophy. Kiang were famous for their sheer numbers amongst the sport hunters. As

Stockley (1936, cited in Fox et al 1991:178) says, ‘From Changthang to Changchenmo

46  

these irritating brutes are to be found from the bottoms of the valleys at 15000 feet to the

snowline at 19000 feet’. Out of the eight wild animals legally sanctioned by the Kashmir

government for sport hunting, five – the Tibetan argali, the Tibetan antelope, the Bharal,

the Tibetan gazelle and the Tibetan ibex – were found in Changthang. As a result,

numerous hunters frequented Changthang during the British colonial era.

By the early 1890s the government had set up the Kashmir Game Preservation

Department (KGPD) to decrease hunting pressure in Changthang by introducing a set of

rules under which game could be shot. As a result, hunting permission was provided by

the game warden in Srinagar in two hunting seasons known as Ammon and Sharpu (Jina

2002:118). Falling mostly in Ammon block, the British shooters came to hunt in

Changthang between the month of July and October. Many scholars agree that the setting

up of KGPD was probably in response to the declining numbers of wildlife, and this

concern was witnessed amongst many accounts of such hunting expeditions. Ward writes:

The horns [of Tibetan Argali] were brought down to Srinagar in large numbers between 1875 and 1888. Every collector wanted a specimen and every sportsman who could afford the expense and could get a permit wanted to shoot a ram. When travellers were few, and the whole of Northern Ladakh was visited by only two or three guns…Hodgson’s sheep were easy to get. Now this is all changed, and only one head may be got on a game license (Ward 1924, cited in Fox et al 1991:176).

The Tibetan Argali were greatly reduced in numbers by this point (Fox et al 1991:176).

Wildlife extinction, due as well to other factors such as the war between Kashmir and

Tibet, has also been noted (Fox et al 1991:168).

As animals valued for sport became scarce, open access to the hunting grounds was

denied to all except those who could buy a sporting license, rendering these animals

unavailable for most of the local people in administrative records. Hussain’s research on

the region concludes that the introduced code of conduct by the KGPD, designed by the

47  

European hunters themselves, constructed a monopoly over the hunt by proclaiming the

parameters of ‘fairness in hunting’. Hussain (113:2010) notices that ‘fairness in hunting’,

along with masculinity and mastery over nature, had become central to the making of the

sportsman’s identity by the nineteenth century in England. The sport hunter was

portrayed as giving his quarry a fair chance of escape and dispatching it with a ‘clean shot’

(Rangarajan 2001:48), whereas the ‘native’ hunter drove the game with dogs and men and

then engaged in slaughter and butchery. Hussain quotes Stone’s (1896) documentation of

the hunting practices in Ladakh during the colonial period:

In severe winters, when the snowfall is heavy and animals cannot escape, they are surrounded by gangs of villagers, driven into deep snow, and then clubbed to death; a few years ago, when there was an unusually severe winter, the slaughter was immense (Hussain 2010:120).

This colonial governance regime of hunting regulations, which affected not only

Changthang, but had also been established across parts of India marked by ‘vermin

eradication’ or the ‘danger of wild predators’, accorded the colonial State the monopoly

over the killing of wild predators (Sivaramakrishnan 2004; Nongbri 2003). In that respect,

the need to preserve Changthang for hunting game originated during the British times,

but it was not protected for its own sake. The protection of especially the vanishing

species became one of the marks of civilized conduct in the British Empire, contrasting

with the wildness of the local hunting practices (Rangarajan 2001:56). Changthang, as a

place distant from Srinagar, with limited seasonal access, would probably not have

experienced the application of such regulations in their entirety, as compared to the other

regions in India. Pardhis and Kanjers (tribal groups) in the rest of India had to give up or

limit catching wild animals as the result of such regulations (Rangarajan 2001:53). Literary

works (Hussain 2010) claimed that Kashmir Game Preservation Department and the

British sportsmen deployed the ideas of fairness and hunting prowess to distinguish

themselves from the indigenous hunters.

As a result, the colonial period in Ladakh reflected the presence of a much more

elaborated State, equipped with a military and an administration to rule. Thus, in this era,

48  

it was not the Changthang plain alone, but the whole of Ladakh that was being arranged

and transformed into frontiers of control and extraction; Changthang may thus be

considered as being on the periphery of these more encompassing frontiers, however,

showing attempts of the State to administratively categorizing the region and its people.

This was also the time when the pashmina trade was at its height and sustained a massive

interest in extraction from the local Dogra, as well as the more distantly situated British

rulers. This era also characterized Changthang as frontiers of conservation where the

Dogra state demonstrated its reasons to preserve the wildlife in Changthang. However,

the KGPD’s role in wildlife conservation projects during these times was primarily

oriented to preserve civil hunting practices for the colonist, never portraying Changpa

nomads as engaging in sustainable hunting practices. Therefore, unlike in the

contemporary discourse of sustainable development and conservation, Changpa practices

of hunting were under scrutiny by the State authorities in this historical period, making

Changthang into an effective frontier of control.

THE EARLY POSTCOLONIAL PERIOD

Changthang From 1947 to 1962

After the partition between India and Pakistan, the Maharajah of Kashmir signed an

agreement12 with the Indian State that led to the accession of Ladakh into the newly

independent India in 1947. Essentially, it was the politico-military interests that defined

Ladakh, significant for its location on India’s borders with Pakistan and China. Like other

regions of the Indian State, Ladakh was also ‘mapped, measured, counted and classified’ –

increasingly rendering it as a frontier of control – to enable the realization of the plans of

‘central planners and administrators to devise and implement the correct measures to

bring Ladakh into the mainstream’ (van Beek 2001:372). Initiating transportation and

communication was primary in this era, and the road providing access to Chushul in

Changthang was one of the first prominent roads emanating from the role of Changthang

in the new administration (Dawa 1999). These mostly military-executed infrastructure

developments were targeted at the ‘adjacent domain of a rival state’ (Geiger 2008:98),                                                                                                                12 At the time of India’s partition in 1947, ‘princely States in India were given the option to affiliate with one nation or the other. Due to variety of factors, the Maharajah of Kashmir signed the Instrument of accession, whereby Ladakh and the rest of Jammu and Kashmir came under the jurisdiction of India’ (Aggarwal & Bhan 2011:521).

49  

which in the case of Changthang was China, rather than towards benefiting its own

frontier-dwelling populace. Prime Minister Nehru’s initial statement about Ladakh – ‘the

real difficulty about Ladakh is its terrible economic backwardness’ – in a letter to the heir

of the Maharajah of Kashmir in 1951, Hari Singh (Singh 1982, cited in van Beek

2001:373), did not translate into the willingness of the Indian State to allocate much

resources for the Ladakh region.

In becoming a frontier for the dominant centres of the state of Jammu and Kashmir,

Ladakh had to rely on the decisions and enthusiasm of the predominantly Muslim

Kashmiri bureaucracy for its share of development. Apparently, Chewang Rigzin,

president of the Ladakh Buddhist Association (LBA), pleaded in a memorandum that was

submitted to Prime Minister Nehru on May 4, 1949 that ‘Ladakh not be bound by the

decision of a plebiscite should the Muslim majority of the State decide in favour of union

with Pakistan’ (Behera 2000:89). In fact, the memorandum had even considered the

options of Ladakh reuniting with Tibet or with the Hindu-majority parts of the State. The

discriminatory development policy practices toward Ladakh by the new Jammu and

Kashmir state of India were highlighted in the Gajaendragadkar Commission of Inquiry,

constituted to investigate regional imbalances within Jammu and Kashmir state in 1968.

Its report revealed that in the first five-year plan (1951-55) the total expenditure on

development in the State was more than 115 million rupees, but Ladakh was allocated no

funds. It seems Nehru also offered Ladakh a Scheduled Tribe status but the local

leadership declined it because it was thought as van Beek (2001:373) notes to be

‘degrading to be ranked with savages and untouchables’.

Within this nexus of attribution of backwardness to Ladakh and the development

emphasis of the Indian nation-state, as well as the discrimination directed toward Ladakh

within the Jammu and Kashmir state, the land reforms introduced by the Indian State in

1948 converted the pasturelands of Changthang into State- owned land. Oblivious to this

nation-state rendering, the Changpa nomads, defying the Indian borders, continued with

their cross-border trade activities, in accordance with how they had been conducted

earlier. Their annual salt trade expeditions to Madam Tso in Tibet were still carried on

(Ahmed 1999). Centered in Korzok, the Rupshu gowa still received his share of the harvest

50  

from the agricultural land in Chebzi, Tibet, which technically would have come under the

Tibetan/Chinese occupation by the time the Indian State declared its national borders

(personal communication 1994). This active cross-border trade was not practised outside

the State’s gaze, as Arpi (2004) clarifies in his book, Born in Sin: The Panchsheel Agreement –

The sacrifice of Tibet, about the Indian State’s intent to carry on its trade with Tibet after its

independence. Arpi quotes Nehru’s statement given in 1953 on the relationship between

India and Tibet:

Tibet is our natural market and we should develop it normally…Gartok is important….Yatung especially, and to some extent, Gyantse are likely to become more important as trade between India and Tibet increases. They are on the main route. Therefore, it is eminently reasonable that we should have some trade agents there or at least at Yatung (Arpi 2004:96).

To a large extent this era treated the Changthang plain as a new frontier that was remote,

but of high strategic significance to the nation-state much in the same way Ladakhi rulers

visualized Changthang to be in the precolonial times. However, the local cross-border

movements had yet to become critical to the legality of a nation-state, as it remained a

loosely administered border without much militarization, despite carrying a paramount

significance for Indian sovereignty: in short, a frontier of control on the fringes of the

Indian subcontinent rather than its core area.

The initial period of ceding to the Indian State did mean a change for Changthang by

which it was controlled, but predominantly it only meant new forms of administration on

paper by the nation-state. Although the intensification of militarization for national

security was a prime agenda during these times, the area was not completely scrutinized.

Therefore, in this era Changthang, continued to remain a frontier of extraction as

economically important as it had been in the past. The Changpa nomads continued to

remain involved in the trade activities along with the traders from Leh and Tibet as they

always did before 1947.

51  

POST-TRANSITIONAL INDEPENDENCE

Changthang in the Post-War Period from 1962 to 1994

The masses of new Indians reacted gravely to losing the 1962 war to China in Ladakh. A

new body of Indian literature, academic as well journalistic, emerged, whose exhaustive

and poignant analysis established the fact that it was the lack of State attention to the

Ladakh borders that had led to India’s defeat in the 1962 war with China (Dalvi 1968).

Several commentators claimed that it was State neglect and its complete absence in this

region that enabled the Chinese State to invade and even construct roads within the

Indian territory without the knowledge of the Indian government. As a result of this

patriotic discourse, Changthang, as a location of the war, went on to experience an

inundation of extensive military establishments, including road system expansion, field

firing ranges and airfields. The military establishment, which arrived following the war,

completely changed the face of this landscape. This new attention, as also noted in

chapter 5, towards Changthang was more due to the reasons that were not local and it was

the rival State of China that triggered the State attention towards Changthang and never

really translated into local welfare or development activities for the Changpa nomads,

given that the end of war also included a major loss of local pastureland to China. The

Changpa families in Korzok who had lost most of their winter pastures to China were

now left with a severely reduced winter pastures for their livestock. Prime Minister

Nehru’s statement, ‘...not even a blade of grass grows here’, in the Indian parliament,

which he delivered in order to rationalize the defeat at the hands of China, only reinforced

the fact that the national interest of securing the borders was not concerned with the local

needs.

The livelihoods of local people were further constricted in Changthang when many

Tibetan pastoral families with their livestock fled to India after the Chinese occupation of

their land. The impact of the Tibetan refugee occupation of the Changthang plain was felt

across the region (Dollfus 2013; Goodall 2004). A rough local estimate is that Korzok

herders lost approximately 20% of their land mass to Tibetan refugees and an extensive

part of their crucial winter pastures to China (personal communication 2010), leaving

them with drastically altered migration patterns and decreased herd sizes (Goodall 2004).

52  

Other than being a State directive, the choice of war impacted Tibetan families to settle in

Changthang had many motivations, one of which was that the Changthang land

comprised the most appropriate pasture land within all of Ladakh for their livestock’s

survival. However, there is evidence demonstrating that the local Changpa nomads tried

to persuade the Tibetan refugees to return back to Tibet, but these efforts at persuasion

were constantly rebuffed. Tsering Angchuk (personal communication 2009) remembers

how the Tibetan families with their livestock forcibly occupied their pastureland and

refused to go back to Tibet. According to Angchuk, the potpas (those from Tibet) carried

weapons such as knives, and they were physically stronger individuals then the local

Changpa nomads and could not be confronted.

As a result, Patil (2008) describes how as a part of the initial adjustments to the influx of

Tibetan refugees into the local land use, there was an upper limit of 25 livestock allowed

per refugee family, which was established by the local Changpa nomads. As no such

restrictions applied to themeselves, this imposition became a source of conflict between

the settlers and the local inhabitants. Patil uses various first-hand accounts to interpret

Tibetan refugees’ perceptions of their plight, including the following:

Refugee means the ones who have no land no home. Ladakhis [Changpa] call us Shorpu which means the ones who have run away. We feel bad when they call us Shorpu – as refugees we have to ask the permission from the Ladakhis [;] if we were not refugees we can go anywhere at our will...This land belongs to the Ladakhis…The authority regarding the distribution of grasslands and water is completely with the Ladakhis, we don’t have any say in those matters and we pay them some money to use their land...We have to follow these rules, if we don’t then we would simply be asked to move out of their land... such rules are made by the local communities and the state per se has no say in such local matters (Patil 2008:23).

The relationship between Changpa nomads and the Tibetan refugees is a complex one.

According to Tsering Angchuk, a 75-year-old herder, also an ex-gowa, the sub divisional

magistrate at Nyoma completely ignored their demands to oust the settlers from their land

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and instead supported the refugee settlements. According to him, losing winter pastures

to China by that time had affected the local inhabitants and accepting new families on

their pastureland had only doubled their difficulties. Later, the establishment and formal

organization of the Tibetan refugees in nine settlements in the Changthang plain reflected

the State intent to provide support to the Tibetan refugees. In this thinly populated

margin of India, the population of Tibetan settlers, presently at 3500, has no doubt

boosted the Indian State’s stake in the region, as such Tibetan settlers could be regarded

as acting in complicity with the State (Geiger 2008). Secondly, the Changpa have always

been aware of the opportunist coalition of the Indian military with the Tibetan refugees.

The use of Tibetan refugees as mukhbir or spies against China by the Indian intelligence

forces, such as the Indo-Tibetan Border Force (ITBF), also revealed the changed status of

the borders between Ladakh and Tibet, where State power on India’s borders intensified

manifold.

Nationalization (militarization) of the Ladakh borders with Tibet was an important event

in the postcolonial period for Changthang. Nevertheless, Changthang could still be

described as an administratively low pressure area. The overriding military authority due

to the implementation of Inner Line Area policy, as discussed in Chapter 1, restricted the

Jammu and Kashmir state capacity immensely to benefit the local people. In addition to

the lack of routinized government, the actual on-the-ground complexity of Changthang’s

nomadic pastoralism far exceeded the simplistic model on which the State administration

wanted to base their development interventions. The static and myopic view (Scott 1998)

of land tenure meant that the civil administration had grappled most of the time

unsuccessfully with the pastoral usage of Changthang land. The nomadic movements of

the local Changpa nomads, not controlled in permanent and fixed settlements, did not

correspond with the way the State administration managed its affairs in the rest of the Leh

district in this era. Moreover, the nomadic movement’s periodic adjustments to changes in

weather, forage availability, and birthing women have also not yielded a static mapping of

their settlements that could be repeated on a regular basis. The Changpa remember this

period as also the one which witnessed a large-scale out-migration of the local nomads

from Changthang to the state capital Leh.

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In 1974 the Indian State allowed foreign tourism into Ladakh for the local economic

development, but had excluded the Changthang region. As discussed earlier in Chapter 1,

Changthang’s status as an Inner Line Area meant that outside entry to the region was

restricted and monitored. This is also partially responsible for having created social

differences between the central Ladakhis, who later on also became certain parts of the

Ladakhi bureaucracy responsible for implementing development policies in Changthang.

The indirect influence of foreign tourism in Ladakh was also the stepping-stone of

international NGOs. It was as early as 1978 that the absence of strong government

development programmes in Changthang led international NGO projects like the Leh

Nutrition Project (LNP) to begin their development interventions in Changthang. The

LNP as one of the first NGO projects started by the United Kingdom-based ‘Save the

Children Fund’ organization in Ladakh, attributed the origin of their interventions in

Changthang to the region being the ‘most neglected, isolated and remote’ in Ladakh (LNP

website). While such programs may have begun reversing the purposeful neglect of the

Changthang inhabitants that its status as a frontier of control had imposed, other

interventions beginning in the 1990s would herald the opening of yet another type of

frontier in the region.

The era up to the early 1990s can best be characterized as a time when Changthang was

concurrently a frontier of control, extraction, and settlement. Like Tsing (2005), Geiger

(2008) explains this overlapping as a frequent phenomenon characterizing the frontier

region, when it is often difficult to distinguish one from another. He further says that

these different types of frontier differs from each other in terms of the number of

intruders they bring in and the possibility of longer-term co-existence (Geiger 2008: 99).

The terms of this co-existence were set, however, to be transformed in the subsequent

decade.

Changthang from the 1990s: Scheduled Tribe Status, Tourism and the Imposition

of the Wildlife Sanctuary.

The 1990s witnessed an era in which the local inhabitants of Changthang were able to

undertake certain actions that signaled a resurgence of local agency that could reverse

certain frontierizations of their region, or, in Geiger’s (2008) terms, close it as a frontier.

55  

However, not all the measures they envisaged yielded the results for which they had

hoped. The complications of their actions require backtracking to the earlier history of the

recognition of local political agency. As early as 1952, in a famous speech delivered during

the discussion of the budget in the State assembly, the Ladakhi representative, Kushok

Bakula Rinpoche (as a representative of modern educated Ladakhi elite) referred to the

worth of Ladakhi self-determination and alleged that the State government was

purposefully neglecting the region (Cited in van Beek 2000a:536). Therefore,

The long struggle of some Ladakhis to receive the special status of Scheduled Tribe came

to fruition in 1989 when the Indian State recognized six Ladakhi communities, including

the Changpa, as scheduled tribes. This accomplishment did cement differences between a

frontier and the dominant centres of the State, but it also developed opportunities for

political action within the purview of the prerequisites accruing to the State-ascribed

scheduled tribe category. In 1995, the victory of having a Ladakh Autonomous Hill

Council (LAHDC) was celebrated in Changthang also, as was the choice of a local

Changpa to represent the Changthang constituency. In 1999, it is alleged that soon after

the swearing in of the first council, members representing Changthang constituencies

were reported to have expressed criticisms of some members of the executive council that

ultimately led to the defeat of the Congress Party incumbent of the Ladakh seat, former

union minister P. Namgyal (Van Beek 2000a:545). With LAHDC participation, the

councilor from Changthang was able to influence changes in Ladakh politics stemming

from his frustration over the neglect of ‘backward areas’ like Changthang. Not only the

success of obtaining the LAHDC for the whole of Ladakh, but also within that wider

forum the assertiveness of the Changpa in voicing their local concerns, indicated a

possible defrontierization of the Changthang plain.

However, the autonomous movement, which is characterized by being embedded within

communalization and continuing party politics also triggered and refueled the older

factions and rivalries amongst the Changpa nomads. The local LAHDC councilor was

often held responsible for deceit and mishandling of the community funds. Initially,

having a Changpa representing one of the five constituencies in the LAHDC carried the

hope of new development programmes and plans for the Changthang region. Despite

these local political skirmishes, the struggle for secession from Kashmir which had led to

56  

the formation of the LAHDC in 1995 was carried on by new organizations such as

Ladakh People’s Movement for Union Territory demanding a Union Territory (UT)

status for Ladakh with a direct administration from New Delhi (van Beek 2000a).

If achievement of Scheduled Tribe status and then the Autonomous Hill Council

somewhat mitigated the disempowerment that had accompanied the imposition of a

frontier of control upon Changthang, other interventions, however, would set in motion

the emergence of a new frontier, that of conservation. The Black–necked Crane, Gus

Nigricollus sp, which was considered vulnerable on the International Union of

Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list of threatened species, attracted many

conservation biologists to stake claims on the unique wildlife habitat that Changthang

represented, asking for conservation measures to be implemented or calling for the

reduction of the anthropogenic pressure on the Changthang plain. This occurred around

the same time that the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) proposed a hunting

ban in 1991. The conservation bent also lent the Changthang plains to scientific scrutiny

where such terms as ‘overgrazing’ and ‘degradation’ dominated much of the conservation

discourse in Changthang. The scientific community, which by now described the

Changthang plain as a fragile ecosystem, purveyed images of Changthang pasturelands as

under tremendous pressure from overstocking, pushing the wild herbivores to extinction

(Mishra 2001:279). Alarmist research used statistical details to demonstrate a gradual

extinction of the Tibetan gazelle due to increased competition from overstocking

(Bhatnagar et al. 2007). Selective drivers, such as decline in polyandry, influence of

external market forces and its impact on the imagined self-sufficient economy, changing

livestock composition, and so on, all combined to conjure up an image of local herders

rearing an ever-larger number of herds, ultimately building the pressure on the wildlife

habitat as also discussed in Chapter 3 (Namgail et al. 2007).

With the hunting ban, the local hunting by the Changpa nomads simply went

underground. The local herders complained of increasing number of kiang or Wild High

Himalayan Ass (Equus Kiang sp) and shankhu or Tibetan Wolf (Canis lupus chanco sp) on their

pastures competing with their livestock as a result of the ban. To discourage the

retaliatory killings of predators such as shankhu, the local nomads were monetarily

57  

compensated, but according to the state Department of Wildlife Protection, it was so

overwhelmed by the number of applications filed for compensation that it stopped

disbursing monetary benefits and instead started to explore alternative ways to decrease

human-wildlife conflict, such as protecting the livestock pens with fencing and other

measures.

In 1994 the Jammu and Kashmir state lifted the part restrictions of an Inner Line Area,

and allowed restrictive tourism to start entering into Changthang. Soon the tourists and

trekking maps re-defined the Changthang landscape inscribing upon the region ‘camping

sites’ ‘walking trails’, and–in the settlements of Korzok –‘guesthouses’ and ‘home stays’.

The tour operator websites were filled up with definitions of Changthang as ‘exotic’,

‘nomadic’, and ‘the land beyond imagination’ to draw the tourists from across the world.

Changthang, which once was largely a frontier of extraction defined by the actions of

merchant traders crossing the country before it turned into a frontier of control by

becoming an international border, was now redefined as a new extractive frontier by the

incursion of the tourism industry. This time the actors differed slightly: instead of

merchant traders hailing from Leh, Punjab, Yarkand, it was the players in the tourism

industry hailing from places like Leh as well as Delhi and Mumbai who wanted a share

from the now ‘scenic’ Changthang region. With parts of Changthang being notified as the

Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary in 2002, the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the

state Department of Wildlife Protection decided on encouraging the ecotourism activities

marrying capitalist forces and ecological concerns which could potentially be beneficial

for the local Changpa nomads. From the early stages of tourism, the local Changpa

nomads had discovered it was to be impossible to retain any tourism returns; in the

absence of local standard tourism infrastructure and luxury expectations, the tourism

business was completely operated by the outsiders.

Eventually, disgruntled and frustrated due to the exploitative situation, the local elite who

had started to benefit from tourism constituted a ‘community’ decision to work towards

driving out the foreign tour operators. The Tibetan refugee settlement in Sumdo refused

to comply with the local (Korzok) decision and was subsequently threatened by the allies

of the local elites. The Changthang gowa handed an ultimatum to the Tibetan refugees: if

58  

they did not comply with this decision and continued to harbour outside tour operators,

then they would literally attack them with their own livestock and graze away all their

assigned pastures. Despite the later involvement of the district police when the outside

tour operators, facilitated by the Tibetan refugees, complained of their tourist tents being

pelted with stones, the outside tour operators ultimately had to withdraw from the

Changthang region, though not without consequences. In one of my conversation with

the Leh tour operators, it was made clear that if Changpa continue with this demand, they

will be ostracized within the tourism industry and will not be allowed to operate outside

Changthang. The tour operator also cited a kind of propaganda campaign in Leh that was

used against the local Changthang tour operators, in order to isolate them within the

Ladakh tourism industry. However, there is a faction within the local elite in Korzok

which continues to partner with the outside tour operators to run their tourism facilities

and has ignored the so-called ‘community’ decision.

Commercial tourism is not the only front upon which the Changpa were able to exert

their agency. They have also opposed the concrete fencing of the northern shores of

Tsomoriri Lake, erected to protect avifaunal life by the Jammu and Kashmir state

Department of Wildlife Protection (DoWP), eventually succeeding in demolishing this

fence at least once. Elsewhere in Changthang the local people have claimed to return to

the DoWP the ecotourism proceeds to show their resistance against the notification of

their pastureland as a wildlife sanctuary. In Korzok, the local people have so far not

demonstrated a collective resistance against the wildlife sanctuary; however, many people

have mostly dropped this stance in favour of increased tourism opportunities afforded by

the presence of the sanctuary. In a tapestry of negotiations and alliances of different social

actors, be it the military or the civil administration, certain Changpa are constantly

asserting and situating themselves in a position to bargain regarding incoming economic

opportunities, and to gain profit from them accordingly.

The households in Korzok have been pleased about the decision of the Indo-Tibetan

Border Police (ITBP) to physically locate themselves on the southern shores of Tsomoriri

Lake in the beginning of 2001. The DoWP has consistently objected to the ITBP’s move

on the grounds that Tsomoriri is part of a wildlife sanctuary, and their chosen location

59  

will have an impact on the nesting of waterbirds. A number of official communications

from the wildlife department to the ITBP office have drawn attention to this. However,

the ITBP, constantly ignoring such notices by putting the ball into the civil

administration’s court, has gone ahead to construct their premises in Korzok. The local

people, ITBP and the block administration have colluded on this issue, with the local

people declaring their support for the ITBP move by writing an official letter to the block

administration. The local monastery has helped the ITBP to build its premises, which also

included a Hindu temple for use of the soldiers (who mostly hail from mainland India) in

daily worship. The ITBP, as a return favour, has distributed kerosene and provided

medical facilities to the Korzok settlement, as well as maintaining critical roads, especially

those connecting to Leh, keeping them free from snow in the winter times. Such

collaborations have thus succeeded in lessening the impact of the imposition of a frontier

of conservation, thus benefiting the local people, but also maintaining in place the

presence of the military and the block administration as agents of a frontier of control.

Yet, it is their presence that has helped to constitute a legitimate space for the Changpa to

negotiate and assert with ‘foreign invaders’ seeking to intensify the frontier of extraction.

Conclusion

Through out its history, Changthang, representing the border of Ladakh, has obviously

been subjected to the incursions of others, ultimately inflected by decisions of the Ladakh

State. However, simply stating that fact does not allow for a nuanced understanding nor

any elaboration of the theoretical notion of frontier based upon this analysis. Geiger’s

typology has helped me to trace how the various trajectories of frontierization in regard to

control, extraction, settlement, and – in more recent times – conservation have intersected

to constitute the history of Changhtang. This analytical perspective is useful to locate

Changthang as a historical and political entity in a nuanced manner and also situate the

State and Society relations in the historical context of Changthang. It is clear that

Changthang has been constantly influenced by the State gaze and have not been isolated

and external to either the Ladakh State or the India State but have remained an integral

part of it in its organization and administration. In the next chapter, I elaborate specific

details of the new conservationist’s discourse about Changthang and critically analyze how

the quest of an isolated and homogenous ‘community’ of Changpa nomads is being

invoked in the biologist’s reports and perspectives.

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Chapter 3 The Quest of Community in Conservation Why in the debates of about pristine natural areas are “primitive” peoples idealized, even sentimentalized, until the moment they do something unprimitive, modern, and unnatural, and thereby fall from environmental grace? (Cronon 1995:21).

__________________________________________________

According to a biological report, by the year 2007, the population of Tibetan gazelle (Procapra picticaudata) is believed to have drastically dropped from being a commonly occurring wildlife species in Changthang to about 100 individuals (Bhatnagar et al 2007).

   Fig 1.2 Tsomoriri, A freshwater to brackish lake at 4595m above sea level, known to be the only breeding ground outside China for the Black-necked crane (Grus nigricollus). The lake is surrounded by wet meadows commonly grazed by the local livestock as well as the wild Ungulates such as Tibetan Sheep (Ovis ammon hodgsoni). On 19th August 2002, The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of international importance with its mission of ‘conservation and wise use’ declared Tsomoriri as a Ramsar site.

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Being endemic to Changthang, the decline of the gazelle has been considered a

conservation crisis. It is speculated that excessive hunting practised by the Indian military

and the Tibetan refugees in the 1960s could have been the reason for its decline in

southeast Ladakh. Constructing the trajectory based on the local Changpa accounts, the

report infers that this animal was hunted by the military, as the animals could be easily

approached on military vehicles. The hunting pressure seems to have risen with the influx

of Tibetan refugees after the 1962 war and the report indicates that some of the Tibetan

refugees have even admitted to hunting gazelles in Changthang. However, when the

biologists have postulated that the gazelle decline never halted even after both the State

hunting ban and the implementation of conservation laws, the report makes a

fundamental shift and diverts its complete focus towards the local pastoral practices in

Changthang. The report hurriedly concludes that it is primarily only excessive local

livestock grazing that has played a significant role in preventing the recovery of the gazelle

in Ladakh. Another study on Tibetan argali has also drawn similar conclusions about how

the changing livestock grazing practices in Changthang are likely to have been the cause

of their declining population. The biologists have suggested:

Livestock grazing not only depletes resources required by argali but also physically displaces argali from productive pastures. Increasing livestock populations and disturbances created by livestock grazing and collateral activities are thus likely factors hindering the recovery of argali (Namgail et al. 2009:290).

The argument about how livestock grazing can be detrimental to the local wildlife habitat

has concerned most of the conservation fraternity conducting research in Changthang.

Another important report presenting an overall picture of the threats and opportunities

for the conservation of the wild ungulates in Changthang, published by the Wildlife

Institute of India (WII) and entitled Habitat Ecology and Conservation Status of Wild Ungulates

in Northern Parts of Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary, Ladakh (2011), has also asserted:

With increased cash–driven economy, there has been a decreased tolerance towards wildlife due to perceived forage competition between wild ungulates

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and livestock, increased negative attitude towards predators and other conflicts (Rawat and Sankar 2011:2).

These reports have observed a direct relationship between livestock grazing and the cash-

driven economy, which is seen to drive resource competition between the livestock and

the wild ungulates and also generates a general negative attitude towards all wildlife

amongst the local Changpa nomads. Therefore, in one of the recommendations, it has

been stated that once identified, the conservation areas ‘need to be relieved of livestock

pressures to facilitate colonization’ by the wildlife species (Bhatnagar et al. 2007:20).

According to the studies, the commercialization of livestock products such as high-value

pashmina wool promoted by the Jammu and Kashmir government has substantially

intensified the livestock grazing in Changthang (Bhatnagar et al. 2007). That such increase

in livestock has intensified grazing pressure and caused problems of resource (forage)

depletion and pasture degradation in the form of reduced plant cover, modification of

plant species composition, increased erosion and decreased water infiltration is taken on

board by most of the biological studies conducted in Changthang (e.g., Singh et al. 2013).

The conservation biologists’ claims that a newly introduced market economy penetrating

local livelihoods from outside is the primary cause of wildlife habitat degradation leads me

to the following quotation from another two biologists, whose belief about the local

Changpa nomads having lived harmoniously with their environment in the past seems

relevant to refer to here:

We suspect that, as elsewhere in the Himalayas, the ecosystem homeostasis that traditionally characterized the trans-Himalayan Buddhist communities is degenerating in the area … (Goldstein 1981, cited in Mishra & Humbert-Droz 1998:66) Polyandry is a traditional system that restricted the growth of the Changpa population, is breaking down with the increasing tourism. Korzok seems headed towards a market economy (Bhattacharji 1993, cited in Mishra & Humbert-Droz 1998:66-67).

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Before I attempt to critically analyze and understand such assertions of the biological

reports about the Changpa nomads, a glimpse into an evolution of the ‘community’

perspective within the wildlife conservation in India is worth a note.

The Community Perspective in Wildlife Conservation

Among others, Sivaramakrishnan (2004) has argued that the legislative mandate of British

India was continuously revised over the colonial/postcolonial divide in ways intended to

expand the purview of Indian government agencies regulating hunting and wildlife

conservation. From being a colonial hunting reserve, when Changthang became a

protected area under the Indian Wildlfie Act of 1972 in the year 1987, it carried a legacy

from the ‘aristocrats and elites who lived through the transition from colonial times

without much dislocation of their attitudes and access to hunting’ (Sivaramakrishnan

2004:372). By the 1980s, it was the staunch conservationist coalition that had legitimized

the idea that nature can be preserved from the effects of human agency through

legislation and centralized bureaucratic authority in India. The idea that ‘people’ were an

obstacle sedimented the belief that goals of conservation and the interests of local

communities were in opposition and the declaration of the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary

envisioned a yet another example of the wilderness approach in India. It also implied that

if the Changpa nomads living inside the sanctuary, ‘had successfully managed resources in

some harmonious past, that past was [now] long gone’ (Agrawal & Gibson 2001:4). Such

ideas only supported the conservation policies that aimed to exlude the local Changpa

nomads from the sanctuary and in India such policies were also backed by the

international conservation agencies involved in conservation research and grassroot level

initiatives in India. It was only in the 1990s that such international agencies as World

Wide Fund for Nature, World Bank, Ford Foundation and so on with the combination of

pragmatic biologists, catalyzed by wider opposition from human rights groups, and the

absence of political support forced conservationists in India and elsewhere to adopt a

more middle ground approach (Stevens 1997; Chhatre & Saberwal 2006). This new wave

was a gradual move where such transformation in conservation thinking was also

influenced by the past failures in preserving protected areas effectively that made the

conservation lobby to espouse for the search of local community’s role as well. The

revisionist approach also brought the conservation research to question the two main

pillars of the coercive conservation–one, the idea that the pristine environments

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untouched by human hands existed till recently and secondly, the belief that local people

dependent on these pristine lived relatively isolated in the past (Agrawal & Gibson 2001).

It is considered somewhat surprising that despite all the positive willingness the ‘claims on

behalf of the community-based conservation often retain a rather simple quality’ (Agrawal

& Gibson 2001:7). Rangarajan (2003) believes that this participatory shift in conservation

management in India had especially made biological research to take on board the role of

communities in conservation proactively. While defining this group of pragmatic

conservationists, Rangarajan (2003:200) informs that they ‘share many of the premises of

the preservation lobby (staunch conservationsits) but seek to attain the objectives in a

very different way’. Their research has carried the dual significance which sought to

ensure the protection of biological diversity along with addressing the pressing human

concerns. However, such widening sensibilities amongst the biologists remained agreeable

to old ‘hands off’ nature where people must be removed from prime wildlife habitats if

this is essential for rare species (Rangarajan 2003). As also evident from the complexities

unfolding in Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary that new thinking has not meant that the

conservation biologists have reconsidered or re-approached their original perspective

towards humans vis-a-vis wild animals. What constitutes effective communities has often

been devoid of rigorous enquiry and based on convenient /simplified constructs which

the biologists borrow from the prevailing dominant perspective about the community.

A Critical Review of the Biological Reports

The perceptions about the environmental, economic and social reality of Changthang

underlying the conservation biologist’s studies tend to be no doubt simplistic. The basic

model of community assumed by the biologists within the relationship between livestock

grazing and the market economy predisposes it to be regarded as an ahistorical entity that

has always existed in an ecologically harmonious balance. This codification of community

fixes the Changpa nomads in a distant past and conflates the actual reality present on the

grounds with the idealism of the biologist. There is a considerable amount of scholarship

in various fields now that not only refutes such simplistic versions of local livelihoods but

has also highlighted the discrepancies and contradictions in such assertions.

Anthropologist Martijn van Beek (2000b:250) observed that Ladakh has often been

described until very recently as being a place isolated from the rest of the world,

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‘characterized by a way of life based on harmony with nature and strong community ties’.

The biological reports seem to demonstrate a similar propensity to romanticize the local

people and imagine them as having lived in a self-sufficient economy, as is evident in this

typical statement in one of the reports:

Most of these [traditional livelihood] strategies had averted the depletion of preferred forage, providing respite to the rangelands through rational use, kept a check on population size of both humans and livestock, and ensured relative self-sufficiency in grains…All these strategies were also probably close to an ideal means to utilize the sparse natural resources in a sustainable manner (Bhatnagar 2008:265).

The biologists’ creation of an uncomplicated picture of the Changpa nomads living in a

self-sufficient economy fails to encompass the complexities and nuances of pastoral

livelihoods as they occur in the lives of local people. Li (2001:160) has argued that ‘rural

livelihoods from a conservation perspective under-estimate the extent and nature of

market involvements, or assume them to be recent accretions to a more fundamental

subsistence base’. However, what is underspecified in the literature is that subsistence or

self-sufficiency is often attributed to those livelihoods that are simplified and are

characterized by an absence of relations with outside markets (Li 2001). The idea that the

market economy is invading from outside into the bounded entity of the Changpa

‘community’ whose members lived in relative isolation in the past and in a subsistence

mode seems a misrepresentation of the people who have been living on the Himalayan

frontiers/borders that have been contested for centuries, as discussed in Chapter 2. The

other basic aspect of the subsistence/market dichotomy is that it invokes the entity of

‘community’ that can be seen as ‘different from that of the encompassing system, and

isolated from it’ (Li 2001:159). This differentiation is based on the attribution of a certain

cultural lifestyle that also seems to fit the Changpa nomadic lifestyle and casts them as

poor or underdeveloped. The Jammu and Kashmir state Department of Wildlife

Protection (DoWP) officials have often defined the local Changpa nomads as a group of

people who have remained isolated and therefore in need of being educated to understand

the ways of conservation (personal communication 2010). The narrative that imagines the

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DoWP staff as civil with the civic responsibility of nature conservation is set in contrast to

the innocence and wildness of the local herders through such labels.

As also noted in Chapter 2, scholars have established that Changthang has been a site of

high-value pashmina trade that connected Changthang and Ladakh to foreign locations

for centuries. Contrary to the vision of most of the biologists, the Changpa nomads have

had a trade-based economy where the translocal trade has been an important part of

Changpa existence that has connected them to people and places from afar and to a

global economy to some extent (Rizvi 1999). Besides traveling to Tibet for salt collection,

Changpa nomads from Korzok were involved in sophisticated exchange arrangements of

livestock goods such as wool, cheese and meat with food grains from cultivators across

the Himalayas (Sabharwal 1996; Rizvi 1999). Moorcroft on his way to Spiti from

Changthang in 1819 noticed a site termed ‘Pha-lung Palrak’ or ‘stones where wool is

clipped’, where the people of Spiti and Korzok annually met to barter the grain and wool

(Moorcroft & Trebeck 1819:52). During my first visit to Korzok in 1994, the traditional

barter trade relations of Korzok Changpa families with settled cultivators of Spiti was still

active and assertions that ‘Korzok is heading towards a market economy’ in biologists’

reports seem to portray local market relations as a new occurrence in Changthang. The

long experience of maintaining such market exchange systems is what made lives possible

on the high altitude Changthang plain where there has never been successful cultivation

or other forms of subsistence (Goldstein and Bealle 1989). The trade exchange was basic

to the local economy and required every family to be part of this bi-annual exercise where

the Korzok Changpa nomads and Spiti cultivators would travel to each other’s location to

engage in trade activities. The trade relations of Korzok nomads with the three specific

villages of Kibber, Cheechum and Kyi in the Spiti valley included mutual arrangements

that continue over generations, along with debts and payments. In 1994, the wool of one

sheep was seen as equivalent to 16 kilogram of barley produced in the Spiti villages

(Sabharwal 1996:104). Similarly, Rizvi (1999:119) observed how for some Changpa

nomads the main source of supply of food grains came from other Himalayan valleys

such as Zanskar, for which the salt collected from Tibet by the Changpa was bartered.

However, the sheep wool was sold for a cash payment for the wool of one sheep to

villagers in Lahul and Manali. This west Himalayan trade also included trade fairs that

were held at different places on both sides of the great Himalayan divide. The famous La-

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Darcha fair in the Rampur valley of Himachal Pradesh, to which the Changpa nomads

would travel with ‘their sheep and sell the wool off the sheep’s backs, shearing it on the

spot, in return taking barley, wheat, tobacco, cloth, pepper, ginger and jaggery, which had

been brought to these fairs from the lower Himalayan regions’, is well known (Rizvi

1999:117). The fair at Patseo on the Bhaga River in Lahul valley was another fair which

flourished until 1951 and attracted nomads from Rupshu and western Tibet (Rizvi

1999:117). With a rich history and practical knowledge of trade economy, the local

Changpa nomads do not appear inexperienced in market relations, despite how they have

been depicted in the biologists’ reports produced about Changthang.

Today, road access to Korzok is seasonal. Like many other sites in Changthang, for most

of the winter months it remains cut off from the rest of the world. This winter isolation is

mostly due to heavy snowfall over Namshang la and Tanglang la, the two mountain

passes that need to be crossed to reach Changthang from Leh by road. It is also possible

to reach Changthang through foot trails across these mountain passes of almost 6000

meters in altitude. However, this is not often attempted due to the required overnight

camping for one or two nights in the extreme winter temperatures of -50 degree Celsius,

which is considered nowadays risky. Also, the implementation of the Inner Line Area

Policy after 1962 restricted the outside admission with negligible civil administration

activities as compared to the other regions in Ladakh. This sort of situation often

facilitates a view of Korzok as a place where only self-sufficient or subsistence

communities could exist and were completely cut off from market relations and the

international trade systems until recently. Such a view about Changpa’s isolation, though,

tends to virtually see Changhtang in the form of an ‘original garden... a place outside of

time,’ such assertions hijack the complex cultural constructions through which

Changthang has become what it is (Cronon 1996:16). The wilderness concept, an

underlying idea to the wildlife conservation policy of the Indian State, is a direct import of

the environmental movement of the United States where wilderness areas were advocated

to be those last remaining places where civilization has not fully inflected its impact and

needed to be kept away from any human disturbances. Now being criticized by many

scholars they being not pristine sanctuaries where the ‘last remnant of an untouched,

endangered without the contaminating taint of civilization’ but ‘instead considered to be a

product of that civilization… and could hardly be contaminated by the very stuff of

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which it is made’ (Cronon 1996:7). Changthang which ‘appears’ natural to the biologists,

preserved by the self-sufficient economy of the Changpa nomads also seems cruel when

seen from the perspectives of the local people who now confront a possibly potential

displacement from their own land as their changing livestock practices come under severe

scrutiny through the biological sciences.

An overemphasis of the biologists on livestock as a means to understand how livestock

grazing impacts local wildlife is not surprising and may be what is desired to understand

the habitat status of the Wild ungulates in Changthang, since livestock and wild ungulates

both depend on the same natural resources. However, it is intriguing that there is a

complete neglect of those aspects of Changpa existence that makes livestock grazing

possible in first place. As Li (2001) says, conservation biologists choose to discuss only

those economic activities that most matter to their analysis, such as livestock grazing,

livestock census and so on, and that fit their assumptions about communities and their

relationship with the local natural resources such as pasturelands. In contrast, economic

activities like trade or market exchange and even migrant labour as prevalent in

Changthang do not seem to be crucial to their analysis, even though such practices remain

integral to the kind of nomadic pastoralism carried out in Changthang.

The Changpa nomads have remained actively involved in doing labour work in and

outside Changthang to augment their pastoral incomes for centuries, as also discussed in

Chapter 2. The military establishments in Changthang after the 1962 war have also

provided a range of new labour opportunities to them. Besides portering, where Changpa

men would carry army rations to high altitude military posts with no vehicular access, they

worked as assistant cooks, cleaners, horsemen messengers and even as military spies.

Most of the Changpa nomads in Korzok have one thing on their mind nowadays, that is,

to somehow pay for their children’s school education in Nyoma or Leh. Families such as

Tashi Dorjee’s spend a large part of the year doing jobs other than livestock rearing.

During summer months, Tashi waits for the mountaineers hailing from the Indian city of

Kolkata to climb mountain peaks around the Tsomoriri region and hire him as their

guide, cook and porter. His younger brother, as part of the polyandrous unit, has been an

assistant cook to the Kyari garrison of the Indian military for years. Their desire for their

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daughter Angmo to study in Leh and one day become a teacher is not different from that

of many other families. Padma Dorjee, whose three sons now live in Leh, has chosen not

to move to Leh, whereas Tenzing Tundup has sold all his livestock in 2004 in order to

migrate to Leh for the education of his children and also to benefit from government

health services for his ailing wife. There are cases of reverse migration as well where

families have returned to Changthang from Leh, but their desire to benefit from the

recently opened tourism avenues is much more. The new generation in Changthang is

also more interested in following a lifestyle that is less restrictive in regards to their new

needs which are not local in nature. Therefore, a functional analysis of livestock grazing is

not only speculative, but tends to see the complex realities of Changpa’s life very

narrowly.

In recent publications, some biological studies that have claimed to be inclusive of the

local socio-cultural contexts and have adopted integrated frameworks combining

ecosystem services, economic and cultural values in the hope of making balanced

assumptions continue to make assertions such as the following: ‘for a pastoralist society

which is centuries old, these changes have in a rather short time span, transform[ed] the

Rupshu way of life’. They also include conclusions such as ‘if an increased standard of

living is to occur, having fewer pastoralists may be the only solution’ (Singh et al.

2013:14). Changpa nomads are already seen distinctively and are socially stigmatized due

to their nomadic lifestyle, and the conservation paradigm only further contributes to make

this distinctiveness more apparent. As Sivaramakrishnan (2003:399) argues:

The people that conservationists have viewed as wild [subsistence, self-sufficient] have been subject to [the] process of expropriation, expulsion, and civilization under the spell of hegemonic notions about the appropriate relations between civility and wildness in national culture.

Despite this crucial neglect in community-based conservation, such labeling certainly

serves the purposes of conservationists who assign these very same people, such as

Changpa nomads, the responsibility of conserving resources that ‘more powerful players

are free to exploit’ (Li 2001:162). In the next section of my chapter, I turn my focus

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towards an evaluation of the community-based tourism programme, claiming to balance

local livelihoods with wildlife conservation, implemented by an international conservation

agency in Korzok. To do so, I first explain how the Korzok settlement has come to be

recognized as a village representing the Changpa ‘community’ targeted by such

conservation initiatives.

Korzok ‘Village’ or a Community?

There are few, if any places on earth that are autonomous from the state systems of the nations in which they are located, although the intensity of state efforts to enmesh rural populations has varied according to the geopolitical significance of the area and the resources involved. State intervention in rural areas, rather than destroying or undermining communities, has been a significant factor in community formation. It follows that where state attention is weak or absent, communities are not strongly formed (Li 2001:169).

Today, as a symbol of territoriality and the State control, Changthang imbibes strong State

influence in its own construction & identity and the community formation process, very

much located within the realms of the State’s agenda of sovereignty. Korzok, where a

large part of my fieldwork was conducted, is considered a ‘village’. In India, the villages

are often the single habitation sites representing the lowest level of administrative

subdivision after the Block. Korzok is seasonally connected by a fortnightly state bus

service that take about 8 to 9 hours to reach Leh, the district headquarters that lies 230

kilometers away. Unlike many of the villages in India, where the bounded nature of the

community might seem apparent, Korzok presents a complex situation. Here, it is a

commonplace to meet the local people walking, chatting, sitting, eating, staying in their

houses, labouring, worshipping in the gompa [Buddhist monastery] just like the Korzok

residents do, but they do not belong to Korzok; at most they are visiting Korzok from the

adjacent Korzok phu [valley] where many of their rebo [yak hair tents] are located. They

are not yulpa [inhabitants], but are rebopa [dwellers of yak hair tents], in the local language.

In the case of Changthang, it is their State-led isolation through the Inner Line Area

Policy, after the 1962 war, which not only tends to define them as remote from the

centres of the State, but also ‘the coincidence of geography, language, culture, and modes

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of livelihood’ that has put them “naturally” in place’ (Li 2001:168). But Changpa nomads

with an approximate population of 1200, who occupy the trans-Himalayan pastureland

spread in a vast area between the Great Himalayan range in south and Karakoram Range

in north, do not appear to think of themselves as a community in the form of a village or

a bounded ethnic group; they may project an image of a cohesive group, but for only

certain purposes. At the present time, they are distributed among five settlements, but are

administratively grouped under the single settlement of Korzok.

Korzok, historically, is a settlement representing the seat of the Buddhist monastery and

was built almost 400 years ago. It is said that until recently the head monk associated with

the Korzok monastery also used to travel across Changthang to different Changpa

nomadic campsites in order to perform everyday lifecycle rituals and even assess

astrological dates critical for pasture allocation. It was almost four centuries ago only that

a reincarnated Rinpoche is said to have witnessed the scenic site of Korzok on the shores

of Tsomoriri Lake in his dream, prompting the whole of the monastic settlement to shift

from Chumur, a settlement at the base of the majestic Gya mountain, to locate itself

further west at Korzok. The focus of gompa led to the assignment of five households of

Changpa nomads to make temporary houses in Korzok in order to provide their labour

services for the upkeep of the monastery. Besides these households, the settlement also

contained the Rupshu gowa’s [traditional/elected chief] house/palace and a few very small

houses where old or sick people could take a respite. In 1819, Moorcroft, who had

crossed Parang la to go to Spiti via Tsomoriri, does not mention anything about Korzok.

Whether it was an oversight or the nomadic campsites, which he described in relatively

more detail, looked more appealing in terms of habitations and people is not clear. The

first significant record of Korzok comes from Drew’s (1875) account, where he identifies

Korzok as being the headquarter of Rupshu. The details of his account have been

discussed in Chapter 2.

During my first trip to Korzok in early May 1994, there were a few local families who had

just arrived from their winter campsites and were preparing to spend the summer months

at Korzok in their houses. In the summer months, their livestock animals were supposed

to graze the Korzok phu [valley] pastures, a summer pasture site approximately 3

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kilometers southeast from Korzok. This was also the time when a large number of local

families, who were still away at much further flung pastures, had now also gradually

started approaching the Korzok phu campsite. These arrivals to Korzok phu continued

for a few weeks, depending on how far the households had to travel. When I had camped

at Yarlung- Marlung, another nomadic campsite in the area, I met two families, encamped

in their rebo tents, on their way to Korzok phu in another month or so. They had arrived

from Kyangdom–spring pastures a few days earlier after spending most of the winter

months on the Tegarzung pastures. However, the families from the Korzok settlement

were not allowed to go to the Tegarzung pastures. Their winter pasture sites were across

the Tsomoriri Lake towards Labgo, which could be approached easily during the winter

months by walking for less than a day on the frozen Tsomoriri Lake from Korzok.

In Changpa folklore, prosperity comes through occupying far-flung pastures or through

being always on the move (personal communication 1994, 2010). The accumulation of

livestock itself is of value, an expression of well–being and prosperity, a form of wealth

(Ahmed 2002:39). Large nomadic movements also mean maximum security for the

livestock against death and disease. Tsering Angchuk, who is considered to be one of the

richest Changpa nomads, is also known to be someone who moves with his animals much

more extensively than others. This mobility is also recognized in the literature as a survival

strategy for the people living in highly variable and uncertain environments, such as

Changthang. Scones (1995) writes about nomadic pastoralists in Africa who have moved

their herds over large areas to manage uncertainty and risk and to convert sparse

vegetation into human food. Goldstein and Bealle (1989) also confirm that the physio–

topographical characteristics of Tibetan Changthang promote uncertainties regarding

water and pasture in the region and have a direct relevance to the local nomadic lifestyle.

As an extension of Tibetan Changthang, the part of Changthang lying in Ladakh exhibits

a local settlement pattern that has always been highly scattered to the extent that

sometimes only a single family or a few families bound by kinship ties group together in a

campsite (Sabharwal 1996). The constant reliance on green pastures for the survival of

their livestock makes migration or dispersal of the local Changpa nomads to different sites

necessary. Losing the critical Skakyung pastures in the 1962 war and with an influx of

Tibetan refuges on their reduced pastures, these nomadic movements have altered and

been rearranged from those times.

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A long time ago, the Rupshu gowa looked after much of the southeast pastureland of the

Changthang region assigned to him by the Ladakh State (Sabharwal 1996). The central

focus upon the Korzok monastery was abruptly altered when Samad decided to have its

own gowa and the families at Samad built their own Buddhist monastery next to Tsokar

Lake (Ahmed 2002). However, the Rupshu gowa still retained an authority to manage and

allocate pastures over much of the Rupshu region, which according to locals included the

present-day Chumur, Tegarzung, Halkoon and Sumdo. Just like the Korzok families,

there were groups of families who would crisscross the Changthang pasturelands, but

would have their specific belonging to these settlements (although this would change with

marriages and kinship ties). Families from Tegarzung were debarred from occupying the

Labgo pastures other than in the autumn, as they would otherwise overlap with the winter

pastures of Korzok families. However, unlike a standard village these pasture allocations

do not denote that they were restricted to only a particular settlement; rather, they are

common property resources shared by all the settlements through locally regulated

arrangements. These regulations designed under the Rupshu gowa’s authority still retain

their validity and value despite the arrival of new institutions of governance, where the

gowa now is an elected male individual from any of these five settlements. Korzok, due to

its being the seat of Buddhist monastery, retains its value and is still frequented by all the

nomadic families for their annual religious rituals such as the mane. Therefore, in a way the

significance of Rupshu as a traditional province was lost after Samat split, and when

Korzok rose in its significance as the administrative center, new alignments and

collaborations were created around it. The government bias, however, to see Korzok as

the only unit/village for all Changpa families has had its own complexities where it is

claimed that the Korzok households have benefitted from the development schemes

much more by virtue of its geographical location and road access. Due to the same

government bias the nomadic families from Chumur, Tegarzung, Halkoon and Sumdo

were not targeted to receive development benefits with the same intensity.

Yet, it is also important to note that not all Changpa families live a nomadic life today, at

least not throughout the year and every year. Limited cultivation has existed amongst

these settlements for a long time, but its role in sustaining the household economy is

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meager, and most often it is either seasonal vegetables or the livestock fodder that is

grown during the short summer season. According to one local estimate, there are about

30% of households in Korzok [including rest of the four settlements] whose members do

not live in rebo, but this does not imply that their household income is not drawn from

livestock rearing. Similarly, the 70% of households that are nomadic for most of the year

live in rebo and sustain their prime income from livestock rearing, but it also does not

denote that they have no other sources of income, as many Changpa men have had jobs

with the Indian military and the local government. There are cases of families who have

reverted back to the nomadic lifestyle after having lived a sedentary life for a while.

Therefore, when it comes to local livelihoods, it is too simplistic to put people who

associate with Korzok in neat categories of being either nomadic or sedentarized. These

dynamics of the local ways of how the Changpa nomads live and relate to their resources

is often not grasped by biologists, as mentioned earlier in the chapter.

In Ladakh, contrary to the assumption that orderly, homogenous villages are a natural

feature of the Ladakhi landscape, Martijn van Beek (1997) has convincingly argued that

there had been a consistent effort on the part of the Ladakh State to enumerate and

classify the local population and the economy of Ladakh. van Beek (1997) refers to how

Changpa nomads did not figure in the State classification system during the colonial

period on many occasions, but after the war in 1962, they had drawn special interest from

both the Jammu and Kashmir government and the Central State.

Korzok has, in fact, been targeted for development programmes from the time the state

bureaucracy started to travel actively to Changthang after 1962. Besides the convenience

of road access, the Korzok monastery also acted as a permanent reference point for the

visiting state bureaucrats, who found it convenient to designate Korzok as a legitimate site

for delivering development. This is in contrast to those other nomadic campsites scattered

in the distant pasture sites that had no road access and were always on the move.

Therefore, the five families who conventionally resided in Korzok in order to serve the

Korzok monastery in collecting fuel wood, cleaning, cooking, animal care and so on,

became the convenient targeted beneficiaries of such initial State interventions in the

region. Padma Dorjee, whose family for generations cleaned the premises of the Korzok

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monastery, also became the village representative for the state’s Public Distribution

System. Similarly, the rest of the Korzok households were also co-opted by the state

officials to represent their respective development programmes, such as Health, Sheep

Husbandry and so on. On the other hand, most of the Changpa nomads lived away from

Korzok on the pasture sites and accessed Korzok only during the times of religious

festivals or during their cyclic migration to Korzok phu.

This lopsided welfare delivery, which resulted in polarizing the Korzok families and the

nomadic families, manifested itself more clearly when a state rural development

department introduced the ‘nomadic housing’ programme in Korzok. Under the

development scheme of ‘housing for the poor’, every Changpa family was provided a sum

of Rs. 80,000 [approx. AUD 1700] to build a house in Korzok. However, besides a

number of families who did not show any interest in having a ‘house’, which signified

sedentarization to them, a large number of families entered into disputes over claiming

land in Korzok to benefit from the nomadic housing scheme. Given Korzok is primarily a

monastic site, most of the land in Korzok belongs to the Korzok monastery or the

powerful local elites. The individual titles of land to build houses also represented a

relatively different arrangement of private land ownership from the traditional commonly

owned pasturelands. Therefore, the efforts required to secure benefits from this scheme

meant the nomadic families had to remain away from their pastoral chores to work

through the new arrangements of individual titles to access the Korzok land. There were

many families who despite all their efforts could not secure land titles in Korzok for a

number of reasons, although there were some who could. However, the difference

between the Korzok residents and the nomadic families was clear. Kunzang Dolma was a

case to be noted, since she already owned a house next to the monastery but under the

scheme could build another one. On the other hand, Angchuk, who belonged to

Tegarzung, could not secure any land in Korzok, also because he was not able to invest

enough time and resources to draw benefits from such development schemes. According

to Tsering Dorjee, a 50-year-old Changpa, the animosities amongst the people reached a

level where disputes over the access to land in Korzok have divided families and created

differences amongst the local people to an extent of having a separate gowa for Korzok.

The nomadic housing scheme has also especially been seen to generate a negative bias

towards a nomadic lifestyle. Families who could secure a benefit from the scheme were

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encouraged to see the sedentary lifestyle as a better way of living than the nomadic

lifestyle. Such State development interventions also tend to generalize the impression of

Changpa nomads as a distinct and bounded community represented by Korzok. The

nomadic housing programme also established the processes and practices of formalizing

the traditional ownership rights through mapping plots, listing owners and issuing

individual titles.

The State-invented categories such as Korzok also prompted group collectives to be more

effective in making claims upon the State for access to development (also see D’Souza

2007). Changthang has in recent times experienced a fresh development interest under

schemes such as the prime minister’s reconstruction plan and centrally sponsored

programmes. Therefore, in order to retain and reinforce the development interest of the

State, the local people often represent themselves as a cohesive homogenous group

holding common interests. They realize that showcasing local animosities and disputes has

proved to go against them, as by expressing such differentiation they are considered as

inappropriate target groups for State activities and interventions. Such a capacity to attract

development is also made to appear as a ‘civilized’ act, whereas the lack of development is

associated with the lack of cohesiveness amongst the social groups of Korzok, Halkoon,

Sumdo, Tegarzung and Chumur. The representative local LAHDC councilor has often

advised the local nomads and the Korzok households that unless they represent

themselves as a cohesive group they will not be able to access the new development

benefits knocking on Changthang door. The whole idea of benefiting through State

allegiance is vey much associated with the way particular representations of community

are fabricated by the local Changpa nomads. In many instances, the role of the gowa plays

an important role in being able to organize the local people to come together for

government meetings, surveys and censuses. The constant nomadic movements of the

local families have not made such government exercises very successful in Changthang.

As a result, there are times when such census and surveys are also fudged by the gowa

himself in order to fulfil the block office requirement to see them as a cohesive

community (Li 2001). The cooperation from the local nomads generally comes on the

basis of how much they can benefit from certain development schemes. Therefore, it

needs to be seen how such group collectives take the shape of community in the hope of

accessing State development benefits, since without such mutual interactions between the

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State and the local Changpa nomads, community in Changthang might not have pictured

itself in such a way.

Community–Based Tourism through the Korzok Village

When the World Wide Fund for Nature- WWF arrived in Changthang with its wetland

conservation programme, Korzok was one of their main target villages, due to its claim to

be representing the local Changpa community. For WWF, collaborating with the local

community as a vehicle for wetland conservation was based on the WWF’s overall

position on poverty and conservation. In a policy paper entitled Poverty and Conservation,

the WWF defines its commitment towards involving local communities in conservation

through equitable solutions and tangible benefits from conservation (WWF 2009).

In 2002, WWF established a local conservation trust in Korzok signifying its partnership

with the local Changpa community. The trust was named Tsomoriri Conservation Trust

(TCT) and was seen as a local initiative for ‘sustainable financing’ where the funds

assigned to the TCT could be used to support local conservation initiatives. The idea of a

local conservation trust was considered a unique concept since it meant regulatory and

financial power given to the local actors for maintaining conservation measures (Gujja

2007). TCT memberships which was largely Korzok based reflected the deliberate

decision taken by the WWF, where Changpa nomads who were not associated with

Korzok were not included in the programme (Anand et al. 2012:9; personal

communication WWF-field staff 2010). This was despite the fact that the majority of the

pastures around Tsomoriri were actually used and managed by the nomadic Changpa

families other than the Korzok ones. This representation of the local community was not

only erroneous but also imagined Tsomoriri to be only represented by the Korzok

houseolds. Therefore, when WWF conjured Tsomoriri to be a ‘sacred gift [from the

community] for a living planet’, boasting its partnership with the local community [see

further details in Chapter 4] it was not an idea fully acceptatble by the Changpa nomads.

By rendering Tsomoriri as an international Ramsar site, it ascribed to Korzok village the

status of the local community, which was a convenient simplification of the actual

community for the conservationists’ audience.

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 Fig. 1.3 A Satellite image of the Korzok Settlement (Source: Google Earth)

The idea of ensuring a better future for local communities through sustainable livelihoods

and for wildlife through protection of critical habitats led the WWF to initiate a

community–based tourism programme. The biological research on Changthang played a

critical role in asserting the need of sustainable livelihoods in Changthang where

sedentarization/decline of the local polyandry system was associated with population

growth, and ultimately could have an adversarial impact on the fragile ecosystem and

biodiversity of Changthang (Namgail et al. 2010). Besides the requirement to conserve

Changthang biodiversity, how the rapid pace of development in Changthang has

presumably left the Changpa nomads struggling for work was another observation that

made WWF design the programme. Korzok was defined as a picturesque village, but

poor, and the ecotourism initiative could ‘protect Lake Tsomoriri and [also] offer income-

generating opportunities to the Changpa population’ simultaneously (Anand et al. 2012).

When WWF implemented a number of Home Stays as part of an ecotourism programme

in Korzok, the process of selecting only ten households for the Home Stays grant from a

group of almost 179 Changpa households was itself tricky. With Korzok as a target

village, it was the families from Korzok rather than Halkoon, Sumdo, Chumur or

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Tegarzung that became the programme beneficiaries. WWF clarified that it was the ‘ability

of [the] households to assign at least one room for lodging throughout the year’ that was

the criterion; on that basis it was only selected Korzok families who could fulfill such

basic requirements and therefore were provided with furnishings and assistance in setting

up the room for guests (Anand et al. 2012:5). The programme also concluded that:

Entrusting responsibilities to the villagers of Korzok for running the enterprise has allowed for a more equitable, steady, and sustainable flow of monetary benefits. Homogeneity in cultural background at Korzok has minimized conflicts and issues that could arise from identity and politics and that could have hampered the progress of the homestay initiative. The institutional choice of WWF-India to work with traditional authorities has enhanced representation of local interests (Anand et al. 2012:9).

The claim of an equitable flow of monetary benefits, made by the programme was

questioned by those Changpa families who were not involved in the programme. These

families concluded that it was ultimately their yak-hair rebo (tents) without a toilet that

disqualified them as a preferred choice for the Home Stays. Yearning to be part of the

‘tangible benefits of conservation’, most of these families were convinced that it was their

cultural lifestyle of living in a rebo and running after the raluk (livestock) away from

Korzok which needed to be altered. Through reinforcing the fact that Changpa who live

in concrete houses are more ‘civil’ and able to cater to the needs of the ‘civilized’ tourists,

the WWF inadvertently contributed towards the rising conflict over individual land titles

for housing within the Changpa families, as discussed earlier. However, WWF-India

accepted the fact that Home Stays were to be limited to households that have a

permanent dwelling in the village and not to others. This strategy was justified on the

grounds that if nomadic families want to join the Home Stay programme, that will

invariably increase the pressure on the ecosystem as well as competition, and therefore the

whole exercise might not remain viable (Anand et al. 2012:10), thus rejecting an equitable

solution promised in the vision of the programme. The progamme, however, continues to

claim the Korzok model is an inspiring one. Through this learning experience the

programme has replicated itself in other ‘communities’ in the Changthang region.

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It is evident in the programme that community–based tourism assumes the presence of an

entity called ‘community’ that is a territorially and socially bounded group and is

somewhat separate from the State. By choosing Korzok, however, to represent the

Changpa community it deflates the whole argument, since Korzok only represents an

extension of the local government, otherwise its existence and identity tells a different

story. The insistence of the conservationists to resurrect an entity like community in

Changthang or the community–based conservation both also have a common desire to

delineate community from the state, as Li explains:

Since states have failed to manage or conserve resources, then communities–outside or at least operating differently from states–offers an alternative. If it is states that spoiled previously existing local resource management regimes, then the withdrawal of states, their devolution of control and authority to communities (or local institution) is the solution (Li 2001:164).

Vandergeest and Peluso (1995) further make it clear that territorialization is a normal

activity of modern State systems and not peculiar to oppressive regimes. It is true for the

frontier context of Changthang, where the State has played a major role in arranging and

re-arranging the region, that the local Changpa nomads have not been aloof from such

State processes and therefore cannot be seen counterposed to it as would be in the case in

‘parks versus people paradigm’.

Conclusion

New conjunctures of theoretical enquiry in anthropology have been making it necessary

to rethink the notion of community in relation to issues of identity and

power/territorialization. Different anthropologists and sociologists have addressed it

from different theoretical perspectives at different scale. The contention has been that

without examining community as a discourse we cannot possibly understand the

enormously systematic discipline by which community is produced politically,

sociologically, and imaginatively within a particular field of power (Chhatre & Saberwal

2006). Agrawal and Gibson (2001:7) in their investigation of ‘community based natural

resource management’ have problematized the adopted ‘mythical’ and ‘enchanted’

concept of community and explained how a simplified image of the community ignores

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the critical interests and underlying processes within communities, as well as between

communities and other social actors.

These critical contributions have not only problematized the way community is defined

within the spheres of natural resources management, but have also created a space to

rethink the concept, which is often a centerpiece in conservation. In this regard, cultural

politics argues that the existence of community is not a foregone conclusion, but it is the

contentious process of its being and becoming which demands attention (Baviskar

2008:12). Li (1996:505-506) identifies that the problem occurs when the communities

literature, old and new, shares a vision in which State and market processes impinge upon

communities from the outside and thus communities are not seen as characterized by

processes of State formation and market involvement. These versions of community also

become ‘points of leverage in ongoing processes of negotiation’ that define community in

a particular way in order to facilitate the arguments for the ‘displacement’ of local

communities from protected areas (Agrawal 2009:4). In order to investigate such

complexities around the concept, Li (2001:157) suggests that while unpacking the concept

of community, it is critical to see how ‘boundaries’ between communities and others are

constructed, the purposes they serve, the processes they obscure, and the consequences

that ensue. According to her, the problematization of the boundary work can assist in

assessing both the promise and limitation of efforts to engage with power through the

development and recent reforms of institutions towards democratization (2001:167). She

also cautions that it is not an easy concept, and it is critical that the relevant relational

categories like State and market that situate the concept be examined together with the

community (2001:157).

Often in conservation literature the concept of community is placed counterposed to

market and State, and the countryside is envisioned to be completely delimited from the

processes of State formation and market involvement (Li 2001:159; Agrawal and Gibson

2001:19). Such an uncritical focus on the community has been discussed as having its own

adverse effect given its impact on the marginalized section of the community (Larson and

Ribot 2004). Similarly, the logic of exploring these discourses also becomes imbricated in

the processes ‘through which social reality inevitably comes into being’ (Escobar 1996:46).

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In Changthang, despite promoting the role of communities in conservation, most of the

biological literature on Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary views the livestock grazing

practised by the Changpa nomads as an adversary to the wildlife conservation. Such

criticism about the local pastoral practices also romanticizes the Changpa nomads as a

self-sufficient group of people who have only recently been influenced by the outside

market, potentially causing destructive changes to the Changthang environment. Related

to these assumptions are the community-based tourism programmes, where the idea of

community as separate from the State has been promoted. Yet, the organization of the

frontier population of Changpa nomads has been very much integral to the State and to

the processes that manage the nation’s frontier. Vandergeest and Peluso (1995) remind us

correctly about how the State’s influence in community formation is a normal and an

ongoing process. This argument is similar to that of Baviskar (2008), who advocates

focusing on communities’ being and becoming to understand how they are made to

configure in conservation thinking. In the next chapter, I will examine the role of

metropolitan conservationists and their impact on the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary. As

a heterogeneous group, metropolitan conservationists who influence the sanctuary are

divided amongst different sets of people, but maintain a common stance when it comes to

Chanthang and how local Changpa nomads should figure in the conservation agenda of

Changthang.

 

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Chapter 4 The Politics of Metropolitan Conservationist’s Agenda

From among the many urban visitors to Changthang, Changpa nomads seemed to

distinguish certain people travelling to Korzok who study and talk about Ridhak (wild

ungulates), Jetpo (Snow Leopard)13 and Thung Thung Karma (Black-necked crane). It is their

more permanent concern with the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary that sets them apart

from the numerous other visitors reaching the Korzok settlement. Tenzin Angchuk, the

local wildlife guard who is invariably the mediator and interpreter aiding the

communication between these urban arrivals and the local people, told me that some of

these visitors were environmental lawyers from Delhi, conservation biologists from

Dehradun and Mysore, and conservation professionals from Delhi and Pune.

When I reached Leh in May 2009 to do my fieldwork this time, I decided to contact

Angchuk, also an old friend. In order to find his whereabouts in Leh, I visited

Choglamasar, a Tibetan Refugee colony about eight kilometers from Leh. There I went to

his other house and met his younger sister Angmo. Angchuk was in Changthang, and she

was planning to travel there in a few days time to join her brother for the annual godmang

festival in Korzok. Angmo, now married with children as well, was pleased to share the

common experiences of motherhood with me. Apart from her emotional response,

Angmo also mentioned that Changthang was now visited by many more gyagharpa

(inhabitants of India) than during the time I was there last (during my M.Phil fieldwork

1994-1995). Associating me with other gyagharpa presumably stemmed from my being

from Delhi (India), as gyagharpa would translate in Angmo’s mind. Yet, her friendly

acknowledgement of our long acquaintance put me in a different niche to the gyargharpa

visiting Changthang now as conservation experts or otherwise. Later on during the course

of my PhD fieldwork in Changthang, I was subject to similar identity attribution in

contrast to my earlier experience in 1994-95. One reason was an increased local exposure

                                                                                                               13  http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0628-ranjitsinh_ghosh.html. [ 23 January 2014]

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to the influx of outside visitors in the last decade or so. At the onset of my fieldwork in

May 2009, when a few of the Changpa elders decided to organize a local meeting to

discuss and also to illuminate their understanding of the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary, I

was asked if I could convene this meeting and share my knowledge about the protected

areas in India. There was an expectation that since the sanctuary originated in Delhi,

where I had previously been based, I might be more aware of its intricacies and what it

might mean in terms of restrictions on local resource use and also potential displacement

of the local people. Perceiving the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary as a New Delhi or

translocal phenomenon is common amongst the Changpa nomads, and they express their

frustration in negotiating with the anonymous authority responsible for declaring

Changthang as a sanctuary.

Background

Mawdsley et al. (2009:57) argues that at present to the extent that the ‘urban middle

classes’ are invoked in political analyses of wildlife conservation, they tend to be

subsumed into a certain social category. Sivaramakrishnan (2003:399) also points towards

the current literature that erases the shades of difference within the urban middle classes:

When wildlife conservation-related conflicts are presented as a town-country, or elite-poor dilemma, does such dichotomization not erase the shades of difference within rural or poor people’s opinion and identities?

Concurring with Sivaramakrishnan’s insights, the need to unpack the vast heterogeneous

group of cosmopolitan elites is central to this chapter. The wildlife conservation literature

on India has discussed in various ways the nuanced evaluation of metropolitan actors and

interests embroiled in the politics of protected areas. Sivaramakrishnan (2003:391) has

located them in the ‘apparatuses of the state, the professions, the academy, civil society

organizations, leadership of social movements’. Guha (2003) has identified them as ‘five’

groups of people; city dwellers & foreign tourists; ruling elites; international conservation

organizations; State functionaries; and biologists. These are the major groups identified as

having together steered the movement for wildlife conservation in India. They are also

viewed as united in their hostility towards the farmers, herders, swiddeners and hunters

86  

who have lived in the protected areas carved out under the wildlife conservation

campaign in India. According to Guha (2003:140),

They see these human communities as having a destructive effect on the environment, their forms of livelihood aiding the disappearance of species and contributing to soil erosion, habitat simplification, and worse. Their feelings are often expressed in strongly pejorative language.

This belief that it is the herder or the farmer living in the forest or pastures who is

responsible for wild habitat degradation has also determined the way wildlife policy has

been evolving in India. Within this format, the officials of national parks constituted

across India have expected the local people dependent on these parks and sanctuaries to

be displaced. Sivaramakrishnan (2003:395) declares that it was:

...a period of intense national development endeavour [that] created social space for the emergence of an expansive notion of civility that encompassed among other things a substantial elite and middle class involvement in wilderness conservation.

He writes that, as a result, there developed speaking positions from which discourses of

wildness have been articulated by this group and wild animals, landscapes, and tribal

people are all referents of different strands of such discourses (Sivaramakrishnan 2003).

The metropolitan ideas about tribal groups have celebrated indigenous knowledges and

instances of such actions as tribals protecting wild animals or abjuring hunting them in

different parts of India (Sivaramakrishnan 2003). Such accounts of wildness that have

romanticized the tribal people for their innate wisdom have also discussed their abilities to

co-exist with wild animals in wilderness areas. Such depiction of tribal people by the

metropolitan public has also been encouraged by non-reflective anthropological

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scholarship14 (Tsing et al 2005). It is interesting to see that such notions of conjured

stewardship or fecklessness, however, have failed to accept the beneficial spin-offs of

rural livelihoods on the protected areas (Aggarwal et al. 1999). Therefore, according to

Sivaramakrishnan (2003:399) wildlife conservation campaigns in India demonstrate a

terrain of ‘mutual incompatibility between the preservation of wilderness in nature and

the persistence of wildness in culture’.

The metropolitan conservationists have used distinctive modes of mobilization to sustain

wildlife conservation as a civic matter in India. The exclusive use of science and law to be

evaluated only by a tiny elite has played an important role in implementing wildlife policy.

Baviskar (2012:23) has examined how wildlife causes taken up by the urban middle class,

channeled through courts and justified through science, are framed as matters of ‘public

interest’. The ruling elite has viewed the protection of particular species (e.g. the tiger in

India) as central to the retention or enchantment of national prestige (Guha 2003:140).

The national importance accorded conserving wildlife and wildlife habitats has also

brought together the amalgamated vision of otherwise diverse fragments of this

metropolitan group.

Eder (1996) writes that those who preach ecological reason are amazed that it does not

fall upon fertile grounds. According to Eder, sometimes the answer lies in specific modes

of experiencing nature on the part of those preachers that lead to choosing the use of

ecological crisis as a way to draw attention. Therefore, the experience in this context of

the metropolitan conservationists living in the cities and towns of India is relatively

different to those of farmers and pastoralists living in rural environments around the

protected areas. In this chapter, I attempt to examine how the everyday metropolitan

conservationists are enmeshed within the politics of Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary. By

viewing this metropolitan group as a heterogeneous group, in relation to Changthang I

have heuristically separated them into authoritarian conservationists, conservation

biologists, state bureaucrats and conservation professionals in the following analysis,

though admittedly there are overlaps among these categories.

                                                                                                               14 The racial interpretation of caste and tribes as van Beek (2001:388) argues had lost its ‘influence after independence, but its traces particularly in essentializing of such “identities”, continue to have considerable influence on Indian ethnographies, also those of Ladakh’.

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The Metropolitans and Changthang

Elite conservationists

[They]… are a wider group of [ruling] elites. Such individuals are not trained biologists but nor are they simple urban pleasure seekers. They are a bit of both and something more besides. Their love for the tiger is deep, even perhaps obsessive. It is, literally, their life (Guha 2006:146).

The keynote address in the 14th International Association of Ladakh Studies conference

was given by Salman Haidar, the grandson of Hasmatullah Khan, who served in Ladakh

as a Jammu and Kashmir state bureaucrat in the early years of the 20th century. Mr

Haidar is himself a distinguished former diplomat. His postings have included a stint as

Indian Ambassador to Bhutan (1980 to 1983), Indian Deputy High Commissioner (1987-

1991) High Commissioner to the UK (1998), Ambassador to China (1991-92), and

Foreign Secretary (1995-1997). When I briefly met him after the conference to introduce

my research in Ladakh during the coffee session, he showed immense interest in my

anthropological research on wildlife conservation issues and promptly handed me a list of

contact addresses and phone numbers of wildlife conservationists living in Delhi to help

my research. The list included, as I later come to know, all the big names in wildlife

conservation in India: Belinda Wright, Billy Arjan Singh, Brinda Dube, Nalini Jayal and

M.K.Ranjinsinhji. Haidar spoke dearly of his close associations with them and told me

that I could use his reference in order to talk to them. As a senior diplomat in the Indian

government administration, Haidar did not belong to any royal family, but his association

with the mix of princely and colonial wildlife conservationists was typical of the alliances

which have been critical in the development of wildlife conservation policy in India.

As it eventuated, amongst all of them, M.K.Ranjitsinhji, a present member of National

Board of Wildlife, has had a lot of influence on the current workings of the Jammu and

Kashmir state Ministry of Environment and Forest, as compared to general bureaucrats

who have served in that ministry and left. Later during my fieldwork, Angchuk told me

that he had accompanied Ranjitsinhji on his trip to do research on ITBP’s request to build

roads inside the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary in 2009. A highlight of their trip was the

89  

hospitality rendered to Ranjitsinhji by the Indian military when he visited the regions close

to the international borders. Ranjitsinhji never chose to visit Korzok or the other local

nomadic settlements, according to Angchuk, as he had mostly remained busy chasing the

wildlife in the wild. Realizing Ranjitsinhji’s influence, P. Gyalpo, the wildlife ranger of

Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary based in Nyoma, the block headquarters, even requested

his help to remove the mandatory permissions from the Indian military, required even by

the sanctuary officials, to enter those parts of the sanctuary which are closer to the

international borders and under military authority, such as Daulat Beg Oldi, known to

harbour endangered wildlife, such as Tibetan antelope and wild yaks.

Ramchandra Guha (2006:146) considers M.K. Ranjitsinhji as part of the urban elites who

have exercised a major influence on the wildlife policy of India. He writes that M.K.

Ranjitsinhji was a hunter turned conservationist and was also instrumental in framing

India’s Wildlife Protection Act of 1972. Born in the royal house of Wankaner in

Saurashtra, Gujarat, Ranjitsinhji belonged to the Indian princely class who owned hunting

reserves (many of the present-day national parks and sanctuaries emerged from such

hunting reserves) and also hunted in the wild with the British colonial rulers. Ranjitsinhji

may be rare as an elite conservationist whose life’s trajectory also included being an

important policy maker for the Indian State. He joined the Indian Administrative Service

in 1961 and held several environment-related jobs. As Forests and Tourism Secretary to

Madhya Pradesh state, he takes pride in having created 14 national parks and 11

sanctuaries in the State. Later he also drafted the key Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, and

served as India’s first Director of Wildlife Preservation between 1973 and 1975. While

defining him as part of the ruling elite groups, Guha (2003:146) declares: ‘Because of their

passion and social connections, this group was able to shape the evolution of Project

Tiger in India’. Project Tiger, which launched 27 tiger reserves in India in 1972, also

declared the Royal Bengal Tiger as the national animal of India. The tiger symbolized

India’s power, just as the lotus symbolized purity in India and the peacock elegance.

Given its status, any decline in the tiger population would be a collective shame for the

whole nation. The collective thinking which required binding together India as a nation

witnessed wildlife conservation playing an important role. In that sense, Project Tiger

became a fine example in the history of wildlife conservation, representing the connection

between nature and nation, articulated and made possible by authoritarian conservation

90  

(Rangarajan 2003).

In the present protected area policy, the roles of princely hunting reserves are integrated

and debated at the same time. In one interview Ranjitsinhji was asked the question: ‘Royal

families have traditionally been accused of exploiting humans and they have been accused

of exploiting animals. How do you defend your royal connections especially when you

relate it to your work for social causes and particularly wildlife conservation?’ He replied:

…tell me if royal families were all exploitative and abusive why are members of ex-royal families still getting elected in India? …See…you have to understand there were good rulers and bad….I have to admit that some princes of royal families were inveterate hunters and slaughtered animals indiscriminately and such wanton killing was and remains indefensible…But at the same time there were hunters like Dharamkumarsinhji who were keen observers of fauna and he was an ardent ornithologist…I also have to say that there was more wildlife in states of Yore [erstwhile princely states] where princes were interested in hunting. When I started as the Director of Wildlife, about 80% of the then existing wildlife reserves were former hunting reserves of British and of the princes. If one family hunted many animals, in Northern Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh there were still more tigers in this country then than now after the Project Tiger initiatives. Hunting was not a free for all during the colonial rule. I would not advocate sport hunting now. It will militate against the current ethos of animal protection in India. But again I emphasize that 50 years ago, there was more wildlife in India than now. The Maharaja of Dholpur in Rajasthan was a former hunter and would call individual Sambar by name. Regarding the moral issue, there is no more and no less morality in taking a life by hunting than eating a chicken… (Ghosh 201015).

Sivarmakrishnan (2003:392) writes that ‘wildlife conservation became a complex source of

symbolic authority for Indian lords even as their fortunes seemed to be waning with the

end of British empire’. This symbolic authority presented itself in many ways in the early

years of wildlife conservation in India. Dharmakumashinhji, as mentioned by Ranjitsinhji,

has also ‘worked for the relocation of forest graziers and nomadic pastoralists from the

parks and sanctuaries… as an urge to transfer the rural poor into the ambit of stable

                                                                                                               15  http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0628-ranjitsinh_ghosh.html. [23 January 2014]

91  

agrarian society where a modern national citizenry was being forged’ (Sivaramkrishnan

2003). Ranjitsinhji holds a similar view when it comes to the people living around the

protected areas, as he argues:

If you are a welfare state, you have to give attention to poverty alleviation. Is the solution to this [the] destruction of forests? Saving animals means saving forests and saving ecosystem, the natural heritage of the country. Marginal land should be forested. In western Satpura [,] in Southern Arravallis in Bhil tribal areas [,] in Madhya Pradesh there is an ecological holocaust…. In a protected park, people should be moved out. In other areas, tigers would have to coexist with humans… (Ghosh 2010).

For instance, the case of Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan has now become a critical

part of the history of wildlife conservation in India. It highlights some of the extreme

impacts of authoritarian conservation where it led to police violence and deaths of the

local pastoralists who refused to leave the protected area.

In a historic policy formulation the government of India had introduced the Scheduled

Tribes [Recognition of Forest Rights] Bill in 2005 with the objective to undo the historical

injustices imposed on the forest-dwelling Scheduled Tribes. The bill included: giving 2.5

hectares of land per family; ownership rights to access of minor forest produce; the right

to graze; and access to traditional seasonal resources. Expressing apprehension, the

conservationists across the country criticized and opposed the Bill. Their contention was

that this would mean giving away 60-75% of forestland to tribal families and causing

irreparable damage to the wildlife (Saravannan 2006:208). In response to this disapproval

of local rights over the forest land by the authoritarian conservationists, Kothari (2005:5)

argued that ‘the fact that conservationists [are] pointing to the destructive potential of

millions of adivasi getting forest rights, conveniently hide[s] under their carpet their own

destructive lifestyles’. Guha’s similar critique (2006) was that elite conservationists live in

comfort or are not keen to scrutinize their own lifestyle of affluence, but believe that local

people need to be moved out of the national parks, in order to satisfy their romantic

aspiration or conservation idols.

92  

In a recent collaboration with the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF), Ministry

of Home Affairs and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Ranjitsinhji, who is also a

member of the National Board for Wildlife, participated in the landmark decision to also

denotify the land for road construction from the original demarcation of the Changthang

Wildlife Sanctuary (MoEF 2009). On May 9, 2009, the standing committee of the

National Board for Wildlife under the chairmanship of the Minister of State (forest and

wildlife) decided to forego the wildlife concerns for the defence needs of the country and

diverted land inside the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary for building a network of 5

metalled roads, as had been proposed by the Indo-Tibetan border Police (ITBP) in a

meeting held in Paryavaran Bhawan, in New Delhi.

On the one hand, the metropolitan conservationists have argued for local livelihoods to

be sacrificed for the cause of wildlife conservation, but at the same time they have

remained party to instances of such denotification of the same protected areas for the

benefit of other stakeholders, such as the Indian military in the case of Changthang

Wildlife Sanctuary. During my own conversations with Ranjitsinhji, he clandestinely

admitted that the border location of the protected areas such as Changthang Wildlife

Sanctuary makes it more threatened by the heavy presence of Indian military than the

local people themselves. However, the issue remains unaddressed since Ranjitsinhji

continues to support the model of protected areas which Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary

represent and also agree to the proclamation notification that recognizes the local

Changpa nomads to be displaced from the sanctuary.

After his retirement from the Central State bureaucracy, Ranjitsinhji has become a

chairman and trustee to a non-profit organization known as Wildlife Trust of India

(WTI). WTI is committed to the action that prevents destruction of India’s wildlife, and

the use of science and law are paramount in their vision to save wildlife. WTI’s

conservation surveys programme, sponsored by Dr. George Schaller, an eminent

biologist, has been conducting several studies especially that includes the threatened

faunal species to help develop a much focused conservation strategy for Changthang.

WTI advocates that these surveys follow appropriate biological methodologies to generate

93  

reliable data on distribution, population, ecology and even behaviour of the subject

species. WTI’s study of Tibetan antelopes or Chiru (Pantholops hodgsonii), endemic to

Changthang and also on the IUCN endangered list, has also led to ultimately bringing in

an amendment to the Jammu and Kashmir Wildlife Act in 2002.

The Jammu and Kashmir Wildlife Act amendment in 2002 introduced the trading ban on

shahtoosh, the fine underfleece of antelopes used in producing expensive clothing, accessed

only through killing Tibetan antelopes. In 1995, CITES accused the Indian MoEF of

failing to stop the production and sale of shatoosh and ordered the government to take

strict measures in this regard. In response, the MoEF appointed an expert committee to

undertake a survey in Changthang to determine the conservation status of the Chiru in

India and the trade in its wool. The survey confirmed the presence of Tibetan antelope in

the upper Changchenmo valley and Aksai Chin region of Ladakh. The Chiru habitat that

lies within the Indian territory was estimated to be around 2,500 square kilometers. The

traders were unable to provide any evidence of shed wool of the Chiru or any breeding

farms. The team also reported that no evidence of killing of the Tibetan antelope was

found within Indian territory (Chundawat & Talwar 1995).

The conservation action was accomplished through the filing of a Public Interest

Litigation (PIL) in the Jammu and Kashmir High Court in 1997 by WTI. Listed under

schedule I of the Indian Wildlife Act, the hunting of Tibetan antelope and trade in its

derivatives were banned in India from 1986. However, this ban had not been included in

Jammu and Kashmir’s state Wildlife Act of 1978, which permitted regulated hunting of

Tibetan antelopes and other animals and allowed trade in its derivatives. Under the

Jammu and Kashmir Wildlife Protection Act of 1978, Chiru was listed in Part I of

Schedule II under the ‘Special Game’ category. This legislation permitted hunting and

regulated trade in its derivatives under the ‘license’ of the state. The WTI’s PIL ultimately

led to an amendment in the Jammu and Kashmir Wildlife Act enforcing the hunting ban

in the state.

WTI’s achievement of the amendment of Jammu and Kashmir Wildlife Act of 2002 has

94  

been showcased nationally and internationally in many ways. Various wildlife conferences

have been held where Jammu and Kashmir state functionaries and the WTI staff rubbed

shoulders with the State politicians to celebrate the conservation success and raised

awareness and funds for Chiru conservation. However, in this whole conservation crusade

the role of local Changpa nomads or even of local authorities does not picture. The idea

that wildlife can be saved by liaising with Ministry of Environment and Forest in Delhi or

Srinagar and by employing the Indian judiciary transcends the way authoritarian

conservationists engage with Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary.

Conservation Biologists/Scientists

To celebrate Wildlife Week in October 2011, the autumn issue of Down to Earth, a

fortnightly magazine run by a well-known environmental organization in India, the Centre

for Science and Environment (CSE), published the summarized viewpoints of 13

scientist-conservationists in a cover story ‘Lives of Others’ discussing the State of

conservation in India. In its introductory paragraph, the article states:

Wildlife is more of an academic concern…. we have little idea how much of the rich biodiversity is being trampled by the march of human progress. Up to 40 percent of the identified species in India are not studied to assess their conservation status (Down to Earth, Oct 15 2011).

For the last three decades Changthang has been an immense focus for conservation

biologists to study the local wildlife species in order to identify their conservation status

(see also Chapter 3). In order to understand the proposed research claims about

Changthang made by the various biologists hailing from different cities of India, it may be

a good idea to first venture into Indian political history, whence the biologists/scientists

in general have traced their legacy of reason and power. Earlier, after the India-China War

in 1962, when Changthang would have experienced massive ecological disturbances, in a

way quite contrary to the conservation drives at those times, there was no political

willingness within the Indian polity to generate funds for the conservation biologists to

conduct research in Changthang probably when it was required the most. The loss of war

95  

damaged the nation’s pride in a different way, and this prioritized placing military

deployments in the Changthang plain. This era was also characterized by hunters-turned-

conservationists from royal families in the Punjab, Swarashtra, Hyderabad and so on who

played a critical role in making wildlife conservation a science or academic-based

endeavour. As is evident from the literary works of the environmental historian

Rangarajan (2003:200), during the era of Indira Gandhi, as Prime Minister of India, the

conservation biologists were invited to become part of the State agenda for saving the

wild. According to Rangarajan (2003:200), the ecological patriotism became integral to the

Indian State by the early 1970s, as Indira Gandhi provided biological scientists (just like

agricultural scientists) a milieu in which their research acquired force and momentum.

This was especially true for the government’s initiative of Project Tiger as the Bengal

Tiger found in the Sunderbans started to be regarded as a source of Indian pride (a

project in which Ranjitsinhji was an integral part as well).

In later years, biological research was given another major boost by the improved Indo-

US ties during the Cold War. This allowed a new generation of conservation biologists

outside of the forest department to conduct research on a range of habitats (Rangarajan

2009:304-5). This State–led conservation and the promotion of science became the

stepping stones for later biological research especially targeting protected areas, i.e. the

national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, through State-run scientific organizations such as

the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) based in Dehradun. The Wildlife Institute of India

was founded in 1982 and has played an immense role in establishing wildlife research

across India, especially through networking with other State institutions such as the state

departments of forests and wildlife protection. To say that most of the conservation

biologists engaged in wildlife science and conservation in India are associated with WII is

not an exaggeration. The students at WII would generally choose a protected area for

their advanced research and often recommended stringent sanctions to promote the

survival of the researched wildlife species within the protected areas. Most of the wildlife

research conducted by WII in Changthang dates later than 1987, the year Changthang was

declared a wildlife sanctuary. As a result, from that time onwards, Changthang has come

under scientific assessment, surveyed and researched to understand the status and

distribution of its wildlife by conservation biologists.

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Scientific achievement is no doubt considered to be an important component of the

modern national identity of nation states such as India, as emphasized by many scholars,

such as Demeritt (1998), concerned with how science is ultimately socially contingent.

According to some political science scholarship, neither science nor nations can be fully

understood without paying attention to the ways in which the two are linked. In the case

of India, the nationalistic thought envisioned with wildlife conservation comes alive in the

noted naturalist and columnist Krishnan’s words in 1980:

If I have only conveyed the impression so far that it is of national importance to conserve our wildlife and wildlife habitats, I have failed fundamentally in my arguments. This is no matter of mere importance, but a primary patriotic duty, quite essential for the survival of the identity of this ancient country’ (cited in Sivaramakrishnan 2003:394).

That the laws of science are not confined within national boundaries is a major argument

of the sciences in general, as what matters most is replicable experiments. On the other

hand, the conservation biologists carrying out research in Changthang are most of the

time positioning or not positioning their research on the basis of the wildlife census or

particular species research found within national boundaries. Despite Changthang being

on the borders of India and physically and topographically contiguous to the Tibetan

ecosystem, the ecological crisis proclaimed for Changthang remains in denial of the

wildlife findings in Tibetan Changthang. In 1905, C. J. Rawling had described herds of

Tibetan antelope or Chiru migrating across the Tibetan plateau: ‘Almost from my feet

away to the north and east, as far as the eye could reach, were thousands upon thousands

of doe antelope with their young [...] there could not have been less than 15,000 or 20,000

visible at one time’ (quoted in Schaller 1998:41). In 1990, the total Chiru population for

the entire Tibetan plateau was estimated to be between 65,000 and 72,500, and this had

declined to about 45,000 in 1998 (Schaller 1998:59). While more recently the IUCN

(2010) reported that the Chiru population is declining in the region, the Wild Conservation

Society in China states that the population of the endangered Tibetan antelopes was on

the increase and had expanded to about 120,000.16 Some Chinese news agencies reporting

about the first ever Chinese winter expedition of zoologists to conduct a Tibetan antelope

                                                                                                               16 http://china.wcs.org/Wildlife/TibetanAntelope.aspx#.U2BgKl4xFSU/Accessed on 24 April 2014

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survey in Changthang even confirmed their number to be 200,000 by 2011, with an

average annual growth rate of 7% in the last decade.17 From the above estimates, it is easy

to conclude that while the population of Chiru has fallen considerably in the past few

decades, it is difficult to ascertain the exact population size as well as the population trend,

given that the Chiru’s habitat of Changthang is divided between two countries.

Beside such limitations to the biologist’s research, there are also administrative influences

on the pure scientific exercises conducted in Changthang. The expansive landscape of

Changthang – approx. 22,000 square kilometer with sparse infrastructure – is considered a

resource-intensive project venue for the biologists’ research. Hence, a biologist

conducting research in Changthang spends a great amount of time and energy in writing

grant applications to various conservation agencies if s/he is not harboured by a State

science institute such as the WII. This is also not to forget that the availability of wildlife

research funds in India has had a political history, as noted above. However, collaborating

and seeking funds from international organizations for funding is also common amongst

the scientists. The Whatley Fund for Nature, the Rufford Foundation, the Nadathur

Conservation Trust and the Ford Foundation are some of the international agencies that

have supported the conservation biologists working in Changthang. These agencies

believe in nature conservation through species–focused research and expect conservation

benefits on the ground as a pre-condition for funding. The hundreds of sponsored

projects across the globe homogenize the wildlife crisis and, in order to seek funds, the

biologists in Changthang have to correlate more with such global assumptions rather than

what exists locally on the grounds.

Seeking State permission to conduct research is another critical aspect of scientific

research in Changthang. The biologists working in Changthang have to rely on the state

Department of Wildlife Protection to grant them permission to conduct research, since it

is part of a protected area. The government guidelines on what kind of research will be

given priority and how the biologists need to conduct themselves during the research

influences the way biologists work in Changthang. Therefore, protected areas like

Changthang are policed and guarded in such a way that the biologists/scientists are not

                                                                                                               17 http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/video/2014-01/17/c_133053067.html/Accessed on 24 April 2014.

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free to research what is important scientifically and must mould the research to suit State

guidelines.

Biologists frequently work in collaboration with the State agencies. This also poses a

challenge if the biologists themselves do not belong to these State agencies. In Ladakh,

Tashi Namgyal, the Regional Conservator of the Department of Wildlife Protection, used

the legacy of a past government order of 2006 to blacklist local NGOs, causing a potential

threat for the wildlife NGOs conducting research in Ladakh. This possibility of non-

Collaboration by the Department of Wildlife Protection is seen as critical by the biologists

representing the NGOs. Therefore, liaising with the state department more than the local

community is crucial for many biologists in Changthang.

In shaping Changthang as a wildlife sanctuary or a place of wilderness, the role of

conservation biologists cannot be underestimated, as is evident in the following case. The

publication of the research of a group of biologists who conducted work on the Tibetan

gazelle (Procapra Picticaudata) in Changthang caused enormous distress amongst the

scientific community. By declaring that the population of Tibetan gazelle in Changthang

had declined to a mere 100 in numbers over a range of less than 100 square kilometers,

they made an urgent appeal for protecting and restoring the species. This perceived

decline of the species also led to a publication (Bhatnagar et al. 2007), co–authored with

other scientists and even state wildlife officials, in which the two pronged ‘species

recovery’ strategy for the Tibetan gazelle was laid down. Consolidation of the gazelle

population and re-colonization of its former range became the critical objectives for their

planned intervention. As part of the intervention directed towards solving the crisis, the

biologists generated enough funds from international conservation organizations to lease

out a pastureland in Kalak Tartar in Changthang from the local herders and fenced it for

the exclusive use of threatened Tibetan gazelle. This trajectory in biological research is not

dissimilar to the wildlife research conducted across the world. As Daniel Janzen wrote in a

report in the Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, ‘we have the seed and the biological

expertise: we lack control of the terrain’. Later, he had solved the problem by purchasing

the forest area needed to create the Guanacaste National Park in Costa Rica (Guha

2006:129).

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The larger issue in this context is the available possibilities for some biologists to conduct

science even in the absence of creating a consensus amongst various other stakeholders

who play an equally important role in the survival or loss of the endangered wildlife.

Biologists rationalize this stance by the belief that the truth, universality and transparent

knowledge produced solely through scientific methods create sufficient grounds to prove

any project’s reasonability, be it bringing more stringent measures to bear on protected

area management or leasing out the land within a protected area. Whether livestock

pressure on other pastures has grown by freeing this patch of land for the gazelle’s

protection or what the Changthang people ultimately think about the Kalak Tartar project

can easily be treated as insignificant within scientific research. As ex-gowa Jigmet at

Korzok poignantly comments in Hindi upon the protection of gazelle at Kalak Tartar: ‘goa

to mehengi cheez hei’ ([being] goa is an expensive thing) (personal communication 2009).

According to him, the endangered wildlife in Changthang is being assigned a higher value

by the State compared to lives/livelihoods of his people, who are also under threat of

displacement after Changthang became a wildlife sanctuary. Outside this equation,

whatever local knowledge Jigmet or Changpa nomads seems to possess of the

Changthang wildlife is considered not reliable or rational enough to build scientific

wildlife conservation programmes, as is quite evident in the way biologists’ literature on

Changthang has been collected. It has not yet become a norm to use local knowledge as

part of biological work in Changthang, as it is often found that the most of the biologists

carry their research away from the settlements and tend to not interact much with the

local people in their field research.

What is also important to note is that the scientific concern for the Tibetan gazelle can

easily override what people like Jigmet believe. The need to save the Tibetan gazelle for

the nation echoes more of the priorities of traditional forest management in India, which

is tilted towards national need and industry, rather than local and subsistence needs

(Mawdsley et al. 2009). For example, Project Tiger in India has garnered legitimacy and

universality through its association with national pride. The social positioning of biologists

as cosmopolitan middle class scientists in India connects them with nationalist ideologies

in a particular way. This is different from how Jigmet views the situation.

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Despite the participatory drive in conservation, the idea of involving local people in

conservation biologists’ research has not yet been completely accepted, although there is

an apparent shift in the popular mandates of the wildlife organizations. For example, WII,

whose role in conducting research in Changthang is dominant, declares its mission to

‘…nurture the development of wildlife science and promote its application in

conservation, in consonance with our cultural and socio-economic milieu’. Likewise, the

Mysore–based wildlife conservation NGO, Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF),

shares a similar vision to WII:

Using this knowledge of wildlife ecology and human society, we design conservation strategies that are locally-appropriate… implemented in collaboration with local communities who depend the most on natural resources, and the governments that manage them. While promoting wildlife conservation, our programmes also strive to safeguard livelihood and development options for local communities (Nature Conservation Foundation n.d.).

This new wave of bringing local people into the conservation paradigm, however, has had

one overt impact on wildlife research in Changthang. In recent times the biologists in

Changthang have been publishing academic research with titles such as ‘Perceived

Conflicts between Pastoralism and Conservation of the (Kiang Equus kiang) in the

Ladakh Trans Himalayan, India’ or ‘Conflicts between traditional pastoralism and

conservation of Himalayan Ibex (Capra sibirica) in the Trans-Himalayan mountains’, as

compared to their past research that solely was interested in such phenomena as

population status and distribution of wildlife in Changthang. The recent Project Snow

Leopard, targeting the Himalayan and Trans-Himalayan areas along the same line as

Project Tiger, initiated by the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) and drafted by

conservation biologists, also has participatory promises. The Project Snow Leopard

describes its goal ‘to safeguard and conserve India’s unique natural heritage of high

altitude wildlife populations and their habitats by promoting conservation through

participatory policies and action’ (MoEF 2008:11). The project identifies that given the

occurrence of wildlife on common land, as well as the continued traditional land use

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within the protected areas, wildlife management in the region needs to be made

participatory both within and outside protected areas (MoEF 2008:10).

Despite the various claims of local participation laid out in the project’s mandates and

vision, the ideology carried by many biologists has not seen much change in terms of local

participation in wildlife conservation management. In an interview to The New York Times

(August 2005), Dr. Ullas Karanth, a well-known biologist studying tiger conservation in

India for decades, declares:

It's naïve. People and tigers have never coexisted harmoniously. They compete for land, protein, resources. In a country like India where there are so many people and so little land, sustainable development is actually a recipe for wiping out the protected areas.

Dr. Karanth has produced 135 peer-reviewed wildlife articles in eminent scientific

journals with seven books and has received India’s highest State award, Padma Shri, for

his outstanding contributions. No doubt many biologists are inspired by such State

recognitions and academic achievements and desire to emulate his success. Therefore, the

tendency of many biologists who do venture into bringing local people into their

biologists analysis is to do it very simplistically, as discussed in Chapter 3. As exemplified

in the following statement, a group of biologists who appeal for a joint management

system for the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary in their research paper continue to position

the local Changpa nomads in a way seen critically by many social scientists:

The socio-economy of Changthang is unique, having evolved over centuries without outside influence. This has been changing since the 1970s, however, due to the opening of Ladakh for tourism, the Cultural Revolution in China and the border conflict between the two countries. With the greater mobility of people due to tourism and military associated infrastructure development, Changpas are increasingly exposed to outside cultures. The social structures of the Changpa people are also changing. For example, the polyandry system, which perhaps served as a population control mechanism in the past, is on the decline….(Namgail et al. 2010:224-225).

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Such simplifications about the local people, as discussed in Chapter 3, romanticize the

Changpa nomads. Placing the local people in a distant past makes it easy to fabricate an

appealing context where the local livelihood seems altered or detrimental to local wildlife.

Sivaramakrishnan identifies such perceptions of the biologists as a hegemonic

construction of people and nature and believes that such a narrative ‘extols the virtue of

cultures that embrace wildness in their lived environment and whose antique genealogy is

traced from a precolonial past’ (Sivaramakrishnan 2003:369). Ultimately, constructing

such a simplifying fiction of cultural harmony from the complex realities also appears to

constitute the claims of those groups of urban scientists whose environmental agenda it

represents.

However, the claims to have included local people in collecting information about the

research on the Tibetan gazelle fall short of understanding the local perception about

Changthang wildlife. The ex-gowa Jigmet from Korzok, who knew about the conservation

intervention in the Kalak Tartar project, responded that the only threat to wildlife is when

somebody wants to ‘kill’ the animal. He discussed how both jetpo (Snow Leopards) and

shankhu (Tibetan Wolves) attack ridhak (Wild Ungulates) such as Tibet gazelle too, in

contrast to the unilateral perspective that it is the hunting by the human population which

has triggered the decline of the wildlife. Jigmet was not convinced that the population of

Tibetan gazelle has not been able to ‘recover’ due to the local livestock increase and

overgrazing of its habitat. According to him, ‘ridhak [Wild Ungulates] can always go to

higher altitudes or across the borders [into China] to eat grasses which are not eaten by

the local raluk [livestock] (personal communication 2009). On the other hand, in Jigmet’s

view it is the local livestock which cannot cross borders due to the military presence and

other restrictions. He also pressed upon the threat due to hunting by the military, and that

the number of ridhak hunted by the military soldiers can be easily hidden in their moving

vehicles, which no one is allowed to check in any case. How the diagnosis of the problem

simply ignored the presence of the elephant in the room – the Indian military – is

intriguing. India has one of the world’s largest armies and extensive infrastructure to

sustain it, which defends its national borders in Changthang, but its presence there has

still not convinced some biologists to recognize the military as a possible cause for the

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present-day wildlife habitat degradation. Some biologists’ research does mention raising

awareness amongst the military soldiers, but sees it as a futile exercise due to the

temporary tenure of the stationed soldiers (Bhatnagar 2007).

Certain pragmatic biologists in India have been advocating for conservation measures

friendly to local people (Guha 2003; Rangarajan 2003). However, in Korzok I have found

that what participation ultimately is offered to the bearers of local knowledge in

Changthang at this stage is restricted only to providing logistic and infrastructure support,

such as being either the cooks/drivers or assistants, as in the case of the local ecology

students from Leh who assist wildlife research expeditions. It seems there is no one from

Korzok who has been asked so far to participate in any of the wildlife research. This

holds true as well for those biologists who come to do research on the wildlife habitats

around the Tsomoriri wetlands and stay in Korzok for the period of research. The

rationale of pure scientific fulfillment and the modest project of protection and

restoration miss the way Changthang appears to the local people. In this way, the space

of local knowledge within pure sciences still remains arbitrary, and so does the

relationship biologists ultimately have with local people.

State Bureaucrats

It was only in 1989 that the first wildlife warden, T. Norboo, was appointed in the Leh

district. This was six years after the Department of Wildlife Protection became a separate

wing within the state forestry departments across India, including in the state of Jammu

and Kashmir. With Ladakh being at the forefront of triggering the state Wildlife Act

amendments in 2002, and the Project Snow Leopard and World Bank Eco development

programme targeting Ladakh, the stakes of wildlife conservation and the bureaucracy of

the Department of Wildlife Protection (DoWP) Leh have amplified in recent times.

Unlike most of his predecessors, Tashi Namgyal, the present regional conservator at

DoWP, belongs to Ladakh. Born and brought up in Leh, Tashi is one of the few Lehpas

who travelled across various Indian cities for his university and professional education.

He joined India’s privileged class of civil servants when he was selected as a bureaucrat in

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the Indian Forest Services. The mix of his Ladakhi identity and his high rank in state

bureaucracy plays a critical role in the way Indian wildlife conservation policy is being

taken forward in Changthang.

When I first met him in his Leh-based office, he told me that it took him a long time to

understand what wildlife conservation really meant. Being a civil servant who was trained

as a forester and now is the topmost authority in wildlife conservation in Ladakh, his

comment was intriguing. In the later conversations, it was clear that his approach to State

conservation was indeed different, as compared to many other protected area managers in

the rest of India. But, in some ways it was also similar, since, as he elaborated, his answer

to his previous question emphasized how it was ultimately the science behind the

extinction of unique wildlife species in Ladakh that led to his insight into the conservation

concept (personal communication 2009). On the surface, these questions seemed

apolitical and simple, as did his actions. He has proposed a people-friendly landscape

approach for biodiversity conservation in Changthang, where people are seen as an

integral part of wildlife conservation: by adopting alternative livelihood activities, the

communities inside the protected areas are made to live in harmony with the wildlife

(Reach Ladakh 2013). According to Namgyal, he has mobilized communities in Ladakh to

join wildlife conservation efforts through awareness and law enforcement methods. In

order to reduce the human-wildlife conflicts in protected areas such as Changthang, he

has introduced alternative livelihood improvement projects to reduce pressure on natural

resources and dependency of livestock (Reach Ladakh 2013).

His desire to accomplish something for Ladakh was expressed to me when he discussed

why he had accepted the post as the regional conservator of Leh district, which is a much

lower position as compared to what he can achieve as a senior civil servant. According to

him, it was more in the interest of contributing something for Ladakh that he had

deliberately relocated himself to Ladakh (personal communication 2009), framing any

personal interests to keep his posting within Ladakh as only a secondary reason.

Namgyal’s Ladakhi identity also surfaces in his everyday working style, which differs from

his predecessors who hailed from outside Ladakh. In order to bring focus to Ladakh,

Namgyal claims to have planned Project Snow Leopard, which supposed to cover five

105  

Himalayan States with its epicentre in Ladakh along lines similar to the flagship Project

Tiger initiative. The central government’s approval of a funding of Rupees 500 crores

(AUD 100 million), through the planning commission in the nation’s 11th five year plan,

highlights how he has been influential in manouvering the state bureaucracy for the

benefit of Ladakh. Such a powerful financial emphasis on Ladakh through the

conservation project cannot be seen in isolation from the way Ladakh fits it into the

political scene of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, of which it is an administrative part.

Namgyal’s way of taking forward the agenda of wildlife conservation is inadvertently

enmeshed with regional political issues. Namgyal is often a representative of Ladakh’s

interests in the official negotiations between Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development

Council (LAHDC) and the central government relating to even those developmental

concerns which he officially does not represent. LAHDC has chosen Namgyal as the

coordinator for drafting the Ladakh 2025 Vision Document. As a road map for the

progress of Ladakh, the Ladakh 2025 Vision Document is a reference document for the

LAHDC, and is also endorsed by the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. This is

quite an achievement for the LAHDC given its tense relations with the Jammu and

Kashmir state. LAHDC thinks by engaging Namgyal, Ladakh’s political concerns can be

articulated and projected in a better fashion with the central government given his high-

ranking bureaucratic profile. One can witness his various contributions to Ladakh laid out

specifically on the LAHDC webpage18.

Between the years 2007-2008, Namgyal communicated to the civil administrative

departments engaged in development activities in Changthang that they should either stop

their activities or seek permission from his department prior to any specific action inside

the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary; otherwise they stood to face legal action. This action

had so annoyed certain civil departments that they became antagonistic towards State

conservation which has come to question their powers of jurisdiction. This frustration

developed to such an extent that even the subdivisional magistrate at Nyoma went ahead

and published articles in the local newspapers blaming the Department of Wildlife

Protection as a deterrent to the economic and development future of Changpa nomads

(personal communication 2009). The magistrate had shared that article with me, and the

                                                                                                               18 http://leh.nic.in/pages/VISIONDOCUMENT.pdf /Accessed on 25 April 20014.

106  

fact that he had become unpopular amongst higher authorities because of his provocative

style and resisting directives from the wildlife department.

Most glaring of all of Namgyal’s actions as a conservator was when he attempted to target

the otherwise sacrosanct Indian military in his campaign to establish his jurisdiction over

Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary. His office drafted official notices for the Indo-Tibetan

Border Police (ITBP) to find alternative sites for their operations by moving out of the

land they occupied in the sanctuary. Confident of his authority, he has even termed the

ITBP’s activities as illegal in one of his official communication to the Deputy Inspector

General of ITBP in 2008:

The [ITBP] construction work is being executed without seeking permission from the Wildlife Protection Department…since the area is falling under Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary, it is illegal and violation of the J & K [ Jammu and Kashmir] Act 1978 to carry out any construction work in the Protected Area. …It is once again requested that no construction is carried out in the protected area failing to which the department will be constrained to take legal action against the executing agency/department. You are requested to kindly cooperate and stop illegal activities in the area (Official letter no. 269-73/WL/WL/Tsomoriri/2008).

It is another matter that ITBP has put all the blame on the Block civil authorities for

allotting to it an alternative site for the last seven years. Namgyal, who has opened an

avenue to criticize the military through the context of conservation, is also admired by

some of his Ladakhi counterparts in the local civil administration because of their local

operations being afforded a lower priority (Geiger 2008) than the Indian military in

Changthang. In addition, Aggarwal and Bhan’s (2011:526) assertion of how the

‘relationship between Ladakhi civilians and the armed forces was for a long period

governed by a culture of fear and difference’ seems also to direct attention towards the

possibility that it would have also influenced Namgyal’s action towards seeing

conservation as an opportunity to critique the Indian military presence in Changthang.

107  

The bureaucratic hat which Namgyal adopts and his simultaneous identity as a Lehpa

(resident of Leh) for especially the Changthang people bring complexities in the execution

of this converging nature conservation agenda. On the road from the airport to Leh town,

one can see there are billboards picturing a snow leopard with a slogan ‘Ladakh Pride,

Save it’ with the logo of the Department of Wildlife Protection (DoWP) underneath.

Explaining the Ladakhi way of conservation to a wildlife researcher in 2009, Namgyal

invoked a romanticized premodern Buddhist ‘subject and society’, saying that Ladakhis

have a compassion for wildlife which naturally comes with their culture, primarily as

Buddhists. The use of religious compassion in explaining the relationship between

conservation and the local Buddhists echoes the writings of biologists about sacred groves

in other parts of India, although the groves, besides being seen as ancient nature

sanctuaries, are predominantly considered to be associated with Hindu mother goddesses.

In this valorization of the local religion, Namgyal also locates the past hunting practices as

a local subsistence necessity amongst the Changpa nomads. According to him these

practices do not need to be taken seriously given that the Jammu and Kashmir’s state’s

hunting ban has been in place since 2002. There are studies (Satterfield 2009) which

reiterate similar references to the Ladakhi monks, who have recently started to describe

how Buddhist teachings are more aware of biological interconnectedness, especially after

wildlife NGOs have started to conduct conservation programmes in the region. The

Central Institute of Buddhist Studies (CIBS)’s recent involvement in providing religious

education to the resident young monks in Korzok monastery is one such instance

exemplifying the growth of current interpretations of Buddhist teachings.

While quoting Tashi Morup, an editor of the local magazine Magpie, Cameron (2006:7)

writes about how the image of the backwardness of the Changpa is far more insidious, as

even the ‘drastic educational improvements among the Changpas were likely to do little to

stem the negative opinions of most urban residents [Lehpa]’. The prejudices faced by the

Changpa nomads who migrate to Leh for education or work are common in Leh, and

many young Changpa students I met during my fieldwork reiterated the way they have to

either work harder to prove themselves or suffer constant discrimination. In 1989 when

the Changpa nomads in Ladakh became one of the six scheduled tribal groups recognized

by national schedules defining disadvantaged indigenous groups for special State welfare

delivery, this State policy initiative further instituted the way Leh residents perceived

108  

Changpa nomads. Similarly, during my several conversations with Namgyal, he would

often refer to Changthang as a backward place where the local people are illiterate and

needed to be ‘educated’ to participate in the State conservation drive. A glaring example

of this thinking is the constitution of the Conservation Reserve Management Committee,

which is designed to advise the chief wildlife warden to conserve, maintain and the

manage the protected areas. The committee is comprised of the representatives of the

Forest Department, Wildlife Department, one representative of each village panchayat

(gowa being its head) in whose jurisdiction the protected area is located, three

representatives of non-governmental organizations active in the area and representatives

of the other related departments, though not exceeding two. The representative of the

wildlife department is to be its secretary. It is also true that such wildlife committees

/meetings organized by DoWP in Leh seem inexplicable to most of the invited gowa from

Changthang. Ex-gowa Jigmet speaks about the wildlife experts present at these meetings,

such as lawyers and biologists, whose deliberations mostly in English and Hindi remained

incomprehensible to him. The local people in Korzok also think that sanctuary is such a

popular project that it has made many experts visit their pastures, but the local people

seem not to have any information about it. One Changpa elder told me. Writing about the

Great Himalayan National Park, Baviskar (2003:295) similarly observed the state

department’s need to control local resources and assert its ascendency over the villagers

through processes which are inexplicable to them.

Namgyal seems to be aware that within even in his enlightened version of the

conservation paradigm the assigned position of the local Changpa nomads remains wild.

The idea that the local people need to be taught to understand conservation has also

become a project of improvement promoted by Namgyal in his larger LAHDC agenda of

modernization aiming to bring progress and development to the region. In a much more

provocative response, Durbuk residents had come forward to demonstrate their

disagreement specifically against Namgyal when in one instance they had stoned his

vehicle on his official visit and even threatened his life. Therefore, such cases show that

local people have not completely subscribed to Namgyal’s well–intentioned idea to

improve local people’s lives through conservation.

109  

As an indirect agenda of bringing good will to Ladakh through conservation, Namgyal

tends to project a people-friendly image, where bringing development and empowerment

to the local people are seen as integral to his view of conservation. However, given the

way State conservation is conceptualized at this stage, in the case of Changthang it is clear

that advocating displacement of the local people would not benefit the local Changpa

nomads. However, the participatory avatar of conservation which Namgyal has advocated

in the form of his landscape approach for conservation is also not without problems,

since the project is located within the rational, scientific project, which he does not

question, as he told me in his first meeting. This mix of culture and authority has had an

impact on the way Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary is being managed under his leadership.

Conservation Professionals

Commenting on conservation professionals, Sivaramakrishnan (2003:396) explains that it

was the environmental movement in the 1970s that produced these ‘enterprising citizen-

subjects’ in India as part of an international conservation vanguard party. Their self-image

is sustained through reading and participating in the national and global conservation

campaigns and travelling to various centres of the global conservation enterprise,

including Rome, Geneva, Stockholm, Nairobi, London and Washington D.C. for

validation and authenticity (Lowe 2010). Bringing global conservation agendas into the

local sphere is a crucial part of their association with places like Changthang.

Largely based on its ecological diversity, Tsomoriri, a 120 square kilometers brackish

water lake, was declared a Ramsar Wetland in 2002. The campaign to bring Tsomoriri into

the Ramsar Convention of Wetlands was made possible through the constant efforts of

the Ladakhi and non-Ladakhi conservation professionals from WWF’s Leh office. The

campaign was successful and was celebrated across the offices of WWF-India and abroad.

The chagdzod, the head monk of the Korzok monastery, was, however, stunned that

Tsomoriri was declared as an international wetland without the local people, including he

himself, knowing about it. The speculation was that, as a result, all the lakeshore up to 30

meters from the water would be inaccessible, and this information about the restriction

was prevalent amongst the local people. Above all, the chagdzod of the Korzok monastery,

110  

which represents the customary ownership of Tsomoriri and the pasture land around it on

behalf of the community, has repeatedly questioned this transfer of authority over

Tsomoriri away from the monastery. His provocative blaming of a political faction within

the community and the sanctuary’s wildlife guard has been a cause of local tension and

confusion. As the events unfolded, it appeared that the local councilor on the LAHDC

for that year was invited by the WWF professionals to travel to Kathmandu to their

annual conference, where he seemed to have handed over Tsomoriri as ‘a sacred gift for

the living planet’ in a ceremony. The councilor, however, claimed a complete ignorance of

this intent of the meeting. According to him, he was travelling with Ladakh’s prominent

religious and political figure Rinpoche Kushok Bakula; in his view, his handing over was

merely a symbolic gesture and in good faith. Moreover, he added that travelling to Delhi

from Korzok and then to another country was so overwhelming that the significance of

the process was lost on him. WWF, not completely unaware of such ambiguities,

continued to highlight such rhetoric of local participation as a critical part of their

conservation achievements in Changthang. According to WWF, such local perception was

what led to declaring Tsomoriri as an International Ramsar wetland, perceived as having

been willingly given away by the local ‘community’ as a ‘Sacred Gift for a Living Planet’19.

WWF, confident of what it has achieved so far in Changthang, has continued to expand

its wetland conservation programme across the other Himalayan States, such as Bhutan,

Nepal and China.

The LAHDC local councilor, the chagdzod, and the ex-school master Tsering are the

traditional ‘interpreters’ amongst the local people, constituting the interface between

Changthang people and the outside world. Their relatively sedentary lifestyle, and

presence in Korzok, as compared to most of the other families continuing to live in the

nomadic campsites, makes it easier for them to perform this function. Education, be it

religious in the case of the chagdzod or formal in the case of other two, has played an

important role in building connections with the educated outside. Therefore, when the

Tsomoriri Conservation Trust (TCT) was created, it was an easier decision for

conservation professionals to instal the local elite trio on the board of TCT rather than

non-sedentary and illiterate nomadic people. This is also consistent with the belief that it

                                                                                                               19 http://sites.wetlands.org/reports/ris/2IN018en.pdf [ Accessed 13 April2014].

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is the progressively aspiring members of the community, sedentarized and educated, who

can understand the conservation drive, and not the nomadic pastoralists.

As discussed in detail earlier, Homestays, a community-based tourism programme started

by WWF, shows some of the hidden biases/prejudices with which conservation

professionals, such as the WWF staff, operate. During my fieldwork, I observed that a

WWF-Leh official, staying in Korzok while conducting tourists survey, preferred

spending more of his spare time with outsiders such as the local café staff or the tourists

than with any local residents. As one of my young friend from Korzok pointed out during

a discussion about how Lehpa do not want to be friends with them. The conservation

professionals who represent urban attitudes and cultural style in working with the rural

people are quite noticeable in the context of Changthang. Their belongings, such as a

particular kind of vehicle on which they arrive and drive around i.e. four-wheel-drives

embellished with WWF logos and stickers, urban attire including khaki wildlife caps with

dark sun glasses across all the staff and heavy, down-feathered jackets, as well as laptop

bags and electronic gadgets, including ‘still’ and ‘moving’ Japanese cameras, are very

distinct from the local people’s appearance. Yet, conservation professionals often hold

local people responsible for maintaining the distinctness between the two. As one of the

WWF officials in Korzok told me, despite their long-term association and ‘working for

them’ [for the local people], Changpa are not hospitable enough, towards them. It is

common in Ladakh to offer Thukpa or Solja on local home visits, but Changpa do not

offer this hospitality, and, therefore, to a large extent the responsibility for the

discrimination lies with the local people in their view. This is also the reason that these

officials end up having to lug all their food rations, including salt and oil, from Leh and

prefer to cook their food separately in their field office while on duty. The professionals

know that this also holds true for the State government officials who come here on their

official trips and have extensive dinner gatherings. To an extent, this experience also

compares to mine, where during my home visits, the local Changpa families took a long

time before inviting me to stay for lunch or dinner. Since my visits have been frequent

and over a longer period, I assume the reasons for ‘lack of hospitality’ experienced by the

conservation professionals have most likely to do with Changpas’ timidity in regards to

their hospitality skills. This timidity could be because of the common ridicule Changpa

have experienced from especially the Lehpa. Besides the common perception amongst

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Lehpa that Changpa are backward people, the Lehpa also believe that Changpa need to

learn the ‘apt’ ways of hygiene. They would often comment about Changpa being

unhygienic, unclean i.e. not washing themselves or their clothes or bathing only once a

year or when they are born. These perceptions also extend to their hospitality skills, like

using their goncha sleeves to clean the table before offering solja or joking about how

livestock hair is an integral part of the local cuisine. The nomadic lifestyle is also

negatively commented upon, and being sedentary is seen as more progressive. Therefore,

as I also discuss across my thesis, Changpa are portrayed as lagging behind culturally by

living a nomadic life in rebo made out of yak hair rather than choosing to pursue a

sedentary life in built-up houses. Concerns for such issues as health, beauty and order find

more places in the ideology of the urban middle classes, such as these conservational

professionals, as also emphasized by Baviskar (2012), than the issues of life and

livelihoods faced by the Changthang people. The Snow Leopard Conservancy (SLC), an

NGO pioneering the ecotourism programme in Ladakh, promotes ‘a traditional village-

based Himalayan Homestay which would maintain and share a traditional way of life and

its values, provide traditional food, be based on eco-friendly concepts and require small

amounts of investment for renovation not building’ (SLC 2004). In Korzok, the

conservation professionals from the WWF-Leh office have conducted several workshops

to educate the people about hygiene, waste segregation and boiling drinking water in the

run-up to the Homestays programme.

How these perceived social biases are further reproduced in the working styles of

professionals and play a role in the crucial decision making of their conservation projects

is evident in the ecotourism project of Homestays, as discussed in Chapter 3. All of the

selected 10 households chosen by the WWF professionals belonged to only the

sedentarized families. The professionals wanted to choose those households which had

the ‘potential’ to ‘cater’ to the tourists, and that precisely had to do with the hospitality

skills assumed by the selected households other than having a permanent dwelling.

Therefore, Changthang people living in rebo were unqualified, given their perceived poorer

hygiene skills, which had the potential to jeopardize their project. As evidence, one

conservation professional discussed with me that sedentarized Korzok residents were

gradually learning the ways to be more hygienic by building toilets and making spaces with

larger windows in their houses and therefore were getting attuned to what tourists want.

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Later on, even a Changpa nomad told me that the families living in rebo have to learn how

to be more hygienic in order to benefit from this tourism project. He added that once he

can afford similar ‘accommodation’ and learn the required skills, he would also benefit

from tourism. The drive of Changthang people towards owning private land to build

houses in Korzok, as also discussed in Chapter 3, certainly bears strands of this civilizing

mission triggered by the conservation professionals.

The conservation professionals’ aspirations align with more ‘civilized’ people in

Changthang and narrate a certain story of how wildlife conservation in Ladakh is a

‘process through which a strong and multi-sited notion of civility is constructed’

(Sivaramkrishnan 2003:396). The universalizing mission of a ‘sacred gift for the living

planet’ also reflects a kind of condescension by the international organizations and their

conservation agendas, which can be achieved through capitalizing on the motivations of

conservation professionals, who aspire to a particular lifestyle.

Conclusion

As a distinctly situated environmental campaign, wildlife conservation in India cannot be

understood without including its crucial relationship with the metropolitan

conservationists. The existing anonymity or lack of definition of these conservationists as

a distinct group has also continued to plague the perception of wildlife conflicts that are

seen in simplified parks-people or State-Community binaries. Yet, it is also true that most

of the accounts privilege a simplified political analysis and tend to erase shades of

differences within this group as well. Through this chapter I have attempted to move

away from such homogenization by de-essentializing the metropolitan conservationists

and presenting them as a heterogeneous group divided amongst authoritarian

conservationists, State bureaucrats, conservation biologists and conservation

professionals. In this chapter I have also tried to demonstrate how, using hegemonic

notions about civility and wildness, the metropolitan conservationists tend to

conceptualize the local people as passive recipients of such conservation initiatives, not as

actors in their own right who bring their agenda to a project (Moose 1986). This point

only demonstrates that the wildlife conservation campaign in India takes place on an

essentially social terrain, which is constituted by colonialism, nation-states, class-politics,

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traditional economies and global conservation agendas and not outside of such subject

matters. In the following three analytical chapters of my thesis, I bring a more grounded

focus on engaging with those multiple alignments and collaborations amongst the State

and non-State actors that has invoked after the declaration of Changthang Wildlife

Sanctuary. These alignments and collaborations that have emerged around the

Changthang Wildlife sanctuary vary in terms of the vested interests of the concerned

actors and such engagements demonstrate the complexity and contingency in which State

conservation is mired in Changthang.

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Chapter 5 A Marriage of Convenience

Civil-Military Relations in Changthang –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The alluvial cone of the Korzok phu stream fans out where this stream meets the brackish

waters of the Tsomoriri Lake in Changthang. This flat green oasis on the shores of the

Tsomoriri Lake is quite unique, as compared to rest of the lake shore, which remains

narrow and too close to the base of the surrounding mountains. For the erstwhile

Buddhist Rinpoche a few centuries back, the Korzok scenery appeared in part of a dream.

As a result, he with rest of the community chose to move from Chumur, a settlement

further west and decided to build their Buddhist monastery at Korzok. The elevating

scenic effect of the Tsomoriri Lake at the foot of the alluvial fan with the Buddhist

monastery as the backdrop has been mentioned both in the old travelogues and in current

tourist impressions. While the southern portion of about three square kilometers of this

plain, along the Korzok phu stream, has been privately cultivated by the local nomadic

herders, the rest is under the monastic ownership left for common grazing. The two

underground springs in the vicinity have also been locally revered and used as an

important drinking water source. The Indian military, which had previously not

strategically prioritized this alluvial fan, recently found it critical to deploy its border post

here. This particular ITBP move, as compared to its other acquisitions in Changthang, has

faced criticism on the grounds that it meant occupying an ecologically fragile area. A

Supreme Court notification had already ordered the settlement of the local claims on

ITBP-occupied land, as it is part of a wildlife sanctuary under the Indian Wildlife Act of

1972.

In this chapter, I discuss the partnership that emerged between the local Changpa nomads

and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) in rendering a patch of Korzok land as an

ITBP border post. Reigzin, a former gowa, told me that it was a number of meetings

amongst certain Changpa nomads and the present gowa, the subdivisional magistrate

(SDM) from the block development office, Nyoma, and representatives of the Indian

military that led to the deployment of the ITBP post in Korzok. The ITBP office in

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Choglamsar, close to the district headquarters of Leh, approached the local civil

administration at the Nyoma block office after having shown its interest in establishing a

border post in Korzok as early as the year 2000. In its response, the SDM claimed to have

discussed the matter with the Changpa nomads and proposed a joint meeting with the

ITBP to understand their choice of land in Korzok for building their border post. The

matter was resolved promptly, as the Changpa nomads attending the meeting favourably

agreed and handed over a letter of support, indicating their consent as well as cooperation

for an ITBP border post to be located on their traditional land. Angchen, the ex-gowa,

recalls the meeting by remembering the star insignia worn by the ITBP officers and how it

was the high-ranking officers who obliged the meeting organizers by visiting Korzok for

this proposal. After the meeting, it was projected that chagdzod, the religious head, would

reserve the right of this land and would sign the letter of support to be handed over to the

ITBP.

Such collaboration between the ITBP and the Changpa nomads is not uncommon in a

frontier landscape such as Changthang. However, this particular partnership between the

two invokes matters that have had consequences over how the management of the

Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary occurs. The focus of this chapter is to discuss how this

alignment has helped to reduce the impact of Changthang becoming a frontier of

conservation, thus benefitting the Changpa nomads by protecting their local access over

the sanctuary. In the first part of this chapter, I draw out the existing context of

Changthang including how frontier management through restrictive State policies fosters

the conditions that encourage civilian alignment with the military. The second part of the

chapter analyses the symbolic overlapping of frontiers of control and conservation in this

collaboration between the ITBP and the local Changpa nomads and how it has an impact

on the conservation of Changthang.

Constituting Changthang as a Frontier

The ITBP’s interest in building its border post in Korzok is embedded within the larger

context of the way Indian State has come to view its borders with China, a translocal

inspiration situated within the geo-political climate of South and East Asia. As discussed

in Chapter 2, there were enough political reasons, which originated in the centres of the

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nation-state of India, to render Changthang a militarized zone after the loss of the 1962

war with China. The post-war period also witnessed an emergence of the local out-

migration from Changthang and altered migration patterns of those local pastoral

nomadic families who continued to live in Changthang (Ahmed 2002; Goodall 2007;

Dollfus 2013). However, both out-migration and altered migration patterns varied

immensely given the diversity of the resource use and also the extent of dependence on

international trade. However, overall, the closure of borders and an introduction of

militarization both had a major role in the way local people lived their lives in

Changthang. In the following section I will discuss the policy and development design

adopted by the Indian State to constitute Changthang as a frontier of control in the period

after the 1962 war.

The Military Authority and the Inner Line Area Policy

The 1962 war is considered a watershed in India’s approach to defence and strategic

affairs. The prevailing view is that the defeat in 1962 war was the result of an extensive

civil interference in military matters. Therefore, following the China crisis, a convention

that was established declared that the military would be made a locus of territorial

sovereignty and to do so, the military must be given a free hand. As a Ministry of Defence

official observed:

While the operational directive is laid down by the political leadership, the actual planning of operations is left to the chiefs of staff, and, over the years, convention has been established that in purely operational matters such advice of the chiefs is almost automatically accepted (Chari 1977, cited in Raghavan 2009:172).

This shift not only militarized the Changthang borderland in the immediate years after the

unsuccessful war of 1962 but also converted Changthang into an exclusively militarily

controlled region. In order to launch the primacy of the military authority in the region, a

centrally controlled ‘Inner Line Area Policy’ was introduced in the Changthang. As a

legacy of the colonial times, this policy has been guided by a complex system of

administrative zones which was supposed to aim to curtail the mobility of ‘outsiders’ with

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regards to travel to and settlement in the region in question and also serves to delimit the

reach of the legal code that governs the rest of the country (Baruah 2003). During colonial

times, this system of exclusionary control for certain areas through legalities such as the

1873 Bengal-Eastern Frontier Regulation for the hill areas in the northeast parts of India

prevented plains people from moving into the hills. In the postcolonial era, the policy has

also served this purpose for regions such as the Changthang borders, putting restrictions

on property ownership or free movement of the outsiders in order to provide special

rights to the military. As a result, certain parts of the border regions in India today require

special permits by non-residents to travel into these zones, and these regions are

characterized by a visible military presence (Aggarwal and Bhan 2011).

In recent times, the deployments of large numbers of military troops to monitor India’s

border have received an added boost with the changing Asian political-economic

dynamics. According to one estimate, by the year 2014, India had become the largest

importer of arms in the world and had increased its annual defence spending up to $36

billion by 2012, leading to an extensive modernization and expansion of military

infrastructure with a direct bearing on its borders. It is expected that India will spend

around $112 billion between 2010 and 2016 on modernizing its military, such as for the

infantry modernization programme known as ‘Futuristic Infantry Soldier As a System’ (F-

INSAS), which was launched in 2011 to entrench the military’s capacity and an increased

reach on its borders20. In the latest developments, the competitive military build-up on the

borders with China has led to the stationing of two new armoured tank brigades with

additional troops and high-tech QRT boats in Pangong Tso in Changthang to counter the

often claimed overwhelming superiority of the Chinese military. As an example of such

military expansion, the border post in Korzok through the civil-military cooperation also

conveys how such military expansion is made legitimate and projected as integral to the

frontier management of Changthang. Militarization of the borders that is secured through

Inner Line Area Policy is also organized in such a way that it overrides most of the civilian

interests in the region. Up until the year 1962, however, Changthang had not experienced

any such State policies that completely isolated the region from the outside world.

Instead, for centuries it had been viewed as a sought-after place for lucrative trade and

commerce (Rizvi 1999).

                                                                                                               20 http://www.defencenews.in/defence-news-internal.aspx?id=nwa4ribyrM4 [Accessed 30 May 2014].

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Baruah (2003) explains that the absence of controversy over the exclusionary rules

imposed by the Inner Line Area Policy in Changthang can be explained by either a lack of

interest in the region on the part of Indian political classes or the perception that, in this

case, these are necessary short-term costs of the project of ‘nationalizing space’.

Christopher von Fürer-Haimendorf, an Austrian anthropologist, revisited the Apa Tanis

of Arunachal Pradesh in 1980’s, another border population living on the international

borders with China in Northeast India, whom he had studied in the 1940s. Referring to

the Inner Line Area Policy, he wrote:

Apa Tanis of the present generation, both traditionalist and modern, fully support this policy, and there are no indications that they would welcome the lifting of the protective barrier which interferes in no way with the movement of Apa Tanis and other tribesmen, but keeps out potential exploiters. It is difficult to imagine that in the foreseeable future [the] legislative Assembly of Arunachal Pradesh, composed overwhelmingly by tribal representatives, would agree to open the territory to the uncontrolled influence of population from the plains, (Fürer-Haimendorf 1980, cited in Baruah 2003).

According to Baruah (2003), Fürer-Haimendorf’s confidence about the protective

discrimination of the border tribes of India may have been brought about by the

onslaught of developmentalism. Fürer-Haimendorf ventured to predict that ‘for a long

time to come, the Apa Tani will remain a haven for a self-contained society unsurpassed

in its skill to utilize the natural resources of its environment and to invest life with a joie de

vivre such as few Indian societies can rival’ (Fürer-Haimendorf 1980, cited in Baruah 2003:

933). If this were to be similarly asserted in such optimistic terms for Changthang, then

this atmosphere would not have been long-lived, for after the war in 1962, a large influx

of Tibetan refugees with their livestock had come to be settled on the Changthang plains

with government support. The demographic change contradicted the government’s Inner

Line Area Policy of not letting the outsiders settle in Changthang. In fact, this new

context of reduced resources due to war and presence of new settlers, when combined

with the weak civil administration as the by-product of the Inner Line Area Policy, had

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triggered a large-scale out-migration of the local Changpa nomads, rather than the

protective discrimination probably imagined by Fürer-Haimendorf. In any case, the Inner

Line Area Policy in Changthang served a major State purpose to propagate the military

authority, which also meant restricting the capacity of the Jammu and Kashmir state to

sometimes provide even basic infrastructure to the local Changpa nomads. With this

monopoly of authority and through policy-induced isolation, the appearance of the region

is what has made the conservationists romanticize the environment and the local people

of Changthang, (also discussed in Chapter 3), as would have been the case with the Apa

Tanis in Arunachal Pradesh.

The Politics of Development

It is said that after the war with China, the officials in the Indian State ‘began to fear the

prospect of the external and internal enemies in this region coming together and

constituting a serious threat to India’s national security’ (Baruah 2003:920). It was against

this background that the Indian State also extended its development institutions all the

way into the International border zone of Changthang. However, this State act was not

based on the fact that the border regions were to become rich through development, as

the case may be in many other rural or remote areas of India. Rather, as Baruah

(2003:918) writes about the North East frontier region of India,

The developmentalist path that Arunachal has embarked upon is neither the result of a choice made by policy-makers about what is best for the well-being of the people of Arunachal, nor is it an evidence of the inevitability of ‘progress’ and ‘civilization’. Rather, it is the intended and unintended consequence of the Indian state’s efforts to assert control over this frontier region and to make it a ‘normal’ part of India’s national space.

Baruah (2003:932) sees the logic of developmentalism in frontier regions being embedded

‘in the institutions of the Indian State that have been put in place in pursuit of the goal of

nationalizing space’. Seeing it as a ‘national security driven process’ Baruah (2003:917)

believes that the development process has made India’s everyday control over this frontier

space more effective. Baruah (2003) discusses the structural disempowerment of tribal

people in cases where the local government or councils are completely dependent on New

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Delhi for their finances and thus vulnerable to New Delhi’s direct involvement in their

day-to-day affairs.

Development in Changthang

To a large extent the ‘chances of encountering soldiers, border patrols’ in Changthang ‘are

many times higher that those of sighting a civil servant’ (Swift 1978, cited in Geiger 2008).

During my 1994 visit to Korzok, it was clear that for most of the local government

officials the place was considered a ‘boring and primitive backwater’. I distinctly

remember an instance when the 70-year-old mother of Tashi Dorjee had an emergency

medical condition and the resident health official was as usual on a short leave to Leh, but

had extended it to a long absence. Tashi Dorjee ultimately sought help from a visiting

tourist who was also a medical doctor carrying first aid. Sonam, the local school teacher in

Korzok, who hailed from Nyemo, had told me that he is holding his position in Korzok

for a temporary period since he is relatively younger in age, whereas once he has a family

and children, he would not like to be posted in such an underdeveloped place. It would

not be an exaggeration to say that most of the government officials I met were somehow

trying to complete their tenure, also known as ‘punishment posting’ in Changthang by

spending a considerable part of their contract in Leh than Changthang.

Nyoma and Durbuk constitute the easternmost blocks of the Leh district. In India, the

blocks are the state’s administrative subdivisions within a district and the sites for

planning and implementing development programmes. Nyoma and Durbuk blocks, being

on the borders with China, are also known as border blocks and thus entitled to a range

of Border Area Development programmes in addition to the Jammu and Kashmir state

development schemes. However, despite the availability of additional funding for border

blocks, the situation on the ground remains one of development negligence and a high

level of apathy amongst the serving state officials. Physical isolation and remoteness from

the district headquarters and absence of most of the basic amenities are believed to be

exacerbated by the additional lack of opportunities available for the civil servants to

exercise their power. The civil state officials often air their frustrations about a lack of

authority in the presence of powerful military institutions. Such considerations not only  

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   Fig  1.4  Map  of  the  Administrative  Blocks,  Leh  district:  See  the  easternmost  Nyoma  and  Durbuk  blocks.      make Changthang an unattractive posting for these officials, but also have a direct impact

on the kind of development that ultimately is targeted for Changthang. The patwari (the

district level land officer), who was frequenting Korzok more often than usual for

registering local land titles under the newly arrived nomadic housing programme during

my field work in 2009-2010, told me that all the land settlements in Changthang comes

under his Department of Revenue and all the land occupied by the military in Changthang

is sanctioned by his department on army’s request. While describing his interaction with

the military in Changthang, he said that although it is on the request of the military that he

and other state bureaucrats visits the military premises for official reasons, the military

officers make them unnecessarily ‘wait’ for a long time outside their offices, and the

military officer’s attitude towards them is mostly of a paternalistic kind. Since it is not an

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exhilarating part of his job, he along with many of his other colleagues wished to be

transferred back to Leh where such interactions are relatively less common. Besides a

prestige issue troubling these officials, the lower status of a Changthang posting in the

hierarchy of their state apparatus was also another critical issue. Therefore, whoever was

serving his/her tenure in Changthang for a bit longer than the locally accepted period of 2

years was considered a ‘loser’ or not successful in his profession (S. Angchuk 2009,

personal communication).

The State presence is considered fragile in places such as Changthang because here on the

international borders, the State is more engaged in an ongoing project of establishing

control (Geiger 2008:115). The role of the military in Changthang was decided after the

1962 war when the Indian government decided to render Indian military a free hand to

manage its borderland with China. It is believed that ‘where the frontier sits at an

international border… political authority normally resides in the army barracks’ (Geiger

2008:115). The supremacy of the military, flaunted on the frontiers, takes multiple forms.

How development is planned and implemented in Changthang also becomes a fertile

terrain to understand this sustained military authority in Changthang.

Controlled by the centralized Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA), the Border Area

Development Programme (BADP) consists of the bulk of the development programmes

implemented in Changthang. Policy matters, such as the guidelines of the BADP, the

geographical location where the BADP programmes are implemented, the allocation of

funds, and so on, are guided by decisions made by an exclusively centralized committee

empowered for this purpose. This committee is primarily composed of a high-ranking

centralized bureaucracy along with representatives from the ITBP and other military units.

With a minimal presence of the Jammu and Kashmir state actors, all the development

decisions are planned away from the region. These development decisions are generally

political in nature, catering to priorities that are mostly non-local and mostly helps retain a

military supremacy in the region.

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The development trajectory or the development vacuum in Changthang is quite clearly

shaped by the military concerns, so that the development processes have been promoted

or halted to achieve purposes with relatively no local significance. Geiger (2008:98) also

suggests that at frontiers, the priorities of the State are mostly to secure the region and

therefore its concerns remain ‘directed outwards, towards the rival state’. For example,

during my fieldwork in 2009-2010, the threat of Chinese incursions across Changthang

borders led to a precautionary halt of any civil works along its border villages, such as

Demchok and Chumur. When the local councilor demanded that the construction of the

promised mobile phone tower planned by the district authorities be allowed, the demand

was turned down at the behest of the Indian military’s decision. The military considered it

to be a threat to the security of the nation. The case exemplifies the many situations

where development work can be abruptly halted or cancelled for strategic reasons or in

order to not alarm the opposition soldiers positioned across the border.

The disassociation of the local people from their development decisions and the

unpredictability of a typical development course has led to a situation where declining

pastoral activities or migrating to Leh have become more common after 1962. According

to one estimate, almost 30% of the Changpa nomads had migrated to Leh by 1998

(Goodall 2007). The potential of the State government institutions, which could have

played an effective role after the 1962 war in Changthang, has suffered considerably from

the impact of the military authority and centralized control of Changthang. Therefore,

whether it is civil democratic rights, or alternative development strategies, all have had to

be subordinated to the project of frontierization of Changthang. Being subservient to

such processes or to the larger national good appears to be inherent in even the thinking

of the State officials who perceive Changthang primarily as a militarized border zone.

While discussing the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary with me, the sub-divisional

magistrate (SDM) Nyoma from the block office seemed clear on how Changthang needed

to be visualized:

Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary is at the international border. Therefore, we should strengthen defence first. The wildlife experts in order to receive money coming from the World Bank start highlighting the [Changthang] area is full of endangered species…to protect their breed—but we forget to represent the area with the stationed armed forces. Experts do not even talk

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about defence. They come and talk about endangered species. But being a collector [SDM], I need to think about it all. We need to balance both the priorities. We cannot weaken security. The sanctuary should not pose any hindrance [trouble] to the defence priorities. For example, the road from Loma to Dungti is in a bad shape, and no vehicles can reach there – they will sink in those alluvial grounds with loose sand. On the other hand, Chinese roads across the border are six lanes wide and sophisticated (personal communication, Leh 2010).

Similar to the SDM comments, the Department of Wildlife Protection’s officials, such as

the local wildlife ranger, reiterate that Changthang is a national border first, and

safeguarding it from the enemy (China) is a major priority of the State, more than

protecting the wildlife or the environment (P. Gyalpo 2010, personal communication).

This only demonstrates the gradual conditioning of the civil administration and its

bureaucrats to see Changthang as a border that emanates insecurity and threat and

therefore justifies the role of the military in Changthang, which is believed to be

something that the nation cannot do without.

Ultimately, the logic applied to such kinds of development in Changthang is that the

frontier regions are always under constant threat, with the potential to be taken over by an

enemy State, and thus military interference is unavoidable. These regions are physically

sitting on the verge between two nation-states and therefore keeping local people loyal to

one’s own nation-state requires manoeuvring and planning by the State. Development can

play a critical role in this respect, but as I noted earlier, the idea of development in

Changthang is different from other regions, as is also evident in the specifically planned

development for Changthang, discussed in the following section.

Lopsided Development

Contrary to the permanent and fixed settlements, the local nomadic movements and

campsites do not correspond with the way State officials generally manage their affairs in

Changthang. As I have observed in my past work that the nomadic movement’s

spontaneous adjustments to the changes in weather, food availability, birthing women,

building houses and tourism do not conform to a static image where regularity can be

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patterned on a sustained basis (Sabharwal 1996). Therefore, the actual complexity of local

lifestyles in Changthang is not largely depicted in the simplistic model followed by for

example the block administration. As Scott (1998:3) argues, ‘they [State] represent only

that slice of it that interest[s] the official observer’. Therefore, Changthang in official

parlance has come to be described as a barren land inhabited by an underdeveloped

nomadic population.

A number of studies have shown how State–centered representations have functioned to

incorporate communities into the nation-state hierarchically by defining who is at the

centre and who is at the margins (Sivaramakrishnan 2003; Coronil and Shrusky (1991),

cited in Hansen and Stepputat 2001). The case of the State development programme in

Changthang reveals that those who follow a nomadic lifestyle and livelihood are regarded

as having occupied inferior positions. This view of the Changthang region has also led to

a larger development agenda of encouraging sedentarization amongst the Changpa

nomads. During my interaction with the State officials, the idea of discussing the

promotion of those development programmes that prioritized nomadic pastoralism

instead of sedentarization for the welfare of the Changpa nomads was discouraged. The

prevailing idea that being nomadic is backward or underdeveloped was commonly found

in the different departments’ discourses. One such incident occurred in 1994, when I had

visited Nyoma, the block headquarters of Korzok, and I was invited to accompany the

Department of Sheep & Goat Husbandry bureaucrats on a ‘Disaster Relief’ visit to

different parts of Changthang. During this trip, the assistant veterinary officer invariably

commented upon how Changpa nomads have been left behind in the modern world. The

backwardness was predominantly indicated by pointing at the local nomadic lifestyle, as

well as the lack of education amongst the Changpa nomads. To cite an example, a

government official from the same department writing about Changpa nomads in a

journal stated, ‘Nomads find themselves at a crossroads where they tend to question the

very wisdom of adhering to the basis of an economic activity which failed to give them a

life of decency and honour because the outsiders look at their livelihood activities as

polluting and degrading’ (2008: 21). In assertions directed at local lifestyles of Changpa in

Changthang, many Ladakhi bureaucrats often use such terms as traditional, and

superstitious.  

 

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The bureaucracy of the block education department has always found it difficult to impart

primary and secondary education to the nomadic children due to the local ‘nomadic’

lifestyles. The appointed school teachers are generally not keen to constantly move and

stay in yak-hair tents with the pastoral nomadic families. Recently, a residential school for

the nomadic children has been built by the state government in the Puga valley, and is

thought that nomadic children can be imparted education more effectively with the help

of sedentarized hostel accommodation. This process of sedentarization through

development is also promoted within the Korzok-based nomadic housing programmes.

Many State officials with whom I had a chance to speak during my field work were

convinced that ‘sedentarization’ through provisions of housing for nomads would set

Changpa on a development path. As one of the official said, ‘How long they are going to

carry on being nomadic? They need to settle down like everyone’ (Patwari 2009, personal

communication) The claims were also made that such programmes are a result of

different need assessment exercises conducted locally.An officer at the Rural

Development Office in Leh told me that nomadic housing programme is something local

people in Changthang desire and is an outcome of the village level planning.

However, the local responses to such development schemes did question the choice as

well viability of such programmes in the Changthang context. Evidently, there was one set

of people who have completely ignored the nomadic housing programme by either not

participating in it or showing a low response rate and were in contrast to the ones who

squabbled in order to draw benefit from the programme. The role of the State is vital to

the maintenance of local welfare in Changthang; development schemes that encourage

sedentarization fit only into the ‘high-modernist’ view of the State that differs from much

of the aspirations attached to the local lifestyles (Scott 1998:5). Often such State-led

insensitiveness towards nomadic lifestyles has helped to conceal the idea of State control

of subjects and administrative convenience inherent in such sendentarizing schemes. In

Changthang, both ideas sit well with each other, since the frontiers, being a place where

the potential of enemy attack dictates the State policy, are essentially subject to an efficient

State control which favours Changpa nomads settling down. Similarly, the dominance of

such State control has already dissipated the motivation of the civil administration to

show much active interest in the region. Therefore, development in the Changthang

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region demonstrates how certain representation of the communities can serve different

purposes.

The efforts to sedentarize the Changpa nomads constantly contradict the other State

development policies for the region. Local government departments, such as Sheep

Husbandry, continue to promote various schemes where nomadism is an essential

strategy to reap benefits out of State investments in the pashmina industry. In a recent

interview, Reingzin Spalbar, the Chief Executive Councilor (CEC) of the Ladakh

Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC), describes the pashmina industry as

the sector that has the foremost potential to make Ladakh into a self-reliant place (One

Point 2012). He dismisses the viability of the existing economic opportunities offered by

sectors such as tourism, the armed forces and the Public Distribution Supply (PDS) to

contribute to a sustainable future for Ladakh. According to him, these three traditional

pillars of present-day prosperity in Ladakh remain uncertain, as there is a tendency for

them to be subjected to outside influences, and therefore to not be in the control of

Ladakhis. He argues for local pashmina development on the basis of it being a resource

local to Ladakh. The idea of pashmina development catering to a large regional prosperity

has led to positive State actions recently, as evident from the procurement and pricing of

raw pashmina from Changthang becoming progressively streamlined. The drives and

complexities involved in the State’s contradictory mandates and the top-down

development programmes have also propelled the local people to explore immediately

beneficial alliances, such as with the ITBP.

Development Through the Military

In the frontier context, as Abraham (2003:406) suggests, the loss of territory ‘marks the

secular failure of a State, leads to the fall of governments, the decline of legitimacy, and

reduction of “state-ness”- the sentiment that all powerful States seek to inculcate and

internalize in its human subjects’. On the frontiers, winning trust amongst its citizens such

as Changpa nomads in order to stay loyal to the Indian State is critical so that they do not

become allies of the enemy State. The State brings development programmes to its

frontier populations such as Changpa nomads to demonstrate that the State wants to

improve its relationship with the border communities through development and is not

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always vicious. But it remains a prerogative of the Indian military, as I stated earlier, to

decide who will bring development to Changthang and what it will bring. Like elsewhere

in Ladakh, the State claimed that such civil-military relations were helping the local people

to lead a more comfortable life. Operation Sadhbhawna (Operation Goodwill), a

development and welfare initiative that was financed by the reserves of the central

government’s Border Area Development Fund and the Ministry of Defence, claimed to

transform local civil-military relations (Aggarwal and Bhan 2011:526). Lieutenant General

Arjun Ray, the founder of ‘Operation Sadhbhawna’, has argued for why the military must

play a role in development:

I believe that in conflict areas, the military must play a larger proactive role to facilitate good governance, especially strategies in human development and border development. In a democracy, a military cannot be an instrument of state coercion; it is an institution of nation building. If the military can send peacekeeping contingents to all trouble spots in the world, why should it hesitate when it comes to peace building within the country? (Arjun Ray 2002, cited in Aggarwal and Bhan 2011:523).

This is exemplified by Aggarwal and Bhan’s (2011) assertion that villagers in the Brogpa

areas often found the military more accessible; that is, the distance they had to travel to

meet a military official in a brigade was less than the distance to meet a civil representative

in the district center. In a particular instance, the army provided facilities such as water

pumps to the villagers promptly, as opposed to the several months that the district civil

administration took to approve them (Aggarwal and Bhan 2011:529-30). With the ITBP

now being located right in Korzok, the local people there have had similar experiences.

The Nyoma block office is located almost 50 kms and 5 hours away by jeep. It is not

surprising that the local people in Korzok have already experienced a range of benefits

through the military alliance, including frequent although casual recruitments as porters

and assistant cooks, providing an instant outlet for their local livestock meat and so on.

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Similarly, there are also now new reasons for rearing/breeding horses in Changthang. The

Korzok-based ITBP border post and also other military or paramilitary brigade forces

require pack animals, such as horses and donkeys, for their patrols and other regular

activities on the borders. Hiring animals from the local herders works perfectly for these

paramilitary forces, as rearing and maintaining the animal stock in Changthang can be

quite a tedious and resource-intensive task for the military. Therefore, hiring the animals

with a horseman in exchange for cash serves the purposes of both parties. Being

experienced in raising animals, local herders welcome this new income avenue. The horses

that were bred traditionally for transport had experienced a decline in the past due to

reduced nomadic movements and sedentarization. Traditionally, the horses were brought

from Spiti in a barter exchange for locally bred Tibetan yaks (Sabharwal 1996). The

chumurti horses bred in Spiti were the prime means of transport in Changthang, whereas

yaks were used for tilling the arable land in Spiti. Traditionally seen as a sign of success

and prosperity by the local households, the horses had varied social roles, such as being

used in grand welcomes for their important Buddhist teachers and also critical to the

auspicious reincarnation ceremonies. However, in recent times, the number of horses

kept by households had declined for diverse reasons (Sabharwal 1996). With the

opportunities coming from the ITBP border post, traditional horse rearing has now

witnessed a revival. Horses are bred and grazed in the local pastures and are becoming an

important part of local household incomes. As a result of this, civil-military relations have

been reinforced in the economic sphere in Changthang.

Even though in actual situations, the ITBP or any military unit does not arrive in a region

declaring a development manifesto, for the local people associating with the military can

mean multi-fold indirect development benefits such as a road network, disaster relief and

emergency medical support. The ex-gowa Reigzin articulates the basis for such an alliance

as follows, ‘Nobody [from the State] wants to stay here, and if ITBP wants to, then it is

welcome.’ However, understanding the military as part of the same developmentalist State

has also made Reigzin see only those aspects of the ITBP border post that are not part of

the military’s main agenda in Korzok. For example, the only road from Korzok to Mahe

to access Leh remains closed during the winter months, which completely isolates Korzok

for more than three months of the year from the rest of the world. After the ITBP arrival,

Korzok enjoyed the benefit for the first ever time that the roads had been kept open

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throughout the year. Such a benefit made local herders benefit from this alliance and also

appreciate it. Notwithstanding this, the priority for the ITBP to keep the road to Leh

open is strategic and can be changed with any new strategic developments on the borders

with China. This illustrates that the contingent nature of development/progress in

Korzok is also associated with the ITBP border post. Alluding to such military reality, the

civil administration seems not to view military development programmes in a favourable

light, as the following quote reveals:

Sadbhawna is a good idea . . . it is not a great idea, because you should not try to civilize the military. It is not difficult to build parks etc. It is the easiest thing in the world. We have built an amazing number of parks. Army builds a park and gets credit for it. This is not development. It is adhocism. I don’t think it was ever projected as a development operation. Had this been the case, the central government would have never accepted it in the first place. It is all right to create good will through some haphazard welfare projects, but to be loud about it, and make it an ego tussle is what leads to an unnecessary clash of interests between the civil administration and the military (Aggarwal and Bhan 2011:526).

The ITBP’s Arrival in Korzok

Civil-military relations might appear on the surface very simple, but they entail

complexities, as the establishment of the ITBP border post at the Korzok settlement has

evidently invoked certain local discourses of religious sentiments and creative affiliations.

During the time of ITBP border post construction, the chagdzod had come forward to

support the erection of a Hindu temple for use by the stationed ITBP personnel.

According to him, the Korzok monastery contributed pieces of wood to build the

temple’s roof and other building materials to support the making of this single-room

Hindu temple. The chagdzod justified the Buddhist monastery’s contribution by resorting

to general cultural arguments: ‘Hinduism and Buddhism ultimately belong to the same

culture, so it was an obvious act’ (The head lama of the Korzok Monastery 2009, personal

communication). He also added that it was expected of the Korzok monastery to extend

its support to such auspicious opportunities in its closer proximity. These sentiments were

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specifically directed at Hinduism, which is a pan-Indian religious identity, also embraced

by most of the military personnel recruited in ITBP.

The site upon which the ITBP post’s construction took place is also locally considered a

disputed land plot. During my earlier fieldwork in 1994, the local schoolmaster Tsering

with many other Changpa families reiterated that this particular patch of land, which has a

chumik or fresh water spring, belonged to his family. Master Tsering and his brother

Namgyal, who now lives as a convert Christian in the capital of neighbouring

Uttarakhand, Dehradun, share the ownership of this patch of land. However, when the

ITBP approached the local people associated with Korzok about allocating this land, it

seems the chagdzod sanctioned this by declaring it was monastic land and not the property

of master Tsering. With the SDM colluding, this claim was easily believed.

Tenzin Angchuk, the eldest son of master Tsering, had built a tourist guesthouse over a

part of his ancestral land by obtaining financial help from his uncle Namgyal. This

construction could have been spread into a larger area, but was now restricted due to the

ITBP border post. Apparently, the commercial viability of the guesthouse was also

influenced by its location and the clear view of Tsomoriri Lake, which is now seem to

have been compromised due to the location of the ITBP border post. Master Tsering’s

family decided to openly criticize the allocation of the land to the ITBP and used reasons

such as how the ITBP’s choice of the plot to build toilets overlaps with what is in fact an

auspicious Buddhist site. In order to subdue the family’s resistance against the ITBP

border post, the chagdzod publicly questioned the propriety of the external façade of the

guesthouse constructed by the Tsering family, which according to him resembled a

church building with a conical roof structure, in contrast to the flat-roofed Buddhist

monastery buildings. This allegation was further extended to its association with

Namgyal’s religious affiliations, implying that this could probably be his way of

introducing Christian religion in Korzok. This was intended to construe it as a threat. At

the same time, the overwhelming support given to the Hindu temple by the Buddhist

monastery functioned as a public spectacle to convey the favour of the monastery

extended towards the Hindu temple and not the Christian-style construction.

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At the regional level, the cultural politics of incorporating Ladakh and Ladakhi Buddhism

into a wider national agenda was initiated by the right-wing Hindu Bharatiya Janta party a

few years earlier, when the party won the federal election and formed the national

government in 1998. The 1997 Sindhu Darshan festival, on the shores of the Indus River

close to Leh, reinvented the tradition of seeing the Indus as the cradle of the whole of

Indian civilization (Aggarwal 2004) The yearly programme is organized by the Indian

federal level politicians borrowing a Hindu ideology with the justification of it as a festival

celebrating national unity. The enthusiastic participation of prominent Ladakhi religious

and political organizations in supporting the festival also sent signals to the rest of

Ladakh. The LAHDC councilors especially tried to reconstruct Hindu-Buddhist

cooperation in their constituencies. An example of this occurred in Korzok where the

familial ties of the local LAHDC councilor Ishey Dorjee with the chagdzod were effectively

used to perpetuate their particular religious support in order to not only advance Ishey’s

participation in the regional Ladakh politics, but also to continue to sustain monastic

dominance in Korzok.

In this way, the arrival of the ITBP in Korzok is not straightforward, but represents a

civil-military coalition that has invoked and pursued local affiliations and political agendas.

The complex nature of this coalition also draws attention towards certain other objectives

which carry important implications for the region and local people. These include how

having an alliance with a military outfit in Changthang raises possibilities for the Changpa

nomads to continue to sustain their customary rights over their pasturelands. Two years

after its establishment in Korzok, the DoWP had asked the ITBP to be removed from its

location. It was the Jammu and Kashmir state proclamation that followed the Supreme

Court notification to settle local rights that made the DoWP send official notices to the

ITBP headquarter as well asking them to remove their border post in Korzok. However,

for almost 10 years now, the DoWP has not been able to demolish the ITBP border post

in comparison to its other actions to demolish other civil buildings such as the State guest

house around the Tsomoriri Lake. Such contradictory State agendas of militarization and

conservation for Changthang also reveal that the State in Changthang is fragmented, and

this also leads to a local pragmatism in which the Changpa nomads align themselves with

the ITBP and its projects rather than the conservationist one.

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Frontiers of Control Vis-a-Vis Frontiers of Conservation

The alliance between the ITBP and the local people also shows how the interaction

between the two frontiers, frontier of control and frontier of conservation, takes place.

Frontiers of control are generally seen as more constant and calculable as compared to

other frontiers (Geiger 2008). This is quite evident in Changthang where the imperatives

of being a national border have made it experience a ‘modicum of policy continuity’

(Geiger 2008:99). The Indian State’s Inner Line Area Policy is a prime example in holding

and consolidating national territory in its border areas. However, as Changthang becomes

a frontier of conservation, deeper questions about the overlapping relationship between

the two frontiers are raised. The alliance between the ITBP and the local people presents

a productive terrain to understand how frontiers overlap with each other, and how this

alliance facilitates a frontier’s transition from one type to another. In order to analyze this

alliance in the following section of my chapter, I observe how the ITBP is recognized as

part of a centralized State authority with a long history in Changthang seeking to be

rightfully prioritized over the local civil administration. Wildlife conservation policy is also

a centralized policy in India, but unlike border management, its implementation is through

local civil administrative offices such as the Department of Wildlife Protection based in

Leh.

Besides recognizing the potential benefits of the ITBP alliance through developing

infrastructure such as roads, transport, emergency support and so on for the local

communities, there are also very specific ways in which the alliance with the ITBP is

understood to bring benefits to the local people. How this alliance can benefit local

Changpa nomads who hide behind it in order to thwart the implementation of wildlife

conservation is one such function.

I will begin with the case of Ishey Dorjee, the local elected councilor of Ladakh

Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC) from Changthang, who sees nomadic

pastoralism as an integral part of the local Changpa identity. As part of his advocacy for

this position he once stated to me, ‘Nomadism and livestock rearing are an important part

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of our lifestyle, and it needs to be preserved’ (I.Dorjee 2009, personal communication).

For Ishey, Changpa identity and the preservation of nomadic pastoralism combine to

provide him a prime basis for his political aspirations as a Changthang councilor. On the

other hand, the LAHDC in its aspiration to view Changthang pashmina for the welfare of

the whole of Ladakh, probably views Ishey as a critical figure in realizing its regional

aspirations. Through liaising with important Ladakhi politicians, Ishey claims to have

brought development benefits to Korzok, such as a power diesel generator to provide

electricity to Korzok households, development funds for the women’s weaving group and

tourism infrastructure. He himself also owns a tourist facility and maintains that he was

the first local resident to bring tourism income in Korzok. Given his facility is located on

prime land in Korzok i.e. on the shores of the scenic Tsomoriri wetlands, it seems

tourism has been a large source of his private income. Both, his political and economic

aspirations for the Changthang region have been adversely affected by the declaration of

Changthang as a protected area. The idea of local displacement and demise of pastoral

nomadism on Changthang is something he stands against. According to him, ‘Tsomoriri

belongs to us, and it should not be part of the sanctuary’ (I. Dorjee 2009, personal

communication). Ishey has played a critical role in working out a successful alliance with

the ITBP and provided concrete support to the construction of the ITBP border post in

Korzok. He believes that by building alliances with powerful bodies such as the ITBP,

they can be compelling enough to counter the Department of Wildlife Protection

(DoWP) mandate. He imagines that if DoWP cannot oust the ITBP from the Changthang

Wildlife Sanctuary, despite trying for almost the last ten years, but the local alliance with

ITBP can easily lessen the impact of the sanctuary on the local people. One can only

imagine that the DoWP’s failure to influence ITBP could have encouraged Ishey to also

install a diesel generator to produce electricity power for the Korzok residents on the

shores of the Tsomoriri, despite its stringent reservations by the DoWP.

Tenzin Angchuk, the eldest son of the master Tsering household, who went to complete

his university education in Jammu after schooling in Leh, now serves as a state wildlife

guard for the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary and is also a tourism operator in Korzok.

Unlike most of the Korzok people, Angchuk has never lived a nomadic life, although he

has visited his nomadic kin and kith families at the time of special social occasions. Thus,

his personal opinion and future vision for Changthang have been somewhat different to

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that of many other local people who follow a nomadic lifestyle. Angchuk believes,

‘Traditional pastoralism renders Changthang a remote place, one associated with a

nomadic life that is equally backward’ (T. Angchuk 2009, personal communication). On

the other hand, appreciating Changthang’s beautiful locations like Tsomoriri and earning a

tourism income are ‘modern’ in his opinion and more accepted and respected by the

wider world, especially the one he interacts with as a wildlife guard and a tourism

operator.

Angchuk, as a wildlife guard, often explicitly voices his condemnation of the ITBP border

post in Korzok, unlike many of the other Changpa nomads. During one of my visits to

his tourist facility, he said, ‘Look how the ITBP border post, besides occupying the

Sanctuary land illegally, has spoiled the pristine and scenic view of Tsomoriri for which

tourists hailing from across the world pay when they stay in my tourist facility’ (I.Angchuk

2009, personal communication). He also quoted remarks from other tourists to further

corroborate his response to the ITBP post. As he expressed it, ‘Even tourists don’t

appreciate the ITBP post so close to the Tsomoriri’(I.Angchuk 2009, personal

communication). However, as a wildlife guard, he does not discuss how, in the first place,

the ITBP could have built a border post within the boundaries of the sanctuary. However,

in hindsight, Angchuk also views the ITBP as probably the only agency capable of giving

a development facelift to Korzok, which he believes is so critical for enhancing local

tourism incomes. In his view, road connectivity throughout the year can improve the

number of tourists arriving in Korzok, and, he therefore does recognize the role of the

ITBP in playing a critical role in keeping the roads open and free from snow during the

winter months. Similarly electricity and telecommunications are considered as some of the

basic needs Korzok requires to improve tourism incomes. He admits that the first major

benefit of the ITBP has been the instant provision of paid phone services that occurred

with its establishment. Through this facility, the local tour operators could easily make

contacts with their Leh counterparts to efficiently manage the arrival and departure of

their tourist groups, and Angchuk agrees that he has benefitted from such services at

several occasions. Similarly, in my conversation with Angchuk, he once asked me, ‘Would

you know if ITBP ever is going to operate motorboats in Tsomoriri, like it is doing in

Pangong Lake?’ (T.Angchuk 2009, personal communication). During this conversation,

Angchuk was clearly appreciative of how the ITBP has introduced motorboats in another

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lake site, opening a new avenue for tourist income if this were to be done in Tsomoriri.

Even though it seems contradictory to his idea of Tsomoriri Lake as a picturesque and

pristine site for his tourists, he believes having motorboats in Tsomoriri can also boost

the tourism benefits in Korzok. Therefore, although overtly he shows his aversion for the

fact of the ITBP border post being located so close to such a picturesque and pristine site

as Tsomoriri Lake, covertly he ultimately sees this alliance as a possibility for Korzok’s

facelift and thus for improving local tourism incomes.

In his criticism of ITBP, Angchuk also commented, ‘ITBP’s benefits are only for a few in

Korzok, and there are many local families who complain about not having benefitted

from ITBP’ (T.Angchuk 2009, personal communication). The provision of benefits by the

ITBP to only a few Changpa families also showcases how this alliance was not

homogenously recognized. In my conversations with especially the local families living a

nomadic lifestyle, noticeably revealed that how the ITBP border post is only beneficial to

those households that are sedentarized and are in Korzok. According to them, the

physical proximity of these households and a sedentary lifestyle provide them an

opportunity to build their relationship with the ITBP and receive benefits, such as

medicine, kerosene oil and transport. Like Tashi Tundup, one nomad in Korzok phu cited

a case where a pregnant woman needed certain medical assistance and the ITBP had

unfortunately declined to help. For them, the nomadic lifestyle poses difficulties for them

to develop relationships with the ITBP and hence keep them distant from the ITBP

benefits.

Local people are aware that the ITBP and the Indian military signify those processes that

have the possibility of overriding their locally specific lifestyles. It was in the wake of

Chinese incursions into the Indian borders that the Ministry of Home Affairs in

November 2010 officially stopped the Jammu and Kashmir government from carrying

out any development activities without the central government’s permission. The ITBP,

which is also subject to the protected area policy, is able to compartmentalize this by

ignoring the DoWP and denotifying parts of the sanctuary for road construction

purposes. In this context of conflicting mandates of the DoWP and the ITBP, the latter

has been the more powerful actor, effectively denying wildlife officials the authority to

enforce restrictions on local access to sanctuary. A range of communications between the

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DoWP and the ITBP has occurred for more than 10 years, where the DoWP has not

been able to force the ITBP to move out of the sanctuary. It was following the Supreme

Court notification in the year 2000 that the DoWP had started to send the ITBP official

notices to shift the ITBP post from Korzok. In one of the communications, the DoWP

clearly stated that the ITBP post at Korzok is an illegal encroachment in the Changthang

Wildlife Sanctuary and therefore required to be shifted. Such communications again and

again reiterated that Changthang falls within the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary, and that

it is illegal and a violation of the Jammu and Kashmir Wildlife Protection Act 1978 for the

ITBP to either occupy or carry out any construction work in the protected area. In most

of the later communications, the DoWP has pointedly conveyed its frustration by saying

that despite dozens of communications, no action has been taken on the subject by the

ITBP and all the correspondence has been wasted. The DoWP has cited umpteen

requests enclosed in the letters to demonstrate its frustration, and the fact that the

concerned authorities are not taking the matter seriously due to their unwillingness to

resolve such long-standing issues. However, in most of the official responses, nowhere

has the ITBP refuted the DoWP’s claim, and time and again assures the department of

their willingness to shift their border post from Korzok, once an alternate site is allocated

by the civil administration at Nyoma (SHQ(Ldk)/ITBP/INT/2002-47880). The sub-

divisional magistrate at Nyoma, however, has alleged that the ITBP has deliberately put

the responsibility on the local administration, as an official communication between the

SDM, Nyoma and the Deputy commissioner, Leh reveals:

The ITBP authority has tried to put the ball in the court of local administration despite the assurances given to them for providing a suitable alternative site for shifting of post in Korzok area… (LAC-27 (T) REV (803) 19.02.03)

However, in the communications to the DoWP, the office of the commandant, Inspector

General, has clearly intimated that the ITBP post at Korzok has not been shifted as yet

because of the non-allotment of alternate land by the civil administration. The DoWP

describes this status quo situation as something that is an integral part of being in the

border area where military authority is dominating and thus can ignore the mandate of the

civil administration. Therefore, it has accepted the fact of military presence in Korzok and

has now mostly refrained from asking the ITBP to shift to any other location, and instead,

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to only stay environmentally friendly and not to conduct any construction or harmful

activity on the shores of the Tsomoriri Lake. It is during this exchange of

communications that the ITBP in 2009 had gone ahead to denotify parts of the sanctuary

for road construction purposes. However, the DoWP denies accepting the fact that the

ITBP could accomplish such an act inside the sanctuary that, according to the DoWP

officials, remains under the DoWP’s jurisdiction. One of the sites for road construction

approved under this denotification is also a road that now connects Korzok to Tegarzung

- a much awaited infrastructure requirement for the Changpa nomadic families. For this

reason, the families’ attitude towards the establishment of the ITBP post in Korzok

appears to have been a useful decision.

It is unlikely that the Inner Line Area Policy in Changthang will be completely removed

under the present State border management and the military authority. However, in 1994

the Indian government did relax the policy and began to permit a restricted entry of

tourists to Changthang. The strict regulation of tourist entries and the related

administrative procedures will benefit Changthang, but not at the same scale it has

benefitted other places in Ladakh. The growing pace of focusing on military strengths to

protect nation-borders is bound to come in conflict with the conservation agendas of

wildlife officials. It is doubtful that DoWP will ever have the political clout to deny

environmental clearance to the military – a reflection of the complexities border context

present where the weakness of DoWP to implement its policies is paramount.

Therefore, the context of Changthang as a frontier region and the implications of this for

the local people in terms of restrictions on planning and management of the region and

how it relates to the kind of development offered to the region by the State lead to

pragmatism in relation to such civil-military relations. This alliance also clearly

demonstrates that in present times the frontier of control ultimately overrides the frontier

of conservation in the context of Changthang.

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Conclusion

Development and conservation are national policies on the Changthang borders, which

can become the basis of making claims by different stakeholders. However, the war, or a

war-like situation, in Changthang discredits and fragments the State and all its form of

governance too. Therefore, for most of the local people such alliances with the military

strengthen their resistance against the conservation policy. By letting it stay on their land,

they expect that the military will protect them from the potential havoc of an

unfavourable conservation policy that threatens their local livelihoods and customary

rights over land and resources. For the ITBP, this alliance is an opportunity for winning

trust of the local people, and it fits into their border management strategy. It has been the

local people’s support that has allowed them to stay on this land, even though the wildlife

department has objected to it and tried to remove the ITBP border post from within the

sanctuary. In this way, this alliance provides an instance of how frontiers of control and

conservation interact with each other. The relative importance of the ITBP, as a

centralized agency dominates the local civil administration. This confirms the interest of

the State in keeping Changthang as a frontier of control more important than seeing it as

a frontier of conservation. This ultimately shows how the State contradictions and the

associated complexities embodied in the context of Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary

demonstrate how binary State versus Community oppositions are only an apparent reality.

The assumptions about the State-Community relations must be rendered more complex

when the DoWP collaborates with one group of Changpa nomads to implement the

conservation policy in Changthang, as discussed in the next chapter.

 

 

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Chapter 6 Mirage of Boundaries State and Community Relations in Conservation –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Analyzing the processes of conservation policy implementation in the Jammu and

Kashmir state impels us to reconsider the workings of the Department of Wildlife

Conservation (DoWP) as an entity entirely distinguished from the Changpa community.

Substantiated by the use of science and bureaucratic power, State-led wildlife conservation

has appeared as authoritative, creating an apparent State-Society disjunction. The literature

critically investigating the appearance of the State in policy implementation processes as a

discrete and relatively autonomous social institution has argued that the disjunction

between State and Society is political (Mitchell 1994; Sharma and Gupta 2009). Instead of

seeing the State as a coherent and autonomous institution standing apart from the society,

a substantial body of literature argues for the relevance of culture to theories of the State

(Skocpol 1979; Abrams 1988; Bourdieu 1993; Ferguson and Gupta 2002; Taussig 1997;

Sharma and Gupta 2009). Particularly, the anthropological concern with bringing an

ethnographic gaze to bear upon the cultural practices of the State has emphasized the

everyday practices of the State, examining ‘how people perceive the state, how their

understandings are shaped by their particular locations and intimate and embodied

encounters with state processes and officials, and how the state manifests itself in their

lives’ (Sharma and Gupta 2009:11). The focus disengages from seeing the State as simply

functional bureaucratic apparatuses, instead viewing it as powerful sites of symbolic and

cultural production that are themselves always culturally represented and understood in

particular ways (Ferguson and Gupta 2002). In accordance with this literature, rather than

approaching the State as a self-contained institutional reality in examining the Jammu and

Kashmir state wildlife conservation policy implementation process in Changthang, I

intend to focus on its nature as it appears on the ground. Seeing it through everyday

practices and representations, the chapter attempts to focus on the bureaucratic practices

and approaches in implementing wildlife conservation policy and to critically examine the

prevalent assumptions about the naturalized State authority over the local.

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DOWP: APPEARANCES AND STATE EFFECT

Although the local government in Changthang intersects constantly with the centralized

control of Changthang as a border, there are obvious instances where one can

differentiate how the local civil administration of the Jammu and Kashmir state actualizes

itself in the Changthang region. The DoWP, being one of the many arms of the Jammu

and Kashmir state, is a two-tiered structure where the district level administration includes

the wildlife warden and the deputy wildlife warden, while the block level operations are

run by the range officer with the help of his/her wildlife guard on site. In order to

understand how the DoWP in Changthang creates what appears to be a normative order

rooted in an official and scientific rationale, I plan to discuss how the wildlife

conservation policy implementation process is actually achieved.

Multi-layered State

The Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary, as well as all the protected areas in India, is a result of

centrally planned policies and overseen by the Ministry of Environment and Forest

(MoEF) based in Delhi. When the standing committee of the National Board for Wildlife

(NBWL) under the chairmanship of the Minister of State (Forest and Wildlife) had

decided to forego the wildlife concerns in the interest of national defence needs in

Changthang in 2009, it was a unilateral decision. As mentioned in earlier chapters, the

committee diverted a major part of the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary for building a

network of 5 metalled roads, proposed by the ITBP in a meeting held in Paryavaran

Bhawan in New Delhi. The committee meeting was held in the far away location in Delhi

where the MoEF finalised the ‘denotification’, without involving the regional or state

wildlife authorities. During my interaction with the wildlife warden, he maintained a

position of being unaware of any such denotification.

The wildlife warden clarified to me on our first meeting that his department does not

declare or notify or carry out settlement of rights for protected areas in Ladakh. He

extended his defence by saying:

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We are only responsible to ‘guard’ the protected areas; the sanctuaries get declared at the centre [Delhi], the Collector [subdivisional magistrate at Nyoma] is responsible for determining and settling the local rights, and we are only supposed to guard or police the sanctuary (personal communication 2009)

I was a little surprised to hear such a statement since the wildlife warden has been actively

involved in every aspect of the sanctuary management much more than an average

warden normally is, therefore to me such a statement appeared a bit unconcerned,

trivializing the role of the DoWP. Exploring the reasons for this kind of statement and

reasons as to why he would have a stand such as this, during a discussion about the

sanctuary, a Korzok resident told me: ‘…It was Namgyal’s (wildlife warden) driver who

was clever and drove him out of the violent protest [in Durbuk]: otherwise he could have

been easily killed’. The resident added that unlike any such protest against the DoWP in

Korzok, ‘the [Durbuk] people threw stones and ran after his vehicle’ (Anonymous 2009,

personal communication)

Probably it was the local protest and resistance against the DoWP regarding sanctuary

regulations which may have motivated the wildlife warden to describe the DoWP’s

position to me, in such a way. Later, the wildlife warden told the Korzok residents that

they could also protest or very well object to the sanctuary, but he differentiated the

limited role of the DoWP from the MoEF and said it was not responsible for declaring

Changthang as a sanctuary. The wildlife warden’s situated knowledge of how much power

he has in implementing the sanctuary regulations have also come about through his own

experience of the State. Being only an interface between centre and regional government

he has experienced how the regional manifestation of power is only part of the multi-

layered wildlife protection authority in India.

The important part of this case is that the wildlife warden clearly understands the state

DoWP is situated within the multiple layers and diverse locales and centres of the Indian

State (also see Sharma and Gupta 2009). He is also aware of where the DoWP stands as a

district authority and ultimately how successful it can be in enforcing the wildlife

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conservation policy, especially in its operations on the international border regions. This

multi layered-ness within the state wildlife authority of Jammu and Kashmir ‘ruptures the

hegemony and singularity of the State, and highlights the contradictions that it congeals’

(Sharma and Gupta 2009:19). It shows how State power is segregated and the inherent

contradictions, which can lead to a rearticulation of people’s relationship with the

immediate state agencies. Chagdzod, of the Korzok monastery told the people in a meeting

at Korzok:

…[the wildlife warden] cannot do anything about the notification of Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary. He says everything gets decided in Delhi. We really want to tell them (MoEF) that this is our land and they can make their sanctuary somewhere else.

Later on the chagdzod asked me about who in Delhi would have taken this decision and if I

could give him the particular contacts and addresses of that agency. Looking clearly for

the particular department rather than the whole State, the chagdzod wanted to go and

specifically put forward the request that sanctuary was not in the interest of the local

people and explain why the protected area policy needed to be scrapped from

Changthang. This knowledge that the DoWP is not a unitary institution dawned clearly

upon the Changthang people through the chagdzod when the wildlife warden made that

statement. Therefore, by including ‘Delhi’ in their discourse of the State, it not only

segregated the DoWP authority present in Changthang, but also referred to another level

of the State which is translocal as well as faceless to the local people but very much

present in Changthang.

Local Imagery

One way by which local people presumably differentiate the DoWP from the workings of

the other state departments was made clear to me by the following comment of the

wildlife warden. He said,

The wildlife [department] doesn’t have [an electoral] vote bank, and it is [primarily] a regulatory authority and generally restricts the [local]

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development activities, unlike other [state] departments that keep giving subsidies and benefits to people. People go against DoWP because of this reason (Wildlife Warden, Department of Wildlife Protection 2009, personal communication).

This statement was made in the current context of explaining the reasons for the lack of

local support experienced by the DoWP for implementing an unfriendly conservation

policy in the form of the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary. Historicizing the local context,

one finds that for the people of Changthang, the Indian State started to matter or became

a critical part of their pastoral livelihoods after the time of the India-China war in 1962,

when India and China militarized and closed their respective sides of the border in

Changthang as discussed in Chapter 5. The consequent shrinking of resources after losing

winter pastures to China in the war and unsustainable livelihoods became some of the

decisive factors for Changthang people to be introduced into the world of the State

benefits and food subsidies. Therefore, when the DoWP arrived in Changthang in 1998,

there already was a considerable history of an existing local context of State-Society

relationship. In this scenario, the DoWP’s advent into Changthang was also unlike any

other existing Jammu and Kashmir state departments, which were providing development

benefits in the form of housing, health, education and food subsidies. Similarly, unlike

other departments, the DoWP did not embody any direct social goals.

Therefore, existing local imagery or an ideological construct (Mitchell 1999) of the State

has sustained an appearance of a welfare entity based outside Changthang in either Leh

(district headquarters) or Nyoma (block headquarters), and is locally known to bring

different kinds of development benefits. Be it the Public Distribution System (PDS), the

oldest State welfare program of food subsidies introduced after the Indo-China war in

1962, as mentioned earlier, or the recently introduced (2006) Nomadic Housing

Programme run by the Department of Rural Development aiming to distribute a cash

subsidy to each local household, the Jammu and Kashmir state has always been associated

with bringing welfare to Changthang. The coherence of this ideological construct

regarding the State is deeply enmeshed in the way Changthang people have experienced

the Jammu and Kashmir state and their continuing expectations of it. Therefore,

according to the wildlife warden his representative department, as compared to the other

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state departments, faces a more challenging terrain because it has gone against the

prevalent State idea of the local people in Changthang, by proposing a policy entailing

restrictions and not development benefits.

It may not be possible in some cases to divorce the existing ideological constructs or the

local perceptions of the State from what the DoWP actually brings to Changthang. That

said, the DoWP remains that agency of the Jammu and Kashmir state which not only

deviates from the existing perception about the State by proposing a restrictive policy, but

at that same time due to being an arm of the Jammu and Kashmir state it remains an

integral part of that State which is identified as bringing benefits and welfare. Abrams

(2009:45) also discusses the process of State reification, where ‘reification takes on an

overt symbolic identity progressively divorced from [State] practice’. Therefore, the

DoWP, despite its authoritative mandate and nature, still remains locally enmeshed and

cannot be seen separate from the local communities. For the local people, the DoWP

remains a representation of that ideological construct which they have always retained in

their minds. In the following discussion I focus, wherever relevant, upon building

arguments around such local ideological constructs of the State and how the DoWP is

ultimately situated within that space.

Conservation Implementation

I begin by explaining how from 1998 onwards, the DoWP has attempted to act as a

‘preconstituted’ structure where it constantly creates an appearance of being tangible,

existing separate from the local communities. Abrams (2009:46) describes this State

phenomenon as a ‘misrepresentation of the actual disunity and incoherence of the

workings of political power and government practices, and an exercise in moral

regulation’ that also helps to legitimate its act.

In the year 1998, almost a decade after the declaration of the Changthang Wildlife

Sanctuary, the DoWP introduced its first intervention in Changthang. The

implementation delay was more administrative in nature, as the DoWP only started its

independent operations within the State Ministry of Environment and Forest in 1998,

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with the first wildlife warden being appointed in the Leh district. Up to 1998 the only

wildlife functionary in the district was the wildlife ranger who worked under the

Department of Forest. After the Supreme Court notification, in order ultimately to settle

the issue of local rights, the present wildlife warden informed me that his department

organized several local meetings and conducted awareness camps in Changthang, besides

having constituted a participatory committee on the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary. Local

meetings are such a typical government exercise that are not new and a regular feature in

Changthang where state departments order the local gowa to bring local people together

on a particular date to either discuss or introduce new development programmes. The

DoWP also superimposed its intent to inform local people about the rules and regulations

of the sanctuary on the existing standardized means of the local meetings. According to

the wildlife warden, such meetings and awareness camps were held in almost all the

settlements of Changthang to help people adjust to the fact that Changthang was now a

protected area under the jurisdiction of the DoWP. However, during my fieldwork in

2009-2010, the local people in Korzok continued to disagree with such claims of the

DoWP and maintained that there had been no such local meetings or awareness camps

held by the DoWP to introduce the sanctuary. When I enquired with the person who was

then gowa about this bureaucratic exercise, initially he hesitated to answer me, as he found

it extremely difficult to differentiate one state department meeting from another. After a

while, he did recall going to Leh some time in the past, where he had been invited to

attend a wildlife meeting organized by the DoWP. However, he revealed his

incomprehension of matters discussed in the meeting because the medium of

communication in that meeting was either English or Hindi instead of the local Bodhi

language. On the subject of local meetings and awareness camps in Changthang, claimed

to have been organized in the settlements by DoWP, his view was consistent with that of

other informants.

Besides having no knowledge about the sanctuary, the local people claimed to have no

access to any written DoWP or government declarations which may have tried to inform

them that Changthang had become a sanctuary. On the other hand, people seemed

confounded by what being a sanctuary practically meant and why Changthang was chosen

to become one. One Korzok resident trying to grasp what sort of a government project it

is asked whether wildlife sanctuaries are ‘made’ or ‘declared’ and if the former was the

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case, then why did local people never knew about Changthang’s potential to become a

sanctuary.

However, the gap between the DoWP’s claim and the local stance became more definite,

as Reigzin Namgyal, a 67-year-old herder tried to explain:

He [Tashi Namgyal, wildlife warden] has not made the public aware about it [Changthang Sanctuary] and it is like a fraud. The public didn’t know about the sanctuary, and if they had known they would not have let it happen. Without any reason, there is no one who would sell the village…. The public doesn’t know, they are more like sheep and goats-whether it is a sanctuary or the Ramsar Site21, people do not know. (A local meeting September 2009).

Such perceptions about the State conservation are common across most of the people.

The difference, however, exist amongst those who keep themselves apace with the

government projects and those who not, especially the nomadic families who do not have

similar means to access the information about government projects as Korzok residents

might enjoy by merely being in Korzok (see also Chapter 3)

The chagdzod, however, explained to me that if they had known that the sanctuary was

‘arriving’ in Changthang, they could have tried to ‘stop’ it. The crux of the problem,

according to the chagdzod, lies in not being adequately informed. On a further

amplification of his roundabout declaration concerning the sanctuary, the chagdzod, also

made it clear that by stopping he does not mean protesting against the State, but using

other means to convince the State to shelve their sanctuary plans. This idea of influencing

the State amongst the local elite is not only restricted to the chagdzod but also others. The

local perception about ‘the sanctuary being arrived at without their knowledge’ stands in

opposition to the justification of the DoWP’s officials, who believe that they have

followed all the proper procedures in the initial implementation stages of the protected

area management. For local people, the knowing/understanding about the sanctuary is a

                                                                                                               21 Tsomoriri was declared a Ramsar Site in November 2002, on the recommendation of WWF-India, on the basis of its being considered a unique example of a biogeographic zone in the Trans-Himalayan region.

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matter completely separate from their participation/acceptance of the sanctuary. Since it

was declared without their knowledge in 1987, the local people stick to their disagreement

about it despite the DoWP’s efforts to involve them at this later stage. The DoWP

officials understood that their application of awareness camp and wildlife meetings as

techniques to inform local people could never have the desired effect, and therefore did

not pay much attention to the impacts of the role of such meetings in their larger

mandate.

Making this distinction between the DoWP’s bureaucratic techniques and local

perceptions is critical in writing the ethnography of the State in order to understand the

divergences and convergences which act as an essential part of elucidation of the State-

community relations. The DoWP’s adopted means to use standard tools that are more

universally than locally applicable give an appearance of the DoWP as an outside agency –

an imposing entity that is ordering rather than engaging. The impact of the State through

this interface could have had a different outcome if these meetings had been more

engaging and influenced the policy implementation process. It remains unclear to people

how one of the regular ordinary local meetings organized by the State could convert their

pasturelands into a sanctuary. However, clarification of intent at these meetings would

have also meant that it could have ignited controversies and possibly an unwanted

resistance much earlier in the State conservation project, causing it to completely alter or

diminish. The possibility of such a level of local interference/participation where the State

abilities are co-opted needs to be discouraged all the time by the State, as it can malign the

whole idea of an autonomous State itself. When I wanted to know from the DoWP the

impacts of such meetings or camps, the DoWP said they were not significant and they

were not in any case much interested in either knowing or assessing the local impact of

such meetings. These were considered more as routine administrative precursors to their

further actions. Maintaining a distinctive self-image of a State institution busy

implementing a technical project is paramount amongst the DoWP officials. It acts like a

deliberate screen put between the DoWP and the community, where the handful of

DoWP officials have the ‘knowledge’ or ‘information’ about the sanctuary project and

nobody else. The only means to access any information about the sanctuary is through the

local meetings but the opportunity has been lost for the local people as, like a highly

managed project, the DoWP is now at the ‘next stage’ where the implementation process

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has other priorities, such as offering conservation incentives in the forms of alternate

livelihoods. So it is usual to find local people in Korzok who are unable to associate the

sanctuary and the conservation incentives such as Home Stays; for them Home Stays is

just part of another State welfare programme.

In response to the Supreme Court notification, the Jammu and Kashmir state also

constituted a committee for the local people to file their objections in case they had any in

regards to the sanctuary declaration. The idea of such committees was to deal with

apprehension, fear and misinformation that has emerged following protected area

declarations across the country. These meetings were held in LAHDC’s office in Leh with

a joint participation of the local/public and the Jammu and Kashmir state representatives.

However, such committees turned out to be unsuccessful, according to the DoWP, since

they were being co-opted by the ‘corrupt’ local councilors and also because the grievances

put forward were beyond the scope of the sanctuary project. The possibility of influencing

the State objectives in such committees seemed likely to the local people when at the

behest of the local people, the councilor offered to spare some specified conservation

locations within the sanctuary (these conservation locations were also superimposed on

those pieces of pasturelands that were grazed by the Tibetan refugee’s livestock), in a way

facilitating the Jammu and Kashmir state to achieve its objectives in Changthang.

Physical Boundaries and Noticeboards

‘The sanctuary includes the whole of Changthang’. This statement was endorsed several

times by the wildlife warden to the local people. Physical boundaries have an important

role in formalizing any rule, and in this case they define a specific geography for the

DoWP to conduct its jurisdiction. Setting up mechanisms such as what is legal and illegal

within these boundaries is a critical step in imposing control over a constituted reality of

the sanctuary. According to the Jammu and Kashmir state, the Changthang Wildlife

Sanctuary has a total area of 4000 square kilometers, whereas the DoWP often claims that

it includes the whole of Changthang, i.e. 22,000 square kilometers, in its jurisdiction.

Demarcating boundaries and settling of local rights in the Changthang landscape can be

extremely difficult given the absence of any specific land allocations within the

customarily owned pastureland. With only four geographical coordinates available to mark

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the extent of the sanctuary, the boundary demarcation predominantly relies on the

DoWP’s subjective interpretations. The claimed size of the sanctuary now encompasses

two whole blocks22, which also makes it effectively a unique State project, crossing the

conventional boundaries of civil administration. Given that Changthang is a customarily

divided pastureland historically owned by more than one nomadic group, such as the

Rupshu, Kharnak, Hanle and so on, by encompassing the whole of Changthang in the

sanctuary, the DoWP represents itself as superior to and distinct from the locally known

‘authority and ownership’ patterns. Through specific sets of such practices as boundary

demarcation, the DoWP represents itself as a reified entity with particular spatial

properties (Ferguson and Gupta 2002).

Despite an absence of a clearly defined physical boundary, the DoWP has installed

noticeboards across the local pasturelands, declaring it to be part of the Changthang

Wildlife Sanctuary and well within the DoWP’s jurisdiction. Noticeboards in the remote

nomadic pasturelands make relatively less sense to the local people given that there is

hardly anyone locally who can read and understand these messages. Written in English, a

language alien to the local people, the noticeboards convey varying /unclear messages

which most do not comprehend. These boards have messages signifying the jurisdiction

of DoWP over these areas. They either declare the authority of DoWP to implement rules

and regulations of protected areas over Changthang or inform visitors that access to

sanctuary is not allowed without prior State permits and access fees. These noticeboards

define what is legally permitted in this context in Changthang. For example, some boards

display the details of how certain areas, such as the Tsomoriri shores, are to be kept

pollution free and how tourists are only to use a defined bridle path.

Some boards have propaganda slogans and jingoistic catch phrases coined by the

department and left to the reader’s interpretation. For the few young school-going

children there is a rhyming slogan on one wildlife noticeboard, ‘Man be not brute Hear

the cry of the mute’, literally meaning ‘not to make ‘noise’ or speak ‘loudly’ so as not to

disturb the wildlife. The choice of the English language only serving tourists visiting the

                                                                                                               22 As an administrative unit, the Indian district is divided into blocks and then to villages. The two blocks here refer to Nyoma and Durbuk, two Changthang blocks that are part of Leh district, and incorporates the whole of Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary.

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region to communicate wildlife conservation concerns has rendered the noticeboards

official and distant to the local people. Creating this distance and distinction from the

local people seems to have also given reasons to the DoWP to be somewhat autonomous

from the local context in which it is trying to actualize itself. In contrast, by rendering

incomprehensible what the English ‘dos’ and don’ts’ say keeps the State authority at bay

in people’s perception.

As physical entities the boards do incubate elements of doubt and confusion as to their

significance and are a successful tool for the DoWP to symbolize its rule and authority.

This is corroborated by the fact that in Samad, a neighbouring settlement of Korzok, the

local people have uprooted and burnt all the noticeboards installed by the DoWP as a

symbolic protest. The Korzok people have refrained from doing so, and the noticeboards

remain intact across their pasturelands, revealing one of the ways DoWP has managed to

sustain its appearance in Changthang. As part of the ‘State effect’, these noticeboards

symbolize the authority exercised by DoWP within the State to governmentalize

Changthang.

Science and Power

Science and its power are often used to help bureaucracy to sustain its arguments and

authority as evident in the protected areas of India (Kothari 1999; Baviskar 2003).

Bourdieu (1993) also concludes that the State’s ability to exert its symbolic power is

largely based on its own embodiment in objectivity. By holding up science as a more

accurate explanation of Changthang ecology, DoWP, in its rational approach, also appears

to distance itself from any other knowledge system. Sivaramkrishnan (2003) also observes

that the locus of expert knowledge is always central to questions of forest management in

India. The biologists who have conducted research on the status of the wildlife in

Changthang have considered influencing the government policy as a major part of their

research rationale. Backed by the touchstones of such transcendental knowledge, visibility

and replicability, the DoWP has used biological reports and studies to make powerful

claims to exclusive control over the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary. A good illustration of

this is provided by a group of biological studies, as discussed in Chapter 3, where an

increased livestock population is held responsible for the shrunken biomass available to

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the wild ungulates in Changthang (Bhatnagar 2007; Namgail et al. 2010). Besides being

actively involved in such biological endeavours, the DoWP staff has co-authored journal

papers with the biologists (Bhatnagar et al 2007). Such collaborations and an involvement

of science also reflects in the DoWP’s official slogans such as ‘Hunting and excessive

livestock grazing have pushed this dainty animal to the brink of extinction. Let us join

hands to safeguard the gowa’s future’. Through the alignment of bureaucracy and science,

the DoWP is able to achieve a kind of status that is of a depersonalized and objectified

entity somewhat different from the local Changpa’s experience of the Changthang

environment.

It was as a result of similar biologists’ recommendations that in 1998 the DoWP fenced

off the northern Peldo shore of the Tsomoriri wetlands and made it inaccessible for local

use. Through fencing, the department was aiming to protect the marshy islands of the

wetland, which are a critical nesting ground of the endangered avifaunal species, the

Black-necked crane. Vehicular movements, tourist camping, garbage, construction of

buildings on the southern side of the wetland, and excessive grazing by the horses

brought in by the trekking groups were some of the recognized threats to the Tsomoriri

habitat (WWF 2000). In order to reduce the human disturbance of the Black-necked

crane’s habitat, the DoWP saw fencing as the most viable solution to curb such problems.

However, erecting a concrete wall on the Peldo shores of Tsomoriri was not taken well by

the local people, and one of the Changpa nomads told me:

Fencing by the wildlife department will take away our land. There are notice boards everywhere, which we can’t read… since we can’t measure the extent of the land /territory mentioned in them, it seems we cannot take care of our own land. They take photographs and survey our land and take away our land.

70-year-old herder Chyang Tak’s response in reaction to the DoWP’s interventions in

Changthang seems to integrate the State’s supposedly ‘higher’ functions, based upon

reason, control and regulation as against the irrationality, passions and uncontrollable

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appetites of the society (Verdery 1996, cited in Ferguson and Gupta 2002:982). This local

response also evokes the notion of verticality discussed by Ferguson and Gupta, where

the central and pervasive idea of the State is seen as somehow ‘above’ the community.

This imagery of stacked vertical levels places the political struggle as emerging from

‘below’, rooted in authentic lives, experiences and communities (Ferguson and Gupta

2002: 983). In this respect, Chyang Tak’s critique of the new kind of land management

adopted by the State is not without reason, since he thinks that such mechanisms also lead

to control and in this case it is his pastureland that has been appropriated by the State.

Through this statement, he also seems to suggest that it is by lacking such mechanisms

that they are losing their hold over their pastureland and that also render it somewhat

outside the local domain. This ‘higher’ function in conservation also manifests the expert

advice, where fencing is seen as a solution to conservation problems, particularly how

fencing a particular patch of land and not any other is more effective. This view, dividing

Changthang according to the science of habitat ecology, often makes it legible only to the

wildlife biologists and the DoWP and not to the people who live there. The visual

appearance of the fencing also has a look of being regimental with padlocks and concrete

walls. It is through such appearances that the DoWP works to create validation for State

conservation in Changthang. As Ferguson and Gupta (2002) clarify, the point is not that

the picture of State being ‘up’ there is false, but that it is constructed. Therefore,

according to them, the task is not to ‘denounce it as a false ideology, but to draw attention

to the social and imaginative processes through which state verticality is made effective

and authoritative’ (2002:983).

As we see, the images of the Jammu and Kashmir state DoWP are influential because of

the way in which DoWP projects itself as an ‘external structure’ standing apart from the

Changthang community. Demarcating the boundaries of the sanctuary and setting up the

mechanism to police the sanctuary, involving a variety of practices and controls – permits,

fees, fencing, noticeboards, and so on – all help to manufacture a transcendental entity,

the sanctuary, superimposed on the local pasturelands. This entity comes to mean

something much more than the sum of the everyday powers of the Changthang context,

which, however, constitutes it. The scholarship in this area has understood that the

metaphors through which the State is imagined are important, but the social practices

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through which these images are made effective and are experienced is critical, as is

examined in the next section.

ENCOUNTERING THE DOWP - EVERYDAY PRACTICES AND

REPRESENTATIONS

In an anthropological analysis of the State, Sharma and Gupta (2009:11) find cultural

struggles to be a determining factor in ‘what a state means to its people, how it is

instantiated in their daily lives, and where its boundaries are drawn’. They emphasize that

it is the sphere of everyday practices where people learn something about the State. While

detailing the everyday practices, such as the ‘practice of standing in line to obtain monthly

rations or to mail a letter, getting a statement notarized or answering the questions of an

official surveyor, paying taxes or getting audited, applying for a passport or attending a

court hearing’, the authors defines them as banal practices of bureaucracies, profoundly

shaped by routine and repetitive procedures (Sharma and Gupta 2009:11). Alluding to the

work of James Ferguson (1994), the authors argue that everyday practices or

proceduralism of the State experienced by the people are so commonplace and ordinary

that they can be mistaken as ‘apolitical’ (Sharma and Gupta 2009:11). On the other hand,

these ‘putatively technical and unremarkable practices’ render the form and exercise of

State power. Mitchell (1994:84), in defining the ‘effect of the State’ points out that the line

between State and non-State realms is partly drawn by bureaucrats’ everyday work

practices and encounters with others. According to him these arrangements can be so

effective that the dualism of State and Society appears very real. Therefore, everyday

practices are an important clue to understanding ‘the micropolitics of State work, how

State authority and government operate in people’s daily lives and how the State comes to

be imagined, encountered and re-imagined by the population’ (Sharma and Gupta

2009:12)

In order to examine the everyday practices of the DoWP, I would like to primarily focus

on those practices that are performed in Changthang by its lower-level bureaucracy. The

lowest levels of the bureaucratic pyramids are often represented by officials such as village

level workers, land record keepers, elementary school teachers, agricultural extension

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agents, the staff of the civil hospital and others in India. This emphasis is primarily for

two reasons. First, in India it is the rural and village sites where the majority of the people

come in contact with the State and ‘images of the state are forged’ (Sharma and Gupta

1995:212). Second, very little ethnographic research present in the literature details what

lowest level bureaucrats do in the name of the State.

Defining the lower bureaucracy as ‘street level bureaucrats’, Michael Lipsky (1980:3)

observes they are the ‘public service workers who interact directly with citizens in the

course of their jobs, and who have substantial discretion in the execution of their work’.

He explains that such bureaucrats have ‘considerable impact over the local people as they

socialize them to expectations of government services and provide a place in the political

community’ (1980:3).

Gupta (1995:384) observes that ‘officials occupying positions at the bottom of the

bureaucratic pyramid pose an interesting challenge to Western notions of the boundary

between State and Society in some obvious ways’. The Western historical experience has

been built on States that ‘put people in locations distinct from their homes - in offices,

cantonments, and courts to make their “rationalized” activity as office holders in a

bureaucratic apparatus, [however, lower-level bureaucrats in India]… collapse this

distinction not only between their roles as public servants and as private citizens at the site

of their activity, but also in their styles of operation’ (Gupta 1995:384). According to

Gupta (1995:384), this might be seen as ‘evidence of the failure of efficient institutions to

take root in a Third World context…. perhaps because those categories are descriptively

inadequate to the lived realities that they purport to present’. Given government policies

are often negotiated at the field level rather than in offices, Vasan (2002) observed the

case of ‘forest guards’ and highlighted the importance of this lower-level bureaucracy,

which plays a critical role in articulating the Indian forest policy and acts as a bridge

between the State and Society. To understand how lower-level bureaucracy in DoWP

operates and functions, I will discuss the role of the wildlife guard in forging the images

of the State in Changthang embedded in the everyday context of the Changthang Wildlife

Sanctuary.

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Subversions

The wildlife guard, whose main task is to protect the sanctuary from any wildlife crimes

and check the visitor’s permits, represents the lower-level bureaucracy in DoWP. Given

the protected area run to thousands of square kilometers in Ladakh, it is the wildlife guard

who foresees all the DoWP activities in partnership with his line manager, the range

officer. The field posting also requires a wildlife guard to mostly stay on the site and be

the localized face of the DoWP in the protected areas of Ladakh. In Changthang Wildlife

Sanctuary, the DoWP’s representative is Tsering Angchuk, who also happens to belong to

a local family in Korzok.

After serving for a few years of his tenure in Karakoram Wildlife Sanctuary in the Nubra

Valley, Angchuk wanted to be posted to Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary, close to his

family and fields. In India, home postings are generally discouraged, as any personal

relationships between citizens and individual bureaucrats are viewed with suspicion.

Vasan explains that such relationships are generally associated with corruption; they are

expected to have only negative consequences for development (Hariss 2001, cited in

Vasan 2002:4125). As a result, the bureaucrats are frequently transferred to avoid the

development of any close relationships with the local people whom they serve (Cited in

Vasan 2002:4125). On the other hand, Evans (1996) finds that quite the reverse principle

is applied in East Asia, where the embeddedness of officials in society contributes to the

synergy between the State and Society. Ladakh is known to be a close-knit society that can

benefit from the synergy between the State and Society but is often seen/ considered to

have a local bureaucracy that is beset by favouritism. In Ladakh, home postings generally

are preferred by the lower-level bureaucrats who belong to rural and far-flung areas. It is

believed that the bureaucrats who stay away far too long from their homes become

despondent, as they are not able to support their families in ‘taking care of children, old

parents, fields and cattle’ 23 . There is also a general belief that the ‘favoured ones

                                                                                                               23 The Pioneer September 2011 http://archive.dailypioneer.com/index.php?option =com_k2and view=item andid=48090:in-ladakh-face-of-corruption-is-nepotismandItemid=549. [Accessed 21 January 2014].

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[bureaucrats] continue in their postings well within 10 kilometers of their homes while

those who do not have influence are posted far away from their homes for too long’24.

Angchuk explained to me that it is not easy to get a home posting in Ladakh, as one has

to look for personal contacts within the State system to be able to achieve it. In his case,

he had to work on his political alliances in the district headquarter offices of Leh with the

superiors who had presumably received favours from him in the past or were connected

to him in other way to support his transfer from Nubra to Korzok. Angchuk was not

completely transparent about his job transfer, as sometimes he also said that it was the

wildlife warden who wanted him to be in Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary because of him

being a local Changpa. Similarly, the local representative of LAHDC also often took the

credit of transferring Angchuk from Nubra to Changthang. After being posted in

Korzok, his local identity as master Tsering’s son or Dolma’s nephew dominates his

bureaucratic identity as a wildlife guard. Many a times, I had to use his local identity more

than his bureaucratic one for the local people to identify him in my discussions with them.

In order to examine the consequences of the dual role of Angchuk, I now discuss some of

the concrete events that had occurred in the actual implementation of the State

conservation policy in the sanctuary and argue how it blurs the boundaries between the

State and the community.

Before Angchuk was transferred from Nubra, the DoWP had decided to put up a fence

on the Peldo shores of the Tsomoriri Wetlands to protect the habitat of the black–necked

crane. The 1998 gowa recalled that ‘there were a truck and a tipper, both belonging to a

private contractor from Leh, which had brought the construction material to build the

fence in concrete’. But the Korzok residents had protested and demanded that the fence

not be put on their pastureland, as yaks and fuel-wood-carrying donkeys would not be

able to cross it. After the DoWP built the fence, the gowa specified that it was a mob of

youngsters from Korzok, who often go to collect fuel wood from Peldo, who went and

pulled down the metal fence fixed in concrete.

                                                                                                               24 The Pioneer September 2011 http:// archive.dailypioneer.com/index. php?option= com_k2andview=itemandid=48090:in-ladakh-face-of-corruption-is-nepotism andItemid=549. [Accessed 21 January 2014].

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After the posting of Angchuk to Korzok, the DoWP decided to put up the fence again

and this time arranged to put padlocked access gates, with its keys proposed to be given

to the then gowa. Angchuk was also instructed to open and close the gates in certain

months of the year. Whether the DoWP’s decision to re-fence was influenced by the fact

that now Angchuk, a local Changpa, was a wildlife guard is not made obvious by the

wildlife warden or Angchuk, but it seems clear that Angchuk’s local identity had a lot to

do with the successful implementation of DoWP’s fencing project. The second attempt to

fence the Peldo shores had other dimensions to it as well. Some time prior to fencing the

Peldo shores, it seems the DoWP had used its department funds to also provide fencing

at another place. This intermediary fencing project was of a different kind, as its

implementation was on the private cultivable land of the Korzok residents, with a hope to

subdue any local protest that might arise against the main fencing project around the

wetlands. The DoWP thus evaded its mandate of convincing the local people in a

straightforward manner about its activities and helping them to understand the

significance of their fencing project at the Peldo shore. This collusion between the DoWP

and local people would have been difficult without Angchuk’s social identity as a local

himself, especially since in such a case the DoWP extended benefits to the local people so

that they would unknowingly contribute to a restrictive policy.

This case thus does not offer much support to the image of a neat distinction between

State and Society. It illustrates that the DoWP used ‘deviation’ from their core mandate

when fencing the private agricultural land to achieve certain conservation goals.

Therefore, through such mechanisms, the DoWP could pursue objectives of conservation

policy which otherwise could have been opposed by the local people. This case also

demonstrates how the institutional mechanism of the DoWP is never confined within the

limits of what is called the State. And subversions come to play a critical role in bringing

the State and community together.

However, this explanation offers only one side of the picture: the local people have

similarly employed the DoWP to further their own goals, as the separate fencing of

private agricultural land demonstrates. Several local people in Korzok obviously claim that

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fencing on the ying – the private agricultural land – was accomplished only because

Angchuk is part of a state bureaucracy, and that means benefits and not restrictions. The

fencing on the ying, a locally desirable project, keeps the unwanted livestock, horses, bar-

headed geese and tourists away from whatever meager but precious cultivable land is

locally possessed. Therefore, it was believed that Angchuk has benefited the people of

Korzok through his department’s funds. When I asked Angchuk why the DoWP would

fence private agricultural land, he said that it was done to encourage tourists to behave

and keep off the private properties. Ecotourism being the alternative livelihood project

integrated in the DoWP’s management of the sanctuary, it was conveniently employed to

justify the private land fencing. However, Angchuk remained quiet on how this act would

have benefited only a select number of people from Korzok, some of the local sedentary

families tilling the cultivable land.

Instead of treating ‘corruption’ in India as a dysfunctional aspect of State organizations,

Gupta (1995) also observes it as a mechanism through which the State itself is discursively

created. Gupta (1995) argues that corruption draws attention to the powerful cultural

practices by which the State is symbolically represented to its employees and to citizens of

the nation, as is also evident in the case of Ladakh and Changthang. How the regionally

situated character of corruption is constituted is also visible through the way it is reported

in media. The newspapers in Ladakh often report corruption as a growing evil practice in

the region. The statement from Chief Executive Councilor of the Ladakh Autonomous

Hill Development Council on the eve of the 62nd Independence Day made headlines in

the local newspapers: ‘Let us all take a pledge on this occasion to erase corrupt practices

in our society’ (Reach Ladakh 2011). In a recent news article a well-known politician of

Ladakh, seeking to encourage youth of the remote Nubra Valley, said ‘the youth from

Nubra should not lose patience over the unavailability of jobs due to widespread

corruption and money laundering in the system and failure of the government to control

this menace’ (Scoop News, June 11 2013). Following from famous social movement leader

Anaa Hazare’s anti-corruption demonstration in Delhi, a rally was also organized in Leh.

The participating political groups demanded that anti-corruption legislation, also known

as the lokpal bill25, be introduced in the Jammu and Kashmir state system. One of the

letters to the editor pointed to bureaucratic tyranny and misuse of power as an insult to a

                                                                                                               25 The Jan Lokpal Bill is an anti-corruption bill drafted and drawn up by civil society activists in India.

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democratic country, causing hurdles in educational reforms in Ladakh. Focussing on the

lower-level bureaucracy, an article published in the Reach Ladakh magazine states:

When the senior cannot be punished how can there be any cleaning at the bottom. It would not even be fair to punish the lower rungs of the ladder when the higher rungs continue to bask in the sunshine of their riches… everyone knows who the corrupt are but the irony of our system is such that no one can be touched (Reach Ladakh 2010).

The lower-level bureaucracy is specifically targeted by the news item, which exposes how

these posts in the remote regions were frequently left unfilled for months at time.

Changthang is considered a very remote place with extreme weather and sparse amenities,

and that also discourages government officials from serving there, as also discussed in

Chapter 5. Control over the official functions and resources are thus not very efficient,

and it is often that the situation lends itself to subversion. An absence of schoolteachers

or health officials or corruption in food subsidies is commonly found in Changthang, but

often under-reported or seen as somewhat normal because of its uncontrolled nature.

The idea of appeasing the bureaucrats to perform their mandated functions through using

different means and incentives is common in Changthang. Slaying personal livestock to

entertain the visiting bureaucrats or providing them local accommodation is a common

local practice. During my fieldwork, when a patwari (village-level land records bureaucrat)

visited Korzok for three days on a tour, he was showered with a number of gifts of dried

cheese, dried meat, silk scarfs, and teapots, and the host arranged a well-furnished room

and served special meals. A few Changpa nomads from different campsites also made it a

point to reach Korzok at this time to ask for favours from the patwari. While the patwari

remained busy with his land surveys, the local people made sure that hot cups of tea were

available to him at all times. Several local people paid him visits with khatak - a white silk

scarf only presented to special honourable guests. Such facilitation and palm greasing to

visiting bureaucrats are considered a normal part of keeping the bureaucrats interested in

Korzok. The idea of influencing the State through such facilitation is very well embedded

within the remotely placed Changthang region. This can also be seen as a continuation of

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a tradition of autocratic governance in these regions, where people had a direct cost-

benefit relationship with the traditional rulers and are unfamiliar with the rights granted in

the modern welfare State paradigm. It can also be interpreted as simple, honest

recognition of reciprocity of not expecting anything without giving something in return.

When I asked a few residents of Korzok about the DoWP provisioning private

agricultural field fencing, several of them believed it was the right thing for Angchuk to

have done. Their conviction was very much embodied in this local statement: ‘DoWP

should have known where to fence. Anywhere fencing is not good’. The DoWP claims to

have saved the endangered Black-necked crane through fencing on the lakeshore was

contested by the local people. Most of the people held the opinion that the Black-necked

crane never returned to those Tsomoriri breeding islands as a result of fencing. The

legitimacy of the DoWP’s wildlife knowledge was implausible to several people, who

thought it is improbable that the Leh-based DoWP could have understood Changthang

wildlife better than the local inhabitants who live in constant company of such wildlife.

Therefore, fencing their private agricultural fields or implementing similar programmes

should have required their input, and this is the way the State should function within their

domain.

To examine how the DoWP is culturally constituted, a glimpse into Angchuk’s specific

social positioning in Korzok is critical. It is this milieu that constantly guides Angchuk on

how to implement the conservation policy and the local people he chooses to benefit the

most through this process. As also noted in Chapter 5, Angchuk’s family had sedentarized

a long time back, and their livestock are tended by a hired lugzi (shepherd). Therefore,

Angchuk himself has never moved like other nomadic families and has always lived a

stationary life in Korzok. Similarly, there are numerous families who by virtue of either

having less livestock or no livestock identify with the Korzok settlement much more.

During my fieldwork in 2009-2010 I was told by the gowa that the herders who rear

livestock and live a nomadic lifestyle are still in the majority, amounting to approximately

90 families; the second group, who live a seminomadic life and move in a particular

season, made up approximately 40 families; the third group, who had no livestock and

drew their means of livelihood from avenues other than livestock rearing, amounted to

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approximately 30 families. According to him, the last two sets of families generally own a

house in Korzok, and their association with Korzok is relatively much more stable than

the nomadic herder families, who only occasionally visit Korzok.

For the district and block offices, Korzok is the place of development programme

delivery, such as school, medical assistance, PDS services and tourism, as discussed in

Chapter 3. The families whose members are nomadic herders have always complained

about having to travel to Korzok to avail themselves of such government services. Given

the lack of road access to their winter and summer campsites, the way the nomadic

herders have experienced the government is different from the Korzok residents.

Therefore, Korzok residents are often better situated to take advantage of the State

programs than the nomadic families. The power of being a sedentarized family in Korzok

was brought home to me when I experienced the local disputes and squabbles over

claiming land in Korzok by the nomadic families. The need to own a house in Korzok

also implied that local people are aware of the centrality of the State and see it as one of

the basic requirements to negotiate the world of development officials and bureaucrats.

Therefore, Angchuk, being a sedentarized local himself, has benefited his fellow Korzok

families through building the fencing for private lands. On the other hand, nomadic

herders living on the camp sites feel they have missed out on the benefits distributed by

Angchuk.

Tashi Norbu, a 58-year-old Changpa nomad, told me how their winter fodder crop is

overgrazed by the kiang (High Himalayan wild Ass) every year. They say in the wake of

the hunting ban, the kiang numbers have increased and they have been requesting the

DoWP to fence their winter fodder crop fields to save them from over-grazing but with

no success. This year when snow fell a little earlier in the season, the kiang over-grazed

their fodder grasses in Tegarzung, cultivated by the herders in order to augment their

winter reserves. According to Norbu, the fodder grasses would have sustained them in

winter months, but now they are left with none. Experiencing how private agricultural

land was fenced by Angchuk, who is a resident of Korzok, the nomadic herders are

doubtful that the DoWP will ever extend the same favouritism to the Tegarzung pastures.

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Such differentiation also shows how power inequalities are shaped and re-enforced

through statist practices and representations.

The friction between the Korzok people and nomadic herders also emphasizes that the

social positioning of the local bureaucracy has an impact on the way the State functions in

Changthang and also how it is imagined by local people. Ultimately, how the DoWP is

imagined and perceived by the local people is not simplistic, but highly enmeshed in the

local social and cultural milieu and tied to diverse local resource use in the case of

Changthang. Another instance where the chagdzod targeted the DoWP’s mandate

suspiciously shows how Angchuk’s social positioning also plays a role in the general

acceptance of, or resistance to, a State policy such as wildlife conservation. The chagdzod in

a local meeting commented:

Many have come with welfare programmes in Korzok to give us benefits. But now we are doubtful which gowa has sanctioned the Tsomoriri as sanctuary. Angchuk keeps on taking signatures from the gowa and his members, and he never clarifies what he really does with those papers. This is all doubtful.

Emphasizing such everyday bureaucratic practices thus brings us to understand the

sources and nature of the DoWP’s implementation of conservation policy. It illustrates

the vexed and discordant process through which the DoWP ultimately actualizes itself.

The case study reveals how subversions and inconsistencies visible in diverse alliances of

multiple actors belonging to the DoWP and Changthang are central to the reproduction

of the DoWP in Changthang. Therefore, instead of seeing it as an anomaly or obstacles to

the smooth functioning of the State, the case shows that one should see such processes as

‘the strategies’ by which the DoWP actualizes itself in Changthang.

Dual Loyalties

At the border between state rule and the wild stand those who dare to define, defy and demand administration. These are the men whom I call ‘leaders’

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because they are ambitious enough to tell the government that they represent the community and their neighbours that they represent the state (Tsing1993: 72).

A transgression of the public-private divide within State institutions is considered

dysfunctional in the ideal type of Weberian bureaucracy. However, in the case of

Changthang, the identity of the State or the way the State is imagined is very much

embedded in dualism. Angchuk, the wildlife guard, is an aspirant seeking to gain

personally from the new rising tourism opportunities in Korzok, as most of the Korzok

households aspire to do. He and his family have built a luxurious tourism facility in

Korzok. Each room in his facility can be hired for about Rs. 2500 (approximately US$50)

per night. Concurrently, the DoWP through Angchuk has also promoted sustainable

tourism activities in Korzok as part of the conservation incentive through Home Stays.

Home Stays is a home-based tourism income generation facility where a household spares

a family room for the tourists, as discussed in Chapter 3. Through the introduction of

Home Stays, the DoWP expects to reduce resource local grazing pressure on the

sanctuary. Therefore, the DoWP has supported the creation of a few Home Stays through

the provision of mattresses, chairs and tables in Korzok. These accommodations are

relatively basic and less costly than Angchuk’s tourism facility; one can hire a room for

between Rs. 60 to 600/night approx. US $1.50 to $15. Angchuk runs his facility in

marketing partnership with Leh-based tour operators, whereas Home Stays have no such

developed marketing infrastructure. Home Stays rely on the choices of walk-in tourists in

comparison to prearranged tourist packages for Angchuk’s facility. Therefore, Angchuk’s

aspiration to see mainstream tourism flourishing in Changthang is very critical to make his

facility successful. During my fieldwork, he often discussed the future of tourism in

Changthang and once asked me if the stationed paramilitary forces of the ITBP in Korzok

would ever run motorboats in the Tsomoriri wetland. I raised my suspicion by saying it is

a protected habitat for the Black-necked crane, and such a practice would be against the

sanctuary regulations. His response to my answer was that the ITBP used motorboats in

another wetland of the sanctuary regardless, and it would be good if the same could be

done in Tsomoriri to attract more tourists to Changthang. His constant competition with

Ishey Dorjee’s tourism facility, the only other luxurious tourism facility in Korzok, also

forces Angchuk to do better.

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However, Angchuk’s practices and his expectation of large-scale tourism activities in

Changthang diverge from the policy efforts of the DoWP towards the more equitable,

small-scale tourism initiative of Home Stays. Equally intriguing in this case is that

Angchuk happens to be serving not only as a wildlife guard in Korzok, but also as a

spokesperson for Home Stays. However, such examples of differences in the perceptions

and discursive politics between a state department and a broadly connected local person

abound in recent literature. This literature has shown that the politics of meaning and

language has significant material impacts on conservation policy and practice (Li 1996;

Ferguson 1994; Dove 1985). Incentives such as Home Stays have been incorporated into

conservation programmes in the hopes of making conservation meaningful to local

people and also to address the social, economic and ecological limitations of people-free

parks and reserves. Li (2001:161) argues that programmes such as Home Stays are also a

reflection of the desire mediated by the ‘imagined community’ according to the

conservation lobby. One of the basic arguments in propounding incentive - based

conservation is about certain presumptions under which the local communities living

inside the conservation areas are defined. The complex and overpowering processes in

which the Changpa nomads aspire to large tourism returns often do not fit within the

conservation agendas which assume that local people inside the Changthang Wildlife

Sanctuary should be satisfied with only subsistence goals. Li observes that when the

communities in conservation are perceived as ‘subsistence-oriented’, it becomes critical

for them to be attributed limited needs and wants, as discussed in detail in Chapter 3.

Home Stays in Korzok provide one such motivated incentive, which has been promoted

by the DoWP to meet the (limited) needs of the Changpa nomads (Dove 1993).

In terms of economic prosperity, Korzok is considered to have lagged behind owing to its

peculiar situation with respect to the State policies such as Inner Line Area. In this

context, the advent of tourism is often projected as a fresh lifeline to the local economy.

This is especially true for families who have chosen to completely sedentarize; for them

tourism carries hopes of income and viable survival in Changthang instead of the more

disruptive option of family migrations to Leh. For this reason, Angchuk’s luxury tourism

facility is more of an inspiration and also a source of envy for the people in Korzok. This

is supported by the fact that the Changthang people have come together to discuss how

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they can capitalize from the potential of the growing tourism industry, and their

discussion is not limited by the principles and scope of Home Stays, as discussed in

Chapter 2.

Therefore, the DoWP’s lower functionaries working in rural societies, as also identified by

Vasan (2002:4126), often exists in a ‘twilight zone’, torn between the demands of the State

for which they work, and those of the Society, in which they live and socialize. It reveals

the multiple roles that a DoWP lower functionary ultimately assumes in different

contexts. Angchuk in all probability, being a local himself, would see tourism as a kind of

necessity for the local people, whether it is accomplished through Home Stays or not.

Angchuk believes that some other prominent local people such as Ishey, the councilor,

who also runs a luxury tourism facility, are not wrong, but with his wildlife guard hat on

he would in all probability see it as illegitimate. The wildlife warden has often made

statements on the lines that he would like to eliminate large tourism projects in Korzok,

but these remarks remain targeted exclusively towards businesses other than Angchuk’s.

The implications of this case illustrate that the dual loyalty and conflicting discourses that

characterize the DoWP’s representation in Changthang are not unusual or exceptional in

regard to the way the members of the lower bureaucracy conduct their duties. The way

Angchuk bridges the private and public troubles the ideal types of bureaucracy, which

often projects the State as a completely separate arena than the Society.

Local Politicians and Bureaucracy

A recent visit of a Jammu and Kashmir Cabinet Minister to Korzok to inaugurate the new

community facility center (CFC) showcased how the Minister’s visit could mobilize the

whole of Nyoma block’s bureaucracy, which travelled a long distance in more than fifteen

cars to facilitate the Minister – an astounding sight in itself:

It was in the early morning when Reingzin Dolma was called by her Ama Tshogspa (a local women’s handloom group) members to come and clean the

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Common Facility Centre (CFC), as summoned by Ishey and the chagdzod. Dolma also wanted to utilize the morning to bid her farewell to the Rinpoche, who was leaving the same morning after a long stay in Korzok. Therefore, she was hard pressed for time. Ishey needed a lot of help that morning, as beside the inauguration of the CFC by a cabinet minister, Rigzin Jora, he was also preparing a feast for the Minister and his bureaucratic convoy to be held at his own tourist camp. This was supposed to be a grand 10-dish feast but no one was sure if the Minister would have the time to eat. Meanwhile, the local people in Korzok had spent the whole afternoon waiting for the Minister and the block level bureaucrats to arrive. Women and men had washed their faces with soap, and women had especially put on perag and chos - a ceremonial dress - accompanying plastic flowers of pink, yellow and blue colours in their hands. As part of the Ama Tshogspa group, the women wanted to request the Minister for a handloom centre to be built in Korzok where finished woolen products could be made… For this reason, the women had decided to clean one room in Dolma’s Home Stay to welcome Jora and serve him tea. Locally woven carpets with local choksas (local wooden tables) decorated the room in no time... But decisions changed at the last minute when the venue shifted to the parachute tent on the main Korzok road because they were informed that the Minister would not have much time to spare for engagements other than the inauguration… Ishey made a quick round to see if everything was organized and in its place…. He looked satisfied, but in his authoritative gesture suggested the Ama Tshogspa women to especially maintain the tent cleanliness until the time the Minister arrived. At last, the Minister and block officials arrived. Considerably prior to the Minister’s car, another car carrying block officials arrived to check on the welcome arrangements. The officials rolled down their car windows and asked the waiting crowds about the food arrangements. When the Minister arrived in a distinct black-coloured four-wheel drive after 5 minutes, he decided not to stop to greet the waiting crowd and instead went straight to Ishey’s tourist camp. One after another, the Nyoma block officials crammed in fifteen cars arrived at very high speed and also went straight down to Ishey’s camp. It was nearly an hour before Minister finished lunch and drove up to the inaugural venue. At the venue, the Minister made sure that the subdivisional magistrate of Nyoma and Ishey stood side by side when he inaugurated the facility centre. After the ribbon cutting ceremony, the locals were let inside the Center followed by the whole group of block officials. Ishey introduced the meeting and thanked the Minister for visiting the ‘backward area’ and ‘culture’ of Changthang. He thanked him for helping develop their ‘village’ and requested the current gowa to present a khatak (silk scarf of felicitation) to the Minister. During the whole ceremony, the block bureaucracy sat through patiently with no expectation to be felicitated for their development achievements or even consideration if people would like to hear about them. Afterwards, the Minister took over the stage from Ishey and

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discussed the development plans and another sum of Rs.400, 000 being sanctioned for food subsidies towards Changthang’s welfare. He also added information about the old age pension and medical facilities and soon after made ready to leave. He left hurriedly, and before the last local person could leave from the venue all the convoy cars had left. The Minister never stopped for the tea at Ama Tshogspa, and the local rumour was that the Minister had already allotted the money for the centre, and Ishey had all the information (Excerpt from the field notes 2009-2010).

This Minister’s visit reveals how the block bureaucracy, including its top functionary, the

subdivisional magistrate, could be mobilized for political ends, even for a relatively trivial

non-administrative task of inaugurating the community facility centre in Korzok. The role

of the Minister was very clearly seen as superior, and the bureaucrats in attendance

endorsed the distinction and hierarchy between the government and bureaucracy. Ama

Tshogspa’s decision to sideline the bureaucracy and its keenness to welcome the Minister in

order to hand over the request letter for a handloom centre embodies the nature of the

distinction between bureaucracy and the local politicians present in the imagination of

people in Changthang.

The power of lower-level bureaucracy is often confronted by the influence of the local

politicians. Such confrontations highlight the contradictions that sometimes exist between

the everyday practices and the representation of the State. Exploring the representation of

the State can help us examine how DoWP is something greater than simply its local

manifestations.

Angchuk’s family… has not done anything for Korzok. Master Tsering [Angchuk’s father] who all his life taught in Changthang School, but has not produced a single graduate from Korzok. Angchuk, his own son, could not handle BA 1st year in Jammu and had to leave. I have brought him here from Nubra and if he misbehaves then I will see that he is posted back. (personal communication 2009).

Thus declared Ishey Dorjee, who as the LAHDC’s local councilor, was well aware of the

differences that exists between the politicians and bureaucracy in Ladakh. Ishey believes

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in the state bureaucracy as a kind of tool to be employed by him or the LAHDC in the

interest of the people. Ishey’s political career as an elected councilor is directly linked to

what development benefits he can bring to Korzok. As such, he is aware that sanctuary

regulations can go against his political interest. In one instance, when he wanted to set up

a diesel generator to provide electricity to the Korzok households, the DoWP objected to

it as being an environmentally unfriendly act inside a sanctuary. This objection was

consistent with the recent course of events where the DoWP had already demolished

other local buildings, such as the Jammu and Kashmir state official guesthouse located at

the lakeshore, on the similar grounds. When the generator was opposed even by the then

Chief Executive Councilor of LAHDC, who was supposed to approve the funds for this

generator installation due to Tashi Namgyal’s behest, Ishey contacted the Cabinet

Minister representing Ladakh in the legislative assembly of Jammu and Kashmir state to

help out. According to Ishey, the Minister willingly obliged, and the requested diesel

generator was approved through the government channels. Ishey conspicuously obtained

the generator and installed it right on the shores of the Tsomoriri. Despite all its

mandated authority the DoWP was unable to deter Ishey from doing so.

This case illustrates how a particular context and the social location of Ishey help him

interpret the construction of the wildlife authority in Changthang. Ishey’s particular

position as an elected councilor who represents the people of Changthang, often seen as

an underdeveloped nomadic community, also reveals why he imagines the state as he

does. Ishey is a member of the local elite who not only has material assets seen as a key

symbol of upward mobility but also has powerful kin relations with the chagdzod, a local

religious authority. He travels across India and foreign countries and often rubs shoulder

with important politicians and administrators in Ladakh. Ishey has been selected as the

local councilor in almost every successive LAHDC election in Changthang and has been

representing Changthang in the LAHDC government for almost ten years. He is very well

aware of how much power he has accumulated as a politician in the last two decades or

so. As he often would remind people in Korzok, ‘it was I who brought the metalled road

to Korzok which was otherwise doomed and would have remained a backward place’.

Symbolic in this statement is how the political regime represented by him is seen as

superior to the local bureaucratic practices which have not had a good track record in

Changthang in any case due to the same reasons that have been discussed in Chapter 5.

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He acts as the face of the nomadic herders in the outside world, where for any state and

political deliberations on Changthang, Ishey is sought for expert opinions. Such social

location helps Ishey see the politicians’s good intentions, particularly towards an

underdeveloped place like Changthang, which still does not have grid-based electricity in

the 21st century, being frustrated by corrupt or inefficient State officials. He also has a

sense that if the politicians in Ladakh want some initiative, then they can easily exert

pressure for certain policies, specifically those affecting the underdeveloped areas. He is

politically adept enough to be able to pass through various political hurdles and have

access to the cabinet level ministers. Ishey would not have invented these tactics only to

get the diesel generator installed, but he would have been socialized into it through his

own experience of being part of the LAHDC. Ishey spent many years as the Changthang

representative becoming aware of how the State functions in Ladakh and how the regime

of LAHDC influences the state bureaucracy. How LAHDC literally decides the tenure

and postings of bureaucrats is evident in the number of requests for home postings and

other favours granted in the LAHDC office, which only symbolizes the dependency of

the bureaucracy on the politicians. In this way, Ishey’s everyday experiences of

Changthang and the LAHDC led him to believe that the local politicians can overpower

the state bureaucracy to favour places like Changthang.

Conclusion

Mitchell recommends that we must take the elusiveness of the boundary between State

and Society not as a problem of conceptual precision, but as a clue to the nature of the

phenomenon (Mitchell 1990: 77). He cautions that the distinction must not be

understood as boundaries between two distinct entities, but as

…a line drawn internally, within the network of institutional mechanisms through which a social and political order is maintained…in particular, one can trace it to methods of organizations, arrangement, and representations that operate within the social practices they govern, yet create the effect of an enduring structure apparently external to those practices (Mitchell 1990:77).

In this chapter, on lines similar to those traced by Mitchell (1990), I have attempted to

demonstrate how the district wildlife authority of Jammu and Kashmir is contingent upon

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instances of subversion, dual loyalty, and influence by the politicians and is never an

autonomous and coherent structure. Conceived in this way, the chapter has argued that

the DoWP in Changthang is produced through everyday practices and challenged as a

vertically encompassing entity (Ferguson and Gupta 2002; Baviskar 2008). How the

DoWP is imagined and portrayed by people located in different social positions affects

the way it is realized in people’s lives. Finally, I have tried to demonstrate how the State-

Society divide is not a simple border between two free-standing objects or domains, as

often imagined in the parks versus people paradigm, but a complex distinction internal to

these realms of practice. No simple line can be drawn dividing the network into a private

realm and a public one or into State and Society opposing each other. However, in

practice, we tend to simplify the distinction between the two by thinking of the wildlife

policy as an abstract legislation and society as the realm of its practical application. Yet,

this fails to encompass the complexities of what actually occurs, where code and practice

tend to be inseparable aspects of one another. How such alliances amongst multiple

actors become a fertile terrain to contest the parks versus people paradigm is also

explored in my next chapter, where I discuss the Indian military’s assumed partnerships

with conservation agencies such as WWF seeking a role in environmental protection of

Changthang. I problematize this new naturalized image adopted by the military and

examine how ultimately it helps to retain military authority in Changthang.

 

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Chapter 7 Military and Environmentalism Spectacle and Concealment –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Although the term ‘military environmentalism’ sounds internally inconsistent, perhaps

even an oxymoron, it alludes to a celebrated narrative of successful environmental

projects in India. The success stories often revolve around tree planting, habitat

restoration, and the recovery of extinct fauna and flora. In this chapter, I attempt to

understand the rationale of military environmentalism, not just in terms of green success,

but also in terms of the project of rule in a context where military legitimacy in border

control is created and contested. In its broader framework, the chapter expands the view

of the military’s role in environmental protection from the limited optics of either seeing

it as a green wash or a simply beneficent engagement. Instead, I examine the role that

environmental protection plays in the military’s actual accomplishment of border control

in the Ladakh region of India. Through localizing the enquiry, I explain how the

imperatives of rule engage with the military’s assumed environmental mandate and, by the

very compromises made in their stated objectives, how they yet sediment its practice in

the border location of Changthang.

The Indira Paryavaran Puraskar, proclaimed as the Indian State’s highest environmental

award, alternatively labelled ‘the greenies award’ by popular media groups, and accolades

from the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) have marked the success of the Indian

military’s role in environmental protection. Describing it as one of the miracles in

biodiversity habitat restoration, D’Souza (1995) extolled the methodical planning of the

military which ultimately led to the restoration of the Deccan plateau grasslands for the

recovery of endangered species, such as the Great Indian Bustard and the Black Buck.

Citing another case of military environmentalism, he wrote that its efforts have also

successfully revived the predator-prey relationships in the drought-prone areas of India

(D’Souza 1995). Establishing tree plantations, considered to be a noble cause, is

particularly celebrated across the Indian State, where the military has brought back the

vanishing greenness. Through such projects military vigilance in border regions has also

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been productively used to ensure the protection of endangered species26. The greening of

the Indian military’s various establishments, apparent in such projects as cantonments,

depots, and manoeuvre areas, and the use of green technology for rainwater harvesting,

ground water rejuvenation, the construction of check dams and the de-siltation of water

bodies, evidences the new and renewable energy initiatives that are part of the military’s

green initiatives.

Such glorification of military environmentalism is often highlighted through before-and-

after snapshots of restored habitats and endangered species. What make this spectacle

unusual are how the actual environmental impacts generated by the military presence,

especially in the fragile ecologies such as the Himalayas, simply remain concealed in these

one-sided representations. Ladakh in the Himalayas is one such case, as discussed across

the thesis, where a border region has experienced a heavy military presence since the 1962

war between India and China. Known to be a fragile ecosystem, especially when it comes

to solid waste disposals and air pollution, the physical environment of Ladakh has

experienced a significant burden due to the excessive use of fossil fuels to sustain a large-

scale military presence and associated infrastructure, including housing, roads, surface and

air transport. However, as J.S. Davis (2007:131) argues, the ‘relationship between the

military and the environment is a much more complex story than merely one of

destruction’. Therefore there is a need to look beyond the military’s environmental record

and focus attention on the complexities inherent in the discourse of military

environmentalism.

The Spectacle of Siachen

The road from Leh towards Changthang has a long sequence of wildlife hoardings

displayed on the side of a road almost like the usual business advertisements around Leh.

Most of these hoardings are around the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) headquarters

in Choglamsar. The large, high-resolution, glossy and colourful images of the Snow

Leopard, Himalayan Ibex and others take pride in introducing people to Ladakh’s wildlife.

Both the images and the style are new, including depicting such roles of the Indian

                                                                                                               26 http:www.assamtimes.org/node/7418. [Accessed 4 May 2014]

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military as conducting local wildlife surveys, guarding the breeding grounds of the

endangered avifauna, organizing eco-fair events, supporting the ‘Green Hiker Campaign

2010’, installing green technologies such as solar power and celebrating anti-pollution

drives. Recently, the Indian military has even committed itself to setting up a Nature

Interpretation Centre at the ‘Hall of Fame’, a Military War Museum in Leh, alongside the

showcasing of newly acquired military artillery and commemoration of the martyred

soldiers of the 1962 India-China war. This divergence is intriguing, as it tries to ‘balance’

not only two competing interests, but also the moral order which ultimately attempts to

define them.

Ladakh’s interface with the recent eco-fair events and the associated public spectacle to a

large extent are designed to whip up enthusiasm amongst its local population to celebrate

the military’s role in environmental protection. Baviskar (2007:295) observes that these

events take the form of spectacle ‘rather different from the usual spectacle of power that

states choreograph such as the republic day parades and festivals of India’. Such eco-fairs

in Ladakh are organized under the array of benign-sounding programmes such as

‘knowing your military’. This is despite the fact that for the military to display what it does

is quite superfluous to its people, and especially those of the border regions with their

ubiquitous military presence. But such illuminations and performances also act as curious

inversions from the structures of military power that exist on these borders. Alongside

sponsored debate competitions, nature wish trees, and environmental hero awards, the

visitors also get the opportunity to see the newly acquired military artillery and infantry

combat vehicles in the same premises. They remain on display for months so that people

do not miss it and are designed to sediment the idea that the dualistic role of the military

exists only for their benefit such as national interest. However, such spectacles, where the

intriguing avatars of the Indian military portray environmentalism as a natural military

activity, narrate a complex story when experienced in the empirical context.

Siachen Glacier is one such example where the military’s environmental impact and the

spectacle of military environmentalism both exist simultaneously. India and Pakistan both

claim sovereignty over this glacier that is lying on the eastern edge of the Karakoram

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Ranges and is a habitat of such endangered species as the Snow leopard and Tibetan ibex.

The 77 km glacier falls between the altitudes of 5753 m (18,875 ft.) and 3620 (11,875ft); it

is considered as one of the longest glaciers in the world outside the polar region. After the

India-Pakistan war in 1984 on the glacier, it is estimated that more than 20,000 Indian

troops were stationed on this highest battlefield of the world (Kemkar 2006) With such a

large population of soldiers located on the glacier and requiring a great amount of survival

gear, it is now described as polluted with 1000kg of garbage being dumped every day

(Alam 2012). One account describes the composition of the waste left behind by the one-

way flow of military materials to be approximately 40 percent plastic and metal:

Siachen is polluted by the remains of crashed helicopters, worn out gun barrels, splinters from gun shelling, empty fuel barrels, burnt shelters, telephone wires, skid boards, parachute dropping boards, edible oil containers, canisters, gunny bags, rotten vegetables, bad meat, expired tinned meat, cartons, [items] damaged or lost due to misjudged para dropping…bodies which could not be recovered, [thousands of potentially recoverable] parachutes…[and] vehicles that are declared beyond economic repair (Kemkar 2006:112).

The Indian military has also been conducting a green campaign known as the ‘Green

Siachen Clean Siachen’ initiative to protect the glacier from ecological destruction. As the

title suggests, the campaign includes a tree plantation drive led by the military soldiers.

Since trees cannot be planted on the snow and ice glacier where most of the

environmental impact occurs, the military focuses on a plantation 76 km away from the

polluted site close to the snout of the glacier. Described as a campaign to save the glacier,

the programme faces many shortfalls. The justification for selecting a site so far away

from the actual degradation appears unconvincing, given it provides no obvious links with

the ecological degradation on the glacier itself, except for the accolades to the soldiers

who participate in the programme. The campaign includes those sites in the programme

which may have not been degraded at all, whereas the most polluted sites which are

located on the Siachen Glacier itself, mostly around the military barracks, are overlooked.

Baviskar (2007:290) makes a similar observation in the case of a government watershed

mission to green Jhabua in Madhya Pradesh and concludes, ‘This may in fact mean

avoiding the people and places…whose actual involvement may in some way endanger the

chances of securing programme success’. Thus, in the case of Siachen, the military

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carefully selects those sites that not only ensure green success but also enable the military

fundamentally not to change their own organization and priorities.

Secondly, the conjured construct of the environmental problem can be entirely disparate

from the imagined solutions. The image of Ladakh being supposedly ‘barren’ is often

suffused with the motif of the ‘infertility’ of the land. In this way, the tree plantation is

intended to supposedly correct the environmental defect of ‘barrenness’, that can be

implemented anywhere to meet the targets of green success, be it the snout of the glacier

or other high altitude sites. Lately, the military’s green act of indiscriminately planting

trees everywhere in Ladakh has come under criticism by the local people, especially in the

wake of the Leh flash floods in 2010. Considered as one of the major environmental

disasters of Ladakh, one theory being propounded at local level is that the Leh flash

floods are being caused by changes in local climate due to the misguided tree planting

drive in Ladakh. However, as a distraction strategy, the continuation of the ‘Green

Siachen Clean Siachen’ programme provides an opportunity to divert the attention from

all the environmental criticism directed at the Indian military.

Following up on the Siachen Glacier’s environmental concerns, in 2003 at the 5th World

Park Congress summit held in Durban, South Africa, environmental organizations and

activists urged the establishment of a transboundary peace park at the Siachen Glacier, in

line with many other international border sites across the world. The proposal had also

received endorsement from the Indian Prime Minister when he declared, ‘Now the time

has come to make efforts that this [Siachen] is converted from a point of conflict to the

symbol of peace’ (Sawant & Aroor 2012)27. Described as a peace overdrive by the Prime

Minister to advance his own political mileage, the generals from the Indian military

unilaterally disapproved of the proposal without seeking any public opinion on the matter.

Identifying the demilitarization of Siachen Glacier as a strategic harakiri, the Indian

military has seen their hold on the glacier as a forward defence against the possible

Pakistan-China nexus against India. Therefore, the Indian chief of military staff has even

declared that the Siachen Peace Park is not in the national interest (Sawant & Aroor

                                                                                                               27 http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/siachen-glacier-demilitarisation-indian-army-pakistan/1/187356.html.[Accessed [22 November 2013].

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2012)28. This determination to not withdraw from the border site of Siachen in spite of

the environmental crisis is also strengthened by the belief that the glacier is also what the

soldiers have won by their blood and sacrifice. Ironically, despite the fact that

demilitarization of this area would provide the most productive environmental fruits of

success, Siachen has the least chance of being selected for the military environmentalism

project. Siachen has a prospect to become a model site to create viable solutions to the

environmental destruction posed by the military, but choosing it for an environmental

solution is a security liability from the point of view of the military.

On the other hand, the ‘Green Siachen Clean Siachen’ campaign nurtures the public

image of the military as an organization learning to mitigate its environmental impacts.

This image is critical since it promotes symbolic public support for the desired expansion

of military spending and sustaining militarization of the national borders. The Siachen

case also projects a kind of pretext and a background to how the Indian military is and

can possibly be involved in environmental practices in the frontier regions.

Military Environmentalism in India

The military as a cultural practice has been performing green tasks as a way of military life… Soldiers are in any case trained to be frugal, known to survive battles in the desert with a ration of just over 5 litres per man a day and still use animals in operational areas. This helps indirectly save fossil fuel use and reduces carbon emission particularly in the fragile Himalayas. The cantonments, barracks, pickets and posts have large green cover (IDSA 2009)29.

The rhetoric of combining a military and an environmental ethos cannot get any better

than this, especially when this is about the world’s largest military of 1.3 million personnel

occupying 1.75 million acres, that is, almost 0.5% of the total Indian land mass.

Naturalizing the military’s relationship with the environment helps consolidate the path

for military environmentalism, keeping it clear from the contradictions embodied within

                                                                                                               28 http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/siachen-glacier-demilitarisation-indian-army-pakistan/1/187356.html 29 http://idsa.in/idsastrategiccomments/TheIndianMilitaryandtheEnvironment_PKGautam_180509 [Accessed 03 May 2014]

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the project itself. By rendering this relationship apolitical, it provides an opportunity to

perceive environmental degradation as external to the military’s functions. In order to

further diminish its profound inconsistencies, the apolitical military lexicon has also tried

to envelop environmental degradation as a security concern. Under the new non-

traditional security threats in South Asia, environmental issues of climate change have

been correlated to topics like organized crimes such as ‘terrorism’ (IDSA 2013).30 The

possibility that environmental protection and preparation for war ‘might reside in quite

fundamental opposed moral orders is denied and removed from the debate’ (Woodward

2001:209). In recent times, the argument for military environmentalism has also attained a

greater degree of persuasion with ‘environmental restoration and protection’ being

offered as the Indian military’s fifth dimension to the existing four dimensions of

‘defending the country’s borders’, ‘ensuring internal peace’ ‘ensuring international peace’

and ‘disaster relief’ (D’Souza 2005) 31 . However, the process of rendering military

environmentalism as a benign project is an unremitting task in which it is necessary to

keep on reinventing and readdressing the project’s framework through new vocabularies,

such as this one:

The military's efforts prove beyond doubt that they are not wanton destructors of nature but have a unique non-violent and productive role to play in the well being of the environment, creating social and security patterns founded on cooperation and not confrontation. In fact, the military can be deployed profitably for protection, regeneration, scientific research, monitoring underwater degradation, measuring radiation levels and managing defence lands (D’Souza 2005).32

The logical next step in this discourse is to establish compatibility between environmental

protection and military activities. In order to do so, D’Souza (1995) in the excerpts of his

Michael Harbottle Memorial Lecture tables an outline of those significant factors that

could possibly constitute environmentalism a legitimate function of the military:

                                                                                                               30 Keynote address by Dr. Arvind Gupta, Director General, and IDSA at the National Seminar on "India’s Non-Traditional Security Challenges" organized by Punjabi University, Patiala, 22nd-23rd February 2011. 31 http://www.godrej.com/godrej/GodrejandBoyce/pdf/2005/marapr/EnvironmentalConcerns.htm. [Accessed 23 February 2014]. 32http://www.godrej.com/godrej/GodrejandBoyce/pdf/2005/marapr/EnvironmentalConcerns.htm. [Accessed 23 February 2014].

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• Indian military personnel are all volunteers and regulars and serve for a

minimum of 15 years. This ensures continuity in any environmental tasks

undertaken by them.

• Personnel are recruited nationwide and are therefore au fait with the

environmental problems of the subcontinent.

• Recruits, especially those of the Military, generally come from rural

backgrounds. They thus have a better understanding of Nature’s web of

life and how each strand is interdependent on the other.

• The Military has the leadership, motivation, dedication/commitment to

tasks, training and discipline to perform this fifth role effectively.

• It has the inbuilt infrastructure, namely mobility, intercommunications,

medical and engineering skills necessary for such tasks.

• An important point that has been raised in the past is that the use of the

Military in such roles is likely to cause friction with the civil populace. In

India the Armed Forces are looked upon with respect and such initiatives

are in fact welcomed.

• The Armed Forces are the managers of vast tracts of Defence lands such

as depots, training areas, ranges, naval bases, airfields and other

installations and to that extent can hone their ecological skills at home as

it were.

• The Armed Forces, especially the Military, are so structured and

organized as to enable task forces of various sizes to be deployed on

such tasks in self-contained groups.

• The Military by virtue of its training, mobility and deployment is capable

of operating in all types of terrain and weather conditions.

• Finally, every year a large number of personnel retire from the Service.

They form a valuable resource pool of trained, disciplined and motivated

manpower for environmental duties in organizations like the Eco

Territorial Battalions (D’Souza 1995).

Woodward (2001:209) cautions that the idea of balance (compatibility) also ‘implies

possibility of balance, that …finding an equal weighting between two interests is feasible’,

and military activities can thus be portrayed as environmentally beneficial. Since the

Indian military performs environmental conservation work on different sites, such as

forest reserves, wastelands, old mine sites, and village lands, however, it is not clear from

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the compatibility list how the sites to do such tasks are selected. How does the military

exclude those landscapes under its own possession, which ecologically may be in dire

straits and needing protection? The puzzle also extends to the much more basic question

of what kind of approach is used by the military to define environmental protection. For

instance, does the Indian military’s establishment of tree plantation programmes qualify?

Are the Eco Territorial Battalions considered expert in transforming a degraded habitat

on a war footing? In a recent tree plantation drive, 40,885 trees were planted in an hour

by a team of a hundred soldiers with the help of an Assam state forest division, which

achieved a Guinness world record33. Seeing nature as subordinated to ‘human problem

solving’ is one of the main postulates of the Indian military, where environmental

problems are considered capable of being solved through ‘an active engagement’

(Woodward 2001:213). Tree plantation drives undertaken by the Indian military constitute

a clear example of this assumption about the human-nature relationship, whereby a

degraded habitat can be salvaged more quickly if more trees are planted. Such drives

might fail to convey much about the quality of the work and only demonstrate

achievements in terms of ecological changes which can be quantitatively measured (e.g.

numbers of endangered species recovered) and suitably showcased.

Woodward (2004) says that militarization and environmental protection are inconsistent

and are opposing moral orders, but it is through subversion or contestations that an

engagement is established. Li (1999) also emphasizes the fragility and contingency of

forms of State rule, such as militarization, which require continuous effort to reproduce

and maintain the relations of rule. The tactics used by the military to stage certain

environmental achievements and simultaneously obfuscate those aspects of the military

which are environmentally damaging draw attention to the complex nature of the military

environmentalism. Building upon these insights, in the following section I will explain

how military environmentalism is an assemblage of practices that are part of an effort to

cast environmentalism as a natural military activity for an effective control of landscapes

such as the Changthang frontier. To understand the discourse better, I elucidate those

issues that are unacknowledged and the concerns that are excluded in this practice.

                                                                                                               33 lilianausvat.wordpress.com/2013/12/02/tree-planting [Accessed 18 January 2011]

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Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary

‘It is bizarre that we have to obtain prior permission from the Indian military to enter the

Sanctuary’, the wildlife ranger of Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary explained to me when I

met him in Leh. Posted at Nyoma, Gyalpo informed me that certain biodiversity rich

zones within the sanctuary, such as Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO), known to be the habitat of

wild yak and Tibetan argali, can only be accessed with prior military permission and then

only in military vehicles. The way Daulat Beg Oldi ‘sector’ is renamed in military circles

overlaps with the Line of Actual Control and remains under the strict control of the

Indian military, despite its inclusion in the sanctuary. For the local Department of Wildlife

Protection (DoWP), Daulat Beg Oldi comes under their jurisdiction and therefore

belongs to them, despite its overlap with India’s national borders. In order to effectively

exercise its power of jurisdiction, the DoWP in recent times has started to object to the

Indian military’s normal course of acquiring land for field firing exercises and for their

deployments and barrack locations in the sanctuary. The DoWP has begun to insist that

military land acquisitions be routed through their office in Leh, since part of Changthang

is now within DoWP’s jurisdiction. In one particular case, the DoWP has ordered the

military to immediately remove a paramilitary post of ITBP on the grounds of the post

being located within the sanctuary and too close to the breeding grounds of the Back-

necked crane, an endangered species (see Chapter 5).

The ITBP, which has a mandate to keep a constant vigil on the borders and check illegal

admissions, has stationed its men on the shores of the Tsomoriri Wetlands since 1994, the

year when the region opened for tourism. The Tsomoriri Wetlands, a critical habitat of

endangered avifauna within the sanctuary, is located within the Inner Line Area. As

mentioned in earlier chapters, the Inner Line Areas are deemed strategically important by

virtue of being close to the international borders. However, the Inner Line Area can be a

bit fuzzy in the understanding of the common man, given the actual border from

Tsomoriri is more than 100 km away. The domestic and foreign travellers visiting the

region seek prior permission from the district office and cannot access the region without

official permits. Being a well-known and often visited wetland by military families, the

ITBP soldiers stationed at Tsomoriri are also seen hosting tourism picnics for these

families. In the year 2000, the ITBP post decided to build a ‘temporary tin’ structure next

to the Tsomoriri wetland, when the wetland was also chosen to become an international

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Ramsar site for conservation. The physical location of the ITBP post turned out to be

right on the shores of Tsomoriri, and it soon started to accommodate 60 men

permanently. The DoWP, which had successfully demolished the other built structures

supposedly affecting the breeding grounds of Back-necked crane around the wetlands,

was not able to exercise a similar authority over the ITBP post as discussed in earlier

chapters. Presumably perplexed by the rationale for the ITBP post being located so far

way from the actual borders, the DoWP has also described the ITBP post as

‘recreational’, one made for the pleasure of military families rather than a post dedicated

to the cause of border protection (personal communication 2009-10). The DoWP’s

directive to remove the ITBP post has been continually avoided by ITBP officials on the

grounds of unavailability of an alternative site to do so34(Also see Chapter 5). During

these eight years of deadlock, the ITBP even went ahead and refurbished their post as a

permanent concrete structure, also adding new enclosures, such as a Hindu temple and a

volleyball court. The military’s non-cooperation with the State conservation goal in

Changthang reached another level when in the year 2009 the standing committee of the

National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) under the chairmanship of the Minister of State

(Forest and Wildlife) had also decided to forgo the wildlife concern for the defence needs

of the country, and diverted land from the sanctuary for building a network of metalled

roads, at the request of the ITBP.

It was in May 2008 when the ITBP through the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA)

requested clearance for five roads from the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF).

These roads were Korzok to Chumur (126ha), Chartse to Point (53 ha), Koyul to Zarsar

(144ha), Phobrang to Marsimik La (27 ha) and Phobrang to Chartse (72 ha). The standing

committee of NBWL, after considering the proposal, had decided to do a site inspection

before a clearance was granted to ITBP to construct the roads. For that, Dr. M.K.

Ranjitsinh and Dr. Asad Rehmani, also members of NBWL, were chosen to visit

Changthang and conduct an on-site inspection. After the site inspection team compiled its

findings, it was presented to the 12th standing committee in August 2008. The

recommendation of the site inspection team was that only four roads be given clearance;

the road from Korzok to Chumur was shelved on the grounds of being too close to the

                                                                                                               34 This becomes clear while reading through the eight-year-long official communications between the two parties. The copies of the communications were shared with me in DoWP’s frustration to indicate the paternalistic land management by ITBP within the sanctuary.

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Tsomoriri Lake, a habitat for endangered avifaunal species. The team also suggested that a

road from Nyoma-Nidder-Kynso-Chumur already existed, and there was no need to make

another road by denotifying the sanctuary. According to the NBWL minutes of the

meetings, the deputy Inspector General of ITBP challenged the team’s decision and tried

to convince the NBWL that the Korzok-Chumur road was critical for the national

security purposes. The deputy Inspector General justified this stance on the grounds that

the road to Nidder and Salsal La (a mountain pass) remains cut off for long periods due

to heavy snow during winter and at the times of potential aggression is critical. Therefore,

the original alignment of the construction of road from Korzok to Chumur should be

reconsidered. The ITBP also added that the advanced road infrastructure on the Chinese

side also required that appropriate infrastructure be built in Changthang to meet the

demands of any exigency. When the Indian military intelligence was also roped in to make

the final decision about the sanctuary denotification, the meeting unanimously decided to

keep the alignment of roads as originally proposed by the ITBP. The secretary of the

MoEF observed that the security of the country and border management should be

guided by the advice of the ITBP as they were in the best position to assess the tactical

and operational requirements on the borders.

According to one estimate, as of March 2013, only 16 (527 km) of the planned 73 (3505

km) border roads across the whole of the India-China borders have been completed,

mostly due to forest and conservation laws (Banerjee 2013). Frustrated by the lengthy

processes to obtain the forest and environment clearance from the State authorities, the

Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Defence have now joined hands to bring the

National Border Infrastructure Bill as strategic legislation in the Indian parliament. The

Bill aims at exempting border infrastructure that includes all the strategic roads within the

50 km of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) from all the relevant acts relating to the forest

or environment.

This new action by the Indian military also echoes the strategic decisions taken by the

erstwhile governments after the 1962 war defeat, when the civilians had to refrain from

decisions on any operational matters on borders, and the military was given a free hand.

Given this order of civil-military relations, where politicians or civil governments are

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restricted to only overall directives and operational matters remain in the hands of the

military, there has been a tendency in the case of Changthang for the military to make

decisions that are not in favour of the State conservation. Moreover, in regard to

Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary, it is common for the military officials to repeat Nehru’s

historic statement about Changthang that not even a blade of grass grows there and

wildlife in Changthang is non-existent. Therefore, a ban on road construction in places

like Changhtang is inappropriate, since conservation is more appropriate where trees and

abundant wildlife are found, and Changthang is a cold desert (Banerjee 2013).

Military-WWF Collaboration

The above mentioned divergences between the ITBP and local civil authorities seem to be

in contrast to those other ways in which the military tries to portray an environmentally

sensitive image of its organization. One of the ways the military attempts to conceal such

non-cooperation on the environmental front is through entering into collaborations with

conservation agencies such as the World Wide Fund for Nature-India (WWF-India). Most

of the time these collaborations are informal and rest on the willingness of the particular

military officers to lend support to conservation work around their headquarters and

military bases. However, lately the Indian military has started to formalize these

partnerships. One of the recent cases was in 2007, when the 5th Mountain Division of the

Indian army signed a MoU with WWF-India to jointly work towards ecological

conservation in western Arunachal Pradesh, another of India’s border sites with China35.

The Indian military has articulated this collaboration as an extension of their existing

environmental action through its Territorial Army and welcomed the WWF utilizing their

infrastructure to reach into remote localities for a joint conservation programme. Given

most of the high altitude conservation sites in India are on international borders and have

a major presence of military troops, the WWF has also found this collaboration

appropriate. The WWF sees this alliance as a natural progression of their informal bond

with the military; elsewhere Indian army officials have been deputed to the Traffic-India

programme for conservation duties. The WWF considers signing a MoU with Indian

military to be a historic moment and a giant step forward for their institution36. With a

                                                                                                               35 http://news.oneindia.in/2007/09/08/army-wwf-join-hands-in-western-arunachal-1189238552.html [Accessed 3 September 2013] 36 http://news.oneindia.in/2007/09/08/army-wwf-join-hands-in-western-arunachal-1189238552.html [Accessed 3 September 2013]

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commitment to administrative and logistical support, the Indian military has promised to

assist the WWF in surveys and in the mapping of wildlife in remote and inhospitable

terrain.

It is often claimed by the WWF that the Indian military is assisting them in local avifaunal

surveys, keeping wildlife records at specific locations, conducting regular garbage

cleanliness campaigns, distributing wildlife posters and developing other resource

materials. The results of such a partnership have been considered successful in

encouraging the military to mobilize its personnel at important nesting sites of the Back-

necked Crane during its critical incubation period (Gujja et al. 2003). For such reasons,

the Indian military has also put in new Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), including

the transport pilots flying over Changthang starting to report wildlife sightings from the

region. The troops and officers from the Indian army, the ITBP, the Indian air force and

the Border Roads Organization in Ladakh have also participated in wildlife training

programmes. These training programmes, organized by WWF-India every alternate year,

are meant to environmentally orient and sensitize the troops.

This partnership between the Indian military and WWF-India in Changthang

demonstrates, on the one hand, an encouraging symbiotic relationship where extensive

military infrastructure and troops can also be used for noble conservation aims with an

expertise from WWF. However, such a partnership, on the other hand, are also transpired

to serve purposes which are normally not made obvious and possibly have nothing much

to do with conservation aims. For instance, after the DoWP came under the supervision

of a Ladakhi, Indian Forest Services (IFS) officer in 2002, most of the existing

conservation operations and wildlife research in the Leh district underwent a critical

assessment by the department (personal communication 2009-2010). The WWF, as a

reputed conservation agency, was also one of the agencies on the list of the DoWP and

was evaluated. The WWF’s operations and its field office in Changthang were objected to

on the grounds that they were inside a sanctuary and also within an Inner Line Area,

where international organizations such as the WWF cannot be allowed to have a

permanent office. These assessments by the DoWP also meant that the WWF would have

to wind up all their conservation activities in Changthang and also close down its office in

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Korzok. It is presumably such strict monitoring which has also led the WWF to

reconfigure its programme in Changthang. It is quite obvious that by having an alliance

with the Indian military, WWF is able to sustain its conservation activities in the Inner

Line Area of Changthang, which would otherwise be deemed impossible for an

international NGO such as WWF. Similarly, it is equally true for the Indian military that

where there is an increased scrutiny by the conservation agencies such as the DoWP, the

military is presumably positioned to gain a better public image from such an alliance. The

WWF is a famous wildlife conservation agency in India, and such a partnership can

immensely help the Indian military to project an environmental friendly public image. The

possibility that such military involvements can positively influence the soldiers on an

individual basis may also be true. However, the way the whole of the Indian military

functions as an organization is quite different. The strategic purposes under which

extensive military infrastructure is seen as compatible with conducting wildlife surveys and

collecting wildlife data cannot be disassociated from the basic premises of border

protection, the reasons why the military infrastructure exists in the first place.

DoWP and the Military

The military’s preference to collaborate with the WWF instead of the DoWP reveals the

complex nature of military environmentalism practised in Changthang. D’Souza explains

that the ‘structure, organization, training, leadership, and infrastructure of the various

branches of the military can make them ideal partners with their civil counterparts in

protecting the environment’ (1995:165). However D’Souza’s description of the military’s

role, which argues for the expansion of the military’s role in environmental conservation,

overlooks how the military interacts with its own State counterparts, such as the local civil

government, especially those departments carrying out related environmental mandates.

The military’s unwillingness to collaborate on environmental issues with the civilian

DoWP in Changthang not only reflects the military’s approach to environmental

conservation, but also how environmentalism is defined by the military in the first place.

The functions of the Civil State in Changthang are well known to have been under the

constant influence of the Indian military’s objectives after the 1962 war. Moreover, an

emphasis upon and advocacy for democratic institutions and the primacy of electoral

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process have been the dominant ideology of the Indian government. However, the

frontier regions such as Changthang in India face the constant dilemma where the

strategic superiority of the military overshadows most of the functions of democratic civil

apparatus. For example, the DoWP’s jurisdiction over the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary

remains influenced by the Inner Line Area Policy and the military’s overriding land

management practices. The Inner line permit, considered a strategic requirement of the

military, continues to hold significance despite the declaration of Changthang Wildlife

Sanctuary. The paternalistic control of the military over Changthang means that ‘any

departure from established military land use practices opens up potential for chaos in the

field’ (Woodward 2001:211). The DoWP exercising its authority over the Changthang

wildlife sanctuary clearly interrupts the way the Indian military would want to manage the

Changthang frontiers. The power of environmentalism when used by the DoWP to try

and disrupt the military’s control over Changthang in an attempt to push the military to

change its normal course reveals the military’s reluctance to work together. As in the case

of Siachen, retaining the use of the Inner Line Area to conduct its military operations, be

it ammunition training or other field operations inside the sanctuary, demonstrates how

ultimately control of the frontier region in India is more the military’s prerogative than

that of the civilian authorities responsible for wildlife conservation. Choosing to denotify

those regions of the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary which are considered a critical habitat

of the Black-necked crane for national security concerns only showcases the complexities

in which Indian military practices are already mired. This, nevertheless, makes

environmentalist practices in Changthang a highly problematic subject, given that the

environmental mandate of the DoWP is also not popular amongst the local people.

Moreover, when the local government’s actual achievements on the ground are quite rare

in Changthang, whether in education or health, the administrative personnel fail to stay

committed to serve in Changthang, as noted in Chapter 5. It is no wonder that the ITBP

establishment in Korzok (Tsomoriri) is supported and welcomed by the local residents

despite its refusal to cooperate with the civilian authorities.

Productive civil-military relations can also be symbols of successful democratic

arrangements, but, as it emerges in this case, the power tussle between the civil and

military authorities has in fact become unfavourable for the protection of biodiversity in

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Changthang. 37 The basic premise of military environmentalism to be sensitive and

responsive to environmental conservation is compromised not only by the stated

imperative of paternalistic control over the land in the sanctuary, but also by simply

ignoring the local government.

Unpacking the Military

Unlike in western Arunachal Pradesh, there is no formal alliance of the Indian military

with the WWF in Changthang. Other than the ITBP, which is a paramilitary force, the

military is composed also of the Indian army and Indian air force with its allied services,

such as Borders Roads Organization (BRO) in Changthang. Most of the military’s

collaboration with the WWF is through the ITBP forces and not with other forces such as

the Indian army. For instance, the ITBP and the Indian army are often located in

proximity, but their operations remain independent. In terms of their respective roles in

border protection, the ITBP’s role is primarily to police the borders, preventing violations

and encroachments, and to prevent smuggling and unauthorized movement of goods and

other related tasks, whereas the Indian army physically protects the borders with infantry

and mechanized forces. In terms of soldier strength, the ITBP has four battalions with

4000 personnel based in Leh, with headquarters in Srinagar, while the Indian army has

more than 70000 soldiers with two infantry division based in Leh. In the wake of the

recent Chinese incursions on Changthang borders in 2009 and the need for a better

posturing of the Indian armed forces on the borders, the Ministry of Defence, which

manages and controls the Indian army has even demanded operational command over the

ITBP, which is regulated by Ministry of Home Affairs. There is an understanding that the

ITBP is a relatively less equipped force to respond to operational contingencies on

borders as compared to the Indian army, which is known for its abundant resources and

the combat machinery at its disposal (Bajwa 2014). During my fieldwork, for a short

                                                                                                               37 The loss of the 1962 war has been entirely blamed on the hostile relationship between the political and military leadership of those times. The military complains about several decisions made by Nehru, such as the delay to militarize the nation’s borders and his belief in the Communist regime of China. Nehru, who had travelled to China in 1953, had extended his hand for friendship and was reciprocated by Chinese Prime Minister Chou En-lai’s visit to India. However, the unsettled borders ended in a military conflict, with China capturing parts of Changthang. Therefore, the 1962 war is considered an educative experience for both the military and political leadership in India. However, the military is left most of the time to take its own independent decisions when it comes to border issues in part because the Indian military won the 1965 war with Pakistan, immediately after its loss to China. Therefore, issues of border control evidence reluctance on the military’s part to coordinate with the civil authorities on any matter.

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period a regiment of the Indian army arrived in Korzok to conduct a military recce in the

nearby areas. I asked the Commanding Officer (CO) of the regiment, if there were any

particular reasons for their regiment to establish an altogether separate camp for their

soldiers rather than choosing to accommodate them at an already established camp of the

ITBP. He remarked on the meager resources assigned to the ITBP and suggested it would

not be conceivable for a minor post like ITBP to satisfy his regiment’s needs. During

several other conversations, the CO made it clear to me that the ITBP basically is an

insignificant police force and not an extensive army. He emphasized the role of the ITBP

is only to keep vigil, whereas the army has a more serious and superior role to protect the

nation from an enemy through combat and mechanized force.

The conservation activities accomplished by the military, such as protecting the nesting

sites of Black-necked crane and being part of wildlife surveys, among others, are mostly

achieved by the ITBP soldiers. The Indian army with its administration running parallel to

that of the ITBP means that it does not seem to be engaged in conservation practices in

Changthang. Given the scale of both strategic forces, it is evident in Changthang that it is

the Indian army’s operations which have the extensive infrastructure and therefore also

the impact on the environment and wildlife conservation. Therefore, the ITBP’s

involvement in conservation practices conveniently benefits the entire military in

maintaining a public image of being environmentally conscious. The massive Indian army,

on the other hand, remains exempted to act in accordance with an altogether

contradictory perspective for Changthang frontiers.

Conclusion

Pearson (2012:119) says that military environmentalism is a well-known field of enquiry in

the western world, where ‘the assumption that military training and activity is compatible,

even beneficial to the preservation and protection for rare species and habitats, because it

keeps intensive agriculture, urbanization and tourism at bay’. Pearson (2012:119) argues

that seeing the military as new defenders of wildlife or taking a pro-conservation historical

perspective has also become common. He cites authors such as Francois Reitel (1994)

who ‘contends that military-motivated forest conservation in nineteenth century France

turned the military into proto-ecologists’ (Reitel 1994, cited in Pearson 2012:119). The

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analysts hailing from institutes such as the US Strategic Studies of the US Army War

College have claimed that the ‘military is good for the environment because of its

leadership, vision, resources, size and environmental programs’ (Pearson 2012:119). In

contrast, a range of scholars and environmentalists has also observed military

environmental records critically. Pearson refers to Seager’s (1993) dismissal of the role of

the military in environmental protection. As Seager asserts, ‘whether at peace or at war,

militaries are the biggest threat to the environmental welfare of our planet’ (Seager 1993,

cited in Pearson 2012:119). Military environmentalism is even termed as a ‘cynical

exercise’ by scholars such as Adria Parr (2009), who thinks such military projects are ‘only

used to conceal the fact that the effects of military power are fundamentally unsustainable’

(Parr 2009, cited in Pearson 2012:119). There is also an understanding amongst the

scholars that the military respects the environment as long as its operational capability is

maintained. Rachel Woodward’s (2012) insightful analysis goes beyond merely looking at

the military’s environmental record as being destructive or beneficial, but instead attempts

to cast it as a political project. While engaging discourse analysis to consider the political

function of khaki conservation, Woodward’s (2012:206) analysis presents military

expositions that try to naturalize the military presence in the countryside through a

discourse of paternalism in land management, which prioritizes the military as the most

effective custodian of specific landscape types in Britain. This is similar to the context of

Changthang where the Inner line Area Policy accords the policies of the Indian military

precedence over any other priority.

The Indian military is a critical stakeholder in Changthang. How it constitutes its response

to environmental conservation illustrates the complex nature of claims made on the

Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary. Though retaining a screen of military environmentalism,

the kinds of alliances the military enters into in order to sustain its control over

Changthang are a reflection of such complexities. The unwillingness of the military to

liaise with the civil authorities, either by not finding an alternative site for their ITBP post

or through their denotification of the sanctuary for road construction, also points towards

those military aspects, which are usually ignored in the project of military

environmentalism. Similarly, by using the ITBP as a representative military organization to

conduct conservation activities, the military attempts to conceal the massive

environmental impact of rest of the military. Such practices demonstrate the political

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nature of military environmentalism and make a valid case for looking critically into how

environmentalism has become a natural military activity.

The ‘contingent patterns of omissions and exclusions’ in the discourse of military

environmentalism lend power to the military organization and conceal that military

environmentalism is basically a project of legitimacy (Baviskar 2007:291). Therefore, in

Changthang military environmentalism cannot be abstracted from the context of what the

military is for, or the power it enjoys in the frontier regions, which ultimately gives it basic

form and reason.

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Chapter 8

Conclusion

The dynamics of resource conflict are not insightfully explicable through a limited optic

of ‘parks versus people’ or ‘vicious state and virtuous communities’. The Indian Supreme

Court’s notification to settle local rights over the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary, for

example, has generated a range of complex responses, including the construction of

alignments and oppositions around it, pursued by multiple actors in ways that no

dichotomizing analysis could capture. These complexities and contentions are essential

components of the wider political identity of the Changthang landscape, as enmeshed in

historical trade, nomadic pastoralism, wars, militarization and tourism. By turning away

from the mediation of State/Community narratives, this thesis has attempted to engage

with those contested grounds of the resource conflict around the Changthang Wildlife

Sanctuary in ways that reveal how basic assumptions about community, State, and

conservation are constantly produced and contested.

As with any resource, there are multiple meanings that have been attached to Changthang,

as rendered by a range of State and non–State actors at different times in separate ways. I

have purposely drawn a focus upon the various efforts made at different times by the

State to reorganize, monitor and develop Changthang as a frontier. This focus has

brought a whole new angle and nuance to the way State and Community relationship can

be grasped and understood in Changthang. From the time that the authority of the

Rupshu gowa was established and granted to him by the Ladakh state, it is evident through

the subsequent historical trajectory how Changthang has acted as a frontier of control.

Several peace treaties settling the borders between Ladakh and Tibet in Changthang

produced a range of sanctions and profits from the valuable pashmina trade, which have

continued to enmesh local Changpa nomads and the successive regimes controlling

Ladakh. The absence of cultivation in Changthang has influenced the way local Changpa

nomads have journeyed outside or welcomed traders on their pasturelands to ensure a

regular supply of cultivated goods. The Kashmir Game Preservation Department during

the Dogra rule also drew up specific regulations controlling hunting of the local wildlife in

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Changthang in order to preserve game hunting for British colonial men in Changthang.

For almost 400 years the identity and organization of the Changpa nomads has been

constantly influenced through by the gaze of the State; they have not been isolated and

external to the State but have remained an integral part of it.

During postcolonial times, once having become an integral part of the Indian State in

1947, Changthang was constituted as an exclusive military zone, entailing the closing of

borders for pashmina trade between Ladakh and Tibet, after the 1962 war with China.

Such policies as the declaration of the Inner Area Line drew into the region new actors,

such as the Indian army, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police and the central ministries of

Home Affairs and Defence. The advent of centralized actors and the re-arrangement of

this region deemed integral to the structure of the Indian State-system constituted

Changthang on India’s map as a border between India and China. In the context of this

border designation, the State once again re-arranged the Changpa nomads’ relationships

with their natural resources and directed the processes through which the region would

appear to the outside world. This time the State brought infrastructure development and

provisions, such as Public Distribution Supplies, to the doorsteps of the Changpa

nomads, as well as responding to the livestock mortality causing distress after a heavy

winter snowfall-all evidence of State support and development. However, the

accompanying State territorialization process had by that time rendered the local nomadic

Changpa campsites as fixed villages, seeking to transform the Changpa identity as a social

group produced by the classificatory government project. It is around this time that the

conservationists’ interests expanded to include Changthang in the portfolio of Indian

protected areas that had emerged out of the royal game hunting reserves of the

precolonial and British colonial period. This move recast Changthang as a frontier of

conservation by declaring it as a wildlife sanctuary, which not only brought Changpa

nomads into the conservation fold, but broadcast essentialized images and simplistic

conclusions about their pastoral livelihoods. As one of the central foci of my thesis, I

have emphasized how such images have figured in the conservationists’ discourse and

been propagated through community-based tourism programmes.

As it is known that the intrinsic link between conservation and community is revealed in

the tendency to delineate community from anything that is beyond it in conservation

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discourse. To understand how conservation and communities came to develop this link in

Changthang, I have critically looked at how the concept of community figures in the

conservation agenda for Changthang. These conservationist’s assertions have painted a

picture of the Changpa community as having lived harmoniously with the Changthang

environment somewhere in a distant past, constructing their research conclusions around

producing images of self sufficiency as an integral part of local pastoral livelihoods. The

idea of community self-sufficiency in a subsistence orientation is produced, as Li (2001)

has noted, with the intent of delineating the community from the market. Such an image

is not an error made in haste, but has the aim of seeking to curtail production for any

purpose other than subsistence, in accordance with conservationists’ assumptions

concerning local people in the conservation area. In contrast, the Changpa’s rich past of

engagements with the State and the prevalence of trade in pashmina, extending beyond

the Ladakh state, draws a picture of them as people who have historically defined their

livelihoods and environment with an eye to connections beyond their region. However,

the biologists’ eyes miss that in the hope of seeing Changthang through the lens of

‘wilderness’. They continue to insist on conservation policies that, instead of including

Changpa nomads in the fullness of their economic and cultural endeavours seek to

portray them as having lived an imagined or even mythical life of isolation.

Therefore, the misconception of community that such an image produces has become

evident in the community-based tourism project conservationists have promoted. The

reliance by the conservation NGOs on the shortcut of dealing with existing administrative

units and thus applying an over homogenized imagination of community has, in fact,

exacerbated the divide between the Changpa nomads and the sedentary inhabitants of the

Korzok settlement and others. Korzok, which has ‘come to take on an appearance of

completeness or autonomy’ (Li 2003:165) is mistaken as a locus representing all the

Changpa nomadic families. This process has revealed how tenuous the construction of

community is, as it needs to be constantly sustained and reinforced for conservation

purposes.

The role of metropolitan conservationists in framing the Changthang frontier as a

standard version of a protected area has been critical in policy design and implementation,

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but the contribution of this constituency to the politics and management of protected

areas has been largely overlooked in academic and policy literature. In regard to the

Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary, they have been opinion makers, policy drivers and

lobbyists in vigorously pursuing the wildlife conservation agenda. However, their absence

in depictions of the wildlife conservation debate in India has raised the likelihood of

conservation contestations continuing to be seen in oversimplified terms. In bringing

them into my analysis of State conservation in Changthang, I have observed how this

group is heterogeneous in nature, divisible into authoritarian conservationists,

conservation biologists, State bureaucrats and conservation professionals. Yet, despite this

diversity, they have uniformly proposed that Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary should

preferably be a people–free conservation area. The evolution of wildlife conservation

policy has seen this group playing a critical role, using means such as science and law to

take forward their conservation agenda. This group has rationalized their viewpoint

through a moral discourse of conservation as a common good; however, they themselves

have mostly remained shielded from any detrimental effect of conservation policies in

their daily lives. By registering this group as a contributor to conservation discourses and

ultimately to policy implementation, I seek to bring nuance and a new angle to the analysis

of the resource conflicts around the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary.

In order to provide a broader perspective upon the conflicts around protected areas, my

research has problematized the way State and Society receive their simplistic treatment in

the conservation discourse. In my analytical chapters (Chapters 5, 6, and 7) I have

focussed on a set of three selected alliances and collaborations that present a terrain of

multiplicity and complexity in the negotiations that takes place around the Changthang

Wildlife Sanctuary. Through this, I have intended to capture the richness and specificity

of the resource struggles in order to characterize the complex symbolic dimensions

integral to any resource. In my case studies these explicit collaborations and implied

alignments amongst the multiple actors do not necessarily imply a common view of these

collaborations and alignments; rather, the diversity of motivations and strategies are what

allow these collaborations to work, constituting a culturally fertile terrain where subject

matters of development, backwardness, conservation, militarization, authority and control

are imagined and appropriated.

197  

The alignment that is the focus of my first case study (Chapter 5), involves an explicit

negotiation of the Changpa nomads and the paramilitary force of ITBP to collaborate on

building a border post on the traditional land that happens to be on the shores of a

protected wetland that is part of the notified Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary. The civil-

military relations between the local people and the Indian military are not new in the

context of Changthang, where the military has been acquiring traditional land on lease

through formal administrative procedures with the consent of the land owners. The

supremacy accorded the military by the Inner Line Area policy and its increased

involvement in planning and managing development in Changthang play an important

role in encouraging such civil-military relationships there. I have detailed how the

construction of the ITBP border post, which gained the consent of the local Changpa

nomads, has undermined the power of the Department of Wildlife Protection to make

conservation a highly coercive agenda as has been the case in other places (Neumann

1998). In this respect, the local Korzok residents have capitalized on the resultant

fragmentation of the State by collaborating with the ITBP and securing their own access

to the sanctuary. Therefore, this alignment also represents how, despite an overlap

between its status as a frontier of control and a frontier of conservation, Changthang

continues to sustain its identity as a frontier of control.

The second case study (Chapter 6) focuses on the collaborations that have been

formalized, though not in an explicit fashion, between the Korzok residents and the

Department of Wildlife Protection (DoWP). This alliance has been made possible by the

dual embeddedness of the lower bureaucracy, whose members sit in the ‘twilight zone’

between State and Society (Vasan 2003). Through this case study I explore the differences

between how DoWP makes its appearance through symbols, texts and iconography and

the way it appears in everyday and localized forms, where it is essentially enmeshed within

the local sphere of the Changpa nomads. Implicit in this discussion is how such

collaborations are, in fact, required by the DoWP in order to be able to implement

wildlife conservation policy in Changthang. This case study thus reveals the need to re-

evaluate the assumption of the State’s autonomy and separation from the community in

conservation discourse. In the case of Changthang local politicians have not only co-

opted the State agenda, but have also transgressed against it in exercizing their influence.

198  

The Korzok elites have used their connections to liaise with senior politicians in order to

implement local development considered detrimental to the sanctuary’s health by the

DoWP, thus demonstrating the intricacies of the implementation process of the State

conservation policy. The denotification of part of the sanctuary in 2009 through

collaboration between ITBP and the Ministry of Environment and Forest also

demonstrates how the State in Changthang is multi-layered. State departments and other

units of policy delivery do sometimes act at cross-purposes, thus dissipating the power of

DoWP to implement conservation policy.

The last case study concerns how military environmentalism feeds on the partnership that

the Indian military has made with the conservation NGOs operating in Changthang and

also with environmentalist ideology. This collaboration reveals how the military has been

successful in accomplishing better control of the borders by projecting a positive public

image acquired through this collaboration. This environmental collaboration between the

two is, of course symbiotic, but for military it has emerged as a product of the need to

respond to the increased public debate on demilitarization and due to an increased

scrutiny of its environmental record. In this collaboration, instead of guarding the borders

solely with guns and ammunition, the military engages itself in the protection of the

environment, as in the case of monitoring the Black-necked crane nesting habitats.

However, this spectacle engineered by the military also tries to conceal the military’s

actual aim in Changthang, where denotification of part of Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary

has also been necessary for its accommodation on the landscape, thus demonstrating how

military environmentalism in Changthang is political in ways that are not self-evident.

A focus on these selected alliances and collaborations reveals how the implementation of

wildlife conservation policy is a dynamic and complex case of negotiation and

maneuvering amongst its multiple actors. Through presenting a more nuanced account

based on the perspective of cultural politics, I have challenged those essentializations that

occupy a privileged position in the planning and management of conservation in

Changthang. Therefore, by moving away from seeing community as traditional, backward

and parochial and positing the State as autonomous and authoritative, my research

199  

underscores the fact that it is only through a broader perspective that complexities and

contingencies involved in any resource conflict are exposed.

By seeking to transcend polarization in conservation debate, my research has emphasized

how State wildlife conservation is actually carried out in Changthang, involving a complex

interaction between the State and non-State actors. At this stage not all actors in

Changthang acknowledge the complexity and contentiousness of the way conservation is

shaped on the grounds, and the conservation debate in India remains painstakingly

polarized mostly viewed through the framework of ‘parks versus people’. With the recent

introduction of the 2006 Forest Rights Act tensions amongst the staunch conservators

and the forest people have surfaced once again, as elite conservationists have not

supported such progressive changes in the management of forests and pastures in India.

The polarized terrain of conservation continues to engender an atmosphere that results in

those actors espousing an overt engagement with conservation and environmentalist goals

and achieving purposes that undermine a balanced conservation approach in places like

the Changthang frontier.

200  

 

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Appendix Peace Treaty Between Ladakh and Tibet at Tingmosgang (1684)

PEACE TREATY BETWEEN LADAKH AND TIBET (van Praag 1987)

AT TINGMOSGANG 1684

The Drukpa (red sect) Omniscient Lama, named My-pham-wang-po, who in his former incarnations had always been the patron Lama of the kings of Ladak, from generation to generation, was sent from Lhasa to Tashis-gang, to arrange the conditions of a treaty of peace, for the Ladak king could never refuse to abide by the decision of the Omniscient One. It was agreed as follows:

1. The boundaries fixed, in the beginning, when king Skyed-Ida-ngeema-gon gave a kingdom to each of his three sons, shall still be maintained.

2. Only Ladakis shall be permitted to enter into Ngarees-khor-sum wool trade.

3. No person from Ladak, except the royal trader of the Ladak Court, shall be permitted to enter Rudok.

4. A royal trader shall be sent by the Deywa Zhung (i.e. the Grand Lama of Lhasa), from Lhasa to Ladak, once a year, with 200 horse-loads of tea.

5. A "Lo-chhak" shall be sent every third year from Leh to Lhasa with presents. As regards the quality and value of presents brought for all ordinary Lamas, the matter is of no consequence, but to the Labrang Chhakdzot shall be given the following articles, viz:

(a) Gold dust - the weight of 1 zho 10 times.

(b) Saffron - the weight of 1 srang (or thoorsrang) 10 times.

(c) Yarkhand cotton cloths - 6 pieces. (d) Thin cotton cloth - 1 piece.

The members of the Lapchak Mission shall be provided with provisions, free of cost, during their stay at Lhasa, and for the journey they shall be similarly provided with 200 baggage animals, 25 riding ponies, and 10 servants. For the uninhabited portion of the journey, tents will be supplied for the use of the Mission.

6. The country of Ngaress-khor-sum shall be given to the Omniscient Drukpa Lama, Mee-pham-wang-po, and in lieu thereof the Deywa Zhung will give to the Ladak king three other districts (in Great Tibet).

7. The revenue of the Ngarees-khor-sum shall be set aside for the purpose of defraying the cost of

sacrificial lamps, and of religious ceremonies to be performed at Lhasa.

8. But the king of Ladak reserves to himself the village (or district?) of Monthser (i.e. Minsar) in Ngarees-khor-sum, that he may be independent there; and he sets aside its revenue for the purpose of meeting the expense involved in keeping up the sacrificial lights at Kang-ree (i.e. Kailas), and the Holy Lakes of Manasarwar and Rakas Tal.

With reference to the first clause of the treaty, it may be explained that, roughly speaking, king Skyed-Ida-ngeema-gon gave the following territories to his sons:

a. To the eldest son - The countries now know as Ladak and Purig extending from Hanley on the east to the Zojila Pass on the west, and including Rudok and the Gogpo gold district.

b. To the second son - Goo gey, Poorang and certain other small districts.

c. To the third son - Zangskar, Spiti, and certain other small districts.