Aug
18
According to a senior and responsible army officer posted at the Siachen glacier, a point of conflict between India and Pakistan, the town of Leh in Ladakh sees the local residents getting violent twice a year on average. The issue: When a Muslim decides to, or already has, marry a Buddhist.
And this sentiment was echoed in many parts of Ladakh. In the town of Padum in the Zanskar Valley, a young student named Ghulam Ali Baig told me Muslim – Buddhist marriages are virtually unheard of. When couples do decide to go in for such inter-religion marriages, their only option it to quietly run away to another place like Leh or Jammu where no one knows them. The only mixed couple living in Padum are Ghulam’s own grandparents: his grandfather is Muslim. But that was many years ago when society was more moderate according to him.
Ghulam is a university student in Jammu, and was managing his uncle’s (father’s brother) cybercafé in Padum during the holidays when I met him. Violent trouble can happen when couples from the two religions decide to come together. The town of Padum, with a mixed population, is otherwise a peaceful place with the two communities living in harmony. It was actually sad to see society hardening its attitudes when we live in more liberal times, probably a direct fall-out of the global Muslim versus the Rest of the World politics of our times.
Even Rigzen, a young lama I met on the way from Kargil to Leh, said such inter-religious marriages are virtually unheard of.
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