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Ladakh: Historical Background
For
close on 900 years from the middle of the 10th century, Ladakh was an
independent kingdom , its dynasties descending from the king of old Tibet.
Its political fortunes ebbed and flowed over the centuries, and the kingdom,
was at its greatest in the early 17th century under the famous king Sengge
Namgyal, whose rule extended across Spiti and western Tibet up to the
Mayumla beyond the sacred sites of Mount Kailash and Lake Mansarovar.
And
gradually, perhaps partly due to the fact that it was politically stable, in
contrast to the lawless tribes further west, Ladakh became recognized as the
best trade route between the Pubjab and Central Asia. For centuries it was
travered by caravans carrying textiles and spices, raw silk and carpets,
dyestuffs and narcotics. Heedless of the land's rugged terrain and apparent
remoteness, merchants entrusted their goods to relays of pony transporters
who took about two months to carry them from Amritsar to the Central Asian
towns of Yarkand and Knotan. On this long route, Leh was the half-way house,
and developed into a bustling entreport, it bazaars thronged with merchants
from far countries.
The famous pashm (better known as cashmere)
also came down from the high-altitude plateaux of eastern Ladakh and western
Tibet where it was produced, thorough Leh to Srinagar, where skilled
artisans transformed it from a matted oily mass of goat's underfleece into
shawls known the world over for their softness and warmth. Ironically, it
was this lucrative trade, that finally spelt the doom of the independent
kingdom. It attracted the covetous gaze of Gulab Singh, the ruler of Jammu
in the early 19th century, and in 1834, he sent his general Zorawar Singh to
invade Ladakh. Ther followed a decade of war and turmoil, which ended with
the emergence of the British as the paramount power in north India. Ladakh,
together with the neighboring province of Baltistan, was incorporated into
the newly created State of Jammu & Kashmir. Just over a century later,
this union was disturbed by the partition of India, Baltistan becoming part
of Pakistan, while Ladakh remained in India as part of the State of Jammu &
Kashmir.
