A short distance from Leh, on the other side of the Indus river, is the sprawling village of Chushot, said to be the largest village in the Leh district. The majority of Chushot’s inhabitants are Balti Shi‘as. Chushot boasts of a centuries-old Shi‘a imambara, a congregational hall dedicated to the twelve Shi‘a Imams. The structure has recently been renovated in a decidedly Iranian mode, although a few traces of its earlier traditional Ladakhi appearance are still visible. Inside, the pillared hall is decorated with thick Persian-style carpets, black flags with Arabic slogans embroidered on them, and pictures of the Ayatollah Khomeini and other such Iranian religious leaders.

A turbaned Shi‘a cleric stands before a podium delivering an impassioned address, while a large crowd of villagers sits below in rapt attention. It is the birthday of Imam Husain, the martyred grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, and a majlis, a gathering in honour of the Imam is underway. The cleric repeats his point over and over again, about the bravery of the Imam and the tyranny of his killers and so on, till the crowd is driven to loud sobs. The majlis continues for well over two hours and is then followed by a community feast.

The crowd makes its way out of the imambara, and on the steps I meet Hasan, a Balti college student. We walk down to the Indus nearby, and settle down on a sand-dune in the sun. I ask him to tell me about the history of the imambara. It was built a long time ago, he says, but no one knows when exactly. However, he says he has heard of a miracle associated with the shrine, familiar to almost every denizen of Chushot, which he proceeds to relate. Once, he tells me, some dacoits attempted to loot the famous Hemis gonpa, the largest monastery in all Ladakh. They were foiled in this when a range of high mountains suddenly appeared in front of them, blocking entrance into the monastery. The dacoits were then forced to change their plans. They headed towards Chushot, in order to raid the imambara, but when they approached the shrine the Indus river suddenly rose to surround it on all four sides. Just then, Staksan Rinpoche, the head lama of Hemis, passed by and he saw two lions standing outside the imambara, drinking the water of the river so as to prevent it from entering the shrine. From then on, every year the lamas of Hemis sent tea, incense and oil as presents for the imambara. This practice, Hasan claims, carried on till 1989, when the LBA enforced the boycott of the Muslims. In the past, Hasan tells me, the local Buddhists would participate, generally as spectators, in the mourning rituals for Imam Husain at the imambara, but after 1989 this has sharply declined. However, local Buddhist government officials are still invited and some of them do attend.

Hasan is reluctant to speak about the boycott, and tells me that relations between Buddhists and Muslims are now almost ‘normal’. Most of Hasan’s friends are Buddhists. In fact, his mother’s side is partly Buddhist, and his Buddhist relatives often visit his home. Likewise, on festive occasions his family visit their Buddhist relatives, and on these occasions the latter make special arrangements for food to be prepared for them by a Muslim cook. Hasan tells me that he eats food cooked by non-Muslims when he travels out of Ladakh, but he pleads with me not to reveal this to anyone.

Hasan takes me with him to his home, and shows me his impressive collection of books. He hands me a set of issues of the Ladags Melong, Ladakh’s only English-language magazine, and explains that the magazine is a ‘secular voice’. Its editor, Sonam Wangchuk, is a Buddhist, and its two sub-editors, Muhammad Hasnain and Rebecca Norman, are probably, as their names suggest, a Muslim and a Christian respectively.

I skim through the issues of the magazine that Hasan hands me. Most of them deal with local development problems. There are some that deal with the question of Buddhist-Muslim relations, and I make a quick note of these in my diary. One issue highlights the Dalai Lama’s visit to mosques in Nubra and his public lectures, attended by Muslims and Buddhists, where he stressed the importance of communal harmony. Another issue carries an extensive interview with the late Kushok Bakula, a revered Buddhist monk and political leader, who is quoted as appealing to the Ladakhis ‘to be vigilant all the time of forces that seek to divide the Ladakhis in the name of religion and region. Buddhists and Muslims must remain united and maintain their traditional harmony’. A third issue contains a report of a peace rally jointly taken out by Buddhist and Muslim organisations in Leh to pressurise the Indian and Pakistani governments to defuse the tension along the border and to resolve the Kashmir issue through dialogue. Interestingly, several issues of the ‘Religion’ page magazine carry selections from the Ladakhi translation of selected verses of the Qur’an that has been jointly undertaken by a local maulvi and a lama.