Abdul Ghani Sheikh, one of Ladakh’s foremost writers and historians, was officially recorded as being born on 5 March 1936. He believed, however, that he was older. His reasoning stemmed from the birth of his elder sister Fatima, who had been born on the same day as Dr Karan Singh, the son of the Maharaja of Jammu. According to their parents, Abdul Ghani was two and a half years younger than Fatima. Dr Karan Singh’s birth on 9 March 1931 had been a day of celebration in Leh, especially in Wazir Bagh where the old tehsil office would stand for many years after Independence. The occasion was marked with the lighting of lamps and cannon fire from the Leh Palace.
Some of Ghani’s earliest memories are of being carried by his father to football matches at Shagaran, a ground used for much of the time for polo. Later he watched polo there before matches moved first to the middle of Leh Bazaar and then, after that custom ended, to the present Polo Ground. His boyhood world was changing, and with it his daily life. As a child he attended the Leh Government Middle School, which stood just before Balkhang on the left when approaching from Mani Tsilding. A little further along, on the right, was the Charas Building, the large residence of the Charas Officer. In those years Charas imported from Central Asia was among the most prized northern commodities to reach India. The Charas Building had many unused rooms that were converted into additional classrooms for the middle school, whose own structure was small. Teachers included both Ladakhi Buddhists and Muslims, although the headmaster was always a pandit from Jammu. Urdu and Bhoti were taught from the first year, while English was introduced only in Standard Five. This was Leh in the late 1930s and the mid 1940s, a town without electricity. Power did not arrive until the 1960s. Until then Ladakhi homes were lit with lamps fuelled by kerosene and sometimes mustard oil, placed high on the walls. Ghani remembered the strain these lamps put on the eyes.
Wazir Bagh was then the centre of official life, housing the Wazir and his staff. The arrival of the Wazir or of the British Joint Commissioner were among the grandest official events of the year. As a schoolboy Ghani was sometimes selected to welcome these dignitaries, dressed in boy scout uniform and carrying a stick. Women in ceremonial attire lined the road from Mani Tsilding to Balkhang, holding the kalchor. To prepare for such occasions a watchman was posted where he could see the Tairey Rong near Sabu. Once he sighted the approaching entourage he would run back to Leh to give the signal and the town would ready itself.
The dignitary arrived from the Mani Tsilding side, greeted first by women with kalchor and then by boy scouts standing on both sides of the road. The scouts chanted “Hip Hip Hurray” in unison as the party entered Leh Bazaar near Balkhang. The day after the arrival a second function would be held inside Wazir Bagh. The British Joint Commissioner usually remained in Leh for two or three months. Ghani remembers an incidence when on arrival he dismounted, removed his hat, greeted the children, and proceeded to Wazir Bagh for a modest welcome of song and dance. Officials were widely respected. If a tehsildar entered the bazaar a man would run ahead to alert people to stand and greet him. The Wazir and the Joint Commissioner were rarely seen in the market. Ghani remembered seeing the last Wazir in 1946 and 1947 inside Wazir Bagh.
Equally vivid in his memory was Ladakhi Losar, when the King came from Stok and stayed in Leh for at least three days of festivities. The ritual of welcoming the King began along the route from Stok. By the time the horse convoy reached the Leh Palace it could number about a hundred animals. After palace celebrations the King would come down to Leh Bazaar, where he owned a property called the Zhimskhang. From the rabsal of the Zhimskhang overlooking the bazaar the King and Queen watched a ceremonial horse race or procession from the Old Bazaar to the New Bazaar. The British had named the latter Victoria Bazaar around 1901. The procession was led by the Lardak family, with the final rider in the line was called the Chipyukpa.
Beyond festivals, Leh was a hub of trade. Kashmiris crossed Zojila, Tibetans followed the Indus River into India, and Central Asians came over Karakoram La. Salt, Ghani recalled, always came from the east and was sold in the Leh market by Changpas. At the edge of Balkhang stood a gate with a small office above it. Another gate at Chubi performed a similar function. Both served as registration points for visitors, with Chubi Gate used especially for recording Central Asian Hor traders from Yarkand who crossed the Karakoram Pass into Ladakh.
The Hors typically arrived in September and stayed for less than two months. Although the Karakoram Pass could be traversed year-round, the principal trading season was short. In Leh the Hors lodged in two sarais. One stood at the site of the present police station near Karzoo and a smaller sarai lay near Zangsti, now the site of a parking lot and public toilet. As a boy Ghani once ventured into the Karzoo sarai. The Hors were striking in their fine, distinctive clothing and they carried goods much sought after in the market. Ghani learned a few words of their language because his father, Kadir Sheikh, owned a dry fruits stall and often received their visits.
Tobacco was among the most prized items. Some tobacco came from Kashmir, while the Hors brought tobacco leaves from Central Asia. Local traders blended the two varieties and sold them to both Ladakhis and Hors. These blends were known as tamak, sotak, and natak and were often kept in a small case called the kapak. Charas from Central Asia, sent onwards to Indian cities such as Amritsar, was also sold locally and many in Leh became addicted. Bhaang from Punjab was likewise part of the trading circuit and was sent on to Central Asia.
The Hors brought chakmen, a cotton cloth used for shirts and trousers and preferred by some over nambu, the locally woven wool fabric. They also carried carpets, turquoise for Ladakhi peraks, and live sheep sold for meat. Ghani remembered wearing a chappan a gown similar to the ladakhi Kos bought from the Hors that for a time became fashionable among Nubrapas. The head of the caravan, called the bhai, owned the animals, often fifty or sixty horses along with camels, and was assisted by a team that tended to the loads and beasts. The Karakoram route also served Central Asian Muslims bound for the Hajj, who travelled via Kashmir to Bombay and then by ship to Mecca and Medina.
Amid these trade exchanges Ghani recalled one lesser known episode in modern Ladakhi history. Around 1942 or 1943 thousands of Kazaks showed up at Ladakh arriving from the Demchok side. Political refugees fleeing persecution in Central Asia, they had been refused entry into Nepal from the Guge and Purang side and entered India only to be halted at the frontier. Leh then had about fifty soldiers under Major Abdul Hameed. The Kazaks, numbering in the thousands and still armed, at first refused to surrender their weapons. It was only through the persuasion of the local patwari, Ba Hukam Deen of Thiksey, that they agreed to hand them over. Ghani remembered seeing the surrendered guns carried away on horseback to the government stores. The Kazaks were housed briefly near Akling and Skara, camping in what is now the Shunu family home. In their desperation some sold goats for as little as one rupee, animals reportedly taken from Tibetan nomads during their flight. That winter they were moved to Kashmir.
The period before independence of 1947 was also the era when the administrative headquarters of Ladakh shifted seasonally from Leh to Skardu for six months each year. Ghani experienced this movement within his own household. His brother Deen Mohammad Sheikh, a clerk with the Wazir, was transferred to Skardu every winter. Two other clerks, Ghulam Nabi Hamam and Munshi Ghulam Mohammad Tak, were close friends of Deen Mohammad. Each October the darbar, consisting of the Wazir and his staff, left for Skardu and returned in April. They were joined in summer by office staff from Skardu.
Partition in 1947 brought personal tragedy. When the borders closed Deen Mohammad and many members of the Leh darbar were stranded in Skardu, among them a Buddhist staff member whose name Ghani could not recall. Nearly thirty years later, after retiring in Skardu, Deen made a short visit to Leh. It was an emotional reunion. He had settled in Skardu with his family. When news of his visit spread the father of the Buddhist staff member came to see him. Deen told him that his son was alive and living far from Skardu and that whenever he visited the town he would call on Deen. The father entrusted Deen with gifts to pass on.
By 1948 Leh entered a new era. That year Ghani and other Ladakhis witnessed the landing of the first aircraft, soon followed by the arrival of the first motor vehicle. The first motorable road from the airport to Wazir Bagh in leh bazaar was built immediately after the plane’s landing. Ghani and the other children were playing at Shagaran when they saw in the distance a black noisy object moving like a strange animal. They chased it until it reached the market, where they saw the first jeep in Ladakh.
In the years that followed, national leaders began to visit Ladakh. In 1949, Ghani recalled being at Choglamsar with his friends during the Hemis Tsechu, enjoying a picnic and a swim in the Indus, when Jawaharlal Nehru, on his way back from Hemis, stopped at Choglamsar and even took a ride in a local kisti boat. He also recalled Atal Bihari Vajpayee then as a member of the Jan Sagh visiting Leh as part of a parliamentary delegation after a law and order incident. The delegation’s report prompted several welfare initiatives aimed at peace and harmony in the town.
Among the many queries the author put to Aba Ghani Sheikh, two stood out: the location of a place called Gulab Baghand the house of a trader named Nazeer Shah.
It is recorded that William Henry Johnson, the legendary Wazir of Ladakh, was responsible for constructing many buildings across the region, including his own residence, the first modern Ladakhi house, on a site called Gulab Bagh. Johnson, regarded as one of the most celebrated surveyors of the Great Trigonometrical Survey (now the Survey of India), is also famed for the “Johnson Line” in Aksai Chin. He later became the only second British Wazir of Ladakh, a position he held for more than a decade. While in Ladakh, Johnson married a Ladakhi Muslim woman as his first wife, and they had a son. Their descendants remain part of a distinguished family in Leh and Hundar. Johnson’s grandson still lives in the Chutey Rantak area of Leh, and over the course of three years the author interviewed him and traced an extensive family pedigree.
Yet the author was unable to locate Gulab Bagh. According to Ghani, it was almost certainly near Mangla Bagh in Skara, rather than in Leh, where the author had been searching. As for Nazeer Shah, Hedin described him as a wealthy local trader whose house was full of precious goods and from whose upper storeys the Indus could be seen. The author had assumed the house was in Chushot, a natural location for a riverside merchant’s residence. Ghani revealed, however, that Nazeer Shah’s house stood in the middle of Leh Bazaar and belonged to the Radhu family. The site today houses a restaurant that still bears the family name. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Leh had few tall buildings and no trees to obstruct the view, so from the upper storeys of the tallest houses the Indus could indeed be seen.
Decades of accumulated knowledge distilled into a few hours inevitably leave much unsaid about Aba Abdul Gani Sheikh le,who leaves behind a rich oeuvre of prose and poetry , a legacy for future researchers of Ladakh.
The following is a selection of works taken from:
Source; https://ladakhstudies.org/2024/08/26/abdul-ghani-sheikh-and-the-ials/
1995. “A Brief History of Muslims in Ladakh.” In Recent Research on Ladakh 4 & 5, pp. 189-192. Edited by Henry Osmaston and Philip Denwood. London: School of Oriental and African Studies; Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
1996. “Some Wellknown Adventurers of Ladakh.” In Recent Research on Ladakh 6, pp. 231-238. Edited by Henry Osmaston and Nawang Tsering. Bristol: Bristol University Press; Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
1997. “Ladakh’s Relations with Central Asia.” In Recent Research on Ladakh 7, pp.447-456. Edited by Thierry Dodin and Heinz Räther. Ulmer Kulturanthropologische Schriften Band 8. Ulm: Abteilung Anthropologie, Universität Ulm.
1999. “Economic Conditions in Ladakh during the Dogra Period.” In Ladakh: Culture, History and Development, between Himalaya and Karakoram. Recent Research on Ladakh 8, pp. 339-349. Edited by Martijn van Beek, Kristoffer Brix Bertelsen and Poul Pedersen. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.
2007. “Transformation of Kuksho Village.” In Recent Research on Ladakh 7, pp. 163-170. Edited by John Bray and Nawang Tsering Shakspo. Leh: Jammu & Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture & Languages.
2009. “Kargil from the Perspective of Historical Travellers and Government Officials.” In Recent Research on Ladakh 2009, pp. 39-45. Edited by Monisha Ahmed & John Bray. Kargil & Leh: International Association of Ladakh Studies.
2009. “The Traditions of Sufism in Ladakh.” In Mountains, Monasteries and Mosques. Recent Research on Ladakh and the Western Himalaya, pp. 131-139. Edited by John Bray & Elena De Rossi Filibeck. Supplement No. 2 to Rivista degli Studi Orientali 80 (New Series). Pisa & Rome: Sapienza, Università di Roma, Dipartimento di Studi Orientali.
* This interview was conducted on the 1st of July, 2024 at his home at Yasmeen Hotel, few weeks before Aba Ghani Sheikh le passed away.
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