NEW DELHI, Jan 18:
A tribe of Jammu and Kashmir’s Ladakh region has demanded that the Centre make serious interventions to help it preserve its cultural heritage, which, experts say, is under threat due to rapid “modernisation, migration and religious conversion”.
Members of the Dard Aryan tribe submitted a charter of demands to Minister of State for Tribal Affairs Sudarshan Bhagat today.
The tribe, inhabiting Dha, Hanu, Beema, Darchik and Garkone villages in Leh and Kargil districts, claims to be the descendants of “pure Aryan race”. Many researchers believe they are the descendants of Alexander, an official of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) said.
“The villages are together called the Aryan valley. The people of the region are completely different from those in other parts of Ladakh. The community prohibits marriage with outsiders to keep the gene pool intact. Of late, the Dard men are marrying outside the tribe,” the official said.
The tribe is considered “threatened” due to their depleting numbers, which, at present, is around 4,000. They are mainly dependent on agriculture and are “educationally and economically backward”, he said.
The Dard Aryans do not document their history and they have carried forward their cultural legacy orally. Most of them have embraced Islam or Buddhism and modernisation has had a negative impact on their traditions, he claimed.
Members of the tribe — participating in a six-day festival, ‘Celebrating Dard Aryans of Ladakh’, here — claimed that there were only three high schools in their villages and very limited resources of livelihood.
As such, they have no option but to migrate to cities. They demanded that the government set up a tribal hostel in the region and declare the Aryan valley a heritage village.
“So far, the government has not been able to anything for the Dard Aryans. Its policies and programmes have failed to reach them. Not many people in the country know about the tribe, which is considered threatened,” Virendra Bangroo, an INGCA scholar, said.
“We are making an effort to help these people preserve their culture and tradition, which is under threat due to modernisation, migration, and conversion,” Bangroo added. (PTI)
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