Janet Rizvi’s Ladakh: Cross¬roads of High Asia has been prefaced as a background and introduction to Ladakh. It is divided into three main parts: the geographical, the past and the present. The book is based on her two-year stay (1976-78) in Ladakh where her husband was the Development Commis¬sioner. One is immediately struck by the intensity of her impressions and her abiding urge to assimilate as much as possible of that stark yet capti¬vating ampitheatre. The props have not changed very much, her enthusiasm is new—refe¬rences to Michel Peissel not-withstanding. Readers of his Zanskar—The Hidden King¬dom would recall page after page of outright misrepresenta¬tion of fact. He has done it again, via Time magazine of March 5, 1984, claiming to have disguised himself and crept into the forbidden ‘Dansar’ area of Kashmir to study the Minaro tribe—sup¬posedly Dard survivors of the early Aryans or descendants of Alexander’s troops. Expectedly, the Kashmir Government has refuted Peissel’s claim to having made such a trip as ‘baseless, ridiculous and laughable’. (Indian Express, March 15, 1984).
May-June 1984, volume 8, No 6