Qurban Ali’s Legacy and the Partitions of Baltistan

Qurban Ali’s Legacy and the Partitions of Baltistan Saturday 31st October, 6.30 P.M.

On the night of 13th December 1971, people in the village of Turtuk, Baltistan, ‘went to sleep in Pakistan but woke up in Hindustan.’ The five border villages of Turtuk, Thyakshi, Thang, Pachathang and Chalungka, located in the Karakoram mountains, ‘entered’ India that week; they became a part of Ladakh, then two more Balti villages were joined to Kargil. Baltistan, once a vital part of the Indian imagination as well as trade routes to Central Asia, had become virtually sealed off from India in 1948 as the borders of India and Pakistan were imposed in this region. At this time the Balti people living in Kargil had been separated from their kin in the rest of Baltistan that had gone under the control of Pakistan. In 1965, the village of Hundarman, caught in the war between the two…