Dalai Lama lauds Buddhists and Muslims pledging religious harmony in Zanskar/ENG

2018. július 24./Phayul.com/TibetPress

eredeti cikk

By Tenzin Dharpo

DHARAMSHALA, July 24: The bond in the Buddhist majority Zanskar region between Muslims and Buddhists may be on the road to recovery with representatives from the two faiths pledging interfaith harmony in the presence of the Tibetan leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama on Monday.

Buddhists and Muslims in Zanksar region presented a letter to the Tibetan leader, pledging to move on from the past six years of communal tension and promoting interfaith friendship between the two communities that have seen conflicts in the past. The 83 year old Tibetan leader who champions religious harmony as one of his commitments appreciated the effort from both faith groups.

“We owe it completely to His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s vision and compassion for enabling us to reach this milestone and for this, we remain forever indebted,” Gulam, a spokesperson for the Muslim community, told the official website of the CTA, Tibet.Net.

While relations between the two faiths in Zanskar have comparatively been that of peace in the last few years, communal tension and confrontations took place in September 2012 when some Buddhists converted to Islam. Kashmir Dispatch reported that the Zanskar Buddhist Association which suspected the conversions to be ‘forced’, threatened riots and observed all educational and commercial establishments closed for days.

In Leh, communal tension hit its peak in the 1980’s; In July 1989 a scuffle between some Buddhist and Muslim youth led to confrontations in Leh town, which later spread to other parts of Ladakh. Consequently, the Ladakh Buddhist Association imposed a social and economic boycott on the Muslim population which was lifted in 1992 after intervention from the central government.

Among the two districts of Ladakh, Kargil is a Muslim majority district with Buddhists accounting for less than 15% of the local population while Muslims make up for over 76% of the total population. In contrast, Buddhists in Leh district made up the majority at 66.4%, followed by Hindus at 17.1% and then Muslims at 14.3%, according to government census of 2011.