The empire strikes back, from the smoking rubble of its ruins.

The divide and rule tactics of the British empire still cast their shadow after nearly a century over international politics

The Empire Strikes Back

A year and a half ago, me and my wife Estrella rode a Royal Enfield motorbike along the dusty road beside the Indus River in the Indian part of Kashmir, toward Srinagar, close to the Pakistani border. It was a memorable journey for several reasons. We had just spent a few weeks in Ladakh, around the capital Leh, in the predominantly Buddhist part of this Indian state, where we visited serene Buddhist monasteries, such as the one in Tikshey, where the Dalai Lama was a guest at the time, giving a series of lectures to crowds on festival grounds, as if he were a rock star. We saw farming families in traditional clothing descend en masse from their mountain villages to the valley to see the Dalai Lama and listen to his words of reconciliation, as his series of lectures was themed around ecumenism, which in this specific case meant coexistence with Islam, the other dominant religion in the region.

We ourselves listened in the Tikshey monastery at 5:30 am to the morning chants of the Buddhist monks and novices. On the monastery’s rooftop terrace, with a view of the city of Leh and the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas, we enjoyed the deep tones of the long traditional trumpets that three monks blew into the valley to call the villagers to morning prayer. In the spacious prayer hall, the monks then recited their monotonous prayers while their prayer wheels spun, and the young novices, barely ten years old, served Tsampa (roasted barley) and butter tea for breakfast. Visitors from all corners of the world are more than welcome here. The sacred atmosphere in the prayer hall contrasts with the playfulness of the novices, who don’t stop teasing each other during the prayer service, without being reprimanded by the older monks, who smile gently at the mischief the children get up to. Despite their playfulness, the novices don’t forget their tasks: stirring the drum on time, chanting along, and refilling tea.

Estrella and I think back with nostalgia to those mornings in the Tikshey monastery as we ride along the road by the Indus toward the west, in the shadow of the majestic K2 mountain to the north. While the landscape passes by, we also notice that the Buddhist stupas with their colorful prayer flags gradually give way to mosques, constructed from corrugated iron and equipped with large loudspeakers through which muezzins call to prayer. Large flags bearing a photo of Ayatollah Khomeini span the road.