Auf der Flucht nach Liebe: Paar überbrückt eine buddhistisch-muslimische Kluft
Murtaza Agha, links und Stanzin Saldon bei einer Hochzeitsfeier, die von einem Freund in Kargil, Indien, veranstaltet wurde. Weil er aus einer muslimischen Familie stammt und aus einer buddhistischen Familie stammt, hat ihre Romanze die Region aufgeweckt. Kredit Kazym Syed
LADAKH-REGION, Indien – Vor einem Zinndachhaus mit dahinter aufragenden Himalaya-Bergen warteten rund 300 Hochzeitsgäste auf eine große grüne Wiese, die auf die Ankunft der Braut und des Bräutigams gespannt war.
Als das Paar auftauchte, formten die Gäste ein fröhliches Gedränge um sie herum und zerrten sie durch die Tür und ins Haus. Die Zimmer roch nach dem kommenden Fest: Tandoori Huhn, Salztee, frische Brötchen und saftiges Ziegenfleisch in Joghurt und Gewürzen gekocht.
Aber die gesamte Familie der Braut fehlte auffällig von der Party.
Die Braut, Stanzin Saldon, stammt aus einer buddhistischen Familie, und der Bräutigam Murtaza Agha ist ein Muslim. Beide wuchsen in Ladakh, einer abgelegenen Region von Jammu und Kashmir in Indien auf. Was passiert also hier, wenn eine buddhistische Frau für einen muslimischen Mann fällt? Chaos.
Die Romantik des jungen Paares hat Proteste hervorgebracht, Unternehmen geschlossen, Faustkämpfe verursacht und muslimische und buddhistische Führer gegeneinander ausgespielt . Die Polizei war gezwungen zu intervenieren, und so haben die Gerichte.
Mehrere Tage mussten die beiden sogar rennen. Sie fuhren im nahegelegenen Kashmir-Tal herum, das mit Militanten und Soldaten krabbelt, und sich besorgt darüber machen, zusammen gefangen zu sein.
Aber Frau Saldon, die von frischer Liebe erfüllt war, würde es wieder tun. “Wir haben Frieden in einer Konfliktregion gefunden”, sagte sie ernsthaft.
The Ladakh region is widely considered one of India’s most charming spots. The main town, Leh, feels like a glass museum case of traditional Buddhist culture delicately perched on a shelf high in the Himalayas. Each year, thousands of Indian and foreign tourists come here to stroll around the old Buddhist monasteries, take pictures of the saffron-robed monks and eat yak-cheese pizza.
In the west lies the mainly Muslim town of Kargil, where green-domed mosques rise behind stores with Arabic names. Taking Kargil and Leh together, this region’s population is around a quarter million, split roughly in half between Buddhists and Muslims, along with a few Hindus.
In Leh, Buddhist women grumble that there aren’t enough Buddhist menaround because so many have become monks.
The Buddhist-Muslim divide seems to be getting sharper in this part of the world. Neighboring Bangladesh is struggling to absorb hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingyas, an ethnic group from Myanmar, who recently fled atrocities by Myanmar’s military and Buddhist majority.
But to Ms. Saldon, 30, and Mr. Agha, 32, none of this mattered.
Theirs is a Ladakh love affair, through and through. They met on a college trekking trip to the Himalayas. They kept in touch. Mr. Agha, a government engineer, and Ms. Saldon, a social worker, both lived in the city of Jammu, south of Ladakh, and they couldn’t stop calling each other for coffee and lunch. Ms. Saldon said she could feel herself falling in love with the soft-spoken and gentle-mannered Mr. Agha. But she kept it a secret.
After she was nearly killed in a rickshaw accident, though, she recalled, “It was Murtaza’s face that floated before my eyes. I decided life was too short and I should confess my love.”
Mr. Agha, who grew up in Kargil, couldn’t have been happier.
But when he told his family he wanted to marry a Buddhist girl from Leh, his father’s response was: impossible.
“Why marry a Leh girl?” his family kept asking. There were so many more Muslim options.
In July 2016, with help from one of Mr. Agha’s uncles, the couple held a very small private wedding under a clear blue sky by one of Kargil’s sparkling mountain streams.
Then they went back to their jobs, the world oblivious to their relationship. They maintained separate homes, planning to one day unite.
But soon their family members found out. While Mr. Agha’s people took it in stride, Ms. Saldon’s went berserk. They pulled her out of Jammu and locked her in the family home in Leh. Her father spat in her face, and later called on shamans to perform ceremonies to try to make her forget about Mr. Agha, she said.
Ms. Saldon said she lost 20 pounds. She was heartsick to be away from Mr. Agha and terrified of her father, who kept screaming at her.
“I was totally cut off from the outside world,” she said. “I feared death as my father shouted, ‘Why did you not die no sooner than you were born?’’’
One morning she sneaked out. She knew her family would chase her, so she went to court and won a restraining order demanding that they leave her alone.
But the problem was bigger than her family now, and things in Leh were about to get sticky.
The Buddhist community association was so outraged by the relationship, and the fact that Ms. Saldon had fled, that it sent young men stomping through Leh’s main bazaar, demanding that all the shopkeepers help bring her back. Buddhist toughs threatened taxi drivers and merchants from Kargil, telling them they weren’t allowed to work in Leh. A few men got into fistfights — all over a couple most of them didn’t even know.
The Buddhist association tried to drag in the state government, sending a letter in September that read, “We have repeatedly asked the Muslim community leaders to sensitize their communities to stay away from such wicked and depraved acts which otherwise will lead to communal unrest.”
The head of a Muslim organization in Kargil shot off a counter letter asking Buddhists to calm down. The state government declined to get involved, except for sending more police officers to the market.
Leh’s Buddhists remain bitter.
“The Muslims are trying to finish us off,” said Gushe Konchok Namgyal, a head lama, as he slurped a bowl of lentils and rice in a 500-year-old monastery.
Not only is it crucial that Buddhists marry Buddhists, he said, but Buddhist women should have a dozen children to match the Muslims or the Buddhists will “face extinction.”
Harsh Malhotra, chief coordinator for the Love Commandos, a voluntary Indian organization that helps couples fight off arranged marriages and deal with harassment from their families, said this case was getting attention across the country. But he wasn’t surprised.
“Just as the Ganges flows freely, so, too, lovers of any caste, creed and sect,” he said.
This Ladakhi version of Romeo and Juliet was easy to politicize, he said, because the couple came from middle-class backgrounds and were perfect fodder for “those who consider themselves to be the self-appointed guardians of culture and society.”
Leh hat sich beruhigt. Aber die Episode hat ein wenig mehr Dampf auf die Suche von einigen der Leh Buddhisten gesetzt, um mehr Autonomie für die Region Ladakh zu bekommen.
Was das Paar anbetrifft, scheinen sie dies unbeschadet überstanden zu haben. Sie hofft, dass ihre Eltern eines Tages bald kommen und begrüßen sie und ihren Ehemann mit einer Umarmung.
Bei ihrem langwierigen Hochzeitsempfang im September strahlte Frau Saldon aus, als die Verwandten von Herrn Agha eine Girlande aus indischen Rupien um ihren Hals drapierten.
Sie lebt jetzt mit Herrn Agha in einer Wohnung in Jammu, die größtenteils Hindu ist und für dieses junge Paar neutrales Territorium gilt.
Und wie die buddhistischen Führer befürchteten, hat sie sich zum Islam bekehrt.
Nach Unruhen in Jerusalem: UN-Sicherheitsrat beruft Sondersitzung ein/© AP Photo/ Frank Franklin II
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