Biennial General Meeting of the IALS, 20–21 August 2011
(download minutes as pdf)

As usual the Biennial General Meeting of the IALS was held during the conference.

At the start of the meeting, John Bray paid tribute to John Crook, one of the earliest members of the Association, and remembered particularly for having introduced Henry Osmaston to Ladakh, an event without which there might have been no IALS. John Crook invited Henry to join his research expedition to Zangskar in 1980, and together they co-edited the expedition report, a monumental work of co-operative scholarship, Himalayan Buddhist Villages (1994), which remains a benchmark study. His other main work on Ladakh, along with James Low, was Yogins of Ladakh. But he was a man of many parts whose interests extended far beyond Ladakh. He died at his desk in July 2011.
We also paid tribute to the memory of Rinchen Wangchuk, the director of the Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust, who passed away in March 2011. Rinchen presented a paper at the 2003 IALS conference in Leh, and had pioneered a series of community-based snow-leopard conservation initiatives.
After that, we honoured three happily still living senior members of the Association: Saleem Beg, Francesca Merritt and Martijn van Beek. Saleem Beg, Convener of the J&K Chapter of INTACH (the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage), and formerly has always maintained a close interest in the Association, and was instrumental in getting money from the J&K Tourism Department to support the conferences in Kargil in 2005 and Leh in 2009. Francesca Merritt, after years of invisible work as Henry Osmaston’s chief helper in the early days of the Association, served as Treasurer and Membership Secretary from 1997 to 2009, maintaining the accounts and membership lists and unobtrusively keeping us all straight. Martijn van Beek was a member of the Advisory Committee from the Association’s early days, and served as editor of Ladakh Studies from 1997 to 2007. Each of them was presented with a kathak and a calligraphed scroll, conferring Honorary Life Membership of the Association. Saleem Beg was there to receive his honour in person; Francesca and Martijn received theirs in absentia.

The regular agenda of the meeting consisted of the following:

A. Ordinary Items of Business
1. Announcement of the result of the elections to the Executive and Advisory Committees.
Since there were no nominations to any of the vacant positions from the wider membership, the Executive Committee proposed a panel of single candidates, as follows:
• President: John Bray (under para 8(b) of the Constitution which provides for the immediate re-election of a sitting President after the statutory two terms, if the position would otherwise remain vacant) for a further two-year term.
• Secretary: Sonam Wangchok.
• Treasurer and Membership Secretary: Gareth Wall (who has been fulfilling the duties of the position on an interim basis as a co-opted member of the Executive Committee since 2009).
• Ladakh Liaison Officer: Raza Abbassi.
• Four members of the Advisory Committee: Juliane Dame, Bettina Zeisler, Mohammed Deen Darokhan and Thupstan Norboo.
The Meeting was invited to ratify the election of the above candidates by show of hands, which it duly did.
2. Gareth Wall, Treasurer and Membership Secretary, gave a broad statement of the Association’s finances, and promised to circulate a detailed statement in due course.
3. Instead of a discussion of membership charges, the meeting was referred to item 1 in the Extraordinary Items of Business below.
4. John Bray announced a proposal from Juliane Dame to hold the next conference in Heidelberg, Germany, and the meeting authorized the Executive Committee to pursue the proposal. As regards the date of the conference, Bettina Zeisler pointed out that a date between July and September would make it impossible for some researchers to attend the conference without compromising their field-work in Ladakh. At the same time it was admitted that the Conference Convener would have the last word, according to conditions in the host city.
John Bray put it to the meeting that it would be good to explore the possibility of holding a conference in Sikkim or Bhutan, either as part of the ongoing series of biennial conferences, or as a standalone event. This might take place jointly with an academic institution in the proposed region, and cover issues of mutual interest like conservation, biodiversity loss or Buddhist culture. The meeting authorized the President and Executive Committee to explore the possibilities.
The other issue discussed under this head was the possibility of holding inter-conference events. Very few such events have been held in Ladakh, and so far none abroad. The initiative for organizing such events in Ladakh would lie partly with the local membership, but also with visiting scholars, who might offer to conduct workshops or seminars on their own particular subjects of interest. Gareth Wall offered to organize an event for members based in the United Kingdom, who might be disappointed by the cancellation of the conference in Aberdeen; and suggested that Germany-based members, of whom there are a fair number, might think along similar lines.

B. Extraordinary items of Business.
1. The Executive Committee proposed two amendments to the Constitution.
• The first regularized the position of Webmaster, giving him/her a recognized position on the Executive Committee; and providing that, on account of the technical nature of the necessary skills, he/she should be appointed by the Executive Committee rather than elected.
• The second streamlined the membership system, providing for a membership period of two years to run from conference to conference. Since renewals would become operative at the start of every conference, it would no longer make sense to have the General Meeting, held during the conference, decide the level of membership fees. Any revisions of these would now be decided by the Executive Committee and announced ahead of the conference, and the General Meeting be invited to ratify their decision.
The meeting was pleased to ratify these two amendments.
2. The Executive Committee had circulated a Discussion Note on the way forward for the IALS. The main issue was whether the Association should seek registration under the Indian Registration of Societies Act. Also put forward for discussion was the possibility of forging closer links with registered NGOs as an alternative to registration, so as to take advantage of some of the privileges of a registered society, such as permission to receive funds from abroad.
The sense of the meeting was clearly against registration in India, as it was felt that for the IALS the possible advantages were outweighed by the problems involved. Harjit Singh, a senior professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, pointed out that, if you know how to access them, plenty of funds for conferences and other activities are available in India even for unregistered bodies.
Monisha Ahmed, who heads a registered organization in Leh, was of the opinion that it would not be to the advantage of a registered association to forge closer links with an unregistered one like the IALS, though it was possible, indeed common practice, for temporary arrangements to be entered into, whereby the registered society could receive foreign funds on the unregistered society’s behalf, taking a percentage for their pains.
Both Monisha and Harjit proposed that, rather than seeking linkages with local registered bodies, the Association should explore the possibilities of joint action with universities in north India, especially those with a large number of Ladakhi students. This might enable us to hold conferences or similar events in Delhi, Jammu, Srinagar or Chandigarh. This suggestion that the association explore such options was approved by the meeting.
3. The Executive Committee had circulated a discussion note on the Association’s publications, which referred to in-depth discussions in recent issues of our journal, Ladakh Studies. Introducing the discussion, John Bray informed the meeting that Kim Gutschow had decided to step down as Editor in 2013, and that therefore the EC would be seeking candidates for a replacement after that date. In the meantime Kim has co-opted Gareth Wall and Sunetro Ghosal onto the Editorial Committee.
One of the main questions at issue was whether the proceedings of the conferences should be published as comprehensive volumes, or whether it made more sense to divide the papers of several conferences up into thematic volumes. Although Noé Dinnerstein volunteered to edit the proceedings of the present conference as a single volume, John Bray, who has from the start taken a lot of initiative in the matter of publishing the Association’s material, expressed a definite preference for thematic volumes which, apart from any other considerations, were more likely to be accepted by publishers. Thematic volumes with papers from the 13th and 14th conferences, relating to conservation and the environment, and art and architecture are already on the anvil, and John suggested that it might be possible to incorporate some of the papers of the present conference into these. In addition he would talk to the authors of the papers, try to establish their preferences and act accordingly.
The meeting was also informed of the proposal of Stawa, the local publishing house started by our member Sunetro Ghosal which has for several years printed and distributed Ladakh Studies, to enter into a closer relationship with the IALS. The idea that Stawa might undertake all the Association’s publishing work was rejected on the grounds that if a conference were held jointly with another institution, that institution would want a say in the publication of the proceedings. The meeting however authorized the Executive Committee to enter into negotiations with Stawa with a view to establishing a closer link, which among other things would enable the Association to take advantage of Stawa’s distribution and marketing systems.
Janet Rizvi raised the related issue of the accessibility of foreign publications, whether published under the auspices of the Association or not, to researchers in Ladakh. Some such publications are exorbitantly expensive, far beyond the means of individual students; and though many of them are available in the various libraries in Leh, tracking them down can be difficult, as can working in libraries which keep Government office hours and close at 4 p.m. Janet proposed a partial solution to the problem. In Leh, the libraries attached to the Central Institute of Buddhist Studies, the Eliezer Joldan Degree College, the Central Asian Museum, the Ladakh Arts and Media Organization (LAMO), the Ladakh Ecological Development Group (LEDeG) and the Himalayan Cultural Heritage Foundation, together with the Municipal Library, might agree to digitize their catalogues and create a consolidated catalogue. This would at least make it possible for the Leh-based researcher to establish whether the text he wants is available, and if so where. The second step would be for all the libraries to work out the modalities of an inter-library loan scheme, to enable the researcher to consult the text in the library most convenient to her. The third step would be the creation of a central reading room, open till late evening—at least 8 or 9 p.m.—where the researcher could consult the consolidated catalogue, and requisition the texts she needs under the inter-library loan scheme. A similar programme could be followed in Kargil.
Professor Harjit Singh assured the meeting that Government money would be available for, e.g., the creation of a consolidated digitized catalogue of books, as well as other steps, and undertook, if approached, to facilitate the obtaining of funds. Most probably such funds would be routed through the University Grants Commission; and for projects proposed by educational institutions, funding running into tens of crores could be made available. Accordingly the project might be best promoted by the Degree Colleges of the two towns. Since this is a scheme intended to benefit Ladakhi scholars in Ladakh, it is for them to initiate it and carry it forward.