Little Tibet: Renaissance and Resistance in Baltistan

The cold winter nights in the Karakorum are warmed by Radio Pakistan's Skardu broadcast of the life story of Ali Sher Khan Anchan. At a time of growing sectarian and political divisions, the 17th-century Balti king is one figure everyone shares a love for. Other heroes include Hazrat Ali (the son-in-law of Prophet Muhammad) and the legendary Tibetan folk icon, Gesar of Ling, the latter although Baltistan's traditional links with the Tibetan plateau have been severed for the past 50 years.

But despite being on the margins of the Pakistani nation state, the pace of cultural change in what the Mughals once called Tibet-i-Khurd (Little Tibet) is quickening. In recent decades, Balti identity has been re-shaped by ties with the Iranian Revolution and Pakistan's Punjabi-dominated culture. But as the new generation enters the information age, in Baltistan's de facto capital, Skardu, more and more Baltis are dreaming of the day when the ceasefire lines will no longer separate them from their Himalayan kin in Ladakh and Tibet.