Book Review: Ancient Futures
Author: Helena Norberg-Hodge
Publishers: Oxford University Press
Pages: 224
Ancient Futures is a book on Ladakh’s cultural and social atmosphere, its environment and changing face of Ladakhi civilization with the influence of modern world.
Hodge, director of International Society of Ecology and Culture, and founder of Women’s Alliance of Ladakh is an long time visitor to Ladakh. She has been vocal about sustainable development and preserving cultural values in the region. In this book, she writes about her own experiences of spending many years in Ladakh, the change she has been seeing since the time Indian Army built a major presence in the region and tourists thronged in large numbers.
The book has a good preview of Ladakhi culture, their way of living, the attitude of the people and their economic system. It is rich with personal experiences of the author from the days when Ladakh was still a secluded place to the times of modernization. Sometimes the book appears as though the author is working with a one pointed agenda to say that everything Ladakhi was good and the onslaught of ‘bad’ modernization has made irrecoverable damages. But nevertheless, it is hard to deny the facts she puts forward about the problems that come in with change. It is a well written, readable book and is worth picking up, for anyone who is interested in the life, culture and geography of Trans-Himalayan regions of India.
