Who Decides How Ladakh’s Monasteries Are Conserved?
A young monk named Lotus giving access to the restricted section of Hemis Monastery (Clicked by Author)
In Ladakh’s Buddhist monasteries, damage is often noticed long before it is repaired. A leaking drain, a damaged wall painting, an unstable beam, or a broken ritual object: monks photograph the problem or make a note of it and pass their observations to senior monks and managers. Decisions ultimately rest with the head monk. Monastic administration follows a pattern in which observations emerge from the base of the hierarchy, while judgement rests at the top.
Ladakh offers an important case for examining how authority, practical knowledge, and responsibility intersect in conservation. Who authorises expertise, under what circumstances, and how? Whose knowledge matters when monasteries require restoration, repair, or adaptation? These questions become pressing in a context where conservation responsibilities remain contested, and no policy or authority appears to command the confidence of all those involved.
For artistic work, the answer appears relatively clear. Wall painting commissions are entrusted to local traditional Tibetan painters and trained artists whose expertise is established through making and repair. The situation becomes more complicated when newer infrastructure is involved, whether electrical additions, interior renovations, or new rooms built within the monastery. When I asked about these additions, which often seem to sit uneasily with the older architecture, monks explained that they were intended partly for tourists and older monks who needed greater comfort and access. As they explained it, these were not luxuries but ways of making life easier for others. Whether this reasoning settles the question of how such changes should be made remains open.
Ongoing construction work at Hemis Monastery (Clicked by Author)
I sought out young monks in particular, whose voices carry relatively little weight within monastic administration. I found not silence so much as a restricted form of speech, especially when conservation work was discussed. Some of the more senior monks spoke more candidly. At Alchi, they spoke openly about the monastery’s maintenance problems, including their struggles with village communities and obstacles in securing funds for basic repairs. Likir Monastery, which oversees Alchi Monastery, apparently, is exploring different ways to raise funds, including gift shops, ticketing, and publishing its work, while remaining reluctant to involve the government.
Despite the reluctance, an authorised discourse operates even within these monasteries, leaving room for opinion while drawing boundaries around what can be said and who can participate. This pattern recurred across my conversations.
The Ladakh Buddhist Association, a non-political, socio-religious organisation, also has their own heritage preservation committee. Yet the usual arrangement remains one where the conservation of Buddhist religious heritage rests almost entirely with monastic administration. A few sites fall under the protection of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), but local accounts suggest that monasteries have kept the state at a distance, regardless of what the law provides. This resistance is not without its reasons. Locals and monks speak of questionable ASI conservation decisions dating back decades, which help explain this resistance. I am yet to find official documentation that establishes these accounts in detail, but they form a major part of how people on the ground explain the strained relationship.
The state offers a milder account of this. Sunder Paul, Director of Conservation at the ASI, said in a lecture in Delhi this July that the service continues to urge people to follow traditional knowledge and methods, “but this tussle is going on.” He was speaking about roofs and repairs, not authority directly. Still, tussle was the word he chose.
Resistance to the state runs deep within monastic administration. Yet within that same administration, material choices can sit uneasily with the buildings they alter, while heritage is increasingly turned into a display and a commodity. This tension is evident in recent interventions on wall paintings in the region, where commercially available paints have replaced locally sourced traditional pigments on the grounds of economic convenience. Such decisions, however, often overlook, or disregard altogether, the durability of these materials, their compatibility with the local climate, and their interaction with the older building fabric.
Who, then, is conserving these places well? Is there an acceptable negotiated alternative to the opposing positions that tend to dominate conservation debates?
Heritage experts familiar with the wider field tend to advocate an approach that uses traditional materials and techniques while remaining attentive to changing needs. It is a sensible position, and researchers have argued for versions of it for years. In a 2016 paper on Ladakh’s living monastic heritage, Satish Pandey, Joyoti Roy, and Noor Jahan describe outside interventions as slow and prone to conflict, often ending in compromises that damage the very heritage they are intended to protect. The same paper is critical of monasteries, arguing that monastic and village communities frequently lose sight of the historic value of what they hold, with consequences for maintenance.
No party emerges unscathed. And local experts seem to belong to neither camp, which may help explain why their sensible recommendations remain proposals and not established practice.
Meanwhile, traditional painters and those skilled in conserving materials through traditional methods, with the religious understanding and sensitivity that such knowledge requires, are classified as ‘labour’. They occupy the base of the decision-making pyramid.
No two monasteries are alike, and no single case can stand in for another. Each must be understood on its own terms, with attention to the pressures it faces and the people responsible for maintaining it. What holds across these cases is the difficulty of dividing conservation into right and wrong, tradition and modernity, and most importantly, community and authority.
My forthcoming research article will examine these questions in greater detail. For now, the question I return to is a practical one: what would conservation look like if the people who know how these buildings are made and maintained had a greater say in deciding their future?
Leh, September 29, 2026: Chief Secretary, Union Territory of Ladakh, Ashish Kundra, inaugurated the newly constructed Changsem Sherab Zangpo Hall, Guest House and Staff Rooms at Thiksey Monastery. (Source: NothLatestInfo Instagram Page)
Cite this article: Samidha Pusalkar, “Who Decides How Ladakh’s Monasteries Are Conserved?” Center for Critical Conservation, October 11, 2026, https://centerforcriticalconservation.com/1675-2/