The Role of Social Media in Reconnecting Divided Families in Ladakh

This paper focuses on divided families in Ladakh, India, and their fractured narratives, and how social media played an essential role in bringing geographical and political divides and bringing divided families together in times of difficulty. 

There has been less debate and discussion academically about the impact of partition on the Ladakh region. The partition led to the separation of families across newly drawn borders, leaving many displaced and traumatized. While the partition's impact on families in the central region of portioned countries has been widely studied the stories of families in other regions such as Ladakh remain largely untold.  The story of the partition of India in the Ladakh region continued even after the drawing up of the Line of Actual Control (LoC), as it shifted in the two subsequent wars with Pakistan, in 1965 and 1971, leaving behind hundreds of divided families.  People in the border villages in Ladakh have fractured narratives; about how their families, and relatives were divided during the shifting of territories between the two nation-states. Sadiq Ali Sadiq who was settled in Balti Bazaar (market) in Kargil was one such divided family. During the partition, he was in Kargil along with his father who has a shop in Balti Bazar. Most of his family members were in Kharmang village, which is on the other side of the LoC. Like him, there are hundreds in Kargil and Leh districts in Ladakh. This study is based on first-person accounts and untold stories of divided families in Ladakh, India, and their fractured narrative and the role of social media to reconnect with lost family members, Families in Ladakh have been able to heal some of the wounds of the partition.