Ladakh is also called Little Tibet due to: (a) Geographical proximity (b)…
2024
Ladakh is also called Little Tibet due to:
(a) Geographical proximity
(b) Religious similarity
(c) Similar cuisines
(d) Linguistic similarity
Choose the correct options:
Answer: B. (b), (c) and (d) — Concept — a "Little X" name is a cultural label, not a locational one. A land earns such a name when the everyday life of another country is reproduced inside…
- A.
(a), (b) and (c)
- B.
(b), (c) and (d)
- C.
(a), (b) and (d)
- D.
(a), (b), (c) and (d)
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
Concept — a "Little X" name is a cultural label, not a locational one. A land earns such a name when the everyday life of another country is reproduced inside it: the faith its people follow, the tongue they speak and the food they cook. Sharing a border is only a fact about position on the map, and position by itself does not carry a way of life across that border.
Applying the idea to Ladakh. Tibetan life is reproduced in Ladakh along three strands:
Strand | What Ladakh shares with Tibet |
|---|---|
Faith | Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism; the gompas of Hemis (Drukpa Kagyu), Thiksey and Diskit (Gelug) and Lamayuru (Drikung Kagyu) follow the same Tibetan monastic orders that run the monasteries of Tibet itself |
Food | The plateau kitchen: tsampa (roasted barley flour), thukpa, momos and gur-gur cha (salted butter tea) |
Speech | Ladakhi, or Bhoti, belongs to the Tibetic branch of Sino-Tibetan and is written in the Tibetan Uchen script; classical Tibetan is the liturgical language of its monasteries |
Cross-check the remaining strand, nearness on the map, by testing it as a criterion:
Xinjiang, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh all adjoin Tibet, yet none of them is called "Little Tibet" — so adjoining Tibet is not enough to earn the name.
Where the name is used at all — Ladakh, and Lahaul-Spiti beside it — it tracks Buddhist and Tibetic culture rather than the length of a shared boundary, so nearness is not what the name records.
The cultural strands work the other way round: wherever the shared faith, the shared kitchen and the shared tongue are found along the Tibetan rim, the comparison with Tibet is drawn — which is why the name tracks culture rather than the map.
Result — the name records shared faith, shared kitchen and shared tongue, so the accepted set is religious similarity, similar cuisines and linguistic similarity. Ladakh does physically lie against the Tibetan plateau and popular writing sometimes lists that nearness as one more reason; the official CTET January 2024 Paper II final answer key nevertheless keys this cultural triad and does not accept the set that adds geographical proximity to it.