A campaign for a monastery in Muslim-dominated Kargil has Ladakh on edge

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Editor's note: The site of the gompa is at the centre of Kargil town. It’s bare except for two mud houses on the side, marked by Buddhist flags. There are portraits of the Dalai Lama and Buddhist deities inside, along with puja paraphernalia. The doors remain locked through the day. X, a student at a local college, comes to the temple site twice a day. She unlocks the door of one of the houses, pours vegetable oil in the lamp, lights it, and then locks up. She’s been doing it for a year. After she graduates, there’ll be someone else. On 12 June, a couple of people walked in as she was lighting the lamp. They asked her where she was from, her name and where she studied. She answered them, wondering if they were the police in plain clothes, but not daring to ask. “I went back to my place and stayed there for a week,” she says. “I was petrified.” This was two days before a group of a thousand Buddhists was to arrive at the site to lay the …