Why a loyalty test for Ladakh?

It required special talent to turn peaceful Ladakh into a troubled hotspot in just two weeks. The lieutenant governor of Ladakh, Kavinder Gupta, an old RSS hand, and Union home minister Amit Shah can claim the dubious credit of alienating the population of Ladakh and Kargil in one fell swoop. The peaceable folk of Ladakh are today seething — their Gandhian leader has been arrested, their loyalty to India is being questioned and they are being branded ‘anti-nationals’.

The region’s patience was already sorely tested with the Centre having stalled its longstanding demands of statehood and inclusion in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution — which offers special protections for tribal communities in a predominantly tribal state. Promises the BJP made in its election manifestos of 2019 and 2020 (ahead of the hill council polls) remained unkept for six long years.

To nudge New Delhi into resuming talks, the Leh Apex Body (LAB) and the Kargil Democratic Alliance (KDA) launched a 35-day hunger strike starting on 10 September. Climate activist Sonam Wangchuk and 10 others joined the fast. Eleven days in, the government responded, announcing that the ministry of home affairs (MHA) would hold talks with the LAB and KDA on 6 October. The protesters, angered by the delay, rejected the proposal and declared that their fast would continue.

At a press conference, they voiced a deeper frustration. Ladakhi youth, Wangchuk said, were losing faith in non-violence, convinced that peaceful methods had failed to bring results. His fears proved true just two days later. A group of young men, enraged and impatient, set fire to the BJP office on 24 September. Police opened fire, killing four, and injuring hundreds.

The aftermath was swift. Sonam Wangchuk ended his fast, only to be arrested on 26 September under the National Security Act (NSA) for sedition, accused of inciting the mob and conspiring to ‘overthrow’ the administration.

He was flown to Jodhpur Central Jail — an irony that did not go unnoticed. A globally respected environmentalist, innovator and educationist who had led a peaceful democratic movement, now found himself behind bars in the same prison that held the gangster Lawrence Bishnoi and had, until recently, housed the disgraced godman Asaram.

Stating that “talks cannot be held at gunpoint”, both LAB and KDA pulled out of the proposed meeting with the MHA.

Meanwhile, curfew in Leh continues, with short breaks. Barbed wire fencing criss-crosses streets where armed security personnel keep vigil. With internet services suspended across the region, Ladakh remains cut off from the outside world even as people come to terms with the arrest of Wangchuk, arguably the most prominent Ladakhi.

To make sense of Ladakh’s present turmoil, two dates are crucial. The first is 5 August 2019, when Parliament passed the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, simultaneously abrogating Articles 370 and 35A of the Constitution. The people of Ladakh celebrated: becoming a separate Union Territory surely meant new opportunities for growth and development.

However, governance soon shifted to the lieutenant-governor — Delhi’s representative — leaving Leh and Kargil with so-called autonomous hill councils. The mood darkened.

The second date to remember is 6 December 2021, when the Ladakh bandh marked the first signs of collective disillusionment. Barely two years after the big political change, people realised that nothing substantive had been gained. The only difference was geographical: where once the administration was run from Srinagar, it was now run from New Delhi.

The bandh was jointly called by the LAB and the KDA, an unusual show of unity across political and demographic divides. While Leh is dominated by Buddhists, Kargil is predominantly Muslim; while Leh had celebrated the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019, Kargil had opposed it.

Both realised the Autonomous Hill Development Councils are toothless. Under the Sixth Schedule, hill councils draw their authority from the Constitution and enjoy autonomy in matters like land use.

Their powers are severely limited — they cannot frame laws, nor do they control meaningful resources. Of the nearly Rs 6,000 crore allocated to Ladakh in the Union budget — a figure cited by the LG as proof of New Delhi’s goodwill — the councils are said to receive less than nine per cent, leaving them underfunded and ineffective.

While unemployment has risen across India, the crisis is particularly stark in Ladakh. Across the country, 13.4 per cent of graduates remain unemployed. In Ladakh, the figure is nearly double — 26.5 per cent. The scale of the problem became evident recently when over 50,000 young people — that’s 17 per cent of the region’s entire population — applied for 534 vacancies announced by the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council.

Six years after Ladakh’s separation from Jammu and Kashmir, not a single local has been appointed as a gazetted officer. Most key positions continue to be held either by officers from the Jammu and Kashmir Civil Service or by IAS officers deputed from Delhi. One of the central demands of the ongoing protest is the establishment of a separate Public Service Commission for Ladakh, so that local youth can secure a fair share in the administration.

For decades, a major avenue of employment had been the Ladakh Scouts, the Indian Army regiment celebrated for its courage and unmatched ability to thrive in high-altitude terrain. The regiment was a source not only of secure employment, but also pride. During the Kargil War, its soldiers were acclaimed nationwide for reclaiming the steepest of slopes from Pakistani intruders. A Major from the regiment — also named Sonam Wangchuk — was awarded the Mahavir Chakra for his heroism.

This traditional avenue has narrowed. Recruitment into the Ladakh Scouts is now carried out only under the Agniveer scheme, which means short-term stints instead of permanent jobs. In June this year, only 194 Agniveer recruits were inducted after completing their training.

All of these underlying issues boiled over when news broke that the Central government was planning to set up the ‘world’s largest solar power plant’ in Ladakh’s Changthang region. The proposed 13-gigawatt project would occupy a vast tract of land; and all the electricity generated would be transmitted 750 km away to the national grid in Haryana. The contract has allegedly gone to an industrialist known to have close ties with the BJP and the country’s top leaders.

For Changthang’s herders, whose sheep yield the world’s finest, most expensive Pashmina wool, the plan came as a devastating blow. At the same time, reports surfaced about large-scale mining projects in Ladakh. It was then that people began to realise the full implications of losing Article 370—the legal protection that once safeguarded their land and culture was lost, with nothing gained. Fear of dispossession and cultural erosion quickly turned into anger.

The broader movement for Ladakh’s rights which took formal shape in 2021 gained new momentum in January 2023 when Sonam Wangchuk joined in. At a time when temperatures in Ladakh were well below freezing, his five-day fast was aimed at highlighting the ecological dangers of the proposed industrial plants and mining projects. Until then, Wangchuk had been seen as a supporter of Narendra Modi — like many others in Ladakh, he, too, had welcomed Ladakh’s Union Territory status in 2019.

Rumours abounded that the Central government might upgrade his Himalayan Institute of Alternatives (HIAL) to a full-fledged university. For a while, Wangchuk and his colleagues did indeed use the term ‘university’. Once he joined the protest movement, though, his understanding of political undercurrents deepened.

Since 2021, Wangchuk has been staunch in his resolve. He led a 1,000-km padayatra from Leh to New Delhi, and staged multiple hunger strikes — including an indefinite fast that he ended only after receiving assurances from the central government that the demands of Ladakhis would be considered.

Wangchuk joined the Leh Apex Body, which has been at the forefront of the fight for Ladakh’s rights. With his involvement, the movement suddenly acquired a recognisable face and a voice that resonated beyond the mountains. Stories from Ladakh, long ignored by the national press, began to break into the headlines.

This visibility came at a cost. The Central government, perhaps under the misconception that silencing one individual could cripple the entire struggle, made Wangchuk its prime target.

The pressure campaign began with a notice pasted on the door of his institute: the lease on its land was being terminated, and eviction proceedings were imminent. Wangchuk alleged that this retaliation was sparked by Ladakhi resistance to the plans of a powerful corporate group closely aligned with the ruling party.

A crucial question lingers: was the violence that erupted in Leh on 24 September truly a spontaneous act of rage?

Ladakh historian and academician Professor Siddique Wahid, in a recent YouTube interview, offered a significant observation. On a recent visit, he was struck by the unusually heavy deployment of security forces in Ladakh — a region long considered one of the most peaceful in the country. Though Professor Wahid did not draw any direct conclusions, his account raises doubts about whether the violence was simply an impulsive outburst.

The LAB and the KDA have since demanded that the Leh incident be investigated by a sitting Supreme Court judge. They have also set this as a precondition for any dialogue with the government.

But what about the release of Sonam Wangchuk — has that, too, been made a condition? Speaking to National Herald, LAB co-chairman Tsering Dorje clarified: it is indeed a demand, but not a precondition. The demand, he said, is for the unconditional release of Wangchuk as well as more than 50 young men arrested after the police firing in Leh. Sajjad Hussain Kargili of the KDA echoed this position.

The home ministry, for its part, has insisted that the scheduled talks will go ahead as planned. But, as Kargili points out, if both the LAB and KDA boycott, who will they talk to?

Even if the conditions are eventually accepted, will the dialogue be meaningful, given the deep trust deficit? Tsering Dorje strikes a cautious but hopeful note: “If we participate in the talks, we will do so with an open mind, believing that a solution is possible. Without that mindset, the talks would be pointless.”