H.M. Nazmul Alam

The arrest of Sonam Wangchuk, the environmentalist, educationist, and reluctant political agitator who became the face of Ladakh’s protest movement, is no ordinary event. In the windswept, high-altitude desert of Ladakh—where silence is broken only by the sound of glacial streams and military boots—the simmering frustration of its people has erupted into a fire that the Modi government cannot easily douse. What began as a hunger strike for statehood and constitutional protections has turned violent, leaving four people dead, dozens injured, and an uneasy Union Territory under curfew. The government in Delhi, quick to deploy security forces and cut off internet services, has chosen confrontation over conversation. But in doing so, it may have underestimated the symbolic power of this movement and its strategic implications.

To understand why Ladakh is burning, one must go back to August 2019, when Article 370 was revoked, bifurcating Jammu and Kashmir and carving out Ladakh as a Union Territory. At that moment, Ladakhis celebrated. Many believed the separation from the Kashmir Valley would free them from being the peripheral victims of its instability. They expected more attention, more development, and crucially, protection for their fragile environment and distinct identity. Instead, what followed was disappointment. Without statehood or protections under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, Ladakhis have watched outsiders claim jobs, land, and opportunities. Their cultural and ecological anxieties, rooted in centuries of living in balance with the harsh terrain, have been dismissed as secondary to Delhi’s centralizing vision.

The movement’s demands—full statehood and Sixth Schedule protections—are not radical. They are constitutional, legal, and consistent with India’s framework for safeguarding indigenous communities. Yet, the Modi government has responded as if they were seditious provocations. Sonam Wangchuk, globally admired for his innovation in sustainable education and inspiration for the character in 3 Idiots, now faces charges of sedition. In India’s political imagination, dissenters too easily become “anti-nationals,” and Ladakh’s calm dissent has now been folded into that familiar narrative of internal enemies threatening unity.

But Ladakh is no ordinary theatre of dissent. It is India’s most strategically sensitive region, a borderland with both China and Pakistan. The shadow of Galwan, where Indian and Chinese soldiers clashed in 2020, still looms large. Retired Lieutenant General Deependra Hooda, who once commanded the Northern Army, has warned that ignoring Ladakhi grievances risks fueling unrest in a region where national security is already fragile. China is watching, Pakistan is waiting, and Delhi is busy arresting an activist whose greatest crime appears to be speaking too convincingly about the rights of his people. It is a dangerous miscalculation.

The government insists that Wangchuk’s speeches incited violence, pointing to the clashes that left police officers injured. Yet Wangchuk himself told that he had warned of the youth’s growing impatience. His account is not of incitement, but of inevitability—of how hunger strikes and sit-ins can only go so far when met with bureaucratic delays and dismissive deadlines. The Home Ministry’s attempt to paint him as an instigator mirrors a wider pattern: the personalization of protest. By reducing the Ladakh movement to “Wangchuk’s agitation,” the government avoids grappling with its collective roots. But the slogans on Leh’s streets and the hunger strikes in Kargil were not born in one man’s mind. They reflect the anxieties of both Buddhists and Muslims—two communities historically separated by geography and faith, but now united in disillusionment.

That unity is politically significant. Kargil, a Muslim-majority district, has long felt neglected. Leh, predominantly Buddhist, has often enjoyed relatively more attention. But the Ladakh Apex Body and the Kargil Democratic Alliance—two organizations representing these communities—have joined forces, making the movement not just broad-based, but unprecedentedly united. In a region where communal divisions might have been exploited to fracture dissent, Delhi now faces a movement that transcends religious boundaries. Arresting Wangchuk may weaken one voice, but it cannot silence an alliance rooted in shared grievances.

The imagery circulating around Wangchuk has only amplified the government’s paranoia. His photograph with Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate and now interim head of Bangladesh, is being weaponized on social media to portray him as connected to foreign powers. His January trip to Pakistan for a UN environmental conference has been dredged up as proof of questionable loyalties. Yet these attempts to delegitimize him are both predictable and shortsighted. In an age of globalization, intellectuals and activists often attend international forums. To frame such engagements as acts of betrayal is to shrink India’s intellectual space into a narrow nationalist box. Ironically, the Modi government, which relishes projecting India as a global leader, appears unable to stomach its own citizens acting as global citizens.

The political ripples of Ladakh’s unrest extend beyond its snowy borders. Omar Abdullah, the former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, has seized on the protests to remind the country of broken promises. If Ladakhis feel betrayed despite never being promised statehood, he argues, how much deeper is the sense of betrayal in Kashmir, where statehood was explicitly promised and denied? His words hint at a dangerous possibility: that the fire in Ladakh could ignite embers in Kashmir, where discontent simmers beneath the veneer of enforced quiet. Delhi may insist the two situations are distinct, but grievances have a way of traveling across mountains faster than armies.

This is precisely why senior journalists like Rahul Pandita have urged caution. A movement that begins as a local demand for autonomy can easily be framed by adversaries—particularly China—as evidence of disaffection within India’s borderlands. In geopolitics, perception matters as much as reality. If Ladakh’s Buddhists and Muslims are united against Delhi’s governance, it complicates India’s narrative of harmony and stability. It risks giving China diplomatic ammunition in the ongoing border standoff, and Pakistan an opportunity to rhetorically link Ladakh’s plight with Kashmir’s. This is the strategic danger General Hooda warned about: the domestic and the geopolitical are inseparably intertwined in Ladakh.

For the Modi government, the challenge is not simply quelling a protest. It is confronting its own centralizing instincts. Since 2014, the BJP has projected itself as a party of decisive governance, willing to reshape India’s constitutional order in pursuit of national unity. The abrogation of Article 370 was celebrated as a masterstroke. But five years on, the costs of that decision are becoming clearer. By stripping regions of autonomy and imposing rule from Delhi, the government has created new resentments. In Ladakh, the absence of Sixth Schedule protections has fueled fears that the region’s fragile ecology will be sacrificed at the altar of unchecked development. For a community deeply tied to its land, glaciers, and culture, this is not an abstract worry—it is existential.

The fire in Ladakh is therefore not merely about administrative status. It is about identity, survival, and dignity. Arresting Wangchuk will not change that calculus. Nor will curfews or internet blackouts. If anything, these measures deepen the sense of alienation, reinforcing the narrative that Delhi is more interested in control than care. The real test of leadership lies in listening, negotiating, and extending protections that the Constitution itself envisions.

What should worry the Modi government most is not Wangchuk’s speeches, nor Omar Abdullah’s tweets, but the sight of Ladakh’s youth—once hopeful about Union Territory status—now turning to anger. These young men and women are not militants. They are students, farmers, and workers who see their future slipping away. When patience breaks in such communities, it rarely returns quickly. And in a region where India cannot afford instability, every protester lost to despair is a strategic vulnerability.

The writer is an academic, journalist, and political analyst. Currently he is teaching at IUBAT. He can be reached at nazmulalam.rijohn@gmail.com