Why Sonam Wangchuk and Others in Ladakh Are on a Hunger Strike Once Again

On Day 6 of his hunger strike in Leh, climate activist Sonam Wangchuk made a direct appeal to Union home minister Amit Shah. His demand was neither secessionist nor radical: he sought statehood and inclusion under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, to safeguard Ladakh’s fragile ecosystem, jobs and land rights.

The video Wangchuk released references an old interview Shah had given, where he calls illiterate people a "burden" on society for they don't understand the Constitution or their rights. The people of Ladakh know their rights, Wangchuk is now telling the home minister – and so they deserve to be celebrated and rewarded, not punished, for that.

Delhi’s response has been clear. According to Wangchuk, when a Ladakh delegation met Shah in March 2024, he bluntly told them: “Even if the prime minister asks me, I won’t grant Sixth Schedule or statehood to Ladakh.”

The remark is not just rejection but a reversal. In 2019, as Wangchuk points out, the BJP’s Lok Sabha manifesto promised Ladakh Sixth Schedule protections. In the 2020 Hill Council elections, the party repeated that pledge, wooing voters with assurances of autonomy.

Today, those assurances lie in tatters. Multiple rounds of talks through a High-Powered Committee led by MoS Nityanand Rai ended with officials telling Ladakhi leaders that “nothing can be given”.

But the context that Delhi is side-lining is that Ladakh is no ordinary union territory; it sits at the razor’s edge of India’s borders with China and Pakistan, a place where loyalty to New Delhi has long been taken for granted. Yet the Union government’s refusal to engage with a peaceful hunger strike carries layered risks.

Ecologically, Ladakh faces the threat of mega-solar projects and industrial expansion that could devastate fragile grazing lands and delicate high-altitude ecosystems. Politically, the rare unity of Buddhist-majority Leh and Muslim-majority Kargil behind a single set of demands signals not only deepening local discontent but also the erosion of the BJP’s credibility in a region it once touted as a success story of 2019. Morally, the government’s categorical rejection of a Gandhian form of protest raises troubling questions about its commitment to constitutional values plainly suggesting that even disciplined, non-violent assertion of rights is now insufficient to draw Delhi’s attention.

In this loss of legal rights, Ladakh’s experience is not unprecedented. This nuanced narrowing of democratic space mirrors earlier interventions in Jammu and Kashmir, where the dilution of Article 370 dissolved the state’s autonomy and split it into Union Territories. In the Northeast, too, promises of constitutional protections under the Sixth Schedule were often diluted or delayed once insurgencies subsided and electoral calculations shifted.

Part of the BJP’s indifference could stem from political calculations. Ladakh, with just one Lok Sabha seat, carries limited electoral weight compared to the gains the party seeks in the Hindi heartland. Since 2019, the region has witnessed multiple protests such as rallies in Leh and Kargil, sit-ins by student groups and repeated delegations to Delhi but these have been met with mere assurances or outright dismissal.

For the BJP, allowing the implementation of Sixth Schedule protections would mean restricting outside investment and central control over land and resources, undermining its broader economic and strategic agenda. In effect, Ladakh’s constitutional pleas clash with the government’s desire to push large-scale infrastructure and industrial projects, leaving its people caught between promises of autonomy and the reality of centralised power.

By refusing Ladakh’s demand for constitutional safeguards, the BJP is not merely breaking an electoral promise, rather it is actively hollowing out democratic space in the region. Amit Shah’s categorical dismissal of statehood and Sixth Schedule protections signals that dialogue and peaceful mobilisation no longer carry weight in Delhi’s calculus. Ladakh was stripped of its legislature in 2019 and has since been governed directly from the Centre, leaving its people without meaningful representation. The ongoing hunger strike, is a plea for rights and a test of whether India’s democracy extends to its most remote frontier or whether Ladakh will remain an administered territory without a voice.

This silence being served by Shah and the Union government is a warning sign of how democracy is being hollowed out at India’s peripheries. A region that asked for constitutional safeguards has instead been met with denial, direct rule and broken promises. The hunger strike led by Wangchuk has laid bare a stark truth: that even the most peaceful, constitutional methods of protest can be rendered powerless when confronted with a regime that values control over dialogue.

If Ladakh’s voice can be muted so easily, it raises a larger question for the rest of India whether democratic rights in the republic are now negotiable, depending on geography and political convenience.

Tarushi Aswani is an independent journalist.

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