When the state brands Sonam Wangchuk “anti-national,” we must sit up and take notice.

This is the same Wangchuk who developed ice stupas for water conservation, inspired the film 3 Idiots, addressed global fora including the Nobel Dialogue, and was once a trusted government advisor. Yet today, for demanding constitutional safeguards and ecological justice in his home region, he is being framed as a threat to the nation.

His wife, Gitanjali Angmo, denounces the campaign as “blatant lies … part of a witch-hunt” intended to defame him and suppress the Ladakhi struggle.

This episode is not just about one man. It is about what kind of democracy India wants to be. If dissenters can so quickly be recast as traitors, then the promise of a plural, open, constitutional democracy is under grave risk.

In Ladakh

Wangchuk’s activism has always been tied to the fragile ecosystem of his homeland.

“Over my lifetime, I have seen glaciers vanish. Glaciers that used to be right next to roads have retreated hundreds of meters,” he told Yale's e360 last year.

And about the path of development, he warned: “There will be more and bigger roads … all of this activity will lead to more local emissions … the glaciers disappear even faster.”

On September 10, 2025, Wangchuk began a 35-day hunger strike demanding Sixth Schedule status and statehood for Ladakh. But when two fasters collapsed and protests escalated, violence broke out in Leh on September 24, leaving at least four dead and dozens injured.

Calling off the strike, Wangchuck appealed for calm: “I request the youth of Ladakh to stop the violence forthwith … We do not want instability … This is the saddest day for Ladakh.”

Days later, he was arrested under the National Security Act. Just before that, his NGO’s licence under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act was cancelled.

A pattern

Wangchuk’s case is not unique. Farmers protesting against the centre's laws were met with water cannon. Students speaking on campuses are penalised or criminalised. NGOs investigating human rights abuses have had their licences suspended, bank accounts frozen, or their directors harassed.

These repeated episodes establish not a pattern of overreach but a framework of suppression. Each time peaceful dissent is met with coercion rather than conversation, the democratic contract is weakened.

Why dissent matters

At stake here is not just Wangchuk’s reputation, it is the meaning of democracy itself.

Democracy is not merely about winning elections every five years. 

If global climate advocacy and peaceful marches can be retroactively recast as “anti-national,” then dissent in India has become perilously unsafe. Democracy is not merely majority rule, but a system where reasoned disagreement shapes collective will.

In Wangchuk’s case, what was once considered valuable global advocacy – such as his participation in climate dialogues abroad, including in Pakistan – is now retroactively painted as a national-security liability. As his wife Gitanjali Angmo has argued, this is part of a “fabricated narrative” meant to discredit Ladakhi protests. That narrative flips the democratic principle on its head: instead of dialogue with dissenters, the state seeks to delegitimise them.

Political theorist Chantal Mouffe offers a useful distinction: in a healthy democracy, adversaries are seen as legitimate opponents (agonism), not enemies to be crushed (antagonism). Disagreement is natural, even necessary. The challenge is to manage conflict without demonising the other side.

To paint dissenters as “anti-national” is to collapse this distinction, converting legitimate critics into enemies of the state. That is the hallmark of authoritarianism, not democracy.

The treatment of Wangchuk illustrates this danger. His protests were peaceful, his demands rooted in constitutional guarantees for Ladakh’s autonomy, his language measured. Yet the response included heavy police presence, tear gas, and media spin portraying him as destabilising. This is not the agonistic clash of ideas that democracies require, but the authoritarian logic of silencing.

The 'anti-national'

The “anti-national” label has become one of the most powerful tools in India’s political lexicon since 2014. It is vague, elastic, and impossible to defend against because it requires no proof. Ernesto Laclau’s discourse theory helps explain why the “anti-national” label is so potent. Hegemonic power, he argued, often sustains itself by constructing an antagonistic “other”. In this case, activists and intellectuals are turned into “internal enemies,” which allows governments to consolidate majoritarian narratives of strength while shrinking the space for pluralism. But this tactic carries costs.

By branding Wangchuk as a security threat, the state manufactures an external enemy within — consolidating its narrative of unity while suppressing plurality. But this discursive move corrodes trust in institutions deepens social polarisation, and chills democratic debate. If every critic can be branded a threat, then no citizen is safe from suspicion.

This is not unique to India. Around the world, from Turkey to Hungary, populist regimes have used the same playbook: equating government with nation, and critics with traitors. But India’s Constitution, born of anti-colonial struggle, demands better.

Since 2014

India has prided itself on being the world’s largest democracy. Yet since 2014, a pattern has emerged: critics from journalists to NGOs to public intellectuals face harassment, legal cases, or delegitimisation. The charge of being “anti-national” has become a catch-all, from university campuses to border villages. Each time the state resorts to this label instead of dialogue, it narrows the democratic sphere.

Since the BJP came to power in 2014, India has witnessed what many scholars call a democratic backsliding. Institutions have been weakened, checks and balances eroded, and civil society space shrunk. The branding of dissenters as “anti-national” fits this trajectory. It allows the state to avoid engagement on substantive issues — ecological degradation, corporate land acquisition, minority rights — by delegitimising the questioner.

As the EPW recently argued, political imprisonment and delegitimisation of dissent hollow out democracy from within, even while elections continue. John Stuart Mill had warned that “the worth of a man is in proportion to the objects he pursues” — if those who pursue justice, sustainability, or rights are branded traitors, we risk becoming a nation hostile to its own conscience.

The cumulative effect is corrosive. Children grow up seeing not reasoned debate but repression of dissent. This erodes the culture of critical thinking essential for innovation and democratic vitality. For a country that aspires to be a global leader, the suppression of independent voices is not just a political mistake but a developmental dead end.

Lessons from the Enlightenment and Beyond

The Enlightenment tradition, from Kant to Mill, imagined citizens as rational beings capable of self-rule. Liberty, reason, and critique of authority were its pillars. India’s Constitution was born of Enlightenment values, embedding freedoms of speech, association, and peaceful assembly. But history warns us: when states claim to know better than citizens what counts as “the national interest,” liberty quickly turns into control.

Michel Foucault, for example, highlighted how power often disguises itself as “reason.” When governments claim to know better than citizens what counts as “national interest,” they risk converting liberty into control. Postmodern thought reminds us to stay sceptical of grand narratives – including those that claim dissent is inherently dangerous.

The real danger lies not in citizens questioning power but in the state branding all questioning as subversion. As Isaiah Berlin once observed, the greatest threat to liberty is the pursuit of a single, unquestioned vision of the “common good.”

Why Wangchuk matters

Sonam Wangchuk’s case is about more than Ladakh. It is about whether India will continue to honour the pluralism that has long been its strength. A state that cannot tolerate peaceful protests by its most creative citizens is not confident in itself.

For a democracy to thrive, power must be contestable. When citizens lose the ability to question, the state becomes monolithic. When every critic is a potential traitor, then fear replaces public reasoning.

Mill insisted that allowing dissent – no matter how unpopular – prevents stagnation. Postmodern critiques warn that grand narratives of “national unity” often serve to suppress difference in the name of order. When democracy is redefined as national unanimity, dissent becomes heresy.

India’s constitution gives space to protest. It gives rights to speech, to association, to dissent. Yet the logic of branding does the opposite: it punishes the exercise of those rights.

Sonam Wangchuk’s case is symbolic yet deeply material. A man who has sacrificed his health, worked in remote mountains, and sought local solutions, now threatened with jail for exercising his voice.

Democracy is not endangered when people protest; it is endangered when the state cannot tolerate their protests. 

The true “anti-national” act is not dissent. It is the silencing of dissent.

Sushiila Ttiwari  and Dr Samarender Reddy are managing director and director of 7qube.com.

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