Srinagar: Innovator and Ladakhi Magsaysay Award recipient Sonam Wangchuk, who is on hunger strike to demand special status and statehood for Ladakh, on Tuesday said that Ladakhis now feel it [Ladakh] is like a colony in the olden times and officers from faraway places come to govern them.
Wangchuk, whose life inspired the character of Phunsukh Wangdu, played by Aamir Khan in Bollywood blockbuster 3 Idiots, is observing a 21-day fast, amid freezing temperatures, to press for the Union Territory’s special status under the sixth schedule of the constitution of India and statehood. These demands have dominated the politics of the region after Ladakh was dismembered from the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir and granted a Union Territory status in 2019 by Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government.
He started the fast on March 6 after parleys between leadership of Ladakh and Union home ministry reached a dead-end with the Apex Body Leh (ABL) and Kargil Democratic Alliance (KDA) saying that the sub-committee level talks and their separate meeting with Union home minister Amit Shah didn’t yield any concrete and positive outcome.
Talking to The Wire over phone from the venue of his hunger strike, Wangchuk, who entered the 7th day of his strike today, said that Ladakhis are “very dejected, disappointed and frustrated” due to the Indian government’s approach to their demands.
He said the government has been “very careless and insensitive” towards genuine demands of the people of Ladakh.
“They have set-up a bad precedent of distrust for the entire nation for decades to come. You can make any promise and get away with it. Electoral promises and manifestos will have no meaning,” he said.
Wangchuk was referring to the promises made by BJP regarding inclusion of Ladakh in the sixth schedule of the constitution.
“Not only once, they made the same promise twice. In 2019, it was among their top three promises and in 2020 Hill Council polls, it was their topmost promise,” he said.
The sixth schedule provides for the administration of certain tribal areas as autonomous entities. It allows creation of autonomous district councils and regional councils endowed with certain legislative, executive, judicial and financial powers.
In his videos on social media, Wangchuk has been seeking special status for the region to safeguard its fragile environs and glaciers.
On being asked that certain quarters are citing the small size of Ladakh’s population to oppose its demand for statehood, he said: “When Sikkim became a state, it had roughly 2.50 lakh population and Ladakh today has three lakh population. When the government’s intentions are right, they can do things and when it is not, they can get away with excuses.”
He said Ladakhis now feel it is like a colony and commissioners from some faraway places come and govern them. “They have no democracy, no voting rights to elect their representatives to an Assembly. It is like a colony in the olden times,” he said.
Wangchuk said that they are trying to mobilise people in Ladakh, and in the nation, to express their opinion, maybe through the electoral process in the upcoming election.
“They will calmly elect the right people and reject the wrong parties,” he said, when asked whether Ladakhis would express their anger against the Union government over these demands in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
He said that he is touched by the bonhomie between people of Leh and Kargil over these serious issues which have far-reaching effects for a longtime to come. “This sad incident has some positive aspects. The people have united and resolved their differences,” he said.
The Buddhist-majority Leh and Muslim-majority Kargil have been arch-rivals in the past, but they have come together to fight for sixth schedule and statehood for the Union Territory.
Who is Sonam Wangchuk?
Fifty-seven-year-old Sonam Wangchuk is an engineer, innovator and education reformist. He is the founding-director of the Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh founded in 1988. Wangchuk was instrumental in the launch of operation New Hope in 1994, a collaboration of government, village communities and civil society to bring reforms in the government school system.
In 2018, he was conferred with the Ramon Magsaysay Award for his efforts to develop educational reform programmes that focus on “creative, child-friendly, and activity-based” education in Ladakh.
