Ladakh’s Local Hero Wants India to Pay Attention to His People

The activist Sonam Wangchuk is leading protests to demand more autonomy for India’s remote Ladakh region, which shares borders with China and Pakistan.

Sonam Wangchuk has worn many hats: as an engineer, an environmentalist and an education reformer.

His work has inspired a Bollywood movie, and he has been honored with what is often called Asia’s Nobel Peace Prize, the Ramon Magsaysay Award.

A native of Ladakh, an ecologically fragile Himalayan region of northern India, Mr. Wangchuk is now leading protests to demand more control over how that land is used and governed. With China to the east and Pakistan to the west, Ladakh is critical to India’s national security.

But the region was upended by the Indian government’s decision in 2019 to bring Ladakh under direct federal control. ​

Ladakh residents initially rejoiced at the change, thinking it would help preserve the remote region’s unique ​identity and culture. For many, the mood has since soured.

In the past month Mr. Wangchuk and a group of supporters trekked about 500 miles from Leh, the biggest city in Ladakh, to New Delhi, the nation’s capital. They plan to protest there until the Indian government agrees to restart talks on the issue.

​Negotiations in March were inconclusive, but India’s Ministry of Home Affairs said in a statement at the time that the government is “committed to provide necessary constitutional safeguards” to Ladakh. It has not officially responded to the current protests.

“Governments in democracies should be sensitive to people’s demands,” Mr. Wangchuk told reporters on Thursday. “Good leaders listen to people’s voices, especially when they have been walking for a month.”

He added that government officials should be especially attentive to Ladakhis, many of whom are called upon to patrol the region’s borders with China and Pakistan.

Mr. Wangchuk is also more than a week into what he plans as a 28-day fast — one he says he would end if the government agrees to negotiate. Mr. Wangchuk was on the seventh day of his fast on Saturday, when Hindus celebrated Dussehra, a holiday marking the triumph of good over evil.

“But I can’t see truth winning in the real world,” he posted to his 1.4 million followers on Instagram. “Let’s all first make that happen and then say, ‘Happy Dussehra.’”

Until 2019, Ladakh was part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. India and Pakistan have fought several wars over the Muslim-majority region of Kashmir.​ Five years ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government revoked Kashmir’s autonomous status, including the ability to set its own laws.

The move allowed Jammu and Kashmir to elect its own local assembly but decreed that Ladakh would be ruled directly by New Delhi, with no such powers. The government cast the moves partly as a way to spur economic development in the troubled regions.

Ladakh’s present status is “primarily driven by its geostrategic position,” Naresh Kumar Verma, an assistant professor at the Special Center for National Security Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, said via email. “This will remain a major calculus on the part of New Delhi when considering an arrangement for Ladakh,” said Dr. Verma, who co-wrote a paper published this summer on Ladakh’s quest for autonomy with Rahul Rawat, a Ph.D. candidate.

In 2020, India and China were locked in deadly border skirmishes in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley. Ladakh’s territory also includes Kargil, where India and Pakistan fought a bitter war in 1999.

Mr. Wangchuk, who received the Magsaysay award in 2018 because of an eco-friendly school he founded, said he got involved in the movement for autonomy out of concern that haphazard construction, heavy tourism, the sale of mining rights and other actions were destabilizing Ladakh’s natural habitat and threatening the local environment.

With nearly 300,000 residents, including Kargil, Ladakh is surrounded by the peaks and valleys of the high Himalayas, where rare flowers bloom and elusive snow leopards roam. Tourism is an important driver of the economy.

“Ladakh is like Mars, which is not easy to understand,” Mr. Wangchuk said Thursday in an interview. Dressed in a blue kurta and Nike sweatpants, he looked frail but composed. He said he was subsisting on water, lemons and salt along with a group of about 20 protesters gathered on the campus of a government building. This is his fourth fast for the cause, he said.

Those who have lived in the region for generations understand its “ecology, its glaciers, its land, its forest, the culture of people, which saved us so far,” he said, urging that their input should be included in shaping policies that affect them.

Ladakhis have sought a number of remedies from the government, foremost of which is a provision in the Constitution granting the region the right to set its own rules on matters like agriculture and forestry.

Whether or not Ladakh’s demands are met, “the protests serve as genuine feedback for policymakers,” Dr. Verma said. “This will work as a loop to include the participation of locals as the quintessential stakeholders in formulating” policies and programs.

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