By SANJEEV CHOPRA
As this edition goes to print, Sonam Wangchuk, the Magsaysay Award winner who inspired the character played by Aamir Khan in the very popular ‘Three idiots’ would be on the twelfth day of his twenty one hunger strike in the freezing climes of Leh, where hundreds have joined him in his quest for justice . He speaks in a language other than any of the twenty-two listed in the eighth schedule. This is the language of pain and silence, and he and his friend are reaching out to fellow citizens across the country to ensure a voice for Ladakh, and their right to determine their own destiny.
Just for recall, when Ladakh was carved out as a Union Territory from the state of J& K on 5th August 2019, the Ladakh Buddhist Association (LBA) had welcomed the decision for it felt that the Ladakhis had long been denied their ‘voice’ in the polity of J&K. But they were disappointed about the fact that unlike J&K, they were constituted into a UT without a legislature, almost on the lines of Lakshadweep. However, they were hopeful that they would be accorded the benefits of the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution which is applicable to several states in the North East, including Sikkim, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Assam and Manipur.
It is true that the Ladakh does not have the numbers to affect electoral politics – any one way or the other. But will everything be determined by elections alone? The ecological fragility of Ladakh is extremely relevant, not just for Ladakh but for the nation as a whole. In fact, after the South and the North Pole, this is called the third pole and has the largest reservoir of fresh water that feeds roughly 2 billion people, which is about 25% of the planet’s population. Ladakh is on the Tibetan plateau and entire Himalayas come in sensitive zone. Why should they not decide the nature of infrastructure projects as well as the kind and type of tourism they want. While the MHA never accepted the demand for statehood, the promise of the sixth schedule was held out in the election manifesto of the BJP during the last Lok Sabha elections.
Then there is the issue of the morale of the people of a crucial and contested border. The ongoing agitation is certainly going to have a psychological impact on the Ladakh scouts who are bravely facing the ‘dragon’ on the other side. As a newspaper from the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand which faces the same border, the concerns of Wangchuk and his colleagues are shared quite widely. One hopes that the MHA listens to their demand, and the fast is withdrawn well before the completion of twenty-one days.
