The Martyrs Memorial Park is perched at an altitude of 3,500 meters, in Skyatsags, Leh, Ladakh. Surrounded by willows on three sides, the podium in the park is decorated in cloth buntings of blue, red, and yellow, a visual that has come to represent Buddhist prayers floating into the ether. Each bunting carries the prayer: ‘Om Mani Padme Hum” (Praise to the jewel in the lotus).
The memorial park is dedicated to the three locals who died in the firing by security forces on August 27, 1989, during an agitation for Schedule Tribe (ST) and Union Territory (UT) status at the polo ground in Leh. Surrounded by mighty peaks over 5,000 meters high and peppered with fresh powder snowfall in a distance, many women, in ones and twos, enter the park, their voices hushed, their footsteps quiet.
This is where climate activist Sonam Wangchuk, 59, sat a three-week long hunger strike from September 10 this year. Now detained under the stringent National Security Act (NSA), 1980, Wangchuk had to call off the hunger strike on September 24 after rare violence left four locals dead and around 90 injured. People had been out on the street demanding Statehood and the enforcement of the Sixth Schedule, the part of the Indian Constitution which guarantees special provisions for areas with tribal majorities. In the violence, around 80 cars were found damaged outside the park. Dozens of people remain in police custody, locals say.
Dolma Phunsukh, in her 30s and a member of a non-governmental organisation (NGO), is at memorial park a week after the violence broke out and a curfew was imposed in the town. As the curfew in Leh is being relaxed by eight hours a day, Phunsukh says she has come to pick up her belongings from the protest site. “I have come to check if the mattresses and cushions I would bring along during the hunger strike are still there. I am sure no one will steal them. Everything is safe in Leh,” says Phunsukh, accompanied by her daughter. Both go through the bundles of mattresses at the venue, which is being emptied of chairs used by the protesters and stacked in a truck. Wangchuk’s absence means the protest politics are likely to take a back-seat for now.
“I can never forget the date, September 24. Even old men and women were not spared and beaten up with batons. Smoke shells were fired. I had never imagined that such a scene could have occurred in Ladakh. I barely managed to leave the park as the security forces barged in,” says Phunsukh.
More than a week has passed since the violence erupted in Leh. People are still grappling with a sense of disbelief and shock in a Union Territory which has one of India’s lowest crime rates, as per National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data. Most people here think the youth was running out of patience, changing the value system of Ladakh.
In living memory
Security personnel keep vigil at Leh’s main market.
| Photo Credit:
IMRAN NISSAR
Just 1 kilometre away from the memorial park, the mud-colour secretariat, with typical shingskos (carved) windows, has visible marks of violence. The Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC), formed in 1995, to facilitate a decentralised governance process, sits here.
Most window panes of the facade facing the Leh-Manali Highway are shattered. Glass shards are on the ground. Eyewitnesses say most deaths and injuries took place outside the secretariat. The BJP headquarters, another 1.5 km away, still has black soot on its freshly-coloured yellow three-storey building. The larger-than-life party banner has vanished from the office board in the arson. The security of the building has been heightened further and remains out of bounds for strangers, the policemen guarding the building say.
After the street violence left around four dead and 90 injured, unprecedented scenes unfolded at the Sonam Nurboo Memorial Hospital, Leh. “In my 24 years of service, it was for the first time I was attending to firearm injuries in Leh ever. The last time there were chaotic scenes in the hospital was the 2010 cloudburst (which left 255 locals dead),” says a senior doctor at the hospital on the condition of anonymity. No doctor is authorised to share details with the media in Leh independently. Meanwhile, the doctor recalled how doctors from other departments, not concerned with trauma and emergency, like ophthalmology, pathology joined in to ferry the injured civilians to different hospital units.
“We tried to resuscitate the four civilians. However, they were brought dead. We had to do 46 blood transfusions. Blood donors came in from all areas of Leh,” says another senior doctor at the hospital on the condition of anonymity. Several doctors, however, suggested that around 20 injuries came in with bullets and pellets.
Relatives waiting oustide the district jail in Leh. Twenty-six people were arrested following the violence on September 24.
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IMRAN NISSAR
Up to 11 injured still remain at the hospital, with seven MORE? shifted from police custody. A police officer said most injured will be released in “a phased manner and soon”.
“I was outside my college when protests broke outside. I came out of college and a warm object pierced my leg. I fell to the ground,” says a visibly shaken 18-year-old commerce student of the Eliezer Joldan Memorial College, Leh. He has been shifted to a Srinagar hospital for specialised treatment, as his parents fear a pellet-like object or splinter is lodged in his leg. Most injured in Leh protests were in their 20s and 30s.
Main demands
The damaged Bharatiya Janata Party office in Leh, Ladakh.
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IMRAN NISSAR
The official narrative that Wangchuk’s agitation had a foreign hand, connections with Pakistan, and misuse of funds have further piqued the youth simmering with anger. Locals also question the narrative of painting all Ladakhis as anti-nationals.
“My brother-in-law was an ex-soldier. He would tell tales of the Indian Army’s bravery while recapturing Tololing hill and the Drass sector from Pakistan intruders in the 1999 Kargil war. He fought the war himself and sent two of his sons to the Army school to serve the nation again. His father too was in the Army. He was shot at from a point-blank range, with two bullet wounds on the chest. Eyewitnesses said he was first beaten up and then targeted,” says Zanu Tundup, brother-in-law of 45-year-old Tsewang Tharchin, a retired army soldier-turned-protester who died in the Leh violence.
The family is still performing rituals as part of the last rites at the ancestral village in Skur Buchan in Khalsi Tehsil, 125 km away from Leh town. Locals consider those who died in protests as “martyrs” and arranged special prayers at monasteries on Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday on October 2.
The September 24 violence has left a scar on people’s mind. The security forces crackdown on local influencers’ vlogging has muted many. “A rap artist was sent a veiled threat to stop making videos on protests or face the music. She stopped,” a youth member of the Leh Apex Body (LAB) says, on the condition of anonymity. “There are threats that those whose names figured in First Information Reports (FIRs) will never get jobs. Government employees have been warned against posting their opinion online. Youth are detained and released after questioning. It’s control,” he adds.
The past four years have seen street protests, mostly peaceful, spearheaded by the Leh Apex Body (LAB) and the Kargil Democratic Alliance (KDA), conglomerates of social, political and religious bodies of Leh and Kargil regions of Ladakh. They have a four-point agenda: of Statehood status, inclusion in the Sixth Schedule list, an additional Lok Sabha seat, and an independent recruiting agency or Public Service Commission. Their message has seeped into every strata of society, mainly unemployed youth.
Centre-Ladakh strife
Relatives greet detainees released from the district jail.
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IMRAN NISSAR
Gelek Phunchok, 42, who serves as convener of LAB’s organising committee, says the conditions laid down by the Ministry of Home Affairs for talks were agreed upon. “We had already decided not to include Wangchuk’s name for this round of talks with the MHA. We are for peaceful settlement of issues. On the day of violence, our activists were pleading against hitting the streets. What followed was deaths and crackdown on local youth. Most bullets fired were above the waist,” says Phunchok. He fears the Centre may use Wangchuk’s detention and the cases filed against the youth to derail talks.
Ladakh and the Centre have held several rounds of talks to iron out differences and arrive at a consensus, but have failed so far. “Unkept promises and dilly-dally tactics by the Centre are fuelling angry protests in Ladakh,” Dr. Mutasif Ladakhi, who has a doctorate degree from the Jawaharlal Nehru University’s (JNU) History department, says. “After 2019, when Ladakh was carved out as a Union Territory (from the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir), the region was left at the mercy of bureaucrats from outside. They have a poor understanding of the region and have little knowledge about local sensibilities.”
Ladakhi’s mother, Nasreen Maryam, in her late 50s, attended Wangchuk’s hunger strike on September 24. He flags the issues weighing heavily on the minds of the youth: over-bureaucratisation and reports of ill-treatment to local contractual employees pushed to work beyond official working hours. “The region has been without a recruiting agency for the past few years and many youths have now become unemployable. Industrial policy is copy-pasted from the plains of Delhi to the rugged mountains of Ladakh, which is a complete mismatch and needs local knowledge for it to work,” says Ladakhi.
He worries that Ladakh will go the way of Lahaul and Spiti in Himachal Pradesh, where the Buddhist population is on the decline. “Ladakh has a population of 3.5 lakh people. The fear of a change in demographics exists. This is why we demand the Sixth Schedule rights to frame policy on land and culture locally,” he adds. The fear that corporations from outside will take over land to harness 13 GigaWatts of renewable energy without any sense of responsibility towards local ecology is also a source of anxiety. Ladakhi also laughs off the official narrative of Chinese angle to Ladakh protests. “No one buys the China angle here. Why would they do it? We are nationalists beyond doubt,” he adds.
Land value
The unrest-gripped Leh is also facing a major dent to its economy, which is dependent on tourism. In the past few decades, locals have invested in constructing 317 hotels, 691 guest houses, 1,055 homestays, and 105 camps in Leh district. “The Pahalgam attack in Kashmir resulted in a 50% drop in tourist footfall. The latest violence in Leh has acted as a death knell for tourism industry. People who had taken loans are struggling to repay them,” says Rigzin Wangmo Lachic, a hotel owner and a member of All Ladakh Guest House Association. She fears that the total tourists who travelled to Leh this year will be lowest. Around 5.25 lakh visited Leh in 2023 and 3.75 in 2024.
“We have built a tourism model from the ground up that prioritises community over corporations and sustainability over unchecked growth. People need to stop looking at the Leh highlands as a piece of land. Those who plan to set up solar energy plants don’t realise that the Changthang plateau is a whole ecosystem in itself,” says Lachic.
She says the Kiang or Tibetan wild ass is the backbone of green cover, as it grazes and spreads green cover with its excreta. “The plateau is home to sensitive pashmina goats, which graze on this green cover. Rare birds visit the area. We can’t disturb ecology for power plants,” Lachic says.
Political speak
Security personnel patrolling Leh’s main market.
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IMRAN NISSAR
As Ladakh is without a legislature, the recent violence also casts a shadow on the scheduled elections to the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council-Leh, the only elected body that runs governance issues around roads, electricity, and water. “We fear the elections, which otherwise should have been notified, may not be held in time. The recent events also do not favour the ruling BJP in the council so they would prefer to delay it,” says Tsering Namgail, a Congress councillor from Lower Leh.
He says his party will ensure that besides the Statehood and Sixth Schedule demands, the immediate release of Wangchuk, withdrawal of cases and compensation to those families who lost loved ones are part of the party manifesto. The previous council elections were held in October 2020 for 26 seats and the BJP had managed to win 15 seats and the Congress 9.
On October 2, dozens of locals reached the Leh central jail to receive 26 locals and activists being released after 10 days of custody. Around 56 locals were held after the September 24 violence, according to the LAB. Thiley Dorjey, 40, who faced charges like attempt to murder and rioting, was among 26 who were released was garlanded with a khata, a white scarf considered as a symbol of honour and respect. “Jail will not force me to change my stand as the future of Ladakh is at stake. Violence was wrong, but we will continue peaceful protests. We are proud Indians, but our region is ecologically fragile and our demography is under threat,” he adds.
