Leh, Ladakh – Sep 24, 2025
By United Kashmir News Service
In the shadow of jagged Himalayan peaks, where ancient trade routes once wove together the fates of diverse peoples, the air in Leh crackled with fury today. Four protesters lay dead, over 60 injured, and a local BJP office smoldered after being torched by a mob of enraged youth. What began as a hunger strike for autonomy has erupted into the bloodiest clash in Ladakh's ongoing saga of resistance—a stark testament to how India's 2019 bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir has splintered a millennia-old cultural mosaic, leaving behind a fractured region adrift in resentment and neglect.
The violence erupted outside the Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters in Leh, the beating heart of this Buddhist-majority enclave. Demonstrators, many from the Gen Z vanguard of the Leh Apex Body (LAB), hurled stones and set fire to a police vehicle, demanding an end to what they call Delhi's "colonial stranglehold." Police responded with tear gas and baton charges, imposing a curfew under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. Curfew sirens wailed as the annual Ladakh Festival—meant to showcase the region's storied heritage—was abruptly canceled, its stages of traditional dances and yak races reduced to echoes in the thin mountain air.
At the epicentre stands Sonam Wangchuk, the acclaimed climate activist whose 35-day hunger strike, launched on September 10, has galvanized the movement. Addressing a virtual press conference amid the chaos, Wangchuk decried the escalation: "Nobody had an inkling something like this would happen. The youth said peaceful protests aren't working... This is the fifth time we've fasted, and now they've forced our Gen Z frenzy into violence." He ended his fast, appealing for calm, but vowed the agitation would persist until "result-oriented" talks with the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) address core demands: full statehood for Ladakh, inclusion under the Sixth Schedule for tribal protections, a dedicated public service commission, and separate parliamentary seats for Leh and Kargil.
This isn't a sudden flare-up. The protests trace back to August 5, 2019, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government revoked Article 370, stripping Jammu and Kashmir of its special status and bifurcating it into two Union Territories: Jammu and Kashmir (with a legislature) and Ladakh (sans one). Hailed by New Delhi as a step toward integration and development, the move instead ignited a slow-burning revolt across the erstwhile state's 222,236 square kilometers—a landmass stitched together for over 5,000 years by shared histories of Buddhist monks, Shia traders, and Sufi mystics traversing the Silk Road. Ladakh, once a semi-autonomous hill council under the old state, found itself reduced to a bureaucratic outpost, its 97% tribal population stripped of land safeguards and political voice.
"Delhi promised prosperity; we got plunder," said Sajad Kargili, a leader of the Kargil Democratic Alliance (KDA), speaking from the Shia-majority town of Kargil, 230 kilometers southwest of Leh. Overcoming historic Buddhist-Shia divides, the LAB and KDA have united in a four-year campaign, marked by the 2024 "Delhi Chalo Padyatra" march and stalled talks with an MHA high-powered committee. The last round, on May 27, yielded minor concessions like a domicile policy, but protesters decry it as "cosmetic." New laws allowing outsiders to buy land have fueled fears of cultural erosion, while unemployment soars amid unfulfilled job quotas. Talks are slated for October 6, but Wangchuk dismissed them as "pro forma," warning of intensified shutdowns.
The bifurcation's scars run deeper, echoing across the Line of Control (LoC) into Pakistan-administered Kashmir. In Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), long-simmering grievances over economic despair and denied autonomy have boiled over into parallel uprisings, underscoring the hollow irony of a region cleaved yet bound by shared subjugation. Since May 2023, Azad Kashmir's Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) has led shutter-down strikes and wheel-jams against skyrocketing wheat and electricity prices—exacerbated by Pakistan's economic woes, with flour hitting record highs in 2023. Deadly clashes in May 2024 killed four, prompting a Rs23 billion federal bailout, but unfulfilled promises reignited fury in 2025, with arrests of JAAC leaders under anti-terror laws sparking fresh sit-ins.
In GB, the "wheat protests" of late 2023 morphed into a 2024-2025 torrent: blockades of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)'s Karakoram Highway in June 2025 halted trade for days, stranding perishable goods worth millions and exposing Islamabad's neglect. Thousands rallied against land grabs for hydel projects like Diamer-Basha, demanding rehabilitation and jobs—echoing 2010 agreements ignored for over a decade. April 2025 saw outrage over mineral exploitation and blackouts, while May arrests of Awami Action Committee (AAC) activists under hate speech charges drew international condemnation as "systemic harassment." Police sit-ins in August 2025 over unpaid allowances paralyzed Gilgit, the regional capital. "We subsidize Pakistan's power grid but live in darkness," fumed AAC chairman Ehsan Ali Advocate, highlighting GB's disputed status—neither fully Pakistani nor autonomous, per Islamabad's Kashmir calculus.
From Delhi's Rajpath to Islamabad's corridors of power, the treatment mirrors the British Raj's disdain for its Indian subjects: Westminster's viceroys once dictated from afar, much as New Delhi and Islamabad now impose edicts on a people who've coexisted for millennia. The 2019 Reorganisation Act, passed amid opposition walkouts and torn constitutions in Parliament, downgraded a princely state forged in the 19th century from Dogra, Ladakhi, and Kashmiri threads. Post-bifurcation, Jammu and Kashmir saw a fragile assembly election in October 2024—the first in nine years—but violence spiked, with 40 attacks killing dozens by September 2025. Ladakh's youth, once symbols of harmony, now chant against "betrayal," their agitation a microcosm of eroded trust.
Yet amid the smoke and slogans, a whisper of an alternative persists: empowerment from below. Protesters on both divides invoke a grassroots path—elect representatives to draft a unified constitution, honoring the region's ancient bonds. This elected body could then negotiate shared sovereignty with India, Pakistan, and China, modeled on the European Union's cooperative federalism: porous borders for trade, joint environmental stewardship over glaciers feeding the Indus, and cultural corridors reviving lost pilgrimages. "We've lived as one for thousands of years; let us chart our future, not be pawns in distant games," urged Kargili, echoing calls from GB's AAC for "no taxation without representation."
As curfew lifts in Leh and highway blockades loom in GB, the bifurcation's legacy hangs heavy: a historic heartland adrift, its people paying the price for top-down "solutions." Without dialogue yielding real power, today's clashes may foreshadow tomorrow's inferno. In a region where mountains have outlasted empires, the true test is whether leaders heed the call for reunion—or risk history's unforgiving verdict.
A reminder from the history when our four fathers from all parts of J&K, presently known as AJK, GB, Ladakh, Jammu and Valley of Kashmir gathered in Srinagar in 1944 at the platform of The National Conference had approved, a constitution for an independent Kashmir, which began: “We the people of Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh and the Frontier regions(Gilgit Baltistan), including Poonch and Chenani districts, commonly known as Jammu and Kashmir State, in order to perfect our union in the fullest equality and self-determination, to raise ourselves and our children forever from the abyss of oppression and poverty, degradation and superstition, from medieval darkness and ignorance, into the sunlit valleys of plenty, ruled by freedom, science and honest toil, in worthy participation of the historic resurgence of the peoples of the East, and the working masses of the world, and in determination to make this our country a dazzling gem on the snowy bosom of Asia, do propose and propound the following constitution of our state:"
No comments:
Post a Comment