Ladakh: A betrayal wrapped in bullets

Ladakh rose in protest this week — not with slogans of secession but with songs of survival, not with foreign flags but with the Indian tricolour clenched in rough, frostbitten hands. It was an organic uprising of monks, farmers, herders, students, and elders. Yet, in return for their dignity, what they received was live fire, pellets, and unlawful crackdowns, as if Ladakhis were enemies to be subdued rather than citizens to be heard.

Broken Promises in Thin Air

When Ladakh was carved into a Union Territory in 2019, the government promised constitutional protections that would place land, livelihood, and culture beyond the reach of unchecked exploitation. Repeatedly — in Parliament, in public — leaders assured Ladakh that the Sixth Schedule was on its way. Yet years have passed, and every promise has been scattered like dust into the cold desert wind. Ladakh has waited with faith; it has camped in hunger strikes and dialogues of peace. What it has received instead are lies lacquered as policy, empty assurances dressed as patriotism.

Guns for Protest, Silence for Justice

The firing on peaceful demonstrators this week is no accident; it is the logical outcome of a regime that fears dissent more than it values democracy. Lawful policing protocols were abandoned. Non-lethal measures were discarded. Instead, bullets cut through the cold mountain air, a state-sanctioned declaration that Ladakhis will not be heard but hunted. This is not “law and order”; this is tyranny in the tricolour’s shadow.

Media as Weapon, Not Mirror

If the bullets injured bodies, the national media injured the truth itself. Instead of showing the tears of Ladakhi mothers or the chants for the Sixth Schedule, primetime screens framed the movement as a conspiracy. Channels spat out accusations of Congress hand, whispered of “foreign forces,” and peddled fantasies of separatism — a lazy, malicious script designed to discredit genuine people’s power. But Ladakh’s protests are not a Congress rally. They are not Pakistan’s script. They are not propaganda paid for in Beijing.

They are the righteous demands of India’s own people, spoken in their own voices, written in the blood of their own ancestors. To dismiss Ladakh as a “foreign plot” is not just biased journalism — it is insult layered over injury, a betrayal of both Ladakh and the very idea of a free press.

The Arrest of Sonam Wangchuk

Arresting Sonam Wangchuk, Ladakh’s most respected innovator and environmentalist, will be remembered as a moral blunder of historic proportions. The man who built ice stupas to save water, who taught renewable science to young dreamers, who drew global attention to Ladakh’s fragile ecosystems — this man is now shackled as a criminal. By detaining him, the state has not silenced dissent; it has exposed its own weakness, its own fear that truth, spoken by one voice of integrity, can spark an uncontainable fire.

The Naked Truth

The Ladakhis ask for no revolution, no partition, no favour outside the bounds of law. They ask for the Sixth Schedule. They ask for promises already inscribed in India’s democratic pledge. They ask the government to honour its word. Nothing less, nothing more. And yet, instead of law, they receive lies. Instead of protection, police firing. Instead of dialogue, the dungeon. And when the smoke rises, the media delivers its sermons, dutifully painting the oppressed as traitors and the state as benevolent. This twisted narrative is not journalism. It is propaganda tailored to mock the pain of Ladakh.

Time for Reckoning

India stands at a precipice: Either it honours its word and grants Ladakh the Sixth Schedule, or it admits openly that its promises to frontier citizens are ornamental lies. Either it allows Ladakh’s people to shape their destiny through constitutional safeguards, or it continues to criminalize their voices until democracy itself becomes hollow in the Himalayas. What happened in Ladakh is not peripheral — it is central. For if bullets can answer questions in Leh, they can answer questions anywhere. If promises to Ladakh can be shelved, then promises to anyone can be thrown to the wind. This is not Ladakh’s battle alone. It is India’s moral battle. It is time to look squarely at the state, unmask its broken promises, and demand action: grant the Sixth Schedule, release Sonam Wangchuk, stop vilifying citizens through state-fed media. To stay silent now is to watch democracy suffocate at 11,000 feet above sea level. Ladakh has spoken with clarity. The question that remains is: Will Delhi dare to listen?

The writer is a political observer