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A renowned environmentalist at the forefront of a protest movement in the Indian region of Ladakh has been arrested amid a wider crackdown on dissent under the prime minister, Narendra Modi.
Sonam Wangchuk, an activist, engineer and inventor, has been leading a lengthy agitation against the Modi government, calling for statehood and greater protections to be granted to his home region of Ladakh. He was arrested on Friday afternoon, on his way to address a press conference.
His detention came after demonstrations in the regional capital of Leh turned violent on Wednesday. The local offices of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were among the buildings set on fire. The police responded with live ammunition, killing at least four protesters who were demanding autonomy and statehood for Ladakh.
Ladakh – which sits high up in the Himalayan mountains along the fractious borders with China and Pakistan – has been under the control of the central government since 2019.
The territory was part of the state of Jammu and Kashmir before it was unilaterally dissolved by the Modi government and brought fully under its control, to the anger and frustration of the local population.
The central home ministry accused Wangchuk, who had been staging a 15-day hunger strike, of inciting the “mob violence” through “provocative statements”, which referred to the Arab Spring and recent anti-corruption protests in Nepal.
Wangchuk had rejected the allegation, saying he did not support violence. He claimed that the central government was building a case against him to “throw me in jail for two years”.
“I am ready for that,” he said the night before his arrest. “But Sonam Wangchuk in jail may cause them more problems than a free Sonam Wangchuk.”
Wangchuk rose to prominence in his fight for the educational rights and environmental preservation of Ladakh.
He established an award-winning school as part of his students’ educational and cultural movement of Ladakh and is the inventor of the ice stupa, an artificial glacier that helps with crucial water storage that has been adopted globally. He was also the inspiration for one of Bollywood’s most beloved films, Three Idiots.
But after the Modi government took away the statehood of Jammu and Kashmir and, as deadly border skirmishes with China resulted in a massive military buildup and infrastructure push in Ladakh, with a heavy environmental impact, Wangchuk began to lead a movement fighting for Ladakh’s regional autonomy.
He has held repeated protests and hunger strikes, and last year led a group of hundreds of protesters on a 500-mile march from Leh to New Delhi to urge the government to heed to their demands for statehood.
Wangchuk claimed he had been harassed for standing up to the BJP government, which over its decade in power has routinely arrested activists, environmentalists and those who have taken part in government action, often charging them under stringent laws.
This week, the home ministry cancelled the registration that allowed Wangchuk’s NGO to receive foreign funds and put the Ladakh school he founded under criminal investigation. The move mirrors actions against organisations such as Amnesty International and Greenpeace after they were critical of the Modi government.
