Protests in Ladakh – The opening of a Pandora’s Box?

Locals stage a protest demanding statehood and protections under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution for the Union Territory, in Ladakh. (Source: PTI)

In the pre-2019 state of Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh was the outlying region. There may have been local rumblings about Kashmir and Jammu getting greater attention. When Article 370 was dismantled which gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir, the BJP government at the Centre had also bifurcated the state into Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh, and each part was given Union Territory status.

While Kashmiris were unhappy over the removal of the special status under Article 370, though it was meant for the whole state, which included Jammu and Ladakh, the people of Jammu were relatively happy that they are on an equal footing with Kashmir. But there have been murmurs of dissatisfaction in Jammu that the BJP’s decision did not turn out to be of much advantage to Jammu. They still have to share the new political status with Kashmir. There was a broad religious angle to the new setup. Kashmir was mostly Muslim, Jammu, despite areas like Doda, was largely Hindu, and Ladakh was largely Buddhist though Shia-dominated Kargil is part of Ladakh.

It was perhaps to be expected that the political groups in Ladakh, the Leh Apex Body (LAB) and Kargil Democratic Alliance (KDA), should have come up with the demand for statehood even as the Supreme Court had heard the case over Article 370 and the demotion of J&K into a Union Territory, had received an assurance from the central government that the statehood of Jammu and Kashmir would be restored. That meant Ladakh was left out in the cold, and it will remain a UT.

The demand of Ladakh was inevitable. It would have come up anyway, and it has come up soon enough. Also the demand to be included in the Sixth Schedule to give it a tribal status was in the logic of things. And those who had submitted the memorandum on their demands have rightly cited the cases of Mizoram, Tripura, Sikkim. And they also cited Article 371 – a version of Article 370 having special provisions protecting a set of states and their territories and local people  – which is again a natural demand.  So does this mean that the gambit of undoing Article 370 was a futile exercise? In some ways, Article 370 came with its own mortality written into it when it was called a temporary provision.

When the statehood of Jammu and Kashmir is restored, the demand can crop up that Article 371 be extended to it because of cultural characteristics, Kashmir  with its Kashmiri language and living traditions, and Jammu with its Dogri language and traditions. Perhaps it would not be a bad idea if Ladakh was to be re-integrated with Jammu and Kashmir, and the old state is brought under Article 371!

This is a tricky issue for the BJP because it had opposed special status for Muslim majority Kashmir Valley, and did not seem to note the fact that Hindu-dominant Jammu and Buddhist-dominant Ladakh were also part of the special status. What is needed is a political review of the situation in Ladakh, and in Jammu and Kashmir, and make the necessary course correction.

Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr is a New Delhi-based journalist. Views are personal, and do not represent the stance of this publication.