A Glacial Meltdown

Ladakhis are demanding nothing more radical than statehood and Sixth Schedule safeguards within the Indian Constitution

- Anand Teltumbde

WHEN Ladakh erupted on September 24, 2025, with four protesters killed in police firing, dozens more seriously injured, curfew imposed across Leh, internet blackouts, and Sonam Wangchuk arrested under the National Security Act (NSA), many in the Indian establishment tried to reduce it to “law and order.” Wangchuk was flown to distant Jodhpur as a grave threat to national security. But Ladakh is not a local disturbance. Dissent is treated with contempt across the country by the ruling dispensation and institutions are subordinated to party interests.

Ballots are held, parliaments sit, courts function—but all of these have been hollowed out, bent to the will of one party and one leader.

The Arc of Authoritarianism

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) ideological journey in power can be mapped in four stages: Congress-mukt Bharat, Opposition-mukt Bharat, Protest-mukt Bharat and now, Citizen-mukt Bharat.

In 2014, Narendra Modi’s campaign promised a Congress-mukt Bharat (Congress-free India). Framed as the end of dynastic corruption, it quickly morphed into delegitimising India’s oldest party as “anti-national.” Once the Congress was weakened, the target shifted to regional parties. Leaders of the Aam Aadmi Party, the Trinamool Congress, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Nationalist Congress Party, and the Shiv Sena were hounded by the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation. State governments were toppled through engineered defections. Pluralism, the very foundation of Indian federalism, was hollowed out.

With parliamentary opposition reduced, the street became the next frontier. Peaceful citizens’ movements— from Shaheen Bagh against the Citizenship Amendment Act to the yearlong farmers’ agitation—were vilified, disrupted by curfews and blackouts, and crushed with sedition charges and preventive detentions. Protest, the soul of democracy, was rebranded as anarchy.