Forty-two years ago, an Indian prime minister flew into Leh to talk a Ladakhi leader out of starving himself over a demand for more rights for the people there. This week, as his son fasted for a cause of his own, it was that memory the Congress reached for, though it’s no longer in power.
Event Context
The current BJP-led government has so far been indifferent at best towards the Cockroach Janta Party protest at Jantar Mantar, where Sonam Wangchuk is on hunger strike for 20 days and counting.
Congress MP and spokesperson Pawan Khera became the official party face to physically visit the protest site on Friday, July 17, meeting Wangchuk and other Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) members such as founder Abhijeet Dipke, at their sit-in over irregularities in the NEET-UG examination and other such issues.
Khera’s visit came a day after party general secretary (organisation) KC Venugopal expressed solidarity on X, and broke the Congress’s official silence on the protest that the CJP pegged as “non-political” from the start.
Venugopal mentioned, however, that his own party was raising the demand for minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation too.
Rahul Gandhi, the party’s preeminent leader, has chosen not to visit so far, while he is in Dehradun on July 17 for a Congress rally on the same issue.
Before that, CJP spokesperson Saurav Das also made an X post invoking the Indira Gandhi-Sonam Wangyal meeting, and wrote, “The government must learn how to respond and accept accountability.”
He shared a post that carried a photo of that meeting. And that post was itself a response to a right-wing influencer trying to prove that Wangchuk was the product of a false narrative.
After his meeting with Wangchuk on Friday, Khera too mentioned the 1984 meeting. He also wrote: “Today, on behalf of the Congress Party, I met Shri Sonam Wangchuk and the protesters at Jantar Mantar, and urged them to end their fast in light of their deteriorating health. A movement is not strengthened by losing its people. We live to fight another day.”
Wangchuk’s father, Sonam Wangyal, born in Chemre village in 1925, had served in the paramilitary and was a mountaineer who climbed Mount Everest in 1965 at the age 23. As a prominent Ladakhi society leader, he served as an MLC in Jammu and Kashmir from 1957 to 1967, and later as an MLA in 1967 and 1972 from the Congress, before becoming a cabinet minister in the J&K government in 1975.
It took five more years of agitation before the Centre acted as such; and in 1989 the President promulgated the Constitution (Jammu and Kashmir) Scheduled Tribes Order, granting ST status to eight communities at first. Wangyal was at one point even expelled from the Congress in 1987 over what the party termed anti-party activities. He passed away in 1998.
Son Sonam Wangchuk has remained away from active politics, but has been an activist focused on education, climate, and rights for Ladakh, having recently spent six months in jail over an agitation seeking special status for the region that was carved out as UT when Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood was taken away in 2019.
The Congress had stayed conspicuously absent from the CJP’s protest for much of its run, even as the Aam Aadmi Party’s Arvind Kejriwal, the Samajwadi Party’s Dimple Yadav, and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee extended support. Some Congress MPs did back it as individuals.
Team Analysis
A meeting of the CPP was held today under her chairpersonship on Thursday where the Congress president and Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, and the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, were present, along with other MPs.
Also read | Not only Sonam Wangchuk, AISA activists on parallel hunger strike ‘at high risk’ too: ‘Shows the govt is heartless’
Having remained associated with the National Conference besides the Congress, he was part of a sustained campaign in the 1980s for ST recognition of Ladakh’s communities.
In 1984, he undertook a five-day hunger strike to press the demand.
Then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi travelled to Leh and persuaded him to end the fast, while committing to grant his demand. She was assassinated later that year by her bodyguards over Operation Bluestar, a military intervention at the Sikh shrine complex Golden Temple in Amritsar.
Party insiders had reportedly cited unease among some Congress leaders about aligning too closely with the satirical outfit — founded and named thus after some comments by the Chief Justice of India — over its team members having been bitter critics of the Congress in the past.
Then came the CJP’s invocation of the 1984 episode involving Indira Gandhi’s move; and now Sonia Gandhi’s reported intervention, citing continuity with the Congress tradition of engaging Ladakhi grievances.
Party spokesperson Khera wrote on X after the meeting with Wangchuk: “In a democracy, peaceful protest is a constitutional right. When citizens undertake a fast to be heard, the duty of the government is to listen – not look away. That is Raj Dharma. That is what Smt. Indira Gandhi Ji did in 1984. That is what Dr. Manmohan Singh’s government did in 2011 [during agitation led by Anna Hazare]. They understood that a government’s first responsibility is engagement, even in disagreement.”
Wangchuk, whose health has been under clinical monitoring following a Delhi High Court order, said on Friday that he intended to continue his fast at least until July 20, when the CJP has called for a march to Parliament coinciding with the start of the Monsoon session.
The Congress engagement came also after Wangchuk took a swipe at Rahul Gandhi’s absence from Jantar Mantar, reportedly calling it “great pettiness” if the Leader of the Opposition (Lok Sabha) and others stayed away. He had claimed warning that the public would reject such leaders.
This came even as the Congress, including its comms chief Jairam Ramesh and Gujarat leader Jignesh Mevani, defended Rahul Gandhi by pointing to his parallel ‘Chhatron Ki Goonj’ student campaign, which was headed to Dehradun the same Friday Khera visited the protest site.
Many pro-Congress handles on social media have also recalled how Wangchuk had welcomed the hollowing-out of special status under Article 370 for J&K that led to Ladakh’s becoming a UT. A March 2023 post also resurfaced this week showing Wangchuk thanking education minister Dharmendra Pradhan for his openness to reform. Three years later, Wangchuk is on an indefinite fast demanding that very minister’s resignation.
Also read | How Modi govt’s equation with Sonam Wangchuk collapsed: From ‘wonderful conversation’ to Jantar Mantar
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The gradual shift in the Congress posture — leading to in-person backing via a senior emissary — reportedly followed an intervention by Sonia Gandhi, the Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson.
Sonia Gandhi cited the precedent from 42 years ago, that is, Indira Gandhi’s 1984 visit to Leh to meet Wangchuk’s father, Sonam Wangyal, during his own hunger strike demanding Scheduled Tribe (ST) status for Ladakh’s communities, as per reports in The Indian Express and other outlets citing sources.
