The Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council for Kargil (LAHDC–K) has generated considerable national curiosity. This was surprising because the election was held in the wake of the Canada-India diplomatic standoff, the announcement of the dates for five State Assembly elections, and the severity of the Hamas-Israel war.
The elections may also have attracted interest because their results were reportedly shocking enough to have upset the local administration. The BJP’s ambitions for several more seats in the Kargil Council were not to be. The combination of the J&K National Conference (NC) and the Indian National Congress (Congress) won 22 of the total 26 elected seats. The BJP won just 2 seats and independents bagged the remaining 2. The voter turnout was a very healthy 78 percent.
It was an emphatic qualitative response to the gap between BJP promises and deliveries from Kargil’s quantitatively tiny demography of 150,000 citizens. The victory was notable because the winners managed to shift the debate to issues of constitutional and political autonomy, destroying the BJP government’s blatant and ill-conceived attempts to bury politics under local rivalries and other things.
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Leaving aside, for a moment, the question of whether the BJP has delivered on its promises of economic prosperity and infrastructural development, the ultimate takeaway from this Himalayan-strip victory in the INDIA bloc is this: voters can overcome the ambivalent polemics demonstrate the power of a powerful idea – that all politics is local.
Ladakh proved the truth of this principle by forging a domestic internal unity centered on the issues of loss of basic rights such as employment, local identity and land ownership. The BJP expected to reap the gains from the successful delivery of Union Territory status for Ladakh. But four years later, he discovered that there is deep resentment in Ladakh about what he actually delivered.
Anatomy of a failure
The results of the Kargil elections prove that the rift in the constituent parts of the erstwhile state of J&K against New Delhi has spread from Kashmir, its most politically informed and vocal part, to Ladakh and possibly Jammu, although this requires a separate analysis. Regardless, the spread of dissent in Ladakh is bad enough because, for the past 70 years, New Delhi has focused efforts on controlling the narrative by alienating, blaming and demonizing the ethno-linguistic Kashmir Valley as the source of all the problems in the former State. . The Kargil Council election result is the first to overturn this. Indications are that Leh district will follow suit. It is important to understand why.
First, apart from breaking up the state, the BJP’s August 2019 action also dismantled intra-state political coordination, economic synergies and employment prospects for the region’s youth. So much so that it would not be a surprise if the political, entrepreneurial and work-ready public of Ladakh go for all the electoral measures during the 2024 general elections.
Secondly, and more importantly, what tipped the scales in the Kargil Council elections was a surprising unity between Leh and Kargil, which had been politically estranged for over 40 years now. This shift is evidenced by Leh’s greeting of Union Territory status by the BJP on August 5, 2019, with drumbeats and sweets. Kargil received this with skepticism, mainly because they suspected that it would formalize Leh’s outdated rule over Kargil. However, Leh’s doubts about the BJP’s intentions had surfaced long before 2019.
Almost exactly one year before this date, Thupstan Chhewang, Ladakh’s most seasoned, experienced and respected politician suddenly resigned from Lok Sabha and BJP membership. His reason for this was telling. He doubted the BJP’s sincerity in fulfilling the political demands of Leh. In retrospect, this fact facilitated talks between Leh and Kargil.
Consultations between the representatives of the two regions between 2019 and 2021 convinced both regions that the institution of the UT did not mean transfer of powers. They saw that it meant the opposite. In practical terms, it was a classic case of upward self-assignment of decision-making processes by New Delhi. Most damaging to the BJP, Ladakhis found that their land rights and employment opportunities would be decided by New Delhi. The pushback was overt, vocal and radical.
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On 1 August 2021, in a surprise development, the leaders of Leh and Kargil closed ranks to form a united front, even retaining the option of group autonomy between the two regions. It was a stunning display of democratic decentralization between regions. This pact of unity led to a continuous and sustained dialogue between the two regions that led to protests stretching from the streets of Leh and Kargil to the Jantar Mantar of New Delhi. Speeches during these protest rallies were filled with anecdotes about the sacrifices of Ladakhi youth, from Leh and Kargil, during India’s many wars and skirmishes with Pakistan and China. Unlike the rest of the country, this posed a unique conundrum for those seeking to label legitimate dissent by citizens of a highly sensitive border region as “anti-India”.
There were other, extra-regional developments, which also propelled the Congress-NC victory. Despite the separation of Ladakh from J&K, the National Conference successfully claimed its right to participate in the 2023 Kargil Council elections and mobilize its cadre there. Meanwhile, the Congress nurtured the single parliamentary constituency there. These developments are worth unpacking to understand the broader formulations.
The biggest takeaways
As Indian vote banks go, Kargil is a tiny constituency that barely registers a blip. However, this election contains some important lessons, and not just about giant killings. In short, the citizens of Kargil favored quality over quantity. Three qualitative factors could be highlighted.
First, and to repeat, the voters of Ladakh understood the meaning of the saying, “all politics is local”. Rahul Gandhi’s visits to Leh and Kargil as part of his Bharat Jodo Yatra made a significant difference. More important was his political disorientation. In most public interactions, he barely mentioned the Council elections. Instead, his messages were mostly about the Congress party’s vision for India and how it differs from the BJP’s known aspirations.
Residences in Kargil. | Photo: ANI
Congress workers accompanying Rahul Gandhi also did not intervene. Decisions on candidates and local issues were left to Ladakh to discuss and determine. The NC leadership followed suit, basically ensuring a secular message and aligning its cadre with the goals of the INDIA team. All this marked a departure from earlier interventions by non-local party officials. He went beyond the usual policy formula – as usual – and conveyed a subtle slant that subliminally appealed to voters.
Second, there was a series of strong ties that forged a solid chain that helped win: a local one between Kargil and Leh, a regional one between Ladakh and Kashmir, and a national one that started in New Delhi. The latter is demonstrated by the fact that Congress workers from Leh joined their Kargil counterparts at the campaign event. It was an alliance between several regions with autonomous needs but with a common program based on principles. It could well be a model for good politics in India.
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Third, the residual benefits of good politics were illustrated between the lines of the Kargil elections by the amicable resolution of a 60-year-old dispute over Leh’s Buddhist ambitions to build a monastery in Kargil town. The conflict threatened political exploitation and religious friction. In a unique turn of events for our time, the conflict was resolved through a peaceful Leh-Kargil dialogue that resulted in the provision of additional land for a monastery near Kargil and a sarai within the city, evoking the traditional practice of facilitating comfort of travelers from Leh through Kargil on their way to Kashmir, Zangskar or other points.
A political irony, finally, in the Kargil election results is this: the BJP’s dissolution of the former state of J&K and its inability to manage the consequent dismantling of its institutions has unwittingly created a solidarity that stretches from the ultra-Himalayan Ladakh to the New Delhi and back to Srinagar.
Siddiq Wahid, from Ladakh, is a Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences at Shiv Nadar University (Institute of Excellence), where he teaches Central Eurasian history in the Department of International Studies and Governance. He is an Adjunct Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies in New Delhi.