India’s latest internal rearrangement of its northern border territory of Ladakh – the creation of five new districts in addition to the two existing districts, reducing the plurality of Muslims to a near minority in terms of representation – has sparked a cynical perception that this may be intended to polarize its Buddhist and Muslim populations.
Since the amputation of their region from the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, Buddhist and Muslim Ladakhis have overcome past skepticism and pioneered an effective, consensus-based political struggle. Their litany of demands include statehood and guarantees under the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution that would protect the exclusivity of land and labor for Ladakh’s 274,000 residents (as per the 2011 census), 97 percent of whom are tribal.
In 2019, the Indian government removed Jammu and Kashmir from its semi-autonomous status and divided it into two Union Territories: UT of Jammu and Kashmir and UT of Ladakh. Since then, Ladakh has seen a strengthening of its bureaucratic apparatus, made up of civil servants parachuted in from various regions of the country. The bureaucrats report to an appointed lieutenant governor in New Delhi, are largely insulated from popular sentiments and have shown little aptitude for political inclusion, largely keeping the elected councils of the Kargil and Leh hills out of the decision-making process.
The legislation approved by Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena on April 27 created five new districts: Sham, Nubra, Changthang, Zanskar and Drass. Apparently, the delimitation aims to decentralize decision-making and facilitate direct funding of New Delhi’s districts. This is unlikely to be the case. In a union territory structure, authority over resources and funding is vested in the lieutenant governor, who approves directives from the center. A strong federal arrangement would require an elected legislature.
Critics say the delimitation is blatantly undemocratic, as Muslims – who make up 46.4 percent of Ladakh’s population – will now be in the majority in just two districts: Kargil and Drass. On the other hand, the remaining five districts of Sham, Changthang, Nubra, Leh and Zanskar will be majority Buddhist, an unusual gerrymandering given that the Buddhist population, at 39.65 percent, lags behind its Muslim counterpart.
In the words of prominent Ladakhi historian Siddiq Wahid, the delimitation “reduces the voice of Muslim representation in Ladakh to less than a third while the Buddhist and Muslim population is virtually equal, in fact, with Muslims constituting a fraction of the majority.”
Radha Kumar, political analyst and former interlocutor of undivided Jammu and Kashmir, questioned the procedural legitimacy of the delimitation. “This is not a decision that should be made by the lieutenant governor’s administration. The two elected councils of the Hill should be the ones to decide, in consultation with the people in a transparent public process,” Kumar told The Diplomat.
The Ladakh government says the delimitation was based on inputs from a special committee it set up. The committee met with 1,300 people in more than 20 locations.
But activist Sajjad Kargili disagrees. “The committee never took local representations into account. For example, [Muslim-majority] Sankoo and Chiktan had insisted on obtaining district status, but this was refused to them, while [predominantly Buddhist] Changthang, with a population of just 7,000, was created as a new district,” he said over phone from Kargil.
He dismissed the delimitation exercise as “another example of marginalization of the Modi government”. [of Muslims] project across India.
The deployment of partisan politics in New Delhi must be understood in the context of Ladakh’s sustained opposition, which has forced the Home Ministry to unusually constitute a high-level committee to discuss with its civil society collectives in 2021. While Kashmir has remained largely inactive in the face of majoritarian projects relentlessly pursued by the Modi government, in Ladakh, the Leh Apex Body and the Kargil Democratic Alliance (representing Buddhists and Muslims, respectively) have joined hands to chart a path that relies sporadically on intensifying street protests. The two communities repaired a past riddled with competing aspirations and focused on areas of agreement: the urgency of preventing a unilateral overhaul by New Delhi of the political architecture in this sensitive border region.
The Ladakhi protests, as well as those of farmers in 2020-2021, marked moments when an agitated and organized population signaled that it was possible to challenge and contain the authoritarian drift of the Modi government. The government is known for its vindictive use of investigative agencies against its political opponents; attacks against minorities; and – in the context of a controversial revision of the electoral roll – perceptions of electoral manipulation.
Notably, the Ladakhi protests and farmers’ protests did not trigger violent clashes with security installations or adopt subversive displays; the law and order situation and even the political legitimacy of the Modi government have never been attacked.
But something more sensitive was affected: his sense of political pride. A tiny, electorally insignificant population confronting the center head-on was poor optics for a regime that thrives on relying on conformity – partly by resorting to coercion, and partly by propagating the myth, spread in cooperation with oligarch-owned media, that the protests are essentially globally coordinated campaigns aimed at weakening India’s territorial integrity.
During the farmers’ protests, Indian prime-time television broadcast the specious argument that the protesting Sikh farmers were following instructions from Khalistan separatists. But the protests in Ladakh are harder to discredit; Ladakh’s unwavering patriotism in the face of several wars is often cited as proof of India’s plurality.
A cohesive coalition between a Muslim demographic and its non-Muslim counterpart – in this case Buddhists – is also an obstacle to the BJP’s insidious electoral maneuvers, which rely on consolidating a cross-section of voters against the Muslim “other”. The effectiveness of this polarizing strategy has been tested in various election cycles, most recently in West Bengal, where the BJP formed its first-ever provincial government.
A cross-pollination of political strategies between Muslims and Buddhists also undermines years of overtures by the right to bring Buddhists into its fold. BJP stalwart LK Advani’s launch of the annual ‘Sindhu darshan’ pilgrimage to Ladakh in 1999, last year’s ‘maha kumbh’ yoga, or Home Minister Amit Shah’s participation in a first-ever exhibition of the sacred relics of Lord Buddha in Leh earlier this month are among the regular orchestrations to give momentum to this project, with sometimes stupendous electoral dividends.
In the 2014 general elections, the BJP won the Ladakh parliamentary seat for the first time, thanks to the personal influence of Thupstan Chhewang, nephew of Kushok Bakula Rinpoche, the architect of modern Ladakh. Chhewang had joined hands with the BJP, which promised the Ladakhis an independent destiny of Kashmir. But after Ladakh was separated from Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019, the Ladakhi romanticization of a separate political arrangement quickly subsided. There was general consensus that the BJP’s commitment to reform-minded big government lacked substance.
The repeal of semi-autonomous status opened Ladakh’s doors to an influx of non-local skilled workers, increasing competition and threatening local demographics. A whopping 39.6 percent of graduates in Ladakh were unemployed in 2023-24, according to the Periodic labor force survey. The corresponding national average is 12.4 percent.
At the height of the civil protests, Chering Dorjay, president of the Ladakh Buddhist Association, told this reporter that “Ladakh has changed a lot, but not for the better.” The BJP lost the Ladakh Lok Sabha seat to independent candidate Mohammad Hanefa Jan in 2024. Before that, in 2023, it had lost the Kargil Hill council elections.
As the pros and cons of New Delhi’s “bureaucratic control” of Ladakh were debated, the High Powers Committee engaged the Ladakh collectives in a series of talks. Discussions stalled after a violent crackdown on protesters in Leh in September 2025, which left four people dead. On May 22, negotiations are expected to resume.
Shah asked the Ladakhi delegation to come with “an open mind”, but in the tense minds of Ladakhis, one question lingers: Does the responsibility for restoring peace lie entirely with the besieged?
Wahid told The Diplomat that New Delhi “must listen to the combined objections of the LAB and the KDA and not categorically commit to pursuing decisions resulting from selective consultations and/or predetermined programs for Ladakh defined by the ideological preferences of the BJP.
Others suspect that the negotiations are just a subterfuge to buy time until the political spectrum is meticulously reorganized to New Delhi’s advantage.