Leh: Gitanjali J. Angmo sits in one of the passive solar heated buildings of the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh (HIAL). The sunlight pours in through the glass panes, casting patterns across stacks of papers and files beside her. Her fingers move urgently, scrambling through heaps of documents.
“Can you please translate these videos from Ladakhi accurately?” she asks a student politely.
Angmo is the co-founder and director of HIAL, and the wife of climate activist Sonam Wangchuk, who was arrested in Leh Friday under the stringent National Security Act (NSA) for alleged provocative speeches that led to outbreak of violence in the city on 24 September.
“They have picked everything out of context and are trying to defame Sonam Wangchuk. The whole world has seen that he is a Gandhian, he isn’t a threat to the public but is a celebrated hero,” Angmo told ThePrint in an interview Saturday.
Wangchuk, who had been on a 35-day hunger strike to demand statehood and Sixth Schedule protections for Ladakh, had distanced himself from the violence, saying it damaged a peaceful struggle of five years. The Leh Apex Body has been spearheading the hunger strike.
On Wednesday, a procession had been called in Leh, for which 5,000 people had gathered, the majority in 18-24 age group, and things turned violent. Four persons died and over 70 others were injured as protesters and security forces clashed.
Amid the chaos around her husband’s arrest, Angmo sits steady, her posture unshaken. It is as though she has already made peace with the fresh pressure on her.
Rejecting the Ladakh police’s interpretation that Wangchuk “provocatively” asked people to wear masks at the protest, apparently because of a new strain of Covid but actually to avoid being identified, she said he indeed wanted to warn people against Covid.
On a clip of him speaking in Ladakhi about protests in Nepal, Sri Lanka and other countries, Angmo said “the video was taken out of context”.
“All he is saying is that if the government isn’t responsive to the needs of the people, then the natural reaction is revolution, which we can see is happening in other countries, He is urging the government to be responsive and then also says that if a person’s life is needed for it, then let it be his life,” she added.
Angmo also asserted that Wangchuk had praised the climate-friendly initiatives taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi while attending a climate change conference in Islamabad this February.
She was responding to the Ladakh DGP’s allegation that they had detained a “person of interest” from Pakistan who was in touch with Wangchuk and sent reports across the border.
“He (Wangchuk) and I did visit Pakistan for a conference on climate change organised by the UN and Dawn Media. But he has nothing to do with anything else. Everything else they are saying is lies and propaganda,” she said. “From the stage there, he praised Mr Modi for his carbon-neutral initiatives. I can share the talks of his and mine there, which are purely about climate change.”
Also Read: ‘Police fired in self defence’—Leh violence leaves 4 dead, MHA says Wangchuk ‘instigated’ unrest
‘Sonam wants development not rampage’
Angmo noted that Ladakhi youth had no history of violence. She raised questions about who had ordered the firing at protesters, placing responsibility on the police and CRPF.
“All Sonam wanted was for them (government) to honour the commitment they had made regarding the Sixth Schedule. His hunger strikes were simply a way to remind them of that promise,” she told ThePrint.
“Certain regions of this country have a huge tribal population and the Constitution grants those which have more than 50 percent tribal population a special status under the Sixth Schedule. The tribal population in Ladakh is over 90 percent. This is a fragile ecosystem and the Sixth Schedule grants protection,” she said.
Angmo, Punjabi by birth and the bearer of a Ladakhi surname she chose, also confronted the misconception that Wangchuk was against development.
“This is not the case. Wanting Sixth Schedule (protections) doesn’t mean he is against development. He is an innovator and forethinker. He is against modern invasion. He thought of and built passive solar heated buildings which don’t emit carbon, long ago. He wants development not rampage and not without the consent of the local population,” she asserted.
The buildings at HIAL in Phyang village and SECMOL (Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh founded in 1988) in Phey village are all passive solar heated, a marvel of design that maintain a comfortable 20 degrees Celsius temperature even as the outside plunges into brutal cold.
The HIAL was set up in 2018 as an alternative university for mountain development, focusing on responsible tourism, sustainable architecture and applied ecology. SECMOL is an NGO that also runs educational programmes.
Reiterating that Wangchuk’s vision is long term and futuristic, unlike that of politicians and businessmen, Angmo spoke about his experiment in support of agrivoltaics or dual use of land for solar energy and agriculture.
“The government is planning to set up a 13-gigawatt photovoltaic (system) in Changthang region which is traditionally occupied by herders whose livelihood is herding pashmina goats. If one does this, the community will be displaced. Sonam is so pro-development that five years before this was announced, he started an experiment in HIAL to turn photovoltaic into agrivoltaic.”
“We did a 5 kW and 40 kw successful project which was supported by the Indian Oil Corporation. It isn’t like the Sixth Schedule won’t let this happen. What the Sixth Schedule will do is co-opt the community here and make the people love the project,” Angmo said.
Most protesters in Ladakh believe that outsiders have occupied their lands and very soon, the natives will be displaced, climate will deteriorate and the beauty of the region will be destroyed.
Asked if any outsider had claimed lands there, Angmo said “not in public records for sure. It must be happening under wraps”.
Also Read: ‘Punishment,’ says Wangchuk as MHA scraps FCRA license of NGO linked to him day after Leh violence
‘More HIALs & SECMOLs will come up’
A day before his arrest, the home ministry had cancelled the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) licence for SECMOL (also founded by Wangchuk), alleging violations such as receiving funds from a Swedish platform to conduct a study on “sovereignty of the nation”.
HIAL, of which Wangchuk is co-founder along with Angmo, is also under the scanner as the Central Bureau of Investigation is inquiring into its funding.
However, a formal case hasn’t been registered. It is also alleged that Sheshyon Innovation—a private company of which both Wangchuk and his wife are directors—was used to divert funds.
HIAL, Angmo said, is registered under Section 8 of the Companies Act while SECMOL is a non-governmental organisation that also runs educational programmes.
She insisted that the home ministry had “frivolously misinterpreted” funds meant for food sovereignty as meant for a “study on sovereignty of the nation”.
“Students come to SECMOL and stay here for a year and the whole school replicates their home, unlike other schools. Students here run the school, they grow their own food. Unlike other NGOs, we don’t take funds for daily operational costs.”
“We always believe that CSR (funds under Corporate Social Responsibility) should be taken for building and not operational costs, because when funding stops, NGOs often shut down. That’s why operationally we generate our own revenue and that’s what the corporations love about us. This is the pedagogy of SECMOL,” she explained.
She further explained that SECMOL works on 33/33/33 percent philosophy, where 33 percent of needs are taken care of within the campus. “For instance, SECMOL was solar powered 35 years ago. It’s completely off grid,” she told ThePrint.
The funds, Angmo said, came only when SECMOL got a valid FCRA licence, and never when it was pending approval.
She added that even HIAL had applied for an FCRA licence but alleged that since Wangchuk went on the hunger strike, the government “strong armed” them.
“We decided that we don’t need FCRA (licence). The funds the MHA (home ministry) is citing aren’t donations; these are funds we get through export of services through service agreements. HIAL is a research institute. The United Nations Development Programme too wanted to do research on these passive solar heated buildings, so that they could replicate the same in other such areas in the Tibetan plateau,” Angmo told ThePrint, adding that all service agreements were in place.
She alleged that the “witch hunt intensified” a month ago, when the Ladakh administration cancelled HIAL’s lease for 150 acres of land, saying it had failed to execute a formal lease agreement and cited lack of progress on the project.
“The initial order said that we hadn’t signed a lease deed and that all encumbrances will be demolished, to which we immediately replied showing how within the 15-day time period, we had written to the District Commissioner, Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC), for a lease dead in May 2018 itself. I was told orally by the authorities that they didn’t have an institutional category so they aren’t able to tell us about the lease premium,” Angmo said.
In 2019, Ladakh became a union territory following the abrogation of Article 370.
Since May 2018, Angmo said, she has written five letters to the government and things intensified as the demand for Sixth Schedule protections grew. In one letter dated 2021, seen by ThePrint, the LAHDC informed her that due to Covid and UT status, the lease deed was still under process and that they could continue construction as a new lease policy was awaited.
In Ladakh, several large villages have demarcated institutional land. This land was allocated to HIAL after a no-objection certificate was obtained from the local monastery and the people of Phyang.
“We want to make education inclusive—pay with hard work and creativity and the surplus is used for free courses. The idea behind HIAL is to build student-run enterprises. However, to scale up this fundamental research you need to set up a private limited company for working capital,” she explained.
“The money they are saying goes from the private company to HIAL and vice versa is because the staff at HIAL is academic and we have to give the projects to a third party, which was done with proper utilisation certifications and MoUs. For instance, we had approached the Indian Army to build passive solar tents for them. For this too, we had to raise the initial capital from banks through a private entity,” Angmo said, adding that all funds received by HIAL otherwise are only from domestic donors.
“All income tax returns are filed. Even though we are directors, we have never taken out profits. We don’t take salaries. Every year, we donate Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore from the various talks we give,” she said.
Asked what about HIAL’s land possibly being taken over and SECMOL too under the lens, Angmo told ThePrint that “we will fight till the very end”.
“In case anything happens to HIAL and SECMOL, more HIALs and SECMOLs will be created and built elsewhere. It is the future and no one can stop ideas from growing.”
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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