Bhopinder Singh | Why Wangchuk & Leaders On India’s Periphery Have To Face A ‘Loyalty’ Test

India’s geographical margins have always been more than simply lines on a map. They are spaces where questions of identity, belonging and, most crucially, the meaning of being an Indian, are negotiated most intensely. Many of India’s socially, ethnically, linguistically and religiously distinct communities are concentrated along its frontiers in Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Mizoram, Manipur, Assam and other border regions.

From a Centre-periphery perspective, these areas occupy a complicated position -- physically distant from New Delhi, and historically distinct from political mainstream, and often shaped by security concerns that rarely define everyday life in the Indian heartland.

This distance matters. Border regions are frequently treated as strategic territories before they are recognised as lived communities. Their populations are often viewed through the prism of national security, insurgency and geopolitics, rather than through the ordinary democratic vocabulary of rights, representation and development.

India’s experience with minority-majority states illustrates this tension. Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir, Sikh-majority Punjab, and Christian-majority Mizoram have, at different points since Independence, witnessed secessionist movements. These movements emerged from very different historical circumstances, ranging from political grievances and questions of autonomy to external influences and failures of governance. Minority identity alone did not create these conflicts. Yet, these episodes entrenched a security mindset within the Indian State, making the management of difference a matter not merely of democratic accommodation but also of territorial anxiety.

The consequence has been a persistent ambiguity. For the State, the borderland identities can appear as potential vulnerabilities. For many communities living there, distance from the political centre can translate into feelings of neglect, suspicion and alienation. When majoritarian politics intensifies, these vulnerabilities become sharper. Communities with distinctive identities may find themselves increasingly asked to prove their loyalty rather than being presumed to possess it.

The recent trajectory of Sonam Wangchuk, a celebrated climate activist from Ladakh, captures this changing political mood. Once hailed as a patriotic innovator, educator and nation-builder, Mr Wangchuk has increasingly been portrayed by some critics as a disruptive figure (even labelled “anti-national”) for raising constitutional, educational and developmental concerns. The significance of this transformation lies not merely in the treatment of one individual.

It reflects a broader shift in which any kind of dissent emerging from India’s peripheral regions can be reframed as disloyalty, narrowing the space between the legitimate criticism of any government policy and suspicions over national allegiance.

The rhetoric surrounding Mr Wangchuk is revealing. Some commentators have gone as far as portraying him as a “Chinese stooge”, a departure from the more familiar accusation of being a “Pakistani stooge”, often directed at political opponents. The underlying pattern is the same: geopolitical anxieties are imported into domestic political debates, allowing questions of identity and patriotism to overshadow the substance of disagreement.

Such accusations carry a particular burden for citizens from the borderlands and minority communities. A dissenting Sikh may risk being labelled a “Khalistani”; a dissenting Muslim may be accused of being “pro-Pakistan”; citizens from the Northeast may find their loyalty questioned through the lens of China. These labels are neither universal nor representative of Indian society as a whole. But their repeated use in parts of the daily political discourse reveals a troubling tendency: the conversion of democratic disagreement into a test of national loyalty.

The danger is not only political; it is psychological. A nation is held together not merely by constitutions, borders and institutions, but also by citizens’ belief that they belong equally within it. When minority communities in peripheral regions repeatedly encounter suspicion, they may begin to feel that their citizenship is conditional -- that they are accepted only when silent, compliant or culturally indistinguishable from the majority.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru well understood this challenge when he described India as “a geographical and economic entity, a cultural unity amidst diversity and a bundle of contradictions held together by strong but invisible threads”. Those invisible threads were not simply administrative arrangements or territorial boundaries. They were the bonds of trust, mutual recognition and shared belonging that allow a diverse society to imagine itself as one nation.

When individuals who have long been symbols of national contribution are suddenly recast as outsiders, those threads begin to fray. The issue is not Sonam Wangchuk alone. The deeper question is whether citizens from India’s borderlands and minority communities feel that their place within the national story is secure, or whether they must continually negotiate their belonging.

India’s nation-building project has never depended on uniformity. It has depended on accommodation. The constitutional vision articulated by leaders such as B.R. Ambedkar rested on fraternity, the idea that citizens must recognise each other as equals despite profound differences. A nation as diverse as India cannot be sustained by selective memories of history, majoritarian reinterpretations of identity, or the normalisation of hostility towards all those who are perceived as “outsiders”. Its strength lies precisely in its ability to absorb differences, without treating differences as a threat.

Majoritarian politics may offer swift electoral rewards. It may simplify complex questions of governance by identifying some convenient adversaries. But a democracy that routinely asks parts of its own population to prove their patriotism risks weakening the very foundations of national cohesion.

The handling of Sonam Wangchuk is therefore much bigger than a controversy involving one activist from Ladakh. It is a test of whether India’s national imagination remains capacious enough to include dissent, diversity and disagreement -- or whether the invisible threads that have held the country together are being stretched dangerously thin.

The writer is a retired lieutenant-general and a former lieutenant-governor of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Puducherry