Sonam Wangchuk Urges Young Indians ‘Go to Jail for a Cause, Not a Crime’
Recalling his Ladakh protest experience, the climate activist says people should stand firm on their principles.
Srinagar: At a time when protesters in Delhi and several other parts of the country are reportedly being asked to sign peace bonds or personal bonds to avoid arrest and detention, climate activist Sonam Wangchuk on Friday offered a strikingly different perspective.
Reflecting on his own experiences of state action during the Ladakh movement, he wrote on ‘X’, “Each one must go to jail once in life, not for a crime but for a cause.”
Wangchuk said that during his recent visits to Delhi and Mumbai, several journalists repeatedly asked him whether he would sign a peace bond if authorities insisted on it. In response, he recalled a similar moment four years ago when he began protesting what he described as the government's retreat from its electoral promise of granting Sixth Schedule safeguards to Ladakh. He said he was placed under an undeclared house arrest and threatened with a longer jail term, but chose not to surrender his principles.
“The officer carrying the bond paper never returned,” he said, advising “all young people... Each one must go to jail in life, not for a crime but for a cause.”
