Democracy breathes through disagreement

The government’s decision to withdraw the preventive detention order against Sonam Wangchuk should have been closed a chapter. Instead, it has opened a series of troubling questions.

If he is not a threat to national security today, how was he one six months ago?

For nearly half a year, the engineer-innovator from Ladakh lived under the shadow of the National Security Act — a law meant for genuine threats to the nation, not for voices of dissent.

The quiet withdrawal of the case has spared the government the embarrassment of having to justify the detention in open court. Yet it has not answered the central question: what justified those months in custody? And who is accountable for them?

Wangchuk is no obscure agitator suddenly discovered by the state. He is one of India’s most respected innovators — a figure whose work has been admired even by governments that now appear uneasy with his activism.

An engineer by training, he founded the Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL), an initiative that transformed education in the region. His work on passive solar buildings and the now-famous ice stupas brought global attention to Ladakh’s fragile ecology. He received the Ramon Magsaysay Award, often described as Asia’s Nobel Prize. His ideas even inspired the character of the inventive student in the film 3 Idiots.

For years he symbolised the promise of innovation emerging from the Himalayas.

Yet in recent months he became something else: a detainee.

The story of that transformation is tied to the political evolution of Ladakh itself. When Narendra Modi’s government reorganised Jammu and Kashmir in 2019 and carved out Ladakh as a separate Union Territory, many residents initially welcomed the move. Wangchuk was among those who publicly expressed hope.

For Ladakh, long overshadowed by the politics of Kashmir, the new status seemed to promise direct attention from New Delhi and faster development.

But optimism gradually gave way to unease. Local leaders began raising concerns about land protections, employment safeguards and the preservation of Ladakh’s fragile environment. Demands emerged for constitutional safeguards under the Sixth Schedule — provisions that protect tribal regions through greater autonomy.

Wangchuk’s activism evolved in that context. He organised climate fasts, led awareness marches and appealed for environmental protection and constitutional safeguards. His language was sharp but unmistakably constitutional.

It was dissent.

And dissent, in a democracy, is not merely tolerated. It is essential. The Supreme Court itself has recognised this principle. Justice D. Y. Chandrachud famously observed that “dissent is the safety valve of democracy. If dissent is not allowed, the pressure cooker will burst.”

Courts understand this instinctively. Judges themselves dissent. Some of the most influential rulings in constitutional history began as minority opinions that later shaped the law.

Democracy breathes through disagreement.

But in Wangchuk’s case, dissent began to be treated as disruption.

The protests intensified. So did the response.

Eventually Wangchuk was detained, and soon afterwards authorities invoked the National Security Act against him. Preventive detention laws allow the state to hold individuals without trial for extended periods if they are deemed threats to national security or public order.

Such powers exist in many countries. But they carry an inherent danger: they allow incarceration first and justification later.

In a democracy, that power must be used sparingly.

The detention triggered alarm among civil liberties groups and lawyers. Wangchuk’s wife moved court with a habeas corpus petition — one of the oldest remedies in constitutional law — demanding that the state justify the detention before a judge.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal appeared for the petitioner. The arguments were straightforward: the protests were peaceful, the activist’s record was well known, and there was no material suggesting a threat to national security.

As the court examined the detention, uncomfortable questions began to surface.

Before those questions could sharpen further, the government withdrew the detention order.

Technically, the case ended there.

Morally, however, it has only begun.

The withdrawal leaves behind a stark contradiction. If Wangchuk does not endanger national security today, what made him one six months ago? Was the threat real, or was detention simply a convenient way to neutralise a prominent protester?

Preventive detention operates largely in the shadows. Evidence is often confidential. Decisions are administrative rather than judicial. Precisely for that reason, accountability becomes crucial.

In Wangchuk’s case, nearly 170 days of liberty were lost. Those months cannot simply be erased. They matter not only to the individual but to the democratic system itself.

Because when the state can detain someone under extraordinary laws and later withdraw the case without explanation, a troubling precedent is set.

The message is simple: detain now, justify later — or perhaps never.

The Wangchuk episode also fits into a wider pattern that has increasingly drawn attention. Opposition leaders, activists and critics of the government have found themselves entangled in prolonged investigations and detentions.

Arvind Kejriwal spent months fighting legal battles before receiving relief from the courts. Activists arrested in connection with the Bhima Koregaon case spent years in prison before trials even began, with some eventually granted bail because chargesheets were delayed.

Yet there are moments when the judicial system can move with remarkable speed. When television anchor Arnab Goswami was arrested in 2020, the Supreme Court heard his plea urgently and granted interim bail within days, emphasising the importance of protecting personal liberty.

The principle articulated then was sound. Liberty matters.

But the uneven pace of justice inevitably raises questions. Why do some cases move with lightning speed while others crawl through the system for months or years?

The Constitution does not recognise categories of liberty. Freedom is not meant to depend on political alignment, media attention or public visibility. It belongs equally to everyone.

This is why the Wangchuk episode becomes larger than one activist’s ordeal. It touches the core principle that sustains democratic societies: the right to dissent.

Every major advance in democratic history began with dissent — independence movements, civil rights struggles and environmental campaigns. Dissenters may be inconvenient, sometimes irritating and occasionally wrong. Yet democracies grow stronger by confronting dissent, not by detaining it.

Even the judiciary has repeatedly emphasised this truth.

Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman once observed that the Constitution protects the right of citizens to disagree with the state.

And decades earlier, during the dark days of the The Emergency in India, Justice H. R. Khanna demonstrated the courage of dissent. In his famous opinion in the ADM Jabalpur case, he warned that the Constitution does not permit life and liberty to be placed at the mercy of absolute executive power.

History vindicated that lone dissent. Today it stands as one of the moral landmarks of Indian constitutional law.

That is why the questions raised by Wangchuk’s detention cannot simply disappear with the withdrawal of a legal order. Someone must explain why a respected innovator and environmental activist was considered a national security threat.

Someone must explain what evidence justified the use of one of the country’s harshest preventive laws. And someone must account for the months he spent in custody.

Because if such detentions can occur without scrutiny, the implications extend far beyond Ladakh.

The issue is not whether one agrees with Wangchuk’s demands. The issue is whether peaceful protest can be treated as a security threat.

A democracy confident in its strength does not fear dissenting voices. It engages with them, debates them and answers them.

When dissent is silenced through detention rather than argument, democracy itself begins to weaken.

We often criticise other countries for suppressing dissent and silencing inconvenient voices. Democracies take pride in drawing that distinction. Yet what we are witnessing today is uncomfortably similar. When protest is treated as disruption and dissent as a threat to national security, the line between democracy and intolerance begins to blur.

This reminds me of something veteran journalist M. Chalapathi Rao once wrote in an autograph to me: “Facts are sacred, comment is still free.” Those words were written during the shadow of the Emergency. Today they remain a guiding principle for any society that wishes to remain democratic.

A democracy that fears dissent does not grow weaker because of its critics. It grows weaker because it stops listening.

(The columnist is a Mumbai-based author and independent media veteran, running websites and a youtube channel known for his thought-provoking messaging)