Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play by Edward Albee, first staged in 1962. The title was a pun on the popular song ‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?’, replacing the Big Bad Wolf with the name of the celebrated British writer. In the same spirit, one is tempted to ask, Who’s Afraid of Sonam Wangchuk? The Delhi Police has given many a reason to ponder this question. For those unfamiliar, Wangchuk is an educationist and out-of-the-box thinker from Ladakh, rumoured to have inspired a key character in the film Three Idiots. A climate enthusiast like Greta Thunberg, he, along with 120 others, began a march from Leh on September 1 to reach Mahatma Gandhi’s Samadhi on October 2, Gandhi Jayanti. The march was undoubtedly driven by political demands — statehood for Ladakh, separate Lok Sabha seats for Kargil and Leh, and inclusion of the region in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution.
Their journey, however, was as uneventful as the extinction of the dodo. Had it been allowed to proceed, Wangchuk and his group would likely have reached Rajghat unnoticed, much like the sit-in protest then-Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal staged at the same spot while communal riots raged in northeast Delhi five years ago. But this time, the Centre seemed determined to prevent Wangchuk from slipping by unnoticed. The group was stopped at Singur — the very place where farmers held their ground for over a year — and taken into police custody. Some of the marchers, with blistered feet, might have found the two-day detention a welcome respite. When the evening of Gandhi Jayanti arrived, the group was herded onto government buses and taken to Rajghat, where electric lights illuminated their path to ensure no one accidentally stumbled into the samadhi. And so, by nightfall, a chorus of voices rang out, Who’s Afraid of Sonam Wangchuk?
