India, Oct. 13 -- The unprecedented protests in Ladakh, leading to police firing, indiscriminate arrest, and suspension of the constitutional rights of the people of the snow-bound Himalayan district, are the result of continued discrimination meted out to the people of the region by both the Union Government and the Government of Jammu and Kashmir.

The alienation of the predominantly Buddhist population of Ladakh started within a few years of independence. Such was the neglect and alienation of the population that by the 1970s, the people of the area had completely lost their faith in the administration and stopped approaching it for any help.

The Ladakhi Buddhists genuinely feared that their ethnicity and culture were under threat of ...