India’s entire Northeast is in flames. The seven sisters are viertually independent. The corridor from Nepal to Andhra Pradesh is in open rebellion. This rebellion constitutes more than 40% of areas constituting India. Gurkhaland is one example of secessionist movement in the Northeast. Gorkhas are ethnic Nepalis who invaded what is now the Darjeeling district in 1780. Until then, the area had been ruled by the kings of Sikkim. After Indian independence, the Gorkhas became the main political force in Darjeeling and friction with the West Bengal government led to calls for a separate state of Gorkhaland. One of the main problems is that West Bengalis refuse to recognize the Nepali language as one of the state’s official languages. After 1986 riots, there was established a Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (it has no official symbols).

There are several Gorkhas parties and organizations fighting for secession from West Bengal. Main party is Gorkha National Liberation Front.

GORKHA NATIONAL LIBERATION FRONT
This flag represents the only major Gorkha political party, but not the whole nation. It is dark green with an image of a Kurkuri knife and three four-pointed stars in  yellow. Lower third is banded in four equal yellow stripes. Roman Kogovsek, 9 July 2005

Darjeeling, June 12: The Army was alerted in Siliguri and adjacent areas after violent clashes today between Gorkhas and non-Gorkhas during a 48-hour bandh called by the little known Amra Bangali and backed by Jana Chetana, an outfit formed to oppose the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM) demand for inclusion of Siliguri and areas of the Dooars in a separate state of Gorkhaland.

By afternoon, SSB border guards were out in many parts of Siliguri town and on its outskirts.
West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who was asked by Left Front partner CPI to “hold talks without pre-conditions” with the GJM, decided to call an all-party meeting on June 17 to discuss the Darjeeling crisis over the demand for a separate Gorkhaland.

Describing the Siliguri incidents as “a matter of the greatest anxiety”, Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi urged people to do nothing “that will provoke violence”.

In New Delhi, the Union Home Ministry said it had moved nearly 1,000 Central paramilitary personnel to West Bengal to deal with the situation.

In Darjeeling, GJM chief Bimal Gurung slammed the ruling CPM for “trying to make another Nandigram of Siliguri and the foothills with its murderous cadres”.

“No one had ever seen either the Amra Bangali or Jana Chetana which are behind the bandh and the violence today. They are just a front for the CPM and Asok Bhattacharjee, West Bengal Minister who hails from Siliguri,” alleged Gurung, asking GJM supporters to remain calm.

Violence erupted in the Champasari area of Siliguri — it has a mixed population of Gorkhas, Bengalis, Biharis and others — after non-Gorkhas, especially traders hit by the GJM agitation, came out in strength and joined an Amra Bangali procession which began targeting Gorkhas, assaulting them.
Those who led the attacks claimed they were teaching the GJM a “lesson for harassing Bengali tourists” in the hills. Violence soon spread to areas like Pradhan Nagar, Sahidnagar, Bidhan Market and other pockets of the town. In Bagdogra, a Gorkha student’s motorcycle was smashed and set ablaze.

Taken aback by the attacks, the Gorkhas began grouping and hit back. Police had to teargas mobs at several places to try and restore order. As news of the attacks on Gorkhas reached Darjeeling, tension mounted and GJM activists called up their head office to check whether they should retaliate in the hills. But GJM leaders, including Bimal Gurung, told them not to resort to violence.

“Do not walk into Minister Asok Bhattacharjee’s trap,” Gurung told angry activists. “If the situation does not improve, we will send 50,000 volunteers to provide security to Gorkhas. We do not want to take the blame for communal violence in Darjeeling. The agitation for Gorkhaland should be fought peacefully, in a Gandhian way,” he said.
Meanwhile, Sikkim Chief Minister Pawan Chamling has asked the Prime Minister to intervene. “Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should personally intervene to resolve the problems in the Darjeeling hills permanently so that the people of Sikkim can lead a peaceful life without being put to difficulty due to bandhs on the National Highway which is the state’s sole road link with the rest of the country,” Chamling said in a letter to the PM.

CPM, Trinamool clash again, one killed
COOCH BEHAR: A college student was killed and several others were injured in a clash between supporters of CPM and Trinamool Congress at Nakkatigachh near Tufanganj in Cooch Behar district, police said. BSF personnel were deployed in the area. Fifteen people were arrested, police said. (Indian Express)

The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Fury: Will Gorkhaland Become a Reality? By FARZANA VERSEY

“Indefinite shutdown” said the latest headlines and the hill region of Darjeeling becomes another political pawn.

Ten years ago when I had last visited, stepping out of the cocoon of the teakwood panelled clubby interiors of the hotel meant long walks along curvaceous streets, milky coffee from aluminium buckets on early morning visits to the snowy hills and returning to dinner that was announced with a gong and served by white-gloved bearers who whispered gentility as lace curtains reflected the candlelight.

The insulation was complete.

Little did one realise that another kind of insulation was gnawing at the entrails of the whole region. Peace is a mask Darjeeling has always worn for tourist consumption. Yak safaris provide an interesting diversion – a tourist is said to have described the animal as a buffalo wearing a petticoat. At a trade fair they had to recreate traditional houses because no one lived in those anymore. Except for their taste for meat, butter tea and home-brewed alcohol made with millet and sipped through a bamboo straw, many of the simple activities are often exaggerated exotically for vacationers. The pre-dawn sight of Mount Khang Chendongza – Kanchenjunga – the third highest peak in the world is like the tip of an iceberg touching heaven.

As the sun rises you notice the walls. Red-splattered paint that talks of a separate Gorkhaland. You sit in one of the roadside tea-stalls. Young eyes look suspiciously. Whispers are exchanged.

The blood-soaked cry has not gone away. Today it is reasserting itself with even greater vehemence. The Gorkha Janamukti Morcha president Bimal Gurung is speaking a new voice, a voice that refuses to play footsie or be content with sops. In the 1980s the government had managed to muffle opposition by co-opting the Subhas Ghising-led Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) by forming the Gorkha Darjeeling Hill Council and appointing him the titular head. It was a thorny crown, but the wearer was too enamoured of its purported glitter to care. He took the scraps as long as he could rule. He let down the movement. Self-governance and limited autonomy don’t work, in any case.

It is difficult to believe that Darjeeling was gifted by the Raja of Sikkim to the East India Company for “enabling servants of the government suffering from sickness to avail of its advantage”. That the king could be so generous is a bit of a surprise considering that parts of Sikkim were at various times conquered by Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet. Sikkim became a part of India only in 1975.

Yet the Centre grants the state Rs 5,400 billion in aid; Darjeeling with five times the number of voters gets only Rs 100 billion.

The establishment has been playing games. The demand for a separate state was initiated during the early part of the century when the British ruled the country.

Indian democracy has often been a compromise formula; elections work as soft options. Almost every part of the country has separatist aspirations. It isn’t about terrorism. This is a crisis of identity that has been building up. The neo-fascists in power refuse to understand that we have always had principalities. Independent states were ruled by independent kings and princes. The privy purses have gone but the basic seed of regionalism remains. Is that not the reason why even metropolitan cities like Mumbai have an anti-immigrant stance?

Why does Darjeeling, which is a part of West Bengal, not feel Bengali?

It is a question of selfhood. There may be cultural incest with the border areas of Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet but Darjeeling has been looking for a distinct political identity. Here a war memorial is considered a sacred place and politicians are heroes. Subhash Ghising was deified because “he made these roads”. The Hill Cart Road connecting the plains to the hills was in fact built by the British in 1839.

Looking at the awesome ruggedness of the mountains one cannot help but think of Tensing Norgay, the Sherpa who conquered Everest along with Sir Edmund Hillary. A forest official had been dismissive: “The Indian government has given him too much importance. He is a Nepali.”

Bhushan, our guide at the Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling, had a different story to tell. “Once at an institute Norgay was asked his nationality. After achieving so much he felt hurt by the question. So, in anger, he replied that he was a Nepali. Why was it so difficult to accept him as an Indian? He has been one of a kind, known as a snow leopard. And his house still stands here.”

The Nepalis and those from the North East were seen as outsiders though there is considerable admiration for the Pashupati border area which is packed with foreign goods.

If the Nepali initiative for smuggling is appreciated, then the Tibetans, who started making inroads in the 17th century, are not. Their refugee camp perched atop a hillock in Darjeeling is a complete village boasting of a school, college, housing and myriad self-supporting activities. It is sponsored by the Americans.

Darjeeling has been a migrant haven. While the Biharis came as sweepers, barbers, grocers and later teachers, the Marwaris came to trade from 1888 under the Raj, only too ready to express its fondness for any shopkeeper class. But due to their considerable contribution to the economy, resentment against them grew.

As one politician had told me then, “Maintaining the social balance is important. We therefore need to monitor our economic growth in a manner that guards us from a sudden impact of any kind.”

The locals had found their own way towards creating harmony within. They stopped wearing traditional attire so that you could not differentiate amongst one other. Intermarriages became commonplace so even if there was simmering resentment, they kept quiet.

The Communist government of West Bengal does not take cognisance of social mores and needs. Its workers recently ransacked the homes of the dissenters and beat them up. Indian democracy will have to learn to accept that we are not a cohesive whole and unless the government provides the people with basic facilities and respects their identity, it will have to put up with such separatist aspirations.

The Leftists are happily supping with industrialists and creating havoc in villages to accommodate ‘progress’. What have they done for their own people? Nothing. Except send honeymooners to chuck snowballs at each other and legally seal their fate.

The call for a Gorkhaland wakes us up to these hidden realities. However, for a mountain people they ought to know that echoes resound only in your own valley.

Farzana Versey is the author of the recently-released book A Journey Interrupted: Being Indian in Pakistan She can be reached at kaaghaz.kalam@gmail.com