Darjeeling symbolises both a symptom and an explanation of its predicament. The Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha’s renewed demand for a state called Gorkhaland is a faint echo of the undivided Communist Party of India’s demand for Gorkhasthan.
In the 70 years since that resolution was presented to the Constituent Assembly (6 April 1947), the cries of sub-regional jingoism have become ever more resonant in the Hills. Whereas Subhas Ghisingh and his GNLF had good reason to be beholden to the Left for two decades, Bimal Gurung and his GJMM are not indebted to any of the parties, notably the BJP and the Trinamul Congress, now strutting the undulating terrain, political no less than the natural.
In retrospect, one must give it to the undivided CPI that it was more forthright in the late 1940s than today’s BJP, Trinamul and also, of course, the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
More accurately, the Hills of Bengal have gained little or nothing from the political golf-course. All parties must accept the awkward truth that they have a stake in sustaining the shadow-boxing. After close to three months of the turmoil, the ice has been broken… no more and no less. This doesn’t ipso facto translate into normality before the Pujas.
The forward movement at last Tuesday’s meeting between the West Bengal chief minister and leaders of the major Hill parties was at best notional, at worst a mite distressing. Not least because Bimal Gurung, the leader of the Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha, was remarkably prompt to assert after the meeting at Nabanna that the indefinite strike ~ Mamata Banerjee’s precondition for the talks ~ would not be withdrawn. Which renders any change in the ground reality ever so uncertain. Nonetheless, one must give it to the Chief Minister that she has eventually conceded that the demand for statehood is an “emotive issue for the Hill leaders, indeed their “prerogative that we cannot bulldoze. It is the freedom of democracy”.
That feeler to the Hill leaders is pregnant in itself. With the districts of Darjeeling and Kalimpong out of joint since the first week of June, she has even conceded that “let’s be a little sensitive. It is an issue that is close to their hearts. They love it and are passionate about it.” On the face of it, she may have played to the hill gallery; she must be acutely aware that there has over time been a drain of wealth from the hills to the plains, though not to the extent that has been recorded during the economic history of British India.
The nub of the matter must be that Darjeeling has not benefited to the desired extent from the revenue generated by the tea and tourism industries, indeed the bedrock of the Hill economy. The war-cry for a separate state is embedded in this economic exploitation.
Not that the GJMM and the GNLF are willing to call off the strike ~ the principal demand of the state government. While condemning the violence and the prolonged dislocation, the parties at the meeting have made it clear that a decision on ending the strike can only be taken by the Gorkha Movement Coordination Committee. The waters are murkier in the wake of differences within the GJMM over ending the strike, and the reported expulsion of Binay Tamang who is in favour of a climbdown.
The two sides have agreed to disagree, and they must accept that there is no halfway house quite yet, let alone normality. Aside from statehood, there was no consensus on the two other thorny issues that have cropped up since June ~ Gurung’s demand for an NIA probe into the recent explosions in the hills and a CBI enquiry into the deaths of eight morcha supporters. There is above all a fundamental difference in the strategies of Subhas Ghisingh’s GNLF ~ which had called for the meeting ~ and Bimal Gurung’s GJMM, which is now spearheading the agitation. No less critical is the fact that the Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League and the CPRM, influential entities both, had boycotted the conference, a conspicuous absence that has been underplayed by Banerjee ~ “They did not want to come and that is okay.” It may be a while before Darjeeling is okay.
This indeed was the signal that was emitted by both sides in course of the meeting. An agreeable formula has somehow eluded the Hills ever since 1947. The crisis has been overblown since the mid-1980s to the present day, covering the Marxist dispensations of Jyoti Basu and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee (1977-2011). Both had to deal with the GNLF which has generally lost its clout over time, and still more after Ghisingh’s passing. In 2017, the incumbent’s challenge is to contend with the likes of Gurung.
Altogether, the salubrious hills bear witness to a game of footsie. The scenario is as hazy as the damp Darjeeling winter. Amidst this lethal cocktail of ethnicity and provincialism, the place has been simmering more intensely than it did in the high noon of the CPIM regime and the GNLF movement of the Eighties. Banerjee hit the bull’s eye when she told the Gorkha leaders that “statehood is not something we can discuss.
There are constitutional bindings and this is not in our jurisdiction.” That clarity has somehow eluded the frontrunners of the Gorkhaland movement and the political class. The welter of prescriptions over the decades has not brought about any intrinsic change ~ Gorkhasthan of the oldstyle Communists of the Bhupesh Gupta variety (not to forget Jyoti Basu himself ), regional autonomy, the Sixth Schedule from the adroit spin-doctors of the Left, to the Gorkha Territorial Authority ~ the brainchild of the present Chief Minister. Fundamentally, this is a loose federal arrangement, short of statehood.
It is Darjeeling’s tragedy that it wasn’t even given a try by Gurung’s morcha. The GTA has been reduced to irrelevance over the past two months, and its virtual eclipse in the midst of the raging agitation has turned the clock back. Ergo, it is an index to the chronically volatile scenario that the state government’s three-language formula for schools and a state cabinet meeting at Darjeeling’s Raj Bhavan ~ the summer resort of the Governor ~ could re-ignite the spark to the statehood movement.
The cabinet can meet wherever it wants to within West Bengal, and the GJMM’s cavil on the issue was only a pretext to bare its fundamental angst with khukris, bombs, and bricks… in the manner of the stone-pelters in Kashmir Valley. Significant, therefore, is the Chief Minister’s announcement that the next meeting will be convened on 12 September in the plains ~ at Uttarkanya, the North Bengal secretariat in Siliguri. It is fervently to be hoped that some sense will yet prevail upon men, organisations, and the government.
The bonfire of sanity has been simmering for far too long. Peace and stability in Darjeeling will be a profound tribute to the cause of Independence on its 70th anniversary. There has been much too much of the profane, far too little of serious thought, action, and accommodation. Above all, there is no Bangaliana about the place.
(The writer is a Senior Editor, The Statesman)