Didi keeps hill train rolling, but questions remain on future peace

With the new agreement life is slowly coming back to normalcy in Darjeeling town Photo: URMI BHATTACHARJEE

IT ALL started in 2007 when a young Nepali boy from Darjeeling, working with the West Bengal Police, was singing his way to the final stages of the popular television reality show Indian Idol. The multi-racial Nepali community got united, perhaps for the first time; they voted frantically for Prashant Tamang and he won the competition.

Bimal Gurung, a dissident from the Subhash Ghising-led Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF), who led the people of Darjeeling to promote Prashant, cashed in on the wave of community sentiment and paralysed the hills for more than 40 months with a call to create a separate Gorkhaland.

Bimal Gurung’s Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) was instrumental in ousting Ghising from Darjeeling. The group has now come to an agreement with the Mamata Banerjee government in West Bengal, paving the way for a possible political solution to the impasse.

GJM President Bimal Gurung in a happy mood at his residence

For three and half years, the Darjeeling hills and the adjoining areas of Terai and Dooars in North Bengal have seen violence. Tourism and tea plantations, the main sources of income in the area, faced the brunt of the disturbances.

The GJM, which spearheaded the Gorkhaland movement riding on a wave of political one-upmanship, won all three constituencies in the Darjeeling district in alliance with the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the recently concluded Assembly elections.

The GJM has now agreed to Didi’s formula of a new administrative council with more power for the hills. The council will replace the Darjeeling Gorka Hill Council (DGHC) that was formed following the GNLF’s 28-month agitation for a separate state in the 1980s.

The Darjeeling ice-breaker highlights once again that Mamata has the crowd with her. With political support from the GJM, she has been able to work out an agreement on the dispute through a spirit of accommodation and flexibility.

THE AGREEMENT A joint verification committee on including Siliguri, Terai and Dooars under the framework Workers of the DGHC to be regularised in a step-wise manner A committee to look into the transfer of the Tauzi department to the new authority Elections to be held to the new administrative body The body can frame rules, but not acts

But the negotiation still remains open-ended.

“The deal between Mamata Banerjee and Bimal Gurung does not satisfy the aspirations of the Gorkhas, and thus the struggle for the creation of Gorkhaland is not resolved,” says Pradip Khati, a senior leader of the All India Gorkha League (AIGL), the oldest political party of the Gorkhas.

“The demand for Gorkhaland is not a new one,” adds Gurung cautiously. “After me, other people will raise this demand. So, the political movement for the creation of Gorkhaland will continue. We do not want to mix the creation of the new administrative set-up with the political movement. Politics and developmental work can go hand in hand. Had the Left been sensitive to the region, we could have cooperated with them.”

Even as the GJM settles down to the new adminstrative setup, there are rumbles inside the party on the accord thus its leaders are blowing the trumpet of Union Territory status for Darjeeling or a separate state as the final solution.

For now, it is ready to accept a hill council, but only with more areas added to it. It also does not want a constitutional guarantee, since that might give a permanent status to the council.

The Left is looking to gain ground by raising the anti-agreement ante. “This is only a political stunt. This is not a new formula. When we were in power, we had given options for more powers to the hill council, but the GJM remained adamant,” former CPI(M) minister Ashok Bhattacharjee told reporters at Siliguri. “Mamata Banerjee might say the issue is resolved but until all political forces in the hills are convinced, the issue of Gorkhaland is alive.”

The Communist Party of Revolutionary Marxist, a political unit from the hills, is calling the agreement a great betrayal, as Subhash Ghising had done earlier.

In August 2010, Ghising had predicted that GJM would settle for yet another hill council. The present settlement has given him scope to bounce back in the political domain. Whether Mamata and Gurung deliver on their promise will be something to watch out for, but right now life will return to normalcy and tourists will return to the hills.

Ratnadip Choudhury is a Principal Correspondent with Tehelka.