India's ethnic Gorkha women dance during a ceremony to mark the signing of a landmark accord offering greater autonomy to the Gorkha ethnic group in the hill town of Sukna, about 480 kilometers (300 miles) north of Kolkata on Monday, July 18, 2011. (AP Photo)
Neville Chamberlain is remembered for his singularly inappropriate assessment of the Munich Agreement of September 30, 1938 that it had achieved “peace for our times” since on October 1, Germany began the occupation of Sudetenland and a year later World War II was in full swing. It seems as though the Union Minister for Home Affairs P Chidambaram and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee are precariously poised and could be proved wrong that the tripartite Gorkhaland Territorial Administration accord is an unbreachable bulwark against the division of West Bengal.
Contradicting the unity principle, it is clear from the statements of Gorkha Janamukti Morcha boss Bimal Gurung and his colleagues that the pact is without prejudice and so in no way compromises their claim to and demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland. The pact will achieve, seemingly temporarily, a return of an administration under the GTA, which will have 59 departments and money to spend. It will restart the development process. The as yet undisclosed terms of the accord may give a fuller account of the price at which the Centre and the State Government have bought peace and normalcy in the hill areas of Darjeeling that has been captive to the dictates of the autocratic Gurung for the past three years. In other words, the pact will last as long as GJM feels it serves as a means of rebuilding its crumbling popularity in the hills, fed up with bandhs and no business.
Mr Gurung was not a signatory to the pact. Instead, his deputy Roshan Giri signed on behalf of GJM. Asked why this was so, GJM leaders were coy about the tactical reasons for the substitution. By getting somebody else to sign, Mr Gurung has obviously given himself the freedom to revive the Gorkhaland demand whenever it suits him politically. By signing the deal within eight weeks of assuming office, Ms Mamata Banerjee has lived up to her promise that the “mess” created by the CPI(M)-led Left Front required little effort but a lot of good will to get sorted out. The Congress at the Centre has one positive achievement to show even as the turmoil over Telangana intensifies. In other words, all three parties to the pact have gained separately even if collectively the benefit to the people in the hills, the Dooars and Terai as well as the rest of West Bengal is uncertain.
It was striking that the euphoria over the deal was limited to the boundary marked by the hill subdivisions; beyond that in the Dooars and the Terai including Siliguri, there was anxiety and foreboding reflected in the almost total bandh. The rejection of the pact and its implications was obvious. The reason is that under the terms of the agreement, already announced by Ms Banerjee in Kolkata weeks before the formal sign off, a census of the populations of the Dooars and Terai will be done to determine areas of Gorkha majority. Ethnic identity will determine the addition of more territory to the newly formed Gorkhaland Territorial Administration.
The majoritarian claims of ethnicity have superseded or usurped the claims of indigenous populations, namely the 56 or so tribal groups that live in the hills, Dooars and Terai. The fall out is the articulation of resentment by the Adivasi Vikash Parishad and smaller organisations of other tribal groups. As populations served by the Integrated Tribal Development Programme the adivasis have reasons to question a disposal of their territory to placate the aspirations of Gorkha lebensraum.
It has been argued that the successive accords signed on the disposal of the hill subdivisions have ended the greatly resented domination of the hill peoples by plainsmen; the nagging issue of other ethnic groups has never been dealt with satisfactorily. Earlier accords including the first in 1988 did not prove to be contentious because the only tribal populations affected were the dwindling numbers of original inhabitants of the hills, namely Lepchas, Bhutias and others. This new deal provides for the inclusion of areas of the Dooars and Terai based on the ethnic claims of the GJM.
The combination of Gorkhaland and Territory and Administration is the new regime’s formula for concluding the peace deal. By January 2011 and after 11 rounds of talks a compromise on including Gorkhaland in the title of the new entity had already been worked out. Territory in the title complicates the matter, given that territory is a necessary attribute of a State. The deal, therefore, tacitly recognises the claims for a separate Gorkhaland. Had the Centre agreed to the creation of a local police force under the supervision and control of the GTA, which it thankfully did not, then the difference between a State and the new entity would have been negligible. By insisting on disbanding the vigilante Gorkhaland personnel, the Union Government may have won a technical point, but it will not end the tension over the future of the trained recruits of GJM’s policing force. As Nepal grapples with the problems of the Maoist militias, there is no room to be sanguine that local youth with ambitions will submissively await recruitment to the State police and the Army.
On balance, the tripartite agreement formalises the authority of the GJM over the hill subdivisions and recognises the ethnic claims of the Gorkhas to more territory. It decentralises power to the GTA and enables funds to flow from the Centre and the State to the new administration. Development henceforward will be measured in how quickly Darjeeling begins to be recast as Switzerland, in fulfilment of Ms Banerjee’s dreams for the rejuvenation and parivartan of West Bengal. Development will henceforward be measured by the number of multi-storied car parking lots that come up in Darjeeling, Kurseong and Kalimpong to accommodate the carbon spewing automobiles that choke roads within the towns and across the hills.
The accord is a fresh chapter in the three decade-old friction between the hills and the rest of West Bengal. Despite the success claims of the new State Government, the Centre and Mr Gurung, till the difficult issue of territorial claims in the Dooars and the Terai is resolved, peace cannot be said to have returned.
Source: The Pioneer
Contradicting the unity principle, it is clear from the statements of Gorkha Janamukti Morcha boss Bimal Gurung and his colleagues that the pact is without prejudice and so in no way compromises their claim to and demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland. The pact will achieve, seemingly temporarily, a return of an administration under the GTA, which will have 59 departments and money to spend. It will restart the development process. The as yet undisclosed terms of the accord may give a fuller account of the price at which the Centre and the State Government have bought peace and normalcy in the hill areas of Darjeeling that has been captive to the dictates of the autocratic Gurung for the past three years. In other words, the pact will last as long as GJM feels it serves as a means of rebuilding its crumbling popularity in the hills, fed up with bandhs and no business.
Mr Gurung was not a signatory to the pact. Instead, his deputy Roshan Giri signed on behalf of GJM. Asked why this was so, GJM leaders were coy about the tactical reasons for the substitution. By getting somebody else to sign, Mr Gurung has obviously given himself the freedom to revive the Gorkhaland demand whenever it suits him politically. By signing the deal within eight weeks of assuming office, Ms Mamata Banerjee has lived up to her promise that the “mess” created by the CPI(M)-led Left Front required little effort but a lot of good will to get sorted out. The Congress at the Centre has one positive achievement to show even as the turmoil over Telangana intensifies. In other words, all three parties to the pact have gained separately even if collectively the benefit to the people in the hills, the Dooars and Terai as well as the rest of West Bengal is uncertain.
It was striking that the euphoria over the deal was limited to the boundary marked by the hill subdivisions; beyond that in the Dooars and the Terai including Siliguri, there was anxiety and foreboding reflected in the almost total bandh. The rejection of the pact and its implications was obvious. The reason is that under the terms of the agreement, already announced by Ms Banerjee in Kolkata weeks before the formal sign off, a census of the populations of the Dooars and Terai will be done to determine areas of Gorkha majority. Ethnic identity will determine the addition of more territory to the newly formed Gorkhaland Territorial Administration.
The majoritarian claims of ethnicity have superseded or usurped the claims of indigenous populations, namely the 56 or so tribal groups that live in the hills, Dooars and Terai. The fall out is the articulation of resentment by the Adivasi Vikash Parishad and smaller organisations of other tribal groups. As populations served by the Integrated Tribal Development Programme the adivasis have reasons to question a disposal of their territory to placate the aspirations of Gorkha lebensraum.
It has been argued that the successive accords signed on the disposal of the hill subdivisions have ended the greatly resented domination of the hill peoples by plainsmen; the nagging issue of other ethnic groups has never been dealt with satisfactorily. Earlier accords including the first in 1988 did not prove to be contentious because the only tribal populations affected were the dwindling numbers of original inhabitants of the hills, namely Lepchas, Bhutias and others. This new deal provides for the inclusion of areas of the Dooars and Terai based on the ethnic claims of the GJM.
The combination of Gorkhaland and Territory and Administration is the new regime’s formula for concluding the peace deal. By January 2011 and after 11 rounds of talks a compromise on including Gorkhaland in the title of the new entity had already been worked out. Territory in the title complicates the matter, given that territory is a necessary attribute of a State. The deal, therefore, tacitly recognises the claims for a separate Gorkhaland. Had the Centre agreed to the creation of a local police force under the supervision and control of the GTA, which it thankfully did not, then the difference between a State and the new entity would have been negligible. By insisting on disbanding the vigilante Gorkhaland personnel, the Union Government may have won a technical point, but it will not end the tension over the future of the trained recruits of GJM’s policing force. As Nepal grapples with the problems of the Maoist militias, there is no room to be sanguine that local youth with ambitions will submissively await recruitment to the State police and the Army.
On balance, the tripartite agreement formalises the authority of the GJM over the hill subdivisions and recognises the ethnic claims of the Gorkhas to more territory. It decentralises power to the GTA and enables funds to flow from the Centre and the State to the new administration. Development henceforward will be measured in how quickly Darjeeling begins to be recast as Switzerland, in fulfilment of Ms Banerjee’s dreams for the rejuvenation and parivartan of West Bengal. Development will henceforward be measured by the number of multi-storied car parking lots that come up in Darjeeling, Kurseong and Kalimpong to accommodate the carbon spewing automobiles that choke roads within the towns and across the hills.
The accord is a fresh chapter in the three decade-old friction between the hills and the rest of West Bengal. Despite the success claims of the new State Government, the Centre and Mr Gurung, till the difficult issue of territorial claims in the Dooars and the Terai is resolved, peace cannot be said to have returned.
Source: The Pioneer
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