The Gorkhas of the West Bengal state of India achieved a special autonomy for them in the Darjeeling Hill tracts, after nearly 20 years of struggle. A tripartite agreement signed by the Central Government of India, State Government of West Bengal and Gorkha Janmukti Morcha at a village called Pintail in West Bengal on Monday paves way for the setting up of Gorkhaland Territorial Administration. Gorkhas are a major ethnicity of Nepal that also inhabits the Darjeeling Hills in India, bordering Nepal. While it became possible for the Gorkhas to cast geostrategic weight of their location in a bottleneck territory to achieve autonomy, the Tamils on either side of the Palk Bay are yet to cast their international geostrategic weight in decisive ways to achieve the long-deserving liberation of Eezham Tamils, commented Dravidian political circles in Chennai.
Even though the creation of Gorkhaland territory causes resentment among Bengalis who see it as a division of West Bengal, the Government of India went ahead with the programme, fearing disturbance in the strategic location, political observers said.
Darjeeling, a tea-plantation tract and a former hill station of the British in India is at the entrance of a bottleneck corridor that links India with its Northeast states. Besides, Darjeeling is also a bordering entry point to Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim, a Himalayan state of India bordering China.
Extensive Indian military establishments are located at Siliguri, near Darjeeling.
Other than this narrow corridor India has no other way of reaching its 7 Northeast states that are landlocked.
Recently Indian government negotiated with Bangladesh to get commercial passage through the territory of Bangladesh to the Northeast states. But there is apprehension in the Northeast states that India might use this passage for military purposes.
Keeping Darjeeling and the Gorkhas peaceful is a must for India in the given circumstances. Besides, the martial ethnicity of Gorkhas also makes a major component in the Indian military.
The newly set up Gorkhaland Territorial Administration will have 50 members; 45 elected and 5 nominated.
While the Gorkhas in West Bengal celebrated the autonomy, there were resentment, shutdown and call for strike in nearby Siliguri and in the plains of the northern parts of West Bengal.
Commenting on the situation in the island of Sri Lanka, time has gone for any domestic solutions, Eezham Tamil political circles said.
Some belated opinion is coming from sections in India on Indian-modelled federal solution. But the magnitude of Sinhala militarisation, Tamils lacking military balance, the genocidal war and the deep-rooted genocidal mind-set of state in the island make any federal solution impossible, the Tamil political circles pointed out.
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