The restive hills of Darjeeling in India’s eastern state of West Bengal turned over a new leaf earlier this week after a party at the head of a movement demanding a separate state for India’s ethnic Nepalis agreed to the formation of a new autonomous body to govern hill affairs.
Some doubts remain, however, whether the move will restore peace to the region and return Darjeeling to its halcyon days.
The text of the Monday agreement between Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (Gorkha People’s Liberation Campaign), the West Bengal state government and the federal government states that its objective is “to establish an autonomous self governing [b]ody to administer the region so that the socio-economic, infrastructural, educational, cultural, and linguistic, development is expedited and the ethnic identity of Gorkhas established.”
Gorkhas are ethnic Nepalis whose ancestors are believed to have come to the Darjeeling hills from the southern foothills of the Himalayas in the late 18th and 19th centuries and trace their roots to the former princely state of Gorkha in what is now western Nepal. Gorkhas are world-famous for their valiance and fighting skills. The demand for a separate state for the Gorkhas has been resonating in the Darjeeling hills for over nine decades.
The new body to be formed through direct elections will be named the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration. This new body will have “administrative, executive and financial powers” and will subsume the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council, a body formed in 1988 to settle a bloody movement for a separate state that roiled the hills between 1986 and 1988. The new body will have substantially more powers with control over 59 subjects like agriculture, education, planning and development. The earlier body had power over only 19 subjects.
“This body is formed without dropping the demand for a separate Gorkhaland state,” said Rooshan Giri, general secretary of Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, in an interview. “It’s a powerful body.”
Mr. Giri represented his party in the agreement. Federal Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram and West Bengal’s Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee presided over the signing ceremony held at Pintail village near Siliguri town in northern West Bengal.
“New administration should respect the plurality of the region,” Mr. Chidambaram said on the occasion. Darjeeling and the adjoining regions have seen ethnic conflicts between the Nepali-speaking and Bengali-speaking communities in the past.
The new agreement has drawn the ire of the Left Front, a coalition of Communist parties who are now in opposition in West Bengal after ruling the state for over three decades until May this year. They oppose the agreement, saying it will give impetus to the demand for a separate state, which they do not favor.
“This will not solve the problem; it only complicates the problem by strengthening the demand for a separate Gorkhaland state,” said Basudeb Acharia, a legislator from the Communist Party of India (Marxist). He said the state government also didn’t inform the state assembly about the details of the agreement.
He said the Left Front is not in favor of the bifurcation of West Bengal as doing so will give rise to other demands for separate statehood by the state’s other regions like Cooch Behar.
Saugata Roy, a member of Parliament from Ms. Banerjee’s All India Trinamool Congress, who is also a minister of state at the federal Ministry of Urban Development, defended the agreement, saying criticisms mainly coming from the Left Front “are bogus.”
“This is a genuine effort to bring peace in the hills,” Mr. Roy said. He expressed hope that the new administration will be able to bring development and address the needs of the people.
“If the new administration can deliver a clean administration,” he said, “then the movement for separate state will die down.”
Mr. Roy added that the federal government has already agreed to provide 600 crore rupees ($135 million) for the development of the Darjeeling hills and the West Bengal state government might also give some funds separately.
Some residents of Darjeeling said they had mixed feelings about the new agreement.
“People are satisfied some way or the other because the demand for statehood is still not given up,” said Hasang Denzongpa, a university student. “People also want some way out of the daily strikes, bandhs [shutdowns] and the violence of the last four years.”
Udhyan Rai, managing editor of the popular Darjeeling Times news website, said the formation of GTA will only benefit people close to Mr. Giri’s party.
“People of Darjeeling are silent. There are so many GJM supporters welcoming the new agreement but we can’t say they form the mass,” he said.
Mr. Rai also said that the new agreement will delay the formation of a Gorkhaland state for at least next 10 years.
“For the moment, the chapter of Gorkhaland seems to be closed,” he said.
Whether it is revived will depend to some degree on the fate of Telangana, a region in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh that has also been demanding separate statehood. If the demands for statehood there are successful, it will definitely renew the Gorkhaland demand here in Darjeeling, Mr. Rai said.
Mr. Giri, general secretary for GJM, said his party hopes the elections for the new administration will be held by the end of this year after the West Bengal state assembly passes a new bill giving legality to Monday’s memorandum of agreement.
~indiarealtime
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