fighting fire with fire is unlikely to resolve gorkhaland stir
romit bagchi
romitbagchi@gmail.com
Siliguri, 9 August: A senior RSP leader from Siliguri, while speaking conversationally of the renewed movement in the Darjeeling Hills for Gorkhaland, seems to have caught the contradictory drift of the Bengali mind right. He said his party cannot help saluting the Gorkha community, heroically undergoing sufferings and making sacrifices for the cause of statehood, while adding in the same breath that it is not possible for them to support the demand. He cited some reasons in support of his argument as to why the demand is insupportable ~ the confusion lingering over their citizenship status, the geo-strategic location of the Hills and the economic non-viability of just three sub-divisions of a district becoming a state.
These things must be considered if the Centre at any point of time decides to constitute a second state re-organisation commission ~ this seems to be the only option left as a solution to the entire gamut of statehood demands that have forced their ways into the national agenda following the ruling UPA having endorsed the demand for Telangana.
True, the Gorkhaland tangle stands in a class of its own because of the citizenship-muddle and the strategic importance of the Hills under Bengal. But the question is, do these things constitute the core of the Bengali denial or are these arguments mere fig leaves that seek to cover the profound sense of territorial possessiveness of the race, the strong desire to cling to the Hills at any cost?
However, the current spurt in the stir involving mass rallies rasing war-cries, road-rolling by shirtless youths, women tonsuring their hair, boys etching maps of Gorkhaland by blades on their backs, children walking past streets with wrists and ankles chained and some opting for self-immolation (the last one a new, though most unfortunate trend in the Hills) are striking a sympathetic chord somewhere in the Bengali psyche, seemingly moving them in spite of themselves to feel a sort of empathy with the people in the Hills astir with their demand for statehood.
In fact, both the communities are the same in expressing emotions while articulating anguish. The colonial government failed to bludgeon the ‘neurotic’ Bengalis into submission with batons. Similarly, the Bengal government would not be able to coerce the ‘emotional’ Gorkhas by using the repressive state machinery up to the hilt. The sooner the state government realises this and mends its ways, the better it is for the state as well as for the Hills.(SNS)
romit bagchi
romitbagchi@gmail.com
Siliguri, 9 August: A senior RSP leader from Siliguri, while speaking conversationally of the renewed movement in the Darjeeling Hills for Gorkhaland, seems to have caught the contradictory drift of the Bengali mind right. He said his party cannot help saluting the Gorkha community, heroically undergoing sufferings and making sacrifices for the cause of statehood, while adding in the same breath that it is not possible for them to support the demand. He cited some reasons in support of his argument as to why the demand is insupportable ~ the confusion lingering over their citizenship status, the geo-strategic location of the Hills and the economic non-viability of just three sub-divisions of a district becoming a state.
These things must be considered if the Centre at any point of time decides to constitute a second state re-organisation commission ~ this seems to be the only option left as a solution to the entire gamut of statehood demands that have forced their ways into the national agenda following the ruling UPA having endorsed the demand for Telangana.
True, the Gorkhaland tangle stands in a class of its own because of the citizenship-muddle and the strategic importance of the Hills under Bengal. But the question is, do these things constitute the core of the Bengali denial or are these arguments mere fig leaves that seek to cover the profound sense of territorial possessiveness of the race, the strong desire to cling to the Hills at any cost?
However, the current spurt in the stir involving mass rallies rasing war-cries, road-rolling by shirtless youths, women tonsuring their hair, boys etching maps of Gorkhaland by blades on their backs, children walking past streets with wrists and ankles chained and some opting for self-immolation (the last one a new, though most unfortunate trend in the Hills) are striking a sympathetic chord somewhere in the Bengali psyche, seemingly moving them in spite of themselves to feel a sort of empathy with the people in the Hills astir with their demand for statehood.
In fact, both the communities are the same in expressing emotions while articulating anguish. The colonial government failed to bludgeon the ‘neurotic’ Bengalis into submission with batons. Similarly, the Bengal government would not be able to coerce the ‘emotional’ Gorkhas by using the repressive state machinery up to the hilt. The sooner the state government realises this and mends its ways, the better it is for the state as well as for the Hills.(SNS)
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