Banerjee’s
popularity continued to spiral downwards even after the agitation, as
she continued to muzzle dissent, with arrests and detentions becoming
the order of the day. “It was a reign of terror,” said a man in his late
twenties who makes a living by giving horse rides to tourists at Mirik
Lake. “I can never forget or forgive her for that.”
Banerjee has
never recovered from it. “As it is, the TMC is seen as a repressive
force against Gorkha aspirations, an expression of Bengali hegemony,”
said the Bharatiya Gorkha Parisangh’s Munish Tamang. “That it was
responsible for so many people being shot dead has caused a lot of anger
among the people in the hills.”
The Hill TMC shrank dramatically. During the agitation, there were reports of Gorkhaland supporters harassing TMC workers and supporters:
burning down their houses and threatening them. Fearing persecution,
many of them switched loyalties to other parties such as the GNLF, which
was on a revival path. Many were rendered refugees in the plains of
Siliguri for months.
“We were firm on what we stood for. And we
suffered for it,” said a TMC worker in Mirik. “Yet we did not give up
our faith in the party and Didi. So, now that it’s election time, it is
kind of sad that we are nowhere.”
If it had not been for the agitation, would the TMC have perhaps been campaigning for its own candidates?
“Let
bygones be bygones,” said Rai to this hypothetical question. “When Didi
has decided to leave the three seats for Morcha, we are happy to
support her. It is not that we were weak and could not field our own
candidates; it is Didi’s generosity to give a chance to local Gorkha
parties, and we support her wholeheartedly.”
Bimal factor
Bimal Gurung stunned everyone last December when he dumped the BJP and returned as a TMC leader.
While many Morcha sympathisers are unhappy that he had sided with the
“tyrannical” Mamata Banerjee who suppressed the 2017 agitation with an
iron hand, many in the TMC are disappointed that they have to campaign
for someone who was responsible for atrocities against TMC workers and
their families during the agitation.
“We are in politics and it is
a long-term project,” said a GJM1 office bearer who refused to be
named. “The decision to ally with the TMC is a tactical one. They need
us and we need them. We have to take it one step at a time.”
GJM1 spokesperson Binita Roka told Newslaundry that Gurung realised that the BJP will not do anything for the people of the hills.
“We
have realised this and the people of the hills must realise this too,”
she said. “If anyone can do anything for the people of the hills, it is
the TMC. The BJP only used us in their fight against the TMC and they
will continue to do so.”
For all the criticism of Gurung, he still
has an impressive support base and is a crowd-puller. “He is such a
cult figure that his followers will do just as he says, overlooking all
his flaws,” said a young graduate at a tea garden near Kurseong.
“You cannot simply deny the fact that he is a true mass leader,” said Roka. “There is no one else like him in Darjeeling.”
Modi chamal
The BJP
is hugely popular in the hills, evident not only in its massive rallies
but also in private conversations, especially in the rural areas. Modi
is greatly admired and revered.
“If it were not for Modi chamal
[rice], my family would have perished,” said the young horse-rider in
Mirik. The son of tea workers, he’s a graduate of Class 10 and wants to
join the army someday. He now makes a living by giving joyrides to
tourists on a horse owned by a friend. His income became nil during the
pandemic.
“I got married two years ago. We were in dire straits,”
he said. “The enhanced foodgrain that we got apart from money through a
direct transfer – all thanks to Modi – helped us to survive the
pandemic.”
He also feels that Modi will be able to transform
Bengal. “He is a visionary leader who has led the country well,” he
said. “We need him to transform Bengal as well. We need more jobs, more
development. The TMC will never be able to achieve that for us given
that this Kolkata party only wants to subjugate the hill people.”
Not just Modi chamal, there is Mamata chamal too.
“Depends
on who you are talking to,” said Sumendra Tamang, a member of the
Laliguras cultural resistance group that has been organising a
#NoVoteToBJP campaign in the hills. Accusing the political parties,
especially the BJP, of politicising government schemes, he said, “The
foodgrain is the right of the people, ensured by the Food Securities Act
of 2013. Modi or Mamata have not done anyone any favours by releasing
more such foodgrains during the pandemic. This simple thing is
communicated in such a way that what is rightfully due to the people
looks like a privilege.”
One thing being said about the BJP is
that it has no organisational strength. “It won the Lok Sabha election
in the past by riding on the support of the Morcha,” said Rai. “It is
now trying to win assembly seats by riding on the GNLF.”
But
despite what the saffron party lacks at the organisational level, it
surpasses everyone else in communication and propaganda.
“Both
sides indulge in propaganda, but TMC cannot really match the might of
the BJP in this department,” said Sumendra Tamang. “They [BJP] have been
in it for far too long.”
TMC workers expressed the massive
difficulty in countering the BJP’s narrative. “No matter what we do,
they feel Modi has done it,” said a ward councillor in Mirik. “Didi
organised the Dwar-e-sarkar programme to help people avail government
schemes. We worked really hard for that, running around to help people
with documentation that will help them avail government schemes, like
old age pension. But when the money comes to their account, they say
Modi sent it.”
Mann ko kura
“I think GJM2. Anit da
has done a lot for the people here” said a housewife in Kurseong when
asked who she will vote for, referring to Morcha leader Anit Thapa. “The
people here like him.”
But this voter and the horse-rider in Mirik are exceptions. Most people were tight-lipped when this reporter asked about their mann ko kura
unsure of which way the wind is blowing. Their main worry often is that
of upsetting the neighbours, in case they are voting differently.
“When
the leaders come for campaigning, the villagers greet them all equally
and say good things to all. Their votes will do all the talking on poll
day,” said a resident of Mirik.
A number of factors are at play,
and the wind could be blowing anyway. If there is a strong dislike for
Mamata Banerjee’s brand of politics, there is a sense of betrayal
towards the BJP for not taking up the issues of hill people in spite of
the fact that the locals have been sending BJP MPs to the Parliament
since 2009. Local parties are often discredited for not standing their
ground.
“We couldn’t fulfil the aspirations of the people because
of the TMC government in the state which never cooperated with the
centre,” said Manoj Dewan, BJP’s former district president. “Now with
the BJP government at the state and centre, and BJP MLAs in the hills,
we will be able to fulfil all our promises.”
Many are fed up of
bandhs and agitations, and want development. “People want peace,
stability and progress,” said Keshav Raj Pokharel, GJM2 spokesperson and
the party’s Darjeeling candidate. “The days of disruptive politics are
over.”
Munish Tamang said: “What should have been an easy election
win for BJP in the hills, given the anger against TMC, has nevertheless
become a contest essentially due to BJP’s own poor track record as far
as fulfilling promises – permanent political solution, scheduled tribe
status to 11 communities, setting up a Central University, etc – are
concerned.”
Gorkhaland touches a raw nerve even though it is not a
poll issue for any political party. While leaders do sing volumes on
Gorkhaland in their speeches and explain how important the issue is to
them, the demand is not in any major party’s manifesto.
“I have no
faith in any political party,” said a septuagenarian in Darjeeling
town, who said his only dream is that of a separate state of Gorkhaland.
“All of them are the same. They promise something, but they never,
never deliver. I am fed up of all of them.”
Prem Kumari Lama, the
lollipop-seller by the side of the Mirik Lake, has given up on all hopes
for Gorkhaland. “To see a separate state of Gorkhaland is my only
dream, but I know there’s not a single party which will work towards
it,” she said. A widow, her biggest issue now is getting a job for her
son who lost his during the pandemic. “Any party which can create more
jobs for the youths will get my vote.”
This story is part of the NL Sena project which over 300 of our
readers contributed to. It was made possible thanks to Vedant Kanade,
Madhukar R, Shreyansh Jain, Navas, Ayan Dutta, Mathivanan, Padmani,
Arjun Goutham, Sudarshana Mukhopadhyay, Ravi Pandey, Rajesh Shenoy,
Sahit Koganti, Sarthak, Uma Rajagopalan, Somok Gupta Roy, Sam Sadguru,
Tulasi Pemmasani, Praveen Surendra, Kamesh Goud, Ankur Mishra, Sharique
Damda, Himanshu Singh, Akshaydeep Singh, Saurabh Bhatia, Chitrak Gupta,
Mayukh Roy, Suhesh Lodh, Sumit Dhiman, Farzana Hasan, BK, Sandeep
Sharma, Yuvraj Arora, Ranjith PS, Inderdeep Singh, Joseph M Raj, Gregory
Cooper, Sayani Dasgupta, Soumit Ghosh, Daman, Raunak Dutta, Mhetre,
Puneet Dravid, Md Rafat S Siddiqui, Shayan Sarkar, Aliasgar Khokhawala,
Rinku Goel, Vijesh Chandera, Rohit Duggal, Qaim Alvi, Shubham Bangar,
Sainath Naidu, Prabhat Lakra, Daksh, Bibhas Adhikari, Anima Dey, Sujith
Nambudiri, Rahul Chauhan, Murali K, Aikya Chatterjee, Harshal Geet,
Aditya Deuskar, Anindita Brahma, Abdeali Jivaji, Kamran Hambali, Pranav
Prabhakaran, Ankur Mehrotra, Ston, Phani Sista, Kartik Rao, Sourav
Banerjee, Ravinder Dasila, Rohit Jain, Gaurav Kumar, Anishkumar
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Gurav, Nahas, Apoorv, Reid Alexander Dsouza, Abhishek Chakraborty, Varun
Arora, Oindrilla Mukherjee, Shageer, Arnab Chatterjee, Sahil Ali,
Roushan Jha, Shamik Das, Srinivas Iyer, Simranjeet Singh Kahlon, Imran
Shariff, Souvik Deb, Tamnjum, Rajeev Kumar, Nabil Shaikh, Sushmit Roy,
and other NL Sena members.
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