Gorkhaland stir amidst Sino-Indian standoff in nearby Doklam is ominous

By P.K. Balachandran

The agitation for statehood (or provincial status) for “Gorkhaland”, which is just 150 km away from the Sino-Indian military standoff in Doklam, has entered the 50th day. 

Life in Darjeeling district, which is at the core of Gorkhaland, and which is West Bengal state’s only tourist destination, has been at a standstill since mid-May. Nine people have died in the stir, eight of them in police firing. And yet, there is no sign that the Narendra Modi-led Central Indian Government is giving any thought to solving the problem, which has been brewing for the last three decades, occasionally leading to violence as in 1986 when it is said to have claimed 1,200 lives. 

There is a tendency to treat Gorkhaland agitation simplistically as a local and order problem. But some, like the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banjerjee, see it as an incipient terrorist movement which can be nipped in the bud by a show of force. 

The West Bengal state machinery is unmoved by the declaration of the Gorkhaland Janamukthi Morcha (GJM) that it is only demanding statehood within the Indian Union, and not secession, and that the agitators invariably wave the Indian National Flag in their rallies. 

Observers say that treating the stir as the handiwork of a bunch of misguided “terrorists” and using the police and paramilitary forces to put it down with a heavy hand instead attending to the political, cultural and linguistic bases of the 31-year-old movement, can only radicalise it. 

 

China

So far, the movement has been largely peaceful, involving ordinary men and women. But if political indifference and police repression persist, it could well slip into the hands of real terrorists with foreign links. And this is a distinct possibility now that China has threatened to destabilise India’s North East if Indian troops do not withdraw from Doklam unilaterally. 

Furthermore, China’s anti-India rhetoric on the Doklam issue remains at a high pitch. Experienced China watchers in India have told New Delhi not to take Chinese utterances lightly, especially if they come from official spokesmen.

Gorkhaland is close to a possible theatre of war between India and China. It is also located in the Siliguri Corrridor, which is the only link mainland India has with its Far Eastern States, namely, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Mizoram and Tripura. 

 

Divided too many times?

The Nepalese-speaking Gorkhas of Northern Bengal re-started their agitation in mid-May after the West Bengal State Government announced that Bengali language would be a compulsory subject in schools till Class X. Since then, the whole area, including the hill resort of Darjeeling, has been virtually shut. 

While the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal has dubbed the movement “terrorist”, other political parties in West Bengal and India also oppose the separation of Gorkhaland from West Bengal as Bengal has been divided too many times. 

The first division was in 1905 between Hindu and Muslim Bengals. After an agitation by Indian nationalists, it was re-united in 1911, but only to be permanently divided when the British left India in 1947. All political parties in West Bengal are opposed to another division because Bengalis, who are the majority in the State, are dead set against it. 

However, the Gorkhaland wings of these parties support division. And that includes Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In fact, the BJP is any ally of the Gorkhaland Janamukthi Morcha (GJM) which is spearheading the agitation for separation. Gorkhaland’s representative in the Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of Indian Parliament, S.S. Ahluwalia, is a BJP man and a vocal supporter of Statehood for Gorkhaland.

But even Ahluwalia has not been able to cut ice in New Delhi. He had chickened out of raising the issue in Parliament fearing censure from the party leadership. There is little he can do after the Central State Minister of Home Affairs, Hansraj Ahir, said that the Modi Government is not considering any proposal to give statehood to Gorkhaland.

 

Living in fear, future at stake

Meanwhile, according to an article in The Wire by Boishakhi Dutt, the West Bengal Government has even enforced an unofficial food and medicine embargo. People needing urgent medical treatment have to go to hospitals in Sikkim now. Internet services have been disrupted, it said. 

The Wire quoted Darjeeling resident Upendra Pradhan as saying: “Ration is not the only cause of concern – the youth’s future is at stake, as the lack of connectivity made it impossible for students to apply to colleges. The internet ban was imposed in Darjeeling at a time when students who had finished their 12th standard board exams were to fill up college admission forms. A number of students were unable to do so because the deadlines have passed.” 

According to local academician Parjanya Sen: “Darjeeling is unrecognisable now. People are scared to move around after dark because there are forces with guns everywhere and we don’t know when who will question us about where we are going. Earlier everybody would be out at night, but now, people don’t go out after 6-7 p.m. There are Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) people everywhere standing with guns. We are intimidated.”

 

“People’s Movement”

On 20 July, bank accounts of three top Gorkhaland Janamukti Morcha (GJM) leaders were frozen by the West Bengal police for alleged “misuse” of funds for “illegal operations such as purchasing arms and weapons”. An intelligence officer told the Press Trust of India that around INR 26 lakh had been seized from the three accounts. 

The West Bengal police are taking up murder cases against GJM leaders like Bimal Gurung forcing them to go into hiding. But the movement is going on nevertheless because it is now a “People’s Movement” involving Gorkhas of all classes from all over India and the world. Rallies in support of it have been held in several towns in India and the West.

A report in Scroll.in quotes a local academic saying that the movement is growing horizontally in terms of masses’ support, but not vertically, because the apex is not able to get things moving at India’s decision making level. 

 

Gurung

The prediction is that the GJM will be side-lined as Subhas Ghising’s Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) was, earlier. The GNLF was powerful in the 1980. Gurung, who replaced Ghising as the leader of the movement, came with the pledge that if he did not get statehood for Gorkhaland by 2010, he would shoot himself in the head. It is now 2017, Gorkhaland is nowhere in sight, and Gurung is still at the helm of the GJM and the movement. 

But Gurung has been making himself scarce lately, because of the threat of arrest. However the agitating masses do not feel his absence as they have taken charge, reports say. However, the danger in such a situation is that unscrupulous rabble rousers make take charge with foreign help.

After 1,200 deaths in the 1986 violent struggle, Ghising accepted the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC) in 1988. But the DGHC had little or no autonomy and therefore his successor, Gurung, continued the struggle, this time for full statehood for Gorkhaland to cover areas beyond Darjeeling district. 

But after a sustained, peaceful and constitutional struggle, Gurung settled for the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) in 2012. But this too proved to be inadequate.

The powder for a renewal of the struggle was dry when in May this year, the West Bengal Government stirred the Gorkha hornet’s nest by making Bengali compulsory in all schools till Class X. The Government order was subsequently withdrawn, but by then the anti-Bengali struggle had metamorphosed into something wider in appeal.