‘Neither be divisive, nor be divided so easily’

I have lived in Darjeeling for 40 years now. I left home in Bhutan when I was six to join St Joseph’s North Point as a student and as chance would have it, I became a Jesuit priest, principal of the same school, and am now the provincial here. Darjeeling is the only home I have known all my life and it pains me to see so much turmoil… So much disquiet.

I have seen the way Darjeeling boiled during the agitation that Subhash Ghisingh and the GNLF spearheaded. The DGHC formula heralded in an uneasy calm that could not feed the aspirations of the Nepali-speaking people of the Hills. Bimal Gurung filled that void with his fiery speeches and his native awareness of the craving of his people for a separate identity. But what perhaps the

Hills

requires is not just a speech-maker but a visionary leader.

The Nepalese community in Darjeeling never identified itself with mainland Bengal. There are historical and ethnic fissure lines that you cannot erase and hence, if Darjeeling has to be kept as part of Bengal, things have to be handled intelligently and more importantly, with a lot of compassion.

Historically, Darjeeling was part of Sikkim and Nepal and not Bengal. Two reasons fanned the demand for a separate Gorkha state — the formation of Sikkim in 1975 and the massive attack on Nepalese people in the NE states resulting in a mass exodus. You also cannot deny the cultural exclusion that they faced even when they settled in the Darjeeling hills permanently. They were treated as a community of “darwans”.

The more recent creations of states like Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and Telangana have fuelled the desire for Gorkhaland even further. The West Bengal government needs to understand this and even if it is not willing to part with the Hills, it should at least rework around the GTA clauses and decide to give a longer rope (read greater autonomy) to its caretakers.

The CM has very successfully divided the local people. A sizeable population has sided with the TMC already. On top of that, Gurung is still smarting from his political loss in Mirik. But this is not how he or the local people of Darjeeling should be behaving. The leaders should give up their quest for sops now and build up a strong movement. Local people should also stop getting divided so easily.

(As told to Jhimli Mukherjee Pandey)