Fighting for Gorkhaland Independence in North India

Last week I was in Darjeeling, the hill station in North India, famous for its tea plantations and panoramic views of the Himalayan mountains.

Gorkha woman at independence rally, March 24

On my first day there, during lunchtime, I witnessed an extreme act of politically motivated vandalism, part of turbulent Gorkhaland independence movement that I have been reading about for months.

Darjeeling is the capital of Gorkhland, the uppermost region of the state of West Bengal. It is the nerve center of the region’s state independence movement. Gorkhaland’s political parties have been lobbying the Indian central government for separation from West Bengal and the creation of a proper “Gorkhaland” state since 1947 (the year India gained independence from the British) but over the past four months the movement has taken on much more violent and restive character.

Goons about to torch the office furniture of a rival political party

Post noon, on March 23, my friend Kate and I wandered up the stairs of a steep, narrow alleyway to eat lunch at a bar/restaurant (I highlight this because it is rare when you get booze and food in the same place in India) popular with locals for its great momos and Nepal meals, or thalis. We were just about to order when Kate turns to me and asks, “Do you hear gunshots?” The bar flies had already dashed out onto the balcony overlooking the winding hill street below to identify the clamor. Kate and I also jumped up, pulling out our cameras as we pushed our way to the front of the balcony for a better view.

Chairs, desks, file cabinets and dozens of paper files were flying through the air directly across the street from us and landing with loud clanks (this explains the gun shot noise) on the street below. The men throwing the furniture off the balcony of the office building, as well as those collecting the broken, scattered bits into a big pile on the street, were all dressed in black. Many sported facemasks.

The vandals set fire to the furniture and left the scene

They torched the pile of jettisoned furniture, waited for the fire’s zenith, and slowly walked away from the burning street, disappearing into Darjeeling’s many small alleys. They were clearly confident that no law enforcement would arrive on the scene until they were already well gone away.

I managed to get a few pictures of the vandals and the flying furniture before the locals in the restaurant asked me politely to put my camera away. They said they didn’t want any trouble. They allowed me to take my camera back out when the vandals had gone.

The vandals, said the men observing the fire with me, were part of minor, were most likely followers of the ruling regional political party, The Gorkha Liberation Front, or Gorkha Janamuki Morcha. The office they raided and destroyed belonged to a minor rival political party in the region known as the Gorkha League. Both parties are fighting for a separate state for Gorkhaland, but now that independence seems achievable, they are also fighting each other. Both want their people in the top state positions if and when Gorkhaland becomes independent.

Two days before the office raid, the Gorkha League held a protest against the Liberation Front’s move to work with the West Bengal government (communist) and the central government to create an interim regional authority for Ghorkaland. The lesser well-known Gorkha League, sees this as a sell out.

From what I observed during my week in Darjeeling are whole-heartedly participating in the independence movement.

All shops are for Gorkhaland

Gorkhaland has been painted on the facades of municipal buildings and private shops, and the green, white and yellow colors of the proposed state are omnipresent in the streets. During the large independence rallies that are organized almost every weekend, Gorkha men and women proudly protest in their traditional hats and dresses.

I fully support Gorkhaland’s independence from West Bengal. Just one glance at the map of West Bengal is enough to clue you in to how unnatural its marriage is with the hilly region of Gorkhaland.

The proposed state of Gorkhaland consists of the Darjeeling district and the Dooars region, which lies east of Darjeeling, at the foothills of the Himalayas, bordering Bhutan. There areas have a district cultural, ethnic, linguistic and historical indentity, and almost nothing in common, except annexation by the British, with the heritage of West Bengal.

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There are many different tribes in the Gorkhaland region, and Nepali is the dominant language among them. In 1947, when India become independent and Gorkhaland became part of West Bengal, Bengali, a language completely foreign to the Gorkhas, became the state’s official language. Only after mass Gorkha protests in the 1960s did Nepali become the second official language of these hill regions.

Darjeeling and the Dooars regions had never been geo-politically associated with the plain territories of West Bengal until the British occupation of the sub continent,  They were part of the Sikkim and Bhutanese kingdoms, respectively.

In 1835, the British saw the hills of Darjeeling as an ideal sanatorium spot, and the King of Sikkim (now an autonomous kingdom in India) handed over a small portion of land to them for this purpose. In 1850 the rest of the Darjeeling hills were taken by the British. Between 1864 and 1865 the British fought a war with Bhutan, which had recently occupied the southern kingdom of Cooch Behar (now a region in West Bengal). The British won, and Bhutan ceded the Dooars region to them.

Under the rest of British rule, Darjeeling and the Dooars region were autonomous districts of the Bengal province. Only in independent India did they come under the full jurisdiction of West Bengal.

It seems that soon the Gorkhas may, in fact, achieve independence. Meetings on the issue of new state boundaries are actively taking place between India’s central Home Ministry, the Gorkha Liberation Front and the ruling communist party of West Bengal, which has been adamantly against bifurcation of the state. Separation would mean for them a large loss in tax revenue from the region’s tea and tourism industries. An interim government called the Darjeeling Hill Authority could be set up in upcoming months.