A Cry for Gorkhaland

The northern districts of the Indian state of West Bengal have been the scene of massive protests over the course of the past two months. The goal of the agitators, spearheaded by a local group, Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM; Gorkha People’s Liberation Front) is the creation of a new Indian state called Gorkhaland for ethnic-Gorkhas – Nepali speakers – from the north hilly districts of West Bengal. These hilly districts are known throughout the world as the location of some of India’s finest tea gardens, including those at Darjeeling, whence comes the “champagne of teas.”

However, since June, the northern parts of West Bengal have been paralyzed by strikes and sit-ins. Shops, restaurants, hotels, schools, and colleges were all shut down. Moreover, the internet was cut off by the government of Darjeeling district on June 19, and has still not been restored, two months into the strikes. Whilst this has caused great hardship to the people of the hills, there is also a fair level of popular support for the goal of a separate state for Gorkhas. Currently, some Gorkhas live under the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA), an autonomous body that contains parts of Darjeeling district, and the whole of Kalimpong district, in the state of West Bengal. However, there are many issues in regards to how much autonomy the GTA has, whereas, if Gorkhaland were to be an independent state, its powers would be well-defined under India’s federal constitution. Recent attempts earlier this year by the state government of Mamta Banerjee, head of the a mostly Bengali political party, the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) to mandate Bengali as a compulsory subject in all schools in the state was met with fierce resistance in the Nepali-speaking hills. Disputes over language, culture, and the economy were all major factors in triggering the current unrest.

Nepali speaking people are spread out over the hilly regions of the central and eastern Himalaya mountains. In addition to the hilly central belt (also known as the pahar or hills) of Nepal, this includes most of the Indian state of Sikkim, the northern districts of West Bengal, and parts of southern Bhutan. This complicated demography includes not only ethnic Gorkha or Khas, the original speakers of the language we now call Nepali, but also other mountain ethnic groups from the region, such as the Lepcha and Tamang, who are related to Tibetans linguistically and culturally, but work with Gorkhas throughout much of India’s hilly tea plantations, sometimes supporting them, sometimes opposing them.

The region that encompasses northern West Bengal was ceded by Nepal to the British Raj through the 1816 Treaty of Siliguri, following the British victory in the Anglo-Nepalese War. Much of the territory was ceded to the British to provide a northern buffer to their holdings in Bengal, a very rich and valuable province that included the Raj’s capital, Calcutta. While originally only lightly inhabited, many more people moved to work in the tea plantations that were soon set up there.

In 1841, a British doctor, Arthur Campbell, began successfully planting tea in Darjeeling. The tea was of the Chinese variety, rather than the more full-bodied Assamese variety native to India. This led to a major explosion of economic activity in the region, as the British prefered the Chinese variety, and wanted to avoid importing the tea from China when they could just grow it themselves. To grow the tea, the British encouraged immigration from neighboring hill states, in particular Nepal and Sikkim. The population of the Darjeeling area thus grew from 100 in 1839 to about 10,000 in 1849. While many of these Gorkhas appreciated the economic opportunities brought by tea, they also grew to resent the Bengali and Marwari middle-class that generally managed the plantations and served as intermediates with the British.

Thus, when the British left the subcontinent in 1947, most of the Gorkhas east of Nepal remained there, having settled in India, Sikkim (then independent), and Bhutan for economic reasons that were still valid, such as tea farming, tourism, and mining. At times, the demands of the Gorkhas throughout the Himalayas for political recognition has been controversial. Nepali speakers grew to outnumber the native, ruling ethnic-group in Sikkim, the Bhutia. Eventually, the Nepalese majority in Sikkim used parliamentary means to abolish the position of the Chogyal, the country’s monarch, and petition for a merger with India, which occurred in 1975. Fears of a similar type of upheaval in Bhutan led to the mass-expulsion of Nepali speakers from southern Bhutan in the 1990s, many of whom were deemed “migrant laborers.”

In India, demands for autonomy for Nepali-speakers began in 1907, when local leaders petitioned the British government for a separation from Bengal province. A similar demand was made against in 1952 by the All India Gorkha League. The demand for a separate state began to gather steam in the 1980s. Between 1986 and 1988, a group called the Gorkha National Liberation Front led by one Subhash Ghisingh led violent protests, in which 1,200 people died. Finally, in 1988, the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC) was formed, which lasted until 2012, when it was replaced by the GTA. By this time, the mantle of the Gorkhaland movement has been taken up by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, led by Bimal Gurung, the leader of the current protests. The successful creation of the new state of Telangana from Andhra Pradesh in 2014 has inspired the Gorkhaland movement to agitate further for their own state. However, the government of West Bengal has opposed the creation of a new state so far. Mamata Banerjee has said: “Bengal cannot suffer the pain of yet another partition,” making a comparison with the previous partition of Bengal in 1947.

Despite the ferocity of the protests, and the risk of the the GJM starting a low-level armed rebellion – a police station was attacked with a grenade on August 19 – a separate Gorkhaland state is unlikely in the near future. The ruling at the center, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India has generally favored the creation of smaller states, citing a greater ease of administration; the party supported the creation of Telangana state in 2014, and has previously voiced support for Gorkhaland during the 2009 and 2014 elections. Moreover, the national member of parliament from Darjeeling is a member of the BJP, which has a tacit understanding with the GJM.

Yet numerous factors make the formation of a new state difficult. Gorkhaland would have to be formed in opposition to the direct wishes of the state it is being formed from. Other new states, including Telangana, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, and Chhatisgarh, were all formed with the blessing of their parent state. Gorkhaland is also very small; in order to be large enough to be viable, many of its proponents want it include neighboring areas of West Bengal, including some of the duars (alluvial floodplains) of the region. However, those areas are inhabited by adivasis (tribals) or Bengalis, undercutting the argument for a Gorkha ethnic state.

Additionally, the BJP was now emerged as the principal opposition party to the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, having taken over that position from the Left Front. The one thing that unites all Bengali parties is their opposition to the creation of a separate Gorkhaland state. In order for the BJP to gain greater inroads into West Bengal, one of the few remaining large states in India that has remained out of its orbit, neutrality on the Gorkhaland issue may be the price to pay. The Gorkhaland area only sends one MP to parliament; dozens are sent from the rest of West Bengal. As a local BJP political said:

Our party (BJP) is in a dilemma as it can neither oppose the demand for Gorkhaland nor support it. Supporting the demand for Gorkhaland means losing support in the plains, where we would be termed as anti-Bengali. But if we do not support the demand for a separate state, then we will lose our support in the hills.

Ultimately, the BJP is in a tricky position because it previously showed sympathy to the Gorkhaland movement, but as the recent involvement of Home Minister Rajnath Singh demonstrates, the party may be trying to broker a compromise that gives everyone a little bit of everything: such a compromise would probably involve more autonomy, but it is unlikely the central government would create a new state without the approval of West Bengal’s government. Talks with the West Bengal government, scheduled to take place at the end of August, will likely result in something along the aforementioned lines of more autonomy.

As the current crisis in Gorkhaland demonstrates, in India’s complex political and ethnic landscape, it is almost impossible to satisfy everyone’s wishes. Even the most successful political parties are made cognizant of this during difficult times.