Danger signals in Darjeeling

Danger signals in Darjeeling
Dawa Lhamu Wangdi

Violence spawns violence. So the attack on Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC) chairman and Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) supremo Subash Ghisingh -- the man who bathed the hills in blood in the late eighties -- should not have come as a surprise. Yet it did, since it was the first show of open defiance against the self-proclaimed ``Gorkha raja''.

There have always been whispers of discontent, but the voices never rose beyond a murmur. While Ghisingh may have escaped with his life, the attack has dealt a body blow to his larger-than-life image in the hills. He was believed to be invincible -- the uncrowned king who would reign on the DGHC throne till death. But the power equation has now been upset.

It is ironical that the man suspected to be behind the attack, Chhatre Subbha, was once Ghisingh's trusted guerrilla chief. His is one of the voices clamouring for a Gorkhaland now.

The creation of Uttaranchal, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh could not have come at a more inopportune moment for Ghisingh. On the one hand, as chairman of the DGHC, he cannot renew the Gorkhaland demand, on the other, he knows that the issue of a separate state strikes a deep chord in the hearts of the people. To survive in the hills, all the parties know that they have to play the ethnic card and nobody understands this better than the GNLF, which rode to popularity with its demand for a Gorkhaland.

In the past, Ghisingh has wriggled his way out of many a tight corner by interpreting history according to his political convenience. His only consistency has been sheer inconsistency. Consider this:

* On April 5, 1980, the GNLF was born. ``Bengal is our graveyard,'' it declared as it pledged to fight for a Gorkhaland. One of its members was Ghisingh, a former non-commissioned officer in the army, whose sole claim to fame till then was having written some soft pornographic Nepali novels.

* In August 1988, after scores of lives were lost in a bloody agitation which burned in the hills for over two long years, Ghisingh declared, ``The DGHC is our mandir, masjid, girja (church) and gompa (monastry).''

* Eight years later, Ghisingh pronounced the DGHC ``redundant''. Renewing the Gorkhaland demand, he even approached the Supreme Court with his argument that because of flaws in the Indo-Nepal treaty, Darjeeling was a ``no-man's land'' while the Indo-Bhutan treaty of 1949 made Kalimpong a ``leasehold land''. But the Supreme Court rejected the petition and called for a political solution.

* Yet, Ghisingh continued his reign over the ``redundant'' DGHC. Now, the latest in his constantly shifting stance is his demand that Darjeeling be given tribal status under Schedule VI of the Constitution.

The hardliners, both within the party and outside, accuse Ghisingh of soft-pedalling the statehood demand by raising new issues each time. But what do the masses feel? Alienated by a different language and culture from the rest of the state, the hill people were eager for a local hero and Ghisingh had fired their imagination like nobody else. But the DGHC's performance, or rather non-performance, has left everyone disillusioned.

However, although his popularity is waning, Ghisingh is still a long way frombeing written off. All eyes are now on his next step. And although violence seems inevitable, (the rampage has already started with GNLF workers attacking Opposition offices and calling for an indefinite bandh), it is to be hoped that saner counsel will prevail on Ghisingh, for the hills cannot afford more turmoil, especially with an economy that's dependent on tourism.

The Gorkhaland agitation left a permanent scar on the picturesque hills -- Darjeeling was never the same again. The hill folk, famed for their natural good cheer, lost their smiles. The years of bloodshed left a people quick to the khukri. Common brawls often turned into fatal gang fights.

The agitation changed many lives, most of them for the worse. Life is only just beginning to return to normal for the scores of families who lost their fathers, sons, husbands and brothers. There are still many mothers who wait for their sons to return home. And there are those youths who live in self-enforced exile in neighbouring Nepal, unable to return home for fear of reprisal killings.

The top priority at the moment, both for the Centre and the state, is to ensure peace in the region, for the hills may not be able to survive another blood bath so soon.