Last Saturday, when Siliguri exploded in violence, it was an event that was waiting to happen. The victory celebration for Indian Idol 3, Prashant Tamang, turned sour, with the Nepalese and non-Nepalese population in the township ending up battling each other. For several hours violence raged. Police jeeps were set on fire, armed bands of youth looted shops, and it seemed imminent that the violence would spread to the hills of Darjeeling along communal lines. Fortunately that did not happen. A curfew was imposed in Siliguri town and the army was called out to defuse the explosive situation.

It would be naïve to read the flare-up as a minor, isolated event. The outburst was an expression of the tensions underlying this multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-cultural and highly strategic region, and demonstrated the fragility of its social fabric.

Prashant Tamang had emerged in the course of the popular TV talent show as a great idol for the Nepali community. There have been other icons, too, like footballers Shyam Thapa and Baichung Bhutia or, on a different plane, Subash Ghisingh. This predilection to create heroes — which sometimes translates into mass hysteria — reflects the passionate search for identity of a community that often finds itself on the margins of Indian society.

It is extremely significant to trace the gradual building up of the ‘Indian Idol’ fever. A vast region, centred around Darjeeling and covering eastern Nepal and Sikkim, had virtually turned into a simmering cauldron over the contest. There were early signals of the shape of things to come. A BSNL office in Darjeeling was vandalised by Tamang supporters, who alleged that the service provider had miserably failed to ensure that the SMS votes polled by them reached the jury in time. When Tamang entered the final phase of the contest, the angst took on multiple dimensions. Tamang became the rallying point for the Nepalese across geographical boundaries and the urban-rural divide.

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