Song sung blue in Siliguri

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.

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.

Ever since the Gorkhaland movement, its propagator Subhash Ghisingh had marked out a fine distinction between those he called the ‘Gorkhas’ of Darjeeling and the Nepalis of Nepal. The surge for a ‘Gorkha’ identity saw the emergence of the Gorkhaland movement of the mid-eighties. The ‘Indian Idol’ contest was probably the single biggest emotive factor that unified the people here after the struggle for Gorkhaland, and it evoked the earlier movement. At the same time, it is interesting to observe...