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April 10: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha has called an indefinite shutdown of government offices in the Darjeeling hills from Monday but tourists are unlikely to be inconvenienced.

Banks and private establishments, including hotels,will be allowed to function. Municipalities have also been spared.

All government offices, both central and state, will remain shut.

The Morcha, spearheading the revival of the Gorkhaland demand for the last six months, is planning to bring its campaign to Calcutta.

“We will handpick 10,001 people from across the hills and on May 7, we will start a march on foot to Writers’ Buildings. We want to tell the chief minister and the rest of Bengal about the injustice meted out to ex-servicemen who have spent their lives guarding the country,” Gurung told a crowd of over 1,000 in Darjeeling’s Chowrastha.

A bandh is already in place in the hills till 6 on Friday morning. It had been called in protest against a police lathicharge on ex-servicemen at a rally for Gorkhaland in Siliguri yesterday.

Bimal Gurung, the Morcha president, accused district magistrate Rajesh Pandey and police chief Rahul Srivastav of working “at the behest of Asok Bhattacharya”, the CPM legislator from Siliguri.

“Had the district magistrate given permission to hold a peaceful rally in Siliguri yesterday, our ex-servicemen would not have been beaten up and there would have been no violence,” Gurung said.

The Morcha has asked its women’s wing to stop the DM from entering the hills while it poured its ire on Bhattacharya by burning his effigies at the Chowrastha rally.

The MLA had invited Morcha leaders’ wrath months ago when he allegedly called them outsiders.

The Morcha also observed a token hungerstrike till 6 this evening outside the DM’s office in Darjeeling.

All educational institutions, business establishments, government offices, tea gardens and cinchona plantations remained closed through the day. Vehicles stayed off the roads.

Traffic came to a standstill at Rangpo, a town on the Bengal-Sikkim border. No vehicles, except those carrying army personnel, patients and mail, were allowed to pass through National Highway 31A, which connects Gangtok to Bengal.

Sikkim police had informed tour operators about the strike and some visitors were escorted out of Sikkim and the hills before the strike began at 6am.

In the Siliguri subdivision, however, the bandh was limited to a few pockets. Morcha supporters demonstrated on the outskirts of Siliguri town.

Additional police personnel were deployed in various parts of Darjeeling district.

In the morning, Morcha supporters marched to Subash Ghisingh’s house in Darjeeling, shouting slogans against the GNLF leader.

Gurung warned that the Morcha would have to rethink its peaceful strategy if the government does not change its attitude. He demanded an inquiry into the Siliguri lathicharge.

Gurung urged people to be prepared for a “stronger agitation” and students to sacrifice a year if need be.

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Kalimpong, April 10: Gorkha Janmukti Morcha president Bimal Gurung today invited the CBI to visit the Darjeeling hills to take fresh look at the killing of C.K. Pradhan, the GNLF strongman from Kalimpomg.

Accusing the GNLF of obstructing the CBI, which is investigating CK’s (as he is known in the hills) killing, Gurung said that Subash Ghsingh’s party always put up road blockades whenever the central agency visited the hills to investigate the case.

“We invite the CBI to the hills for an impartial enquiry into the killing, now that the GNLF has gone,” Gurung said.

He also accused GNLF councillor Tshering Sherpa of sheltering Nirey Gurung, the main accused in the case.

CK, a one time confidant of Ghisingh, was shot dead on October 3, 2002, months after he fell out with the GNLF chief. Regarded as a stalwart of the Gorkhaland movement in the eighties, CK was the undisputed leader in Kalimpong till the major part of his eventful political career.
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Kurseong/Kalimpong, April 10: Two CPM offices were ransacked, allegedly by supporters of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, in the Kurseong and Kalimpong subdivisions today.

One of the incidents took place in Mirik, located 35km from Kurseong town.

“They have ransacked our office at Mirik Bazaar. Tables, chairs, almirahs and windowpanes were smashed and papers and documents strewn all over the premises,” said M.K. Tamang, the zonal committee secretary of the CPM, over the phone from Mirik.

“We are sure that Morcha supporters were behind the attack. We could not go to the police station today since there was no transport because of the bandh. We will file the FIR tomorrow,” added Tamang, who is also a member of the district committee of the CPM.

Tamang said fortunately there was nobody at the party office at that time or they could have been seriously injured.

The Morcha, however, denied involvement in the attack on the office. (more…)

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April 9: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha reacted swiftly to the clash in Siliguri by shutting down the hills with a bandh that will continue till 6am on Friday.

In Darjeeling, posters announcing the shutdown appeared around 2.30pm, giving people a 30-minute window to get things arranged before the bandh began at 3pm.

Morcha supporters in Kalimpong were slower off the mark. Around 4pm, following a directive from the party central committee, they went around the town in vehicles fitted with loudspeakers to announce the shutdown.

Most shops downed shutters almost immediately and vehicles stayed off the road. Residents had to scurry to do some shopping, while tourists either caught the last cars out of the hills, or got ready to spend a couple of days in their hotel rooms.

Within half-an-hour, the streets of both the towns were deserted. (more…)

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Darjeeling, April 8: Prashant Tamang is finally coming to his hometown, the first time after winning the Indian Idol crown.

Although his visit has not been publicised much, family sources confirmed that Tamang will land at the Bagdogra airport tomorrow afternoon. His itinerary has not been fixed as the family is discussing taking Tamang to Kalimpong — his uncle resides at Tirpai — for a break before he finally comes to his house in Toongsoong. (more…)

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Kalimpong, April 8: At a time when the hills are being frequently disturbed by strikes and agitations, heads of different schools in Kalimpong met here today and decided to work collectively against forces that impede to smooth running of their institutions. They formed an ad hoc committee and plans a body on the lines of Association of Hill Education Institutions of Darjeeling (AHEID).

The school heads said the new organisation could even operate as the Kalimpong chapter of the AHEID. “We will hold another meeting this week and create an apex body for schools in Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong,” said Prakash Pradhan, the director of Rockvale Academy. Pradhan and four others have been made the co-ordinators of the ad hoc committee.

Nava Ratna Pradhan, the headmaster of Scottish University’s Mission Institution (SUMI), said the new body would collectively deal with any situation or problem that may confront educational institutions. “We will speak to political parties if we find that their actions are hampering education.”

Demanding that educational institutions be kept outside the purview of political agitation, Pradhan said local economy, too, would be hit if educational institutions were not allowed to function smoothly.

The principal of Rockvale said the money generated from the influx of outstation students help sustain the education of local children.

Dear Readers,

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Please read it, and if you agree with its contents, then please sign the petition. It takes just a minute to do so.

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Update:
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We need more, please sign and please inform others as well…

The Telegraph published a most distasteful and ill-informed article by Sumanta Sen on April 3, 2008. The article was so disparaging, divisive and just so widely off the mark that I totally ignored it, as one would ignore the rantings of a juvenile blogger online.. Anyone with a keyboard and an opinion can write anything, and responding to all of them is not possible, nor required. That is the reason this site did not feature the contents of that article.

However, the difference here is that even though the quality of the article makes it undeserving of anyone’s attention it is unfortunate that The Telegraph deemed it appropriate to publish the article. By virtue of this blunder wherein Sen’s article slipped through the editorial cracks, the article has been given the credibility that comes with publication in a national newspaper.

The Telegraph should acknowledge their mistake, should retract the article, and offer an apology to the citizens of the Darjeeling district who have been maligned by the careless writings of Mr. Sen.

It has since then come to our attention that Dr. Sonam Wangyal had written to The Telegraph with an appropriate reply. However, the Telegraph has not yet responded to Dr. Wangyal’s correspondence. Hopefully they will do the correct thing and print Dr. Wangyal’s rejoinder in an equally prominent location in their publication. In the meanwhile however, I have received permission from Dr. Wangyal to re-post his letter in this site.

Thanks,

-Admin

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Give Us One More Thing

Writing rejoinders is not my cup of tea but Sumanta Sen’s Fight for a New Home (Fifth Column, 3 April 2008) leaves me no other option than this unpleasant task of responding to his essay that openly betrays lack of access to ground realities and of his little knowledge of the history of Darjeeling’s hills and plains.

Firstly, let us take the case of his profoundly disturbing declaration that “Strictly speaking, the Nepalese in Darjeeling can be dubbed ‘foreigners’ because they have come from another country.” Banking on Sen’s logic the Parsis scattered all over India, people of Ahom descent in Assam, the Aryans who came to India from Europe, the Sindhis since Sindh is primarily in Pakistan and as a matter of sad but ’strictly speaking’ contention all the Bengalis that migrated to West Bengal from East Pakistan are also foreigners. It is foolhardy to throw stones at others unless one lives in a bullet-proof glass house. And Sen does not have that protection for all we have to do is take a peek at Tripura, the very name suggests the place belongs to the Tripuris, where hordes of refugees poured in from East Pakistan and settled in the fringes of the small kingdom. Today the original inhabitants are in the fringes, very akin to refugees anywhere, and, to use Sen’s term, ‘immigration’ has seen to it that the centre of political, financial, cultural, linguistic and administrative fields are with the Bengalis: from the Chief Minister down to almost every officer that matters is a Bengali. Business is conducted in Bengali, the colleges and schools are predominantly Bengali and even the restaurants smell Bengali or should I say they smell of elish, rhui and bhetki. One could ask the same question Sen has asked in the essay, “Should numbers alone be the deciding factor when it comes to determining the future of the hills (read natives of Tripura)?” Has Sen ever wondered what ever happened to the Reangs, Chakmas, Malsums (Halam), Mogs, Darlongs and the other tribes besides the ruling Tripuris. Nevertheless, these are realities that one must learn to accept and by extension learn to accept that Gorkhas in Darjeeling are as much Indians as Parsis in Mumbai or Bengalis in Tripura.

There was a suggestion that the Indo/Darjeeling-Nepal border could be fenced to check “such a high rate of influx“. Permit me to mention that the Indo-Nepal Treaty of 1950, Article VII, states, “The Government of India and Nepal agree to grant, on reciprocal basis, to the nationals of one country in the territories of the other the same privileges in the matter of residence, ownership of property, participation in trade and commerce, movement and privileges of a similar nature.” If any type of barricading is to be resorted to then the treaty or the specific Article has to be revoked. Who stands to gain or lose by annulling the Article makes an interesting work but is beyond the scope of the present subject. What I find most amusing is that the Government of West Bengal has, even today, a department for Refugee Relief and Rehabilitation headed by the Hon’ble Minister of State, Shri Binay Krishna Biswas (Secretary: Smt. R. Venkataraman, IAS, and Officer on Special Duty: Shri A. Kanugo, WBCS). The Department was formed in 1950 with the following objective: “The Refugee Relief and Rehabilitation Department was created to handle the enormous dimensions of the human tragedy that West Bengal had to face following the partition of India in 1947…” It has been over six decades since partition and the Department has been around for almost as long and its existence clearly suggests that the infiltration still continues and the illegal immigrants even have a department to welcome them. On the other hand if there is no illegal immigration why do we have the Department sixty years to the unfortunate events.

Mention has been made that the hills suffers from cultural hegemony, Gorkhas and Nepalis are different, and that the Sixth Schedule is best for the hills. In the first case the article mentions that “display of muscle power has also ensured that they (Gorkhas) ride roughshod over a Buddhist culture, which advocates peace, friendship and harmony.“. The British may have been past masters in the art of divide and rule but Sen’s divisionary line will only raise a lot of dust and disgust. I am a Buddhist, a member of a minority community, but in my almost sixty years of existence not once have I been intimidated or my faith questioned, let alone my Buddhist culture being ridden “roughshod”. It is because of the tolerance that exists in the hills that Buddhist Bhutia women volunteered to fast till death for Gorkhaland, it is because of the same reason that Pemba Tshering Bhutia has been elected the chief of the Municipality, it is the very same reason that makes Kambachen (a Bhutia) and Cheten Sherpa (also a Bhutia) raise their fists and voices for Gorkhaland. Bhutias and Gorkhas may be culturally different but when it comes to Gorkhaland they speak the same language and run the same mile. Sen has even made an attempt to bring about a collision between the Gorkhas by writing that, “The Gorkhas, however, are a small community in Nepal.”. The scheme is to suggest that the others are not Gorkhas. I think it is best left to us to decide who is or is not a Gorkha: the semantics of the terms Gorkha and Nepali might confuse Sen and it is better that he makes peace with what little he knows. Where the Sixth Schedule is concerned I have never known a giver/donor being so utterly excited and frenzied to give the Sixth Schedule and conversely I have never seen the proposed receivers so absolutely hostile to the proposal. Need anything more be said on the matter!

There was one piece where Sen hit the nail on the head: Darjeeling belonged to Sikkim and it was gifted to the British by the Maharajah of Sikkim. In other words Darjeeling never belonged to Bengal. Now keeping that in mind the question that automatically arises is, “How does West Bengal fit into the slot?” Maybe there is a shared culture (No), could there be a shared history (No), possibly the physiognomy of the people of Bengal and Darjeeling are similar (No), since they share a common boundary the terrain could be similar (No), or since the languages spoken by the two communities are derivative of Sanskrit…(don’t even think about it), script (No), food habits (No), dress (No), music, religion, mental temperament (No, No, No, and NO a lot many more things)! Bengal has to let go, if not today definitely sometime later.

Mr. Sen and his ilk must realize the hillmen are not Bengal’s or Bengalis’ enemies. Talk to any intellectuals like Krishna Singh Moktan, Dr. Indra Bahadur Rai, Dr. Harkabahadur Chhetri, Prof. Samten Norbu, to name a few, and not only do they love the Bengalis but they hold anything Bengali in awe and reverence. I myself was taught by Bengalis, my colleagues are Bengalis, my workers are Bengalis and some of my most trusted friends are Bengalis. On 23 March 2008 Raja Surajit Sen, former Manager of Debpara Tea Estate passed away and six of us, all hillmen, closed shop and took the long ride to Shillong to pay our respect to a Bengali gentleman who was also our good friend. In front of hundreds of mourners all six of us cried like children because we loved that Bong and there are many others for whom we will do the same. Most hillmen simply love Bengalis for they have given us so much in terms of education, vocational guidance, thriftiness, the value of tourism, politics, pride in one’s culture, exposure to a wider world and much much more, and it will be difficult to find one adult Gorkha who has not been touched by a Bengali. Despite what you have written it does not dilute our love for the Bengalis but Mr. Sumanta Sen, please give us one more thing, give us Gorkhaland and you will forever touch our hearts.

Sonam B. Wangyal

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Kalimpong, April 6: Members of Nari Morcha, the women’s wing of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, took to the streets for the second day today, demanding the arrest of GNLF supporters who clashed with them at 10th Mile here yesterday.

Shouting slogans against local GNLF leaders and police, the women took out a rally through the streets of the town before gheraoing the Kalimpong police station. A contingent of the Morcha’s youth wing also joined them in the protest.

The Morcha members stayed put in front of the police station for about one-and-a-half-hour, obstructing traffic. “We will hold a similar protest tomorrow as well,” said Kalyan Dewan, the Morcha’s Kalimpong unit president.

The Morcha women, who were carrying out a cleaning drive in town, had clashed with their rivals in front of the GNLF office at 10th Mile here. The GNLF supporters were celebrating their party’s foundation day. A few Morcha supporters had received minor injuries in the clash.

Following the incident, both parties had filed FIRs. The Morcha complaint named 23 people who included the GNLF’s Kalimpong branch president Dawa Pakhrin and senior leaders like Roshan Rai and K. N. Subba. The GNLF had accused 14 people, including Dewan and Morcha’s central committee member Harka Bahadur Chhetri, in its FIR.

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RAJEEV RAVIDAS

Kalimpong, April 4: Dr Graham’s Homes today played hosts to a cricket team from Cockermouth School in northern England to foster ties between the two institutions.

The boys from Cockermouth played two 15-over matches as part of a tri-series. They beat Graham’s Homes by 25 runs before losing to St Augustine’s School by 33 runs. Graham’s Homes, however, had beaten St Augustine’s by 18 runs a few days ago, which meant all three teams ended with one win each.

The 15 English students accompanied by two teachers arrived here from Calcutta last evening after playing two matches against Future Hope School and Calcutta Cricket and Football Club earlier in the week.

“This is an attempt to encourage links (between the two schools),” said Peter French, the assistant head teacher of Cockermouth. “Our kids will gain by interacting with different cultures. Broadening their horizons is an important part of education.” (more…)