SPRIGG Richard (Keith) Passed away peacefully on 8th September aged 89 years. Funeral Service on 21st September 2011 at The Crematorium, Tunbridge Wells at 12.30, Memorial Service to be arranged later. Family flowers only please but donations to RAFA Benevolent Fund maybe sent to Paul Bysouth Funeral Services, 9 Croft Road, Crowborough TN6 1DL.

Published in the Kent & Sussex Courier from 16th September 2011 to 22nd September 2011 (Distributed in Gillingham (Kent), Tunbridge Wells)

Dr. Sprigg was a distinguished linguist and a long time resident of Kalimpong. Below are two essays on the late Professor.

http://www.kalimpong.info/2009/02/25/an-unusual-doctorate-dr-sonam-wangyal/

http://www.kalimpong.info/2008/07/08/a-thorough-man-dr-sonam-wangyal/

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www.kalimpong.info

The house where Tagore stayed during his visits to Mungpoo. Picture by Suman Tamang

Mungpoo, Aug. 8: The state government has decided to set up the Nepali Akademy at Mungpoo, made famous by Rabindranath Tagore’s visits.

The assurance on the Akademy’s revival — the second in a month — came on the bard’s death anniversary.

The Akademy has been defunct since 1985 and on July 13, on the birth anniversary celebrations of Nepali Adikavi Bhanubhakta Acharya, a Mamata Banerjee aide had promised its reopening. Theatre personality Bibhash Chakrabarty had visited Darjeeling on that day and had conveyed Mamata’s message that the Akademy would be revived.

Today’s announcement was made by north Bengal development minister Gautam Deb at a programme held in Mungpoo, 32km from Darjeeling, to observe the death anniversary of Tagore.

“The chief minister wants to set up the Nepali Akademy here in Mungpoo. I will also propose to her to set up a Rabindranath Tagore International Research Centre at the museum here.”

The Akademy had been established for the promotion of the Nepali language which was recognised under the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution in 1979. It used to award the Bhanu Bhakta Puraskar for literature, drama, music and art.

But with the Gorkhaland agitation starting in the 1980s under Subash Ghisingh, the Akademy stopped functioning. Even after the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council was formed in 1988, Ghisingh, who was then at the helm of affairs, did not attach much importance to the Bhanu Bhakta Puraskar.

Instead, the DGHC instituted the Agam Singh Giri Puraskar in literature and demands for the revival of the Akademy fell on deaf ears despite several pleas from quarters like the Kurseong Pustakalaya and Nepali Sahitya Sammelan.

The Bhanu Puraskar was revived in 2002, but from then onwards it came to be awarded by the Bangla Akademy.

Indra Bahadur Rai in whose name a college is being set up at Gorubathan in Kalimpong sub-division received the Bhanu Puraskar that year. However, the awards for the other three fields have never been revived.

Even the Bhanu Puraskar for literature was stopped after 2006, this time because of the uncertainties in the hills that preceded the revival of the Gorkhaland agitation the next year.

The details of the new Akedmy are, however, unknown. The earlier Akademy had a 23-member committee with then chief minister Jyoti Basu as the chairperson and then information and cultural affairs minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee as its vice-chairperson.

“The district magistrate, who used to be called the district collector was the executive chairman of the Akademy and the secretary used to be of the rank of the assistant director of information,” said a district official. The Akademy also had two other government employees as committee members.

The chairperson of the Siliguri-Jalpaiguri Development Authority Rudranath Bhattacharya, who was also in Mungpoo today, said: “The people of Siliguri and Jalpaiguri would also be happy to extend financial assistance to the Rabindra museum at Mungpoo, apart from the government’s initiative.”

Since Mamata Banerjee government has taken over, there have been frequent visits by ministers and people’s representatives from the plains to the hills to bridge the gap between the two regions.

Minister Deb said the government had sanctioned Rs 5 lakh for the museum recently and the electricity connection would be immediately restored. The museum is currently being looked after by the directorate of cinchona and other medicinal plants even though no separate funds have been allotted by the government for the purpose.

The museum is of much importance as Tagore had visited Mungpoo four times from 1938 to 1940 because of his love for the place and special bond with Maitreyi Devi, the daughter of his friend Surendranath Dasgupta. Memoirs of his stay here were published by Maitreyi Devi in her book Mungpoote Rabindranath (Tagore by Fireside).

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www.kalimpong.info

SILIGURI, 8 MAY: Rabindranath Tagore’s love for the Darjeeling Hills is a mere myth, if his near ones are to be believed. To quote the poet’s daughter-in-law, Pratima Devi, Tagore did not like the Hills. The quiet flow of meandering rivers, the wafting of cool breeze and the unbroken spread of the sky in the rural setting of Bengal fascinated him more than the mistiness of the Himalayas, she wrote. Yet, he has visited the Darjeeling Hills as many as eighteen times.

“He visited Darjeeling eight times between 1882 and 1933. He visited Mongpoo four times and Kalimpong, Kurseong and Tindharia twice each,” wrote Dr Ananda Gopal Ghosh, an eminent historian, in his just-published book on Tagore’s association with the Darjeeling Hills and the Nepalese intelligentsia.

Tagore himself wrote to his niece, Indira Devi, in 1931: “An ascent to Darjeeling was forced on me this time. My mind is not inclined to soaring high. Accustomed to the plains, my mind gets choked in these snowy heights. I was resolved to keep staring at the meadows of Santiniketan. But the fatigue growing unbearable with the passing moments came in the way…” “The surrounding Hills, range after range, obstructed my vision,” he wrote to Indira Devi.

But, during the last phase of his life, he began truly identifying himself with the Himalayan ambience when he kept visiting an out-of-the-way hamlet, Mongpoo. He visited Mongpoo four times in the span of a few years.
“I am enamoured of solitude in a place like this. When the day smiles or when the surroundings get enwrapped in a penumbra of deepening mist, I feel the deep, eternal silence that oozes out from the fount of the creation,” he told Maitreyi Devi. It seems that the true enigma of the Himalayas got unveiled to him when he discovered, to quote Sri Aurobindo, “the unapproachable stillness of soul, intense, one-pointed, monumental, lone; motionless on the pedestal of prayer”.

Tagore seemed to have identified himself fully with the transcendental essence of the Himalayas when he got disillusioned with the world around him. The World Wars that shattered his hopes of a global fraternity, apart from the strings of personal bereavements and the shocks of betrayal from his near ones, seemed to have hastened his long-hindered voyage from the ‘without’ into the ‘within’.

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www.kalimpong.info

During the Pacific War (1941), Kalimpong was an important weapons supply channel. Overseas Chinese businessmen gather in Kalimpong to take advantage of the market. They prospered by leaps and bounds. Because of the large population of Chinese accumulating in Kalimpong, Chinese schools began to emerge. With the overseas Chinese children’s education has become prominent, local overseas Chinese tycoons Mr. Ma Zhucai from Yunnan, Mr. Zhang Yicheng from Yunnan, and Mr. Liang Zizhi from Beijing, and Mr. Wan Gen, approached the Chinese Ministry of Education to assist them in establishing a Chinese school in Kalimpong. The Central Government thus sent two teachers, Mr. Shen Fumin and Mrs. Lee Shaoxiao to open the first Chinese primary and secondary school in Kalimpong. It was called the Chinese. Mr. Shen Fumin was appointed the Principal. Donations poured in from the local overseas Chinese businessmen. The Consul General of the National Chinese Government, Mr. Bao Jianjun, pledged 20,000 rupees towards the school building. Mr. Ma Zhucai and Mr. Zhang Yicheng donated the same. Mr. Liang Zizhi donated towards the building of the auditorium. Other Yunnan businessmen donated towards the building of staff quarters, bathrooms, furniture and fixtures. According to India laws, foreigners were restricted from purchasing or owing land. Thus, the land was registered in Mr. Liang Zizhi’s wife’s name, who was an Indian citizen.

When the school was finally built, it was officially named Kalimpong Chinese School. The school became a legitimate overseas Chinese organization with board of directors and managers, with May 13, a traditional Guanyu date, set up as the date for the fiscal year. Although it began as a tuition-free school, funded by donations from local and regional overseas Chinese, it began to collect fees after 1958 when the donations fell short of the administrative and maintenance costs.

I attended the Kalimpong Chinese school, and developed strong friendship and unbreakable bond with a few classmates. They were Ma Jakui (the 3rd son of Ma Shoukang), Zhang Huairen (eldest son of Zhang Naiqian), and Xuan Shangi (known in Canada as Jimmy Hsuen; second son of Xuan Mingshan). We were bonded because our families had all come from the same region of Yunnan. Ma family came from Zhongdian (Shangrila), Zhang family from Heqing, Xuan family from Lijiang, and my family from Eryuan. We were also of the same age. We were looking after each other like brothers.

Overseas Chinese were now under close surveillance. Businesses no longer could operate normally. My father had a photographic home studio, a grocery store, and was in partnership with the Owen Company, to develop domestic market for German and Japanese optical and photographic instruments and equipment. His businesses were forced to terminate on January 1. Many others fell into the same plight. Then, the Indian Government began to launch severe anti-Chinese attacks against overseas Chinese. Thus, began a history of persecution against the overseas Chinese in India.

Kalimpong was designated as a military control zone. Police were ordered to strictly manage and register the Chinese. Chinese businessmen were put under tight surveillance. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru declared that the Government of India will take stringent measures against Chinese businessmen in Kalimpong. The Government began expelling overseas Chinese and persecuting the Chinese schools.

On the evening of September 24, 1960, a renown Tibetan monk was murdered. The next day, a platoon of police surrounded the Black Building, and arrested the Chinese tycoon, Mr. Ma Jakui, and imprisoned him. The story behind the murder was that a young lama, Duishangdeng came to visit the old lama Luosangjia. The neighbors saw him entered the old lama’s home; then they heard someone screaming from it. The police were notified immediately, but they did not show up until much later. The intruder did not flee the scene; instead, waited in the room for the police to arrive. By the time the police had arrived, the old lama was dead. The young lama then shouted, “Cering (Tibetan name of Ma Jiakiu’s son, Zhucai) hired me to kill the old lama!”

Before further investigation, the old lama’s corpse was immediately cremated the next morning. Rumors began to fly about the incident. The Indian official media publicly announced that Ma Zhucai was a Communist spy chief, with more than 60 assistants under him, who are plotting to murder local Tibetans. This was obviously a frame-up to deliberately incite anti-Chinese sentiments and justify large-scale political attacks on local Chinese population. Through diplomatic channels and judicial proceedings, the Chinese Government rescued Ma Zhucai. There was insufficient evidence to prosecute Zhucai; also, the murderer retracted his initial accusation. Only then, was Zhucai’s father, Ma Jiakiu, released on bail. He had suffered extremely harsh treatment in prison that required medical attention.

I found the document at this site, where I also found an account of life in Kalimpong in the 1950′s.

See Dr Sonam Wangyal’s article on Tharchin babu here, and a picture of Tharchin Babu & the current state of the Tibet Mirror Press here.

I am copying the entire essay below (for reasons of posterity, in case the pdf becomes unavailable.)

Kalimpong, Gergan Dorje Tharchin, and his Mirror newspaper
Paul G. Hackett

Like Tashkent a thousand years earlier, Kalimpong of the twentieth century was one of those cultural junctures — the meeting place of age-old civilizations and a crossing over point between radically different worlds. Below and to the south lay the jungles and lowlands of British India and most prominently of all, Calcutta, where hillstations such as Kalimpong met their commercial port, where the whole population of India — Lepchas, Nepalis, Bengalis, British, Chinese, Malaysians and a whole host of traders, missionaries, soldiers and bureaucrats — daily swarmed over each other in pursuit of their lofty and not-so-lofty goals. Above and to the north lay the mountain ranges of Tibet, a kingdom like no other, perched atop the high Himalayas, a monastic haven far above the mundane world below, a place that six million people called “home”; from the narrow valleys of Ladakh and Guge near Kaśmir in the west, to the wide open plains of Amdo and the Chang-tang on the border of China to the east, Tibet was an ethereal, 1.2 million square kilometer land-mass whose natural borders were visible from space. Kalimpong was where these two worlds met.

Called “Da-ling Kote” by the local Bhutias after the old fort on the 4,000 ft. ridge line, for most of its pre-history, Kalimpong was little more than the stockade (“pong”) of a Bhutanese minister (“Kalön”). It was only with the annexation of the area by the British in the late-19th century with the hopes of opening trade routes did the small village formed around the ruins of the old fort begin to grow. In the wake of the 1904 Younghusband invasion of Tibet, Kalimpong took on greater significance as trading post as the wool trade shifted markets from the administrative capital of the region, Darjeeling, to its new economic capital, Kalimpong, being slightly closer the Tibetan passes of Jelep-la and Nathu-la, with easy transport south to Calcutta for shipping to the textile mills of England and eventually, America.

Though still in many aspects a trading post and missionary enclave, by the early twentieth century Kalimpong had much to offer a Tibetophile. Most notably, Kalimpong was home to the only Tibetan language newspaper in the world, The Mirror or “Me-long,” as it was known in Tibetan. It was also home to the newspaper’s editor and the de factocenter of the Tibetan ex-patriot community in Kalimpong, Dorje Tharchin, known affectionately to all and sundry as Tharchin Babu.

Tharchin was a unique man. Born in 1890 in the village of Pu (spu) in the Khunu region of Spiti (spi ti), Tharchin was the son of one of only a handful of Moravian Christian converts in the western Tibetan borderlands of Spiti, and had spent the early years of his life in Khunu being educated in missionary schools (taught in a mixture of Tibetan and Urdu). With the death of his parents in the early years of the century, Tharchin finally left his village at the age of twenty. During the years that followed, Tharchin earned money as a common laborer spending his time between Delhi and the British “summer capital” of Simla at the mouth of the Kulu valley, and by the late 1910’s Tharchin was fully ensconced in his identity as a Christian and could often be found preaching in one of the cities’ local bazaars.

Accepting a job at the Ghoom Mission School outside of Darjeeling, Tharchin taught Tibetan and Hindi at a Christian school belonging to the Scandanavian Alliance Mission. By 1917, Tharchin had managed to secure a Government scholarship to attend school and so relocated himself to Kalimpong to enter into the “Teacher Training” program being operated by the Scottish Union Mission. Having recently published two small Tibetan language primers, a Tibetan Primer with Simple Rules of Correct Spelling and The Tibetan Second Book, his knowledge of Tibetan brought him to the notice of W.S. Sutherland, a missionary who had spent the better part of forty years in the area of Kalimpong running a combination orphanage and missionary school, who quickly put Tharchin to work teaching Tibetan to a mixture of Bhutia and Tibetan boys in the orphanage.

Despite all these activities and events, Tharchin continued his proselytizing throughout Sikkim, as well as serving as a Tibetan translator for embassies to Bhutan and Sikkim. It was during this time, as well, that Tharchin began to forge friendships with many of the high ranking Tibetan and British dignitaries who passed through the region on a regular basis and various current and future members of the Tibetan government, and relatives of the various aristocratic houses. In the midst of these activities he commenced work on what would be his greatest achievement, eventually earning him worldwide notoriety.

It was on one occasion, in August of 1925 while working for Sutherland’s successor at the Scottish Union Mission, John Graham, that Tharchin noticed “a Roneo Duplicator lying idle in the office of Dr. Graham” and asked him if he could take it, thinking to produce his own newspaper in Tibetan. Graham offered it to Tharchin, though offered little encouragement saying that his office staff had failed to get it working the entire time they had had it. Nonetheless, undaunted, Tharchin began tinkering with the duplicator in an attempt to get it working. After two months of work in his spare time, Tharchin was finally greeted with success, and on October 10th, 1925, Tharchin produced the first issue of his very own Tibetan language newspaper, “The Mirror — News From Various Regions” (yul phyogs so so’i gsar ‘gyur gyi me long). Following a brief hiatus, Tharchin commenced regular publication of his newspaper the following February with monthly issues to follow, and while receiving encouragement and advice from all around, his first real commendation came a year later, when he received a letter from His Holiness the Thirteenth Dalai Lama accompanied by a gift of twenty rupees stating that he was receiving Tharchin’s newspaper, “was very glad and added to continue it and send more news which would be very useful to him.”

Encouraged by this, Tharchin began to think of himself more and more as a newspaperman, expanding the scope of the newspaper beyond the simple relaying of news from other sources to the production of news content himself. With these goals in mind, Tharchin petitioned the Tibetan Government for permission to visit Lhasa as a reporter. With permission received, on August 20th, 1927, Tharchin headed for Gyantse, and from there left for Lhasa to conduct the first important interview of his career — an interview with His Holiness the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. Arriving in Lhasa a month later, Tharchin remained self-conscious about his broken Tibetan — the result of having grown-up in borderlands of Tibet — and spent the better part of the next three months attempting to improve his speaking abilities before finally applying for an audience with His Holiness in mid-December. Success achieved, Tharchin returned to India the following February, receiving 100 rupees along the way from the British Political Officer at Gyantse, Arthur Hopkinson, to support him in the continued publication of the newspaper. By June, the Scottish Mission had received a new Litho Press, which Dr. Graham made available for Tharchin to use, and sending Tharchin to Calcutta to receive training in its use, Graham allowed him to use the press to produce his newspaper as part of his official duties at the Mission.

Although Tharchin had begun his newspaper with only fourteen subscriptions, by the third year his subscriptions were close to fifty, but Tharchin was still sending more than a hundred issues freely to officials in the Tibetan government although more than half of those were usually “lost” along the way by the Tibetan Post Office. These, however, were the least of Tharchin’s troubles and his greater opposition during these years came less from officials in Tibet, than from more hard-line missionaries who would soon appear in Kalimpong, in particular, Dr. Graham’s replacement at the Mission, the Australian missionary, Rev. Knox. Despite the often prominent and unsubtle “articles” on Christianity that appear in the pages of the Mirror with regularity, Knox was not favorably disposed to Tharchin’s activities as a newspaper editor, and shortly after arriving in Kalimpong brought an end to the subsidization of the Mirror — both in terms of material resources and Tharchin’s time. By the early-1930s, Tharchin had managed to stabilize the publication of his newspaper, although was constantly in search of new subscribers and advertising to underwrite his publication costs. It was thus with a certain degree of trepidation that Tharchin rejoined the Scottish Guild Mission in Kalimpong under Rev. Knox as “Tibetan Catechist,” agreeing to accept strict limits on his official activities in exchange for a salary. While there was little love lost between Tharchin and Knox, the position allowed Tharchin to continue his publication efforts, although eventually their differences would prove irreconcilable and they would part ways, with Tharchin pursuing his newspaper work on his own.

Over the next twenty-five years, Tharchin remained hard at work publishing his newspaper. What had begun as a personal vision and occasional medium for Christian propaganda going into Tibet, and which later morphed into a Tibetan language chronicle of world events (especially during World War II), by the 1950s became a vehicle for the fight for Tibetan freedom from the Chinese invasion and occupation. A major hub for information, Kalimpong and Tharchin’s newspaper offices in particular became a clearinghouse for news about the ongoing Chinese aggression in Tibet. In his offices, Tharchin received handwritten accounts of military occupations and aerial bombardments of monasteries and villages in eastern Tibet, which he published along with illustrations. Even in crude cartoon form, the picture Tharchin painted for his audience of events transpiring in Tibet was sobering and hard to believe, and the accounts would only get worse. Over the years that followed, the events unfolding in Tibet and in the rest of central Asia took their toll in very human terms, and even those who escaped Tibet were not immune from their effects. On more than one occasion, Tharchin would find himself writing the obituary for someone he had known, and as with many of the articles that Tharchin authored for his paper, these editorial reports would carry a deeply personal touch.

By the early 1960s, with financial troubles that never seemed to end, Tharchin ceased publication of his newspaper (1963) despite being offered a substantial sum of money and guaranteed subscriptions by the Chinese authorities in Tibet if he would publish pro-Chinese articles in his paper. With the Tibetan exile community growing and Tibetan language newspapers such as Freedom (rang dbang) and others beginning to be published, Tharchin decided that he had done his part on the world stage, and instead turned to put his energies into an orphanage that he and his wife had begun running years earlier. As the years passed and the Tibet Mirror Press became little more than a small historical artifact of the streets of Kalimpong, the Tibet Mirror newspaper would become Tharchin’s greatest achievement, an invaluable legacy and testimony to the abilities of one man and to a once free and independent Tibet.

[Excerpted with revisions from: Paul G. Hackett, Barbarian Lands: Theos Bernard, Tibet, and the American Religious Life. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2008; now forthcoming from Columbia University Press.]

At the very outset, I must be a village explainer: Firstly, my full name is Peter John Karthak, and this name has been a frequent irritant in my life. Secondly, I am a Lepcha, a far-eastern aboriginal nationality of Ilam, in Nepal, a group duly enshrined in the country’s official ethnic list. But Nepali bureaucracy and even the country’s intelligentsia are not fully aware of my tribe’s existence, thus leading to doubts about my own Nepaliness and aggravating my identity as an irredentist. Contrary to this identity, however, I am not one to advocate for reclaiming my people’s native lands, parcelled out to other newly created Southasian countries during the 20th century; I am only labelling myself as somebody who is chronically uprooted by the region’s recent history.

Adding to my irredentism is the fact that, thirdly, I am a fifth-generation Christian, a rare bird for the majority Hindu and Buddhist populace of Nepal. Fourthly, I am taken as an immigrant from Darjeeling, and such a creature is called prabasi in Kathmandu. Fifthly, though my ancestral roots are in Ilam of Nepal, the then-His Majesty’s Government of Nepal granted me a naturalised citizenship certificate, and this does not help address my irredentism – as further exacerbated by, sixthly, the additional fact of having been born in Shillong.

Seventhly, being tossed in and around my family farm and the tea gardens of Darjeeling before settling in the district headquarters of Darjeeling – where the native Lepcha are being reduced to a miniscule minority in the much-vaunted Gorkhaland – further added to my internal irredentism. Eighthly, as a Lepcha, I could claim Sikkim as my new home, too, if not the other sanctuaries in the Lepcha world, but Sikkim’s own various turmoil were more discouraging than welcoming. So I ended up in Kathmandu, whose ownership of me is yet to materialise, even after 44 years of dwelling here.

Ninthly, had I not been a child who never saw his father, my irredentism would not have arisen in the first place; rather, my parental firm address would have solidly anchored me somewhere. Tenthly and lastly, were I living somewhere within a fold of the ancient Lepcha realms, I would not be an irredentist. Technically, I belong to Kathmandu, yes, but ethnically I belong to a territory that once embraced Ilam (in Nepal), Darjeeling and Sikkim (now in India) and west Bhutan. But since none claims me, I belong spiritually nowhere. As an irredentist, I am thus practically invisible. My parts are scattered; so the sum, the total, is far from being whole.

History’s stipend

It happened when I was young, 12 years old, and it happened unknowingly. In late 1956, I was called to the school clerk’s office at Turnbull High, in Darjeeling. Mr Mukhia, the head clerk, quietly counted out some money and handed it to me, telling me to sign next to my name on a form. The amount was 72 rupees in crisp banknotes. It was unexpected and, for a sixth-standard student, completely incomprehensible.

‘What is it about, sir?’ I braved out.

‘Well, you’re a Lepcha. You belong to the Scheduled Tribes of West Bengal. So you get this kind of government stipend every year,’ Mr Mukhia explained. ‘The higher you go up, the more money you’ll get.’

Still, many questions needed answers. Why was I receiving this money only in Class Six? And what was this thing called Scheduled Tribe?

There were other students going into the administration office, each coming out with cash in hand and looking similarly flabbergasted. There were two distinct physical complexions among the recipients: one lot looked Mongolian and Tibeto-Burman, and the other group
distinctly Indo-Aryan.

My younger brother, Mark, also received a stipend of 72 rupees, and we went home and together handed the money to our mother. We explained as best as we could. Mother seemed to understand; among other things, it was good to be a Karthak – a Lepcha, Lapche, Rong!

The money was a godsend, a windfall for a single mother with two sons. We had recently migrated from our self-sufficient farm in Nor Busti, on the other hill range of Darjeeling, and times were hard in a town where everything had to be paid for in cash. Our mother had brought us two brothers to Darjeeling for further education, and this was a huge risk taken by a divorced woman.

Well, that year, the stipend would pay for our stationery and textbooks. Mark and I also got a warm woollen sweater each for the harsh winter. As for the stipend itself, it was a gesture of official protection and paternalism.

From Mayel Lyang

The last Scheduled Tribe stipend I received was 1478 rupees in my final college year. Then I left Darjeeling for Birgunj, in the Nepal Tarai, and eventually landed in Kathmandu – where I was rendered an irredentist. I have been in that state for the last 44 years, while Darjeeling has become a distant memory. By leaving India, I forsook my ST opportunities for higher studies, or for competing in the Indian Administrative Service or the security services.

During my time in Darjeeling, there were two minority groups of ‘miniaturised’ Indian Nepalis classified as either Scheduled Tribes (STs) or Scheduled Castes (SCs). The former comprised the Bhote, Sherpa, Kagate and Lepcha; the latter, Kamis (blacksmiths), Damais (tailors, musicians) and Sarkis (cobblers, leatherworkers). While the STs were non-Hindu ethnic tribes of the Himalaya, the SCs were Hindus but sub-classified as ‘low caste’. The Lepcha were also included on the ST list. While the other ST and SC groups were immigrants to Darjeeling from Nepal, the Lepcha were the indigenous lords of the ‘Rongland’ called Mayel Lyang, which spread from Ilam to Sikkim, Darjeeling district, a strip of Ha province in western Bhutan, to the Mechi River basin and Coochbehar.

But the entire Rongland was overtaken by outsiders. Darjeeling, for instance, was literally taken from the Sikkimpati Raja by the British in India. Instead of receiving reparations, their descendents (like me) ended up being handed annual stipends in modern India. What of the Lepcha who did not attend school was a matter not duly considered. Meanwhile, the 72 rupees I received was a pittance for the plenty my people left to those who arrived without knocking at our door. The gatecrashers were British, hordes of Nepalis, some Farsi and Anglo-Indians, many Biharis and Marwaris, among other uninvited guests.

Whom to blame? The British, of course! But they left in 1947, and departed in such a rush that their McMahon Line, Partition and Durand Line are still causing irredentist irritants as botched history’s half-done measures in Southasia, as elsewhere. The miasma left by the British Raj on pristine Rongland, for one, simmers in one way or the other to this day; so much so that the present people have decided to opt for a convenient forgetfulness. Rather, it is more important, for instance, to spearhead the Gorkhaland movement in Darjeeling. As an immediate irredentist consequence, the Lepcha in Darjeeling found themselves as guests in their own country, as well as in Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and elsewhere.

Irredenta interval

The obscure family of words coming from the Italian irredento (meaning ‘unredeemed’) is not well defined in most dictionaries, so there is a tendency to explain these words in multiple ways. One definition has it that an irredenta is an area subject to potential claim, but not all irredentas are involved in actual irredentism – ie, the pushing for annexation of neighbouring lands. This is confusing at best and, for the Lepcha, as one distinct people but scattered in four directions, it offers not even the flimsiest guidepost by which to begin. Deconstruction of the principle demands acceptance of the fact that there is more than ‘an area’ involved – in the Lepcha question, in fact, there are at least three, if not four, sovereign territories.

A much clearer meaning of irredenta denotes a region that is related ethnically or historically to one country, but is controlled politically by another. Notably, such cases historically have been mostly bilateral and officiated over by imposing powers-that-be – the Yoruba divided between Nigeria and Benin, or the annexation of German-speaking Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. In the case of the Lepcha, however, they are left high and dry in their ancient lands because their prehistoric lands were handed out during the British Raj. In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was able to sort out most irredentist claims in Europe, but what of Southasia?

In fact, other irredentist claims around the world do not bear comparison with the Lepcha situation. Here, there is no question of annexation because there is nothing left to annex in the first place; perhaps a cultural confederation, therefore, would be the ideal choice. Further, in each Lepcha habitat, ethnic nationalism is today a smouldering issue that should not be allowed to degenerate into the glare of disillusionment; again, the concept of pan-confederation would be a nobler alternative. There is also no question of what the Germans call lebensraum – space in which to live, because the Lepcha can be accommodated as a common fraternity in the region if arrangements can be made for their essential exchanges and interactions. This can be done by a clarion call of ‘Lepchas of Southasia, unite!’

With that, it is time to leave the sublime peregrinations and come down to the ridiculous riddles of being an irredentist in Kathmandu. As far as my ‘English’ names were concerned, there was no confusion on the part of officials of various stripes. After all, there was a Peter Chhetri, from Burma, with a known surname in Nepal. Likewise there was Peter Moktan, who posed no problem because he was a Tamang. Another Peter was no headache because his last name was Giri. Then there was Peter Pandey, a Nepal Bahun (Brahmin) and a Christian convert. It was also gently explained to me that names such as Princep Shah, Helen Shah, Emerald Jung Rana, Diamond Shumsher and Victory Rana were easy for bureaucrats to accept as Nepali, because these individuals were known to be from Kathmandu and Nepal-born.

My case, on the other hand, had them all stumped, particularly my surname. When Jimmy Carter was president of the United States, I became Peter Carter. Karthak was also variously spelled as Kathak, Katar (coward), Kartik and Karthar.

And yet, I should note that all of these observations come from the Nepal post-People’s Revolution of 1990. The new democracy made people more vocal, as nosey cross-examiners. Truth be told, the 30-year ‘partyless’ Panchayat system, under which I spent 22 years, was notable for not bothering people who did not annoy the system. No remarks were made against my ‘funny’ surname, no one had to worry about my ‘mlechchha’ religion, or where I came from. Compared to the doubts, suspicions and cynicism I experience these days in Kathmandu, the Panchayat past was a more reassuring period for those who minded their own business. But perhaps the old pent-up rages are today having their catharsis, vented in an anarchical madness that is mistaken for democracy via egalitarian free-for-all.

Many things have changed, but the woes of an irredentist remain the same. All the old Lepcha habitats are there – Ilam, Darjeeling, Sikkim, Bhutan, Mechi and Koch – but none belongs to me, or I to them. The Mayel Lyang of the Lepcha, or Mutanchi Rong, is a paradise lost, and there is not the faintest hope of regaining it.

Peter J Karthak is a writer and editor in Kathmandu.
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From OPEN Magazine

A Sino-Tibetan love story, welcomed and cherished by an Indian hill station
BY Avantika Bhuyan

Gyalo Thondup not know the precise moment that love happened to him; he just happened to realise, by and by, that his heart felt warm and aglow. And that it had to do with his journey of love from the historic city of Nanking in China to the Himalayan town of Darjeeling in India.

It seems like a fairytale now, as we look back at events from Thondup’s cottage nestled in the natural beauty of an estate off 8th Mile Road in Kalimpong, near Darjeeling in West Bengal. Sepia photographs perched on his living room mantle take us straight back to the beginning—in 1945.

Gyalo’s country of origin, Tibet, was experiencing a measure of peace, back then, having reasserted independence in 1913 after decades of rebuffing British and Chinese attempts at taking control. His fellow Tibetans were suspicious of Chinese intentions, but were hopeful all the same of peace talks with the Chinese Nationalist Party, Kuomintang (KMT). It would not be until 1949 that the Communist regime of the People’s Republic of China, under Mao Zedong, would stake its claim to Tibet.

It was a period of calm, and young Gyalo took this chance to leave home for Nanking in pursuit of higher studies. A close grasp of the Chinese language, his father believed, would equip him well to participate in the expected talks. This was important to the future of Tibet, and that of Gyalo’s younger brother, Lhamo Thondup, who had been recognised as the 14th Dalai Lama only eight years earlier. It was while mulling all this at the Central Political University of Nanking that he first met her. Di Kyi Dolkar. A pretty young girl with a beautiful smile.

Read the rest here.

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Victor Banerjee mourns the loss of his close friend, Madan Tamang

His email address was simply rhododel@: his magnificently wild and creatively cultivated hillside garden was less treacherous than Eden, and yet on the edge of every leaf was a timeless drop of suspense that one never expected would one day fall upon blood-sodden earth. No one knew more about Himalayan blossoms than he. No one loved them more than he did: and no one’s garden was a louder chorus of triumph than the quiet acres that surrounded his quaintly constructed log houses amidst the pines.

To travel into the interiors of Bhutan and Sikkim and sweat for years to acclimatize rhododendron bushes to the altitude and climate of Darjeeling was one man’s dream, one man’s achievement. The gentle Gardener had green thumbs and eyes that, while talking to you, would wander to the tree lines on the horizon to contemplate his people’s destiny.

He gave me two dozen cuttings and plants packed immaculately in moss, to transport across the Himalaya. I travelled two nights and a day across the sizzling plains and finally climbed into the comfort of the foothills above the Shivaliks. All the rhododendrons had survived the journey. As I dug holes in the mountainside, he spoke to me over the crackle of a very bad telephone connection and told me, step by meticulous step, how I should go about putting the plants into the ground. It took me five minutes to plant each sapling, and at the end of it I collapsed on the heather. “Finished”, I cried into the mouthpiece. “No, you haven’t”, came the flat and sharp response. “It is the beginning of a new life and a new lifetime!”

That was 10 years ago, almost to the day. He died a few days back. For centuries, we have slaughtered one another for more bad reasons than good. To lustily hang on to a few tracts of land, we have subjugated fellow humans to suffering and neglect and exploitation. Some have fought against that, for all they ever wanted was for flowers to bloom upon a free land.

The Gorkhas have had no representation in Parliament to talk of and no clout with which to demand their rights. Today, one of the Gorkha people’s dreamers is dead: killed violently by one of his own, on the street in broad daylight, with tourist cameras clicking and capturing his death throes.

My friend, Madan Tamang, is dead. And India shines. Real estate is booming. Vegetables are affordable to farmers who have sold out to developers. The nouveau riche once reeked of money. Today, the tables have turned and yesterday’s elite are the impoverished, unwanted and pooh-poohed dregs of society. But the hands of the clock shall still keep turning, without remorse.

In our blossoming flower garden, everything, as the people’s poet Rilke once said, “is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colours, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night”. Madan’s joyous plants shall droop and weep through the night for their leader who was felled for his love of Darjeeling and its people.

Years ago, at the gates of Pashupatinath in Kathmandu, I was told about the most famous lines ever written in Nepali poetry. Today, I find little comfort in the fact that only our silenced conscience makes cowards of us. “Kun mandir ma janchau yatri, Kun samagri puja garne (which temple are you going to dear pilgrim, and what is your offering to the Lord?)” It is time we thought twice about what the Little Prince said to the wily fox: “One sees clearly, only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes”.

And as Darjeeling’s rhododendrons bloom on alien mountain slopes this week, I shall gaze through prayer flags at the full moon that rises on Buddha Purnima night and mourn the loss of a dear friend, a great gardener. Out of gardens grow fleeting flowers but lasting friendships.

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Thank you Mr. Bannerjee for the moving elegy…. a shared sorrow.
-admin

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Mungpoo, May 9: On his 80th birthday on May 9, 1940, Rabindranath Tagore had enjoyed being wheeled around the bungalow at Mungpoo by K.B. Yonzon, a youth of 18 years then.

Seventy-years later, Yonzon, now 88, is among a handful of people who had witnessed probably the last of Tagore’s birthday celebrations before his death in August 1941.

“I was a worker of a Cinchona factory here and was assigned to take care of Gurudev during his stay. Around 300 villagers had gathered here on his 80th birthday with flowers and garlands. Gurudev had wished to be wheeled around the bungalow so that he could meet the people. I had taken him around and he was very happy,” Yonzon said at Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary celebrations here today.

Overwhelmed by the love and affection of the people, Tagore had penned three poems including Janmadin during his stay here which are still preserved in the Rabindranath Museum, now housed in the bungalow.

To Pratap Singh Ghatraj, the bard in flowing white hair had appeared like a “sadhu”. “I had attended his birthday celebration in 1940 as a 10-year-old with my mother. I was awed by his appearance because he looked like a sadhu,” Ghatraj, now 80, said.

The bungalow at Mungpoo, around 40km from Siliguri, wore a festive look today with people from all quarters flocking there to celebrate the poet’s birthday. School children in colourful dresses and local people performed folk dances, recited Tagore’s poems and sang Rabindra Sangeet.

The programme was jointly organised by the district administration, information and cultural department, directorate of cinchona and other medicinal plants, the Rabindra Memorial Model Labour Welfare Centre and the local people of Mungpoo.

Tagore had visited Mungpoo four times from 1938 to 1940 because of his love for the place and special bond with Maitreyi Devi, the daughter of his friend Surendranath Dasgupta. Memoirs of his stay here were published by Maitreyi Devi in her book Mungpoote Rabindranath translated into English as Tagore by Fireside .
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Neighbour Krishna Sharma in front of Gauripur House.
Picture by Chinlop Fudong Lepcha

Kalimpong, April 16: Had Rabindranath Tagore been alive, he might have been moved to pen an elegy on the approaching death of the bungalow from where he had recited his poem, Janmodin (Birthday), live on the national radio more than 70 years ago.

Almost four weeks short of another anniversary of the recitation (that took place in 1938), it is difficult to imagine that Gauripur House on Hill Top used to be one of the favourite summer destinations of the Nobel Laureate.

The two-storied bungalow, owned by B.K. Roychowdhury of Calcutta, is on a scenic hill, near here, and is surrounded by lots of greenery.

Tagore had visited the bungalow three-four times and stayed as a guest of the Roychowdhurys.

However, the building is in need of serious repair.

Thick foliage has grown all over the house, the windows are broken, and the interiors are in a bad shape too.

Even the unmetalled approach road, which is part of the property, had seen better years. Wild growths have all but hidden most of the stretch.

“We had requested the government to take over the house and convert it into a museum on many occasions, but to no avail,” said M.K. Bhattacharya, a professor of political science at Kalimpong College.

Biswanath Paul, principal of a cooperative training centre that ran from the ground floor of the bungalow from the fifties to the late nineties, said he had approached the former chairman of the DGHC, Subash Ghisingh, with a request to acquire and preserve the building as a heritage property, but without much success.

“The bungalow can be revived as a heritage home (read hotel). It should get a good number of visitors,” Paul said over the phone from Siliguri.

There is no dearth of tourists to the place even now. It is a must-see, especially for the Bengalis.

“Tourists keep coming here frequently. Most of them go back with bitter-sweet memories of the place,” said Sangita Sharma, who lives with her husband on the first floor of the bungalow.

Her family has been the caretakers of the building for three generations now.

Sangita’s 80-year-old mother Krishna, who lives in a house just below the compound of the bungalow, recalled meeting Tagore as a child.

“I remember him as an old man with a khadal (wooden slippers). I was very young then. We were scared of going near the bungalow,” Krishna said.

Whatever could have been the reasons for little Krishna’s fear all those years ago, for people like Bhattacharya, Paul and his wife Bani, a retired professor of Sanskrit of Kalimpong College, the fear is that their efforts to preserve the place might never bear fruit.

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