Open Letter by Award Winning Gorkhali Novelist From Sikkim Chetan Raj Shrestha to The Telegraph.
Dear Telegraph,
I was there at Hotel Tashi Delek in Gangtok in 2002 when you launched your Sikkim edition. I was working in a local newspaper then and I remember we were all elated. It was wonderful, that atmosphere of self-importance. We had moved closer to the centre, our tasks would be seen and our voices heard. There was to be a special supplement: ‘North Bengal and Sikkim’. There still is one, the last time I looked. But does it still cover Sikkim?
The recent days in Gangtok have been those of fire and poison. To brief you – over a period of three days, there were lathi charges, tear gas firings, street battles, government vehicles torched, police forces attacked, miscreants arrested and innocent bystanders beaten up in police reprisals. It began with students from the Sikkim Government College, who were protesting a fee hike on Monday and were lathicharged without adequate warnings by the SP (East). Events intensified and soon involved the guardians of the students, Sikkim Police, the Sikkim Armed Police, the Indian Reserve Battalion, the ruling and opposition parties, common members of the public and vandals out for a thrill. The unrest began on Monday and ended on Wednesday when, after a day of rioting, the government seemed to agree to the students’ demands.
These are things that The Telegraph, as a newspaper purporting to cover Sikkim should have told me, a subscriber. Instead on Thursday morning, your ‘North Bengal and Sikkim’ told me about a football tournament in Cooch Behar, a cricket match in Islampur, a blood donation camp in Mogra, the punishment transfer of a food controller from Alipurduar to Calcutta, a union tussle in a college at Calcutta, and the surprise of a large turnout at a BJP rally in Bolpur, apparently a TMC stronghold.
On Thursday, after the hysteria had settled, the police began rounding up the guilty miscreants. Today the Bar Council of Sikkim delivered a two day ultimatum to the Government. They want the SP East, the same idiot whose actions had ignited everything, suspended for beating up two District Court employees, innocents who were returning home. It also turns out that the tear gas canisters which were used, some of them had been fired into peoples’ houses, had expired in October 2011. And the Wednesday agreement between the Students and the Cabinet appears shabbier with each new revelation. All the while the Chief Minister, who is also the Home Minister, has not spoken.
There was nothing in your newspaper today as well. How have you missed all this?
Is it deliberate and induced, this silence? It surely cannot be fear. Our local media have been truthful, and they stand to lose so much more. And I have also seen The Telegraph report on the Left Front and the Trinamool governments without equivocation, applauding the good and exposing the bad. I remember your reports on the murder of ASI Tapash Choudhury by political goons, and in its aftermath, your gutsy endorsement of Commissioner Pachnanda who stood up to the West Bengal Government as it tried to bully the Calcuttan police force.
Is it advertising revenue? An absurd theory, I know.
Is it incompetence? You will be better placed to answer that. I do not know your correspondent here and I have not seen his/her reports to you. But I have taken the liberty of attaching some photographs, all taken from local social media pages.
Is it insignificance? Have we again become peripheral? I hope not. If we have ceased to matter, do let us know. We have a historical aptitude for obscurity so the adjustment will not be too difficult.
If we are too small, then please do remove ‘Sikkim’ from your masthead. The Telegraph and the hopeful Sikkimese reader will have both shed their illusions of representation, and for the better. Though, here at least, in a small market, you may go from being unputdownable to unpickupable.
At the same time, I hope that you begin speaking of us to the world, as you promised to do on that monsoon evening so many years ago when you came to Sikkim. I will gladly renew my elation.
Warm Regards,
Chetan
[Chetan Raj Shrestha is a writer based in Gangtok. His first book of fiction The King’s Harvest won the Tata Litlive First Book Award for 2013. His novel is also one of the 1st books by a Gorkhali author to be included in the syllabus of a Indian University - Jadavpur University]
[Via : The Voice of Sikkim]
Vivek Chhetri
Dear Telegraph,
I was there at Hotel Tashi Delek in Gangtok in 2002 when you launched your Sikkim edition. I was working in a local newspaper then and I remember we were all elated. It was wonderful, that atmosphere of self-importance. We had moved closer to the centre, our tasks would be seen and our voices heard. There was to be a special supplement: ‘North Bengal and Sikkim’. There still is one, the last time I looked. But does it still cover Sikkim?
The recent days in Gangtok have been those of fire and poison. To brief you – over a period of three days, there were lathi charges, tear gas firings, street battles, government vehicles torched, police forces attacked, miscreants arrested and innocent bystanders beaten up in police reprisals. It began with students from the Sikkim Government College, who were protesting a fee hike on Monday and were lathicharged without adequate warnings by the SP (East). Events intensified and soon involved the guardians of the students, Sikkim Police, the Sikkim Armed Police, the Indian Reserve Battalion, the ruling and opposition parties, common members of the public and vandals out for a thrill. The unrest began on Monday and ended on Wednesday when, after a day of rioting, the government seemed to agree to the students’ demands.
These are things that The Telegraph, as a newspaper purporting to cover Sikkim should have told me, a subscriber. Instead on Thursday morning, your ‘North Bengal and Sikkim’ told me about a football tournament in Cooch Behar, a cricket match in Islampur, a blood donation camp in Mogra, the punishment transfer of a food controller from Alipurduar to Calcutta, a union tussle in a college at Calcutta, and the surprise of a large turnout at a BJP rally in Bolpur, apparently a TMC stronghold.
On Thursday, after the hysteria had settled, the police began rounding up the guilty miscreants. Today the Bar Council of Sikkim delivered a two day ultimatum to the Government. They want the SP East, the same idiot whose actions had ignited everything, suspended for beating up two District Court employees, innocents who were returning home. It also turns out that the tear gas canisters which were used, some of them had been fired into peoples’ houses, had expired in October 2011. And the Wednesday agreement between the Students and the Cabinet appears shabbier with each new revelation. All the while the Chief Minister, who is also the Home Minister, has not spoken.
There was nothing in your newspaper today as well. How have you missed all this?
Is it deliberate and induced, this silence? It surely cannot be fear. Our local media have been truthful, and they stand to lose so much more. And I have also seen The Telegraph report on the Left Front and the Trinamool governments without equivocation, applauding the good and exposing the bad. I remember your reports on the murder of ASI Tapash Choudhury by political goons, and in its aftermath, your gutsy endorsement of Commissioner Pachnanda who stood up to the West Bengal Government as it tried to bully the Calcuttan police force.
Is it advertising revenue? An absurd theory, I know.
Is it incompetence? You will be better placed to answer that. I do not know your correspondent here and I have not seen his/her reports to you. But I have taken the liberty of attaching some photographs, all taken from local social media pages.
Is it insignificance? Have we again become peripheral? I hope not. If we have ceased to matter, do let us know. We have a historical aptitude for obscurity so the adjustment will not be too difficult.
If we are too small, then please do remove ‘Sikkim’ from your masthead. The Telegraph and the hopeful Sikkimese reader will have both shed their illusions of representation, and for the better. Though, here at least, in a small market, you may go from being unputdownable to unpickupable.
At the same time, I hope that you begin speaking of us to the world, as you promised to do on that monsoon evening so many years ago when you came to Sikkim. I will gladly renew my elation.
Warm Regards,
Chetan
 |
| Chetan Raj Shrestha |
[Chetan Raj Shrestha is a writer based in Gangtok. His first book of fiction The King’s Harvest won the Tata Litlive First Book Award for 2013. His novel is also one of the 1st books by a Gorkhali author to be included in the syllabus of a Indian University - Jadavpur University]
[Via : The Voice of Sikkim]
Vivek Chhetri
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