Darjeeling tea Workers on a hunger strike for a 20% annual festive bonus.

5:45 PM

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strike news

As you sip your favourite Darjeeling tea planning how to enjoy this festive season, tea garden workers in Darjeeling are on a hunger strike for a 20% annual festive bonus.

A 12 hour bandh has also been called in Darjeeling Hills tomorrow. Union leaders plan to hold hunger strikes 'in front of garden offices' from Thursday. Tamang, the Morcha leader, has announced 'an indefinite hunger strike' from October 6 if the bonus issue is not resolved by Friday.

Darjeeling tea Workers. 

The hills have not witnessed such a protest since the 104-day shutdown in September 2017

All seven trade unions of about 87 tea estates of Darjeeling in West Bengal have called for a 12-hour strike on Friday after the failure in talks between leaders of unions and the managements of gardens over the bonus issue. The unions have given a "bandh call" from 6 am to 6 pm on October 4, a trade union leader said. Trade Union Leaders and workers of Darjeeling Hill Tea Industry are observing hunger strike in demand of payment of 20% Bonus in Darjeeling town and tea gardens. Tomorrow will be 12 hours work off in Darjeeling hill.
Kalimpong to Join in the 12 Hour Bandh on October 4. Kalimpong has decided to join in the 12 hour bandh scheduled for October 4 in the Darjeeling Hills.

Bhuwan Khanal, Spokesperson, Gorkha Janmukti Morcha talking to media persons in Kalimpong on Thursday stated "Expressing solidarity with our garden workers Kalimpong district will also remain closed on October 4 for 12 hours. Business establishments will remain closed and vehicles will not ply. However emergency services have been kept out of the purview of the bandh."

Out of the 87 gardens in the Hills, 6 fall in the Kalimpong district. The bandh is in protest against the management failing to disburse bonus before the festive season. While the trade unions have demanded 20% bonus, the management is not willing to climb up from 15%. Multiple rounds of talks have failed to break the deadlock.

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No matter who loses, we, the Gorkhas, have already won

8:05 AM

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Opinion

Writes: Upendra

In the 2019 elections, Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat is being viewed by almost everyone interested in politics as a litmus test to adjudge if the Gorkha aspirations of having a state of our own will prevail, or if the iron will of TMC chief Mamata Banerjee to obliterate the demand forever will deal a crushing blow to the same.

In the muddled regional political atmosphere, which has gone topsy-turvy post the 2017 Gorkhaland agitation, it would take a political analyst of superhuman powers to predict who will win the seat. While the BJP sounds hopeful of retaining the seat, TMC is confident they will wrestle the seat away from the BJP, which has held the seat for 10-long-years, and has nothing to show for it. Chequering the political equation further is the lack of a strong regional political party that could decisively swing the elections one way or the other.

Currently, for me though, no matter which candidate loses, the Gorkhas have already won, and here’s why.

2017: The game changer

Not many may be aware that till date, Nepali – a language, which is one of the recognised national languages of India, and is included under the 8th Schedule of our Constitution, is not included as an optional paper in the West Bengal Civil Services (WBCS). While one can choose Nepali as an optional paper in the IAS exams, its non-inclusion was highlighted repeatedly in West Bengal Legislative Assembly, yet the powers that be have continued their defiant stand against Nepali language inclusion in WBCS.

These are copies of the same textbook -- same class, same subject. While the copy on the left, for Nepali medium schools, is printed in black and white, the right is for Bengali medium schools, printed in colour

File image

Instances of textbooks published by the West Bengal Secondary School Board discriminating against Nepali language have been reported in local media over the years. The most blatant of all being a Nepali medium book being printed in black and white, whereas books in other languages were printed in colour. After the failure of Gorkhaland agitation in 2013, the Trinamool Congress government had increasingly shown their disdain towards Nepali language, and there was a growing resentment against the same.

On May 15, 2017, West Bengal education minister Partha Chatterjee made an announcement that “the government [of WB] will introduce three-language policy, the students will have to take Bengali compulsory as one of the three languages”.

This same fact was reiterated by Mamata herself in a Facebook post dated May 16.

The Darjeeling hills, Terai and Dooars, which have a very cosmopolitan mixture of Gorkhas – Nepali, Lepcha, Bhutia – Adivasis, Rajbonshis, Rabha, Toto, Mech, Bengali, Bihari, Marwari, Punjabi and almost every other major ethnic groups from various parts of India erupted in protests. Leading the protests were the Gorkhas whose lingua franca is Nepali.

Gorkhaland agitation: A quick recall

Protests against attempt at linguistic imperialism on the part of TMC government quickly snowballed into a full-fledged demand for separate state of Gorkhaland. Even quicker was the response of the state machinery, which violently crushed the movement. The Gorkhas, who were demanding the formation of a Gorkhaland state within the geographic, political and constitutional contours of India, were labelled as separatists and terrorists. The administration even said those demanding Gorkhaland have linkages to militants in Northeast and Maoists in Nepal, they didn’t bother mentioning which faction, though.

Darjeeling residents take part in a protest against, what they call, linguistic imperialism

Towards the end of September 2017, the Gorkhaland statehood movement had died a natural death, with movement leaders choosing to go underground.

Ready at hand were second-rung leaders, who quickly stepped in to fill the void, not in leading the agitation for Gorkhaland statehood, but in handling the local Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) on behalf of the West Bengal government.

Since then, there have been attempts at completely subverting any and all forms of expressing of the Gorkha identity issue in the region.

As all of this was unfolding BJP and its entire leadership, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi preferred to keep a safe distance from the entire issue, and didn’t even utter a single word of sympathy, solidarity, support or outrage. It was almost like, for BJP, the perils facing Gorkhas was an unpleasant distraction, they could very well do without.

The Congress and CPI (M), the other two main political parties in the region, did make some noise about everyone coming to the table and indulging in a dialogue to resolve the impasse, both were functionally indifferent towards the plight and sufferings of the Gorkhas.

Time and tide

But the Gorkhas are a hardy bunch, and we endured all the hardships, with a smile on our lips and hope in our hearts.

Today, as the election comes knocking at the door, lo and behold, the Gorkhas are a priority for all the political parties. Every major political party is trying their best to reconnect with the Gorkhas, whom they had, for all intent and purpose, forsaken and left for dead only a year ago.

Today, three among the four major political parties have nominated a Nepali speaking individual as their candidate for the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat. BJP has nominated Raju Bista, CPI (M) has nominated Saman Pathak, and Trinamool Congress has nominated Amar Singh Rai. Congress has nominated Sankar Malakar, who by the virtue of being a bhoomiputra from Darjeeling Lok Sabha constituency is fluent in Nepali. In fact on his very day after being given the Congress ticket, he headed to Kurseong and interacted with the locals, reminding them of TMC atrocities and BJP betrayals in the language majority of the people in the region speak – Nepali.

Raju Bista is a political novice, but what swung BJP ticket in his favour was his Indian Gorkha heritage. The BJP is hoping that his ‘Gorkhaness’ will rub off against the unpopular anti-Gorkha stand of TMC during the Gorkhaland agitation in the region and help their candidate to shine. Their secret weapon, his mother tongue, is the same that of the shared lingua franca of our region – Nepali.

Saman Pathak comes with years of experience in politics; in fact, he is one of the most experienced candidates around. His father, Anand Pathak, too, has represented Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat in Parliament, and he was himself a member of Rajya Sabha previously. His mother tongue, too, is Nepali.

As for Trinamool Congress, which wanted to impose Bengali across West Bengal, they didn’t move even a single paper in that regard after the protests against their attempted linguistic imperialism broke out in Darjeeling hills, Terai and Dooars. What is almost ironic is that TMC that brutally crushed down the demand for a land of our own is desperately trying to project their candidate Amar Singh Rai as a son-of-the soil Bhoomiputra. The very same TMC that had labelled Gorkhas as being separatists and terrorists, is today talking about protecting the IDENTITY of the Gorkhas.

The Gorkhas have endured, now it’s time to thrive

From my count, we, the Gorkhas, have endured all that the time, government, system and bureaucracy had thrown our way, and survived. We are still Gorkhas – unchanged, and our indomitable spirit remains unconquered. Every political party that had sought to crush us, that had been indifferent towards our plight, that had been apathetic to our distress, that had been unconcerned towards our misery and suffering are today pandering to us.

For me, this is a win

We, the Gorkhas, have survived, and no matter who loses the upcoming elections or wins, we shall thrive.

(Upendra M Pradhan is a Darjeeling-based political analyst and editor-at-large at The Darjeeling Chronicle. He can be reached at pradhanum@gmail.com)

Source - https://www.eastmojo.com/opinion/2019/04/09/no-matter-who-loses-we-the-gorkhas-have-already-won

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Darjeeling Likely to Witness Another Agitation

11:46 AM

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gjm

Darjeeling Likely to Witness Another Agitation From May 1

In an interview given to the Himalayan Beacon, published on Tuesday, CITU has declared that they would be launching an agitation for the workers of Darjeeling, Terai and Duars from May 1. The agitation, however, will mostly focus on the demands of the tea garden and hotel workers. This can be perceived as an affront to the Darjeeling-based Binay Tamang-Anit Thapa faction of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM). This faction had earlier declared that the hills will not witness any more strikes. However, the workers’ agitation will most probably be too prickly for the faction to handle, considering that they form the core base of voters in the hills.

As far as the tea garden workers are concerned CITU has three demands; that the workers be brought under the Minimum Wages Act, 1948, that they should receive the ration money owed to them, and that they should receive land rights.

Tea gardens are not one of the Scheduled Employments in West Bengal under the Minimum Wages Act. The issue of the tea garden workers began in 2014 when they had agitated to be brought under the Minimum Wages Act. In 2015, a tripartite agreement was signed between the workers’ unions, the owners’ union and the West Bengal Government. The agreement stipulated a gradual increase in the minimum wage over a period of three years. In 2017 another meeting was called to revise the minimum wages agreed to in 2015, other than the Trinamool Congress affiliated unions, all the others stayed away in protest against the move. CITU in the interview has alleged that three years since the first agreement was signed, the workers are yet to receive the agreed minimum wages. This also ties into their demand that the ration money owed to workers be paid. As a result, they demand that the entire amount owed to the workers be paid, and that tea gardens also come under the Act.

The issue of land rights is another sore point. According to the CITU representative, the provisions of The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, has not been extended to the tea garden workers. When the tea gardens were first established in Darjeeling, the colonial planters had secured large areas of forest which they converted into plantations. However, not all the area claimed by the gardens has been cleared. It is in these forested parts where the workers have established their homes. Thus generations of tea garden workers have lived on these lands. On this basis, after the 2006 Act came into force, the workers were entitled to hold title over the land on which they live.

The issues highlighted by the CITU representative for the hospitality industry workers focused on; wages for the period of the 2017 agitation, that benefits such as gratuity, provident fund, employees state insurance, and health insurance be extended to them and that they should be able to avail leave on government holidays. Here too, they had launched a movement in 2015, seeking that minimum wages be fixed based on the type ofestablishment – a small restaurant would pay less than a five-star hotel. The movement resulted in a bipartite agreement with the hotel owners’ association. However, the agreement has yet to be implemented. In this regard, the CITU representative has declared expanded demands for the hospitality industry workers.

The CITU representative also mentioned that though the agitation at present is focused on the plight of the tea garden and hospitality industry workers, the agitation would be for the rights of all the workers in the region. He specifically mentioned the hospital staff, construction workers and migrant workers in this regard. He also stated that the unions had submitted memorandums to the concerned owners and that the memorandums contained an ultimatum that unless their demands are met, they would launch an agitation from May 1 till the end of July. This point is significant since the agitation would cripple the tourism industry.

The Binay Tamang – Anit Thapa faction of the GJM has stated that they are pro-business and would not allow any agitations or strikes in the hills. However, they appear to have forgotten the origins of the GJM’s founder, Bimal Gurung. Gurung came from a family of tea garden workers. His residence and the nucleus of the GJM’s power lay in Patleybas, a notoriously poor and rough neighbourhood on the fringes of Darjeeling. One of Gurung’s most popular moves among the tea garden workers in the Darjeeling hills was in 2011 when he was able to secure a raise in their wages. Prior to his intervention, the workers were getting Rs. 67 per day, he was, however, able to raise it to Rs. 90. This worked out as an increase of around 34 percent. At present, the agitation that has been threatened seeks to raise this wage further.

Chances are that the Binay Tamang-Anit Thapa faction will intervene at least in the hills to prevent the agitation from taking place. In the Dooars and Terai, the Bimal Gurung faction still holds sway, it is unlikely that they would miss an opportunity to bring their rival faction down a peg. If the matter is not resolved by May 1, Darjeeling will lose another year of tourism revenue. However, this clearly appears to be a gamble the workers are willing to risk

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Pushed to corner, Morcha hits out

7:38 AM

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Trinamool Congress

Writes : Vivek Chhetri and Avijit Sinha

Darjeeling, June 8: The turmoil in the hills today is being seen as an outburst of a pent-up anger of Gorkha Janmukti Morcha cadres and their apparent apprehension about the party's performance in the GTA elections in the wake of Trinamul gaining a toehold in the region, political observers have said.

Trinamul has made recent inroads into the hills by winning the Mirik civic seat and has managed a section of people on its side by forming 15 development boards for communities. The Trinamul-led government has also been pushing forward its development agenda - upgrading Kalimpong into a district and Mirik into a sub-division.

Although the government's decision to make Bengali compulsory in schools had stirred the hill sentiments to the Morcha's advantage, Mamata Banerjee had blunted that too to some extent by announcing that the language would be made optional.

A political observer pointed out that the state government's sustained campaign to push the Morcha to the wall was being felt not only by the senior leaders but also its cadres and the party was desperate to make its presence felt.

"For the past few days, the chief minister and her government have time and again deflated any Morcha agitation. In fact, after she declared that Bengali will not be compulsory in the hills, questions were raised on the justification of the Morcha's calls for strikes and agitations. The hill party was desperate to consolidate its support base by playing the Gorkhaland card and by fuming at the state again. This led to today's outburst," the observer said.

Trinamul leaders in the hills iterated that the Morcha's anger was the result of the ruling party's attempts to corner it.

"We could sense that there were instigations over the past few days and today, the party indulged in violence. This is because they have no political issue to counter Trinamul as we are solely working on the agenda of development and gaining support everyday," said Binny Sharma, a spokesperson of Darjeeling district Trinamul.

He alleged that the violence today was a "planned move".

"The chief minister has been consistently coming to the hills and announcing projects every time. It is because of this agenda of development that we won the Mirik municipality and secured seats in three other civic bodies of the hills. Now that the GTA elections are ahead, Morcha leaders and cadres are worried if they can win a majority of the seats this time. It is more so because in the past five years, the GTA has failed miserably in meeting the aspirations of the hill people," he added.

Morcha chief Bimal Gurung had yesterday accused Mamata of dividing the Gorkha community.

"You come here so many times and every time you come, you wipe the smile out of people's face. But you keep saying that the hills are smiling. You are dividing our community into bits and pieces. Your intentions are not good for the hills," he had said.

"Trinamul will collapse in two minutes if they don't have the police on their side," he added.

Another Trinamul leader alleged that the Morcha was trying to divert the people's attention from the promises made by its ally BJP over Gorkhaland before it came to power at the Centre.

"Since 2014, when the NDA government came to power with the assurance that it would sympathetically consider the demand of Gorkhaland, there hasn't been an inch of progress. Only some more assurances have flown in from the Centre. Some other hill parties had become vocal against the Morcha for clinching to the GTA and not doing anything on the statehood issue," said Rajen Mukhia, the president of the Darjeeling district Trinamul.

Morcha ally BJP attacked Mamata over the unrest and her decision to call the army.

"She has been going to the hills every month. We keep hearing that the hills are smiling. If it is so, why does she need to call the army?" asked BJP state president Dilip Ghosh.

(Telegraph)

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Fear of fresh agitation lingers in Darjeeling

2:55 PM

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Politics

-Vivek Chhetri

Darjeeling, June 7: The situation in the Darjeeling hills once gain became fluid with Bimal Gurung announcing a two-hour dharna by Gorkha Janmukti Morcha supporters barely 300m from Raj Bhavan when the Bengal cabinet would meet there tomorrow afternoon.

The Morcha president said the party would announce a new round of movement if the cabinet didn't decide that Bengali wouldn't be compulsory at schools in the hills, Dooars and the Terai.

The two-hour dharna on the road in front of Gorkha Rangamanch Bhavan is expected to synchronise with the cabinet meeting at Raj Bhavan.

Gorkha Rangamanch Bhavan and Raj Bhavan are barely 300m apart.

The chief minister had said in Mirik on Monday that Bengali would be an optional subject at the schools in the hills and certain pockets of the Dooars and the Terai. But Gurung said Mamata's words couldn't be taken at face value and decided to continue with processions on the language issue.

Today also, the Morcha took out a march, after which a meeting was held at Gorkha Rangamanch Bhavan.

Addressing the meeting, Gurung said: "Tomorrow, we will hold massive marches from Batasia (about 6km from the town) and Singamari (3km from here). Morcha supporters of the town will join the procession from Batasia near the railway station."

Gurung said more than 30,000 supporters would take part in the two rallies which would converge on Gorkha Rangamanch Bhavan.

"We will all sit on the road for two hours. After that, depending on the outcome of the cabinet meeting, we will announce our next step. The cabinet should take a decision tomorrow that Bengali will not be made compulsory in the hills, Terai and the Dooars. If such a decision is taken, we will thank her. If no such decision is taken, we will announce another round of agitation," said the Morcha president.

The rallies are scheduled to start at 11am and reach the Gorkha Rangamanch Bhavan around 12.30pm tomorrow. A two-hour sit-in would then continue till 2.30pm at the earliest. The cabinet meeting chaired by Mamata is slated to commence at Raj Bhavan at 2pm.

Police hadn't given permission to the Morcha to take out the march today. There is no permission for tomorrow's processions either. The police didn't act against marches yesterday and today to avoid a confrontation with the Morcha.

However, administrative officials are worried that a confrontation might take place tomorrow given the timing and the venue of the dharna.

Movement of ministers and officials to Raj Bhavan is expected to start around 11am tomorrow. Any difficulty in the movement could result in a law and order problem.

In his speech today, Gurung launched a broadside against Mamata.

"They are raking up the Madan Tamang murder case which is in court now. However, it was the same government that had slapped cases on Bharati Tamang and others when they launched a hunger strike at Chowrasta. Now, she is using the same issue. She talks about corruption at our end but her party and leaders are fighting graft cases," said Gurung.

Even though he said the Morcha would announce fresh agitation if the cabinet did not take a decision as desired, he did at one time say in his nearly hour-long speech that the party was "watching" Delhi.

"There has been a continuous attempt to suppress us on all fronts. However, you cannot stop the storm that is brewing now. It could take any turn. We are just watching Delhi and its reaction," said Gurung.

A Morcha delegation, comprising Roshan Giri and three party MLAs, called on BJP state president Dilip Ghosh in Calcutta today. The delegation also met governor Keshari Nath Tripathi. The team had met Assembly speaker Biman Banerjee in Calcutta last evening. The three were apprised of the developments in the hills regarding the language issue, said Morcha leaders.

[Via: Telegraph ]

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Youths should talk about Agitation like the 86 agitation - BImal Gurung

8:31 AM

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Subash Ghisingh

Writes: Vivek Chhetri

At a public meeting of the Gorkha Yuva Morcha, the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha’s youth wing, in his constituency of Vah-Tukvar, Gurung said: “I had told the youths I should not speak here because if I am to speak or chair (the meeting), your voices would be held back.”

He said: “The youths should speak their hearts out, the youths should talk about dignity, about the land, the land wanting blood. The youth brigade should talk about an agitation like the ’86 agitation, They should talk about lifting guns and wielding khukuris. This is what I had told them.”

Observers said Gurung wanted to draw the Centre’s attention with his speech. At one point in his 45-minutes speech, Gurung said: “I have told the Centre that we have extended all support and it is your duty to show us by doing karma (good deeds).” The Morcha chief’s anger at the state government’s supposed interference in hill affairs was clear.

Bimal Gurung in his constituency Tukvar

Gurung told the youths, about 1,000 were in attendance, that playing madals and chabrungs (musical instruments) would not lead to any “struggle”.

In the rest of his speech, Gurung repeatedly mentioned the state government’s alleged “discriminatory” attitude towards the hills.

“Everyone is bullying us, looking down upon us,” Gurung said. “We should live a life of dignity and not that of a coward. One should even be ready to give one’s life,” he said.

The 1986 statehood agitation Gurung was referring to had gone on for around 28 months. It was led by Subash Ghisingh, then Gurung’s leader, but later his rival.

Around 1,200 people had lost their lives during the statehood movement.

“The Bengal government is dividing our community. The black policy of the Bengal government towards the hills is creating such a situation that there could even be a division between husband and wife if they come from different communities. One should not give up one’s dignity for a toilet, a one-room house,” Gurung said, criticising chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s plan to make hill bodies for various hill communities.

The state government has announced development boards for 10 communities and among the major initiatives taken up by the boards, one is to construct toilets and houses for people of the respective communities.

Gurung said: “This (meeting) could be a turning point.”

The Morcha chief said he was increasingly feeling that the GTA cannot function. “There has just been too much interference in the working of the GTA. What is the use of a body that cannot even recruit a peon in the hills. Perhaps you will one day find me in a jungle. You must love me even then because I will be there for the cause of Gorkhaland,” he said.

The hill leader reminded the youths that nothing came without struggle. “One does not achieve anything without a struggle and struggle is not about playing madal and chabrung (musical instruments),” he said.

[Via: Telegraph]

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Bimal Gurung threatens fresh statehood agitation

10:58 AM

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Politics

DARJEELING 27 Jul 2016 Gorkha Janmukti Morcha president Bimal Gurung today vented his frustration and anger at the state government for its alleged interference and threatened to re-start the statehood movement. He said so during a programme organised by the party to observe Shahid Diwas, to commemorate the deaths of more than 1,200 people killed during the 1986 agitation. The GJM organised separate Shahid Diwas programmes in various parts of the hills to pay homage to those killed in the first statehood agitation and also felicitated the families of the martyrs.

Gurung is upset with chief minister Mamata Banerjee for forming community development boards, which he said, was a ploy to divide the hill people. He has repreatedly accused the state government  of interfering in the independent functioning of the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration. And very recently, Gurung was visibly upset when the state government observed the birth anniversary of

Nepali poet Bhanubhakta Acharya on July 13, which he claims, was conducted without adequate participation from the Gorkha community.

GJM chief Bimal Gurung with his associate Roshan Giri during a media conference. File photo

Speaking at the programme today, a charged up Gurung said, “She (Banerjee) comes to Darjeeling and only sees the Kanchenjunga smiling. But she is unaffected by the people’s anguish.

Do not try to divide our community and test our tolerance. This is not good as in time a volcano will erupt in the hills and it will not be easy to handle."

The GJM chief said the chief minister was trying to spread her party’s tentacles in the hills by playing on people’s sentiments. “The Bhanubhakta birth anniversary celebration was hijacked, and now the state government will also do the same with the July 27 Shahid Diwas programme. Such injustice and interference will only give rise to frustration among the people, which may take a terrible turn in the near future,” said Gurung.

He invoked the martyrs of the 1986 agitation saying the Shahid Diwas event could be a turning point for the hills. “In the first statehood movement, 1,200 died and in the second phase in 2007, seven sacrificed their lives. But now thousands may become martyrs. We must be mentally prepared to fight,” said Gurung.

The GJM chief had actually embarked on a padyatra last year to pursue the statehood demand, and today he said without specifying he would go far away from his family.

“I will be going far away from my family and will only return when a separate state is achieved. This is my last appeal to the people to support me as you have done in the past.

The youths must come forward and party leaders and Sabhasads must be prepared to struggle for a separate state and not only go to jail but also lay down their lives,” he said.

Gurung also took a dig at the central government urging it to understand the aspirations of the people. “We are not demanding a country but a separate state within the Union. The central government should understand this demand is our right and is justified. We want the Centre to give us justice,” he said.

Via EOI

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Janmukti Asthayi Karmachari Sangathan confines GTA officials to their chambers at Lal Kothi

8:16 AM

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Janmukti Asthayi Karmachari Sangathan (JAKS)

DARJEELING 15 Jun 2016 Members of the Janmukti Asthayi Karmachari Sangathan (JAKS), an umbrella organisation of casual workers, today confined the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration chief principal secretary and a sabhasad to their chambers at Lal Kothi pressing for enhanced incentives.

More than 200 Group A and B employees comprising doctors, engineers, managers and curators of the GTA under the aegis of JAKS are on an indefinite cease-work agitation since June 13.

They have been assembling every morning before the main gate at Lal Kothi, but refuse to do any work.

Today, the agitators reached Lal Kothi around ten in the morning and headed straight into the administrative building. GTA chief principal secretary Ravinder Singh, secretary Don Bosco Lepcha   and Sabhasad Binay Tamang were in their chambers. Executive directors and executive engineers of the GTA had gathered inside for a meeting with the chief principal secretary.

Janmukti Asthayi Karmachari Sangathan (JAKS) file photo

The officials were all taken aback when informed about the gherao by the JAKS, who by then had blocked their chambers. Visitors were also not allowed to enter the Lal Kothi building.

“It is part of our agitation to press for our demand. We confined the officials to their chambers from morning till evening. We will intensify our agitation and even stop all work of the GTA in the coming days,” warned Deepak Sharma, the JAKS spokesperson.

The officials were confined to their chambers till four in the evening and allowed to leave office only afterwards. The GTA chief principal secretary did not want to talk to the press but the Tamang said,

“The chief principal secretary should initiate dialogues with the agitators. There are several development projects on the pipeline and if the agitation continues, it can be a hindrance. One must also note that the monsoon has started in the hills and there are every chances of calamities occurring."

In February, the state finance department issued Order No.1107-F (P) dated February 25, 2016 to revise the benefits and salary of the GTA contractual workers. The order also stated that it had been  decided to enhance the remuneration by 3 per cent every year. Group C and D workers started getting their enhanced pay from April. However, the JAKS’s contention is that although Group A and B employees, presently receiving Rs13,500 to Rs21,000, are also mentioned in the state government order, they have been kept out of the enhanced pay structure.

There are 5,321 workers employed in the various departments of the GTA, who, initially, worked under the erstwhile Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC) on contractual appointment for meager payments.


(EOIC)

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Hills on agitation path for salary hike & dues spearheaded by GJM

10:18 AM

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Trinamool Congress

Vivek Chhetri

Darjeeling, June 13: GTA offices and some tea gardens are in the grip of movements spearheaded by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha in the hills.

While all 284 Group A and B ad hoc employees at the hill body started a pen-down strike this morning to demand a salary hike, the Morcha-affiliated tea garden trade union today announced a 72-hour relay hunger strike on the district magistrate's office premises this week to press for the payment of dues in plantations owned by Trinamul Congress MP K.D. Singh.

Janmukti Asthai Karmachari Sangathan, the trade union of the Morcha, launched the strike to demand a hike in salaries of Group A and B casual staff at the GTA similar to the one effected by the state government for Group C and D ad hoc workers from March 1. The Group A and B employees include engineers, doctors, managers and school teachers.

The agitating GTA employees outside Lal Kothi on Monday. (Suman Tamang)

"In the GTA, the highest amount a Group A officer like engineers and doctors currently receives is Rs 21,000 per month, while some drivers in Group C section are now getting Rs 22,500 following the recent hike. This is unfair. We will continue the agitation until the government rectifies the anomaly," said Deepak Sharma, the spokesman for the Sangathan.

The GTA has over 19,000 employees in total and 5,321 of them were appointed on a temporary basis. Since there are permanent employees in the Group A and B categories and today was the first day of the strike, the GTA's functioning was not affected.

The Morcha-affiliated Darjeeling Terai Dooars Plantation Labour Union today said it had decided to start the 72-hour relay fast in the district magistrate's office from June 16 and block NH55 on June 21 and 22 to press for the payment of dues in the three gardens run by the Alchemist Group.

The union claims that the dues come to Rs 10 crore.

Early this morning, tea garden and cinchona plantation workers also demonstrated for an hour before reporting for work to demand land rights for the inhabitants of the tea and cinchona plantations.

Telegraph

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GJM and JAP on agitation path to protect their support base

8:31 AM

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tribal news

Writes Vivek Chhetri and Rajeev Ravidas

May 30: After a bitter and hard fought-Assembly election, the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha and its rival, Jana Andolan Party, are now busy protecting their support base and are on the path of agitation in the hills less than a month after the poll.

Four days after the poll results were announced, the JAP started a relay hunger strike at Tricone Park in Kalimpong from May 23 demanding streamlining of water distribution system in town. The party has threatened to intensify the protest if the problem is not resolved by the public health engineering under the GTA and the residents are not given water on a regular basis.

"We are likely to continue the dharna for some more time since the administration has done precious little to resolve the problem," said Nayan Pradhan, JAP secretary.

GJM and JAP on agitation path to protect their support base

The JAP is at present holding meetings at block and village levels to chalk out its future programmes.

The Morcha, too, has decided to launch an agitation to demand land rights to people living in tea gardens and cinchona plantations and tribal status for 11 hill communities.

Suraj Subba, the general secretary of the Janmukti Parcha-Patta Sangharsh Committee, said: "We have decided to hold gate meetings in front of all 87 tea gardens in the hills and in the cinchona plantations on June 13 for an hour before the start work. This is the start of our agitation and we will vigorously pursue our demand."

The Morcha's youth wing, the Gorkha Janmukti Yuva Morcha, has also decided to hold a rally in Darjeeling on June 2 to seek tribal status for 11 hill communities.

"The rally will start from Darjeeling Motor Stand and wind its way to Chowrastha," said Amrit Yonzone, the spokesman for the Yuva Morcha.

Telegraph

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New Movie 'Hawaghar' on Gorkhaland‬ Agitation

8:22 PM

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movie

New Movie 'Hawaghar' - Seeks to Tell the ‪‎Gorkhaland‬ Tale

We too have our stories to tell, like every society has its own.

These stories stand tall, deeply rooted with the hills and valleys, joys and sorrows, soils and flowers as a foundation to the way of life for generations to come. Realising the fact that our stories are not documented enough, through popular and efficient medium and feeling that the responsibility now rests over the shoulders of this generation, the youths from Mirik, Kurseong and Darjeeling are coming up with a feature film 'Hawaghar'.

The film has its plot in a typical village of Darjeeling while the time period goes back to 1980s, when the hill was burning with Gorkhaland Andolan. The sole intention is to recreate, reflect and dramatically document the social, cultural, and economic impact of the revolution among the Gorkha lives and livelihood. 'Hawaghar' is not aligned politcally or ideologically towards any group or party that existed during that time, not out of fear or indifference but realising the need for neutrality to tell the story as accurately as possible. Rather, the viewers can expect a raw and rooted love story at its core, that had no time for love, due to chaos and struggle.

The film is directed by Kushal Ghimiray, who has already acted in a feature film 'Dhurva Taara' which was released last year. He is a lecturer in Southfield College, Darjeeling and has left his mark as a Nepali writer and dramatist with numerous works at his credit.

Hawaghar is co-directed and editing and cinmatography as well is done by Pallawib Rai. He has already worked as cinematographer, editor and associate director for music albums of 2015 Grammy Award winners Ricky Kej and Wouter Kellerman one of which was recently launched at United Nations COP21 (Paris) by Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi and President of France François Hollande. He was previously working for startups Housing.com and Cavas.in in Mumbai and this is his third feature film as a part of cinematography team.

The lead role of the film is played by Kushal Ghimiray himself and Mansha Gurung, who have already rocked the screens as a lead couple around the hills with their film 'Dhurva Taara'. The other roles are being played by Dalleybhai Lepcha, Nasir Gurung, Bhawesh Lama, Naumta Pradhan, Hanak Thapa, Pushkar Singer, Sahil Lepcha, Pradeep Subba and Subeksha Rasaili some of whom have already acted in stage plays while some are freshers.

The story, screenplay and dialoue of film is created by Kushal Ghimiray and Pallawib Rai. Towards the technical side, the role of Chief Assistant Director is carried out by Utsav Pradhan while the cinematography team has extremely talented Abimanu Chettri and Benjamin Rai as associate Cinematographers with their rich experience of working for various production companies in Mumbai.

Fingers crossed!!! Hope they will be able to tell us our story.

Via TheDC

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Gorkhaland martyr Mangal Singh Rajpoot's family lives in poverty

8:00 AM

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Gorkhaland issue

On July 30, 2013- Gorkhaland martyr Mangal Singh Rajpoot laid his life during the newly revived statehood agitation, but one year later, his family lives in poverty. His family neither have their own house nor was any of the family members provided with employment following his death.

Gorkhaland martyr Mangal Singh Rajpoot's family lives in poverty

Saheed Rajpoot became the first person to self-immolate for Gorkhaland last year during the height of the Gorkhaland movement.

Mangal Singh Rajpoot is survived by his wife Manju Rajpoot and two sons Aman and Arpan Rajpoot. Aman has completed graduation but is without any job, while Arpan has left school. “He was our support. In many ways lack of support of a husband or a father is difficult,” Manju said.

She said Rajpoot worked really hard to support the family, but following his death the family has fallen apart. Manju further informed her family’s house was destroyed by the devastating earthquake on September 18, 2011, following which they have been living at her brother’s house. “I have a land given to me by my family, but due to financial problems, I have not been able to construct a house,” Manju added.

Keeping a brave face, she further said her husband’s sacrifice for the statehood movement should not go for a waste and urged the hill leaders to honor his death by paving way for the formation of Gorkhaland.

“My husband was into politics before our marriage and the Gorkhaland issue was very dear to his heart. He was part of the GJM-led statehood agitation and was involved in many rallies and protests,” Manju recalled. “The self-immolation was for the love of his community and this should not be forgotten by the Gorkha leaders,” she emphasised.

Manju also informed GJM president Bimal Gurung had promised for support during the memorial programme of the statehood martyr, but one year after his death the family is still waiting and hoping for help. Following Rajpoot’s death, Manju has been earning money through 100-day work scheme as well as other smaller works in the village.

Source: EOI

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Tribal identity in Darjeeling Hills used to dismantle Gorkha agitation

8:48 PM

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schedule tribe

Tribal detour in Darjeeling Hills - Swatahsiddha Sarkar

Tribal identity in the mountainous Darjeeling area of West Bengal is being used as a tool by the state to dismantle the renewed Gorkha agitation. An analysis of the ways in which the classificatory arrangement by which the state identifies and designates communities as tribes has become a politically provocative and productive tool to divide the hill communities.

Swatahsiddha Sarkar (ss3soc@gmail.com) teaches at the Department of Sociology, University of North Bengal, Siliguri.

This brief communiqué is but a reflection on the contemporary tribal situation in Darjeeling hills, West Bengal. Besides being the historical site of a durable ethnic conflict (i e, known as Gorkhaland movement) Darjeeling hills have acquired political prominence in the recent past for being the playground of intra-ethnic revivalism and tribalism. In addition to the Bhutias, Lepchas, Sherpas and Yolmos – the already designated tribes of Darjeeling district since India’s independence – majority of the hill communities today are busy both in claiming and establishing their claims of being a tribe of the region.

Nepali Social Structure

Indian Nepalis corroborate to the idea of a speech community that is composed of both caste Hindus and Indo-Mongoloid groups. Caste system has been the historical basis of Nepali social structure. Since Nepali caste system in Darjeeling hills has been lax in nature compared to its Nepal counterpart,[1] it successfully accommodated the Indo-Mongoloid groups into its fold. Sanskritsation had been at work in the hills ever since the mid-19th century. Available historical data is capable of establishing the fact that the Mongoloid communities felt content with the Nepali caste system and quite often despised the cause of being tribes.[2]

But in the new millennium the Tamangs along with Limbus did mobilise themselves for tribal status and were accorded with the scheduled tribe (ST) status in 2002. This energised the other Mongoloid groups (like Rais, Magars, Gurungs, Sunwars, Yakhas, Thamis to name a few) of Darjeeling hills clamour for the ST status. Such a programmatic vision for the attainment of protective discrimination measures by the majority of the hill communities is certainly an unprecedented phenomenon that ran parallel with the movement called Gorkhaland.

As is well known, tribal identity especially among the caste Hindu Nepalis, is arguably a contentious issue. During the late 1990s Subhash Ghising had to face socio-political upheavals as a ready reaction to his decision to play out the “tribal identity card” as a hold-all phenomenon for all the hill Nepalis including the Bahuns and Chhetris (twice born high castes) while the government took a “safer” stand by not indulging into the affairs of the hills. Similar kind of social undercurrent is at work now but the hill communities seem to be in agreement with the political project of tribal status so much so that the tagadharis (men of sacred thread – the higher caste groups) are inclined to join the race in which their matwali (men of liquor – the low caste/ status groups) counterparts have already made some discernable progress.

Role of GTA

These issues become a matter of wider significance when one notices that the tripartite agreement called Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA), signed on 18 July, 2011, and the subsequent approval of the GTA Act, 2011 by the government by March 2012 incorporates in it a provision stipulating that the state government facilitate the demand of ST status for all the Gorkhas except the scheduled castes. Not surprisingly, the three designated Nepali scheduled castes like Kami (barbers), Damai (tailors), and Sarki (cobbler) numbering roughly 78,000 (as per 2001 census)[3] have now jumped into the bandwagon.

It is interesting to note that growing tribalism in Darjeeling hills has appeared as a livewire of hill politics at that period of time when ethnic revivalism took place in much more prominent fashion in neighbouring Nepal since the 1990s.

The ethnic revivalism that took place in Nepal since the 1990s is largely based on the attempts to ethnicise caste and community identities to search for an alternative non-hierarchical social imaginary that could provide an egalitarian alternative identity and can even alter the given power structures of society. The inclination to ethnicise community identities while rebuffing sanskritisation is at work in the contemporary Darjeeling hills.

To effectively mobilise the aspiration to become a tribe the Mongoloid communities are foregrounding their past traditions to address the “authentic” and “indigenous” qualifiers of being a tribe. An equal amount of emphasis is also being given to distance their communities from the “vices” of sanskritisation – which they now consider as a process that weakened their organic link with the rich heritage of a “tribalist past”.

Tribal Development Board

The problem becomes more intricate when one takes into account the recent government decision to create a separate development board for the already designated tribes (viz, Lepchas and Tamangs) of the hills as a measure to better serve their interest. Luring the Lepchas and Tamangs through a separate development board and packages has added new incentives for ethnicising the idea of tribe.

The emphasis on tribal development boards or for that matter favouring the communities to become a tribe might not be a rational response to their region specific practical interests. Nevertheless the collaborationist gesture adopted by the state was legitimised on the ground of “development populism”. The concept of tribe in contemporary Darjeeling hills has been strategically posed along the continuum of politics-community-power. In a situation like this – where the state approval meant almost every community could become a tribe – answers to vexed questions like “who is a tribe?” or “what is a tribe?” were to be sought not in ethnographic literature or in welfare imperatives, but in the discourses of power.

The ethnicisation of tribal identity in the contemporary Darjeeling hill is certainly a new development, which also helped the state scale down the intensity and pace of the renewed call for Gorkhaland that took place in the recent past during July to October 2013. However, the question is whether such a policy of “engaging tribe” – a strategy profitably used by the United States (US) in pacifying anti-US and anti-imperial feelings of the Iraqis and Afghans – will reduce the concept of the tribe to merely a “policy category”?

In Conclusion

It is as a consequence of this policy that many a community in the Darjeeling hills are working hard to revive their erstwhile practices linked with ancestral worship, “animism”, Shamanistic and / or Buddhist rituals and so on. Through their revival of their “tribalist” cultural traditions the hill communities are trying to search for and adopt new identities. This will change their relationships with power and privilege and could open up space for inter-community conflicts based on differential political affiliations.

This is how the tribal identity issue has taken an ethnic detour in contemporary Darjeeling hills, particularly since the state itself is seen to encourage such a detour. The situational conditions, produced and reproduced through the discourse of power, are sharpening the fervour for authenticity and making distinctiveness and exclusivity a widespread aspiration. The tribal identity claims of different communities has loosened the idea of tribe from its classical anthropological moorings and pushed it towards being a politically productive “notion”.

Notes

[1] T B Subba has analysed in detail the differences between Nepali caste system in India and Nepal and commented at length regarding the socio-historical forces that resulted into the formation of a relatively weak caste structure among the Indian Nepalis compared to their brethren there in Nepal. For details, see Subba (1985:23-26).

[2] Surendra Munshi and Ugen Lama’s study on the Tamangs of Darjeeling did reveal the significance of caste in the complex and multidimensional process of expressing their identity through the Nepali Tamang Buddhist Association during the 1970s. For details, see Munshi and Lama (1978).

[3] The data were collected from the website of Backward Classes Welfare Department, Government of West Bengal. The number of the three designated Nepali Schedules Castes in West Bengal (Kami, Damai and Sarki) is 78,202. See Government of West Bengal (2001).

References

Government of West Bengal, Backward Classes Welfare Department (2001): State Primary Census Abstract for Individual Scheduled caste – 2001, available at http://www.anagrasarkalyan.gov.in/pdf/census-abstract-of%20SC-2001.pdf, accessed on 2 April 2014.

Munshi, Surendra and Ugen Lama (1978): “The Tamangs of Darjeeling: Organized Expression of the Ethnic Identity – Part II”, Journal of the Indian Anthropological Society, 13(3): 265-86.

Subba, Tanka Bahadur (1985): “Caste Relations in Nepal and India”, Social Change, 15(4): 23-26.

Source: epw.in

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Kalimpong hotels asked to clear electricity dues

9:57 AM

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Kalimpong Live News

Kalimpong, Jan. 24: Hotels here have been asked by the West Bengal State Electricity Transmission Company Ltd to pay their electricity dues accumulated during the non-co-operation movement for Gorkhaland enforced by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha by January 29.

Earlier, GJM Mahakuma Samiti had assured residents of
Kalimpong of ascertaining the reasons for such
 huge amounts and find a feasible solution

The company has primarily targeted the hotels and restaurants of town. The notice states that if power bills up to October 2011 are not paid within January 29, connection will be disconnected.

As part of the non-co-operation movement from April 2008 to July 2011, the people of the Darjeeling hills had been asked not to pay power and telephone bills and sales tax. The notices to clear the dues were issued by the West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd.

Sources said the distribution utility had decided to realise the dues in the hills at a meeting in Calcutta on December 26 last year. The power utility also decided to accept payments in installments.

The Hotel and Restaurant Owners’ Association of Kalimpong said each of its 45 members had dues ranging from Rs 2 lakh to over Rs 5 lakh. “Our members have received the notices from the electricity board in the last few days. We are law-abiding citizens and prior to the agitation had always paid our bills on time. It was at the call of the Morcha that we were forced to stop paying our bills to extend our support to the statehood agitation. Now that we are being asked to clear the dues, the party must come to our aid and settle the matter once and for all,” said the president of the association, Sanjogita Subba.

A team of the Hotel and Restaurant Association of Kalimpong (HORAK) today met with GJM spokesperson and MLA Dr. Harka Bahadur Chettri.

Kalimpong MLA and Morcha spokesman Harka Bahadur Chhetri said he would take up the matter with the power minister in Calcutta soon.

The notice signed by the company’s managing director has been met with strong criticism from hill CPI (M) leader Tara Sundas.

He said, “The meeting on December 26, 2012 at Vidyut Bhawan in Kolkata had resolved several things. Among them was the issuing of notices to residents for paying unpaid dues. GJM chief Bimal Gurung had earlier directed the people not to make payments and he should now take the responsibility of clearing all pending bills. While signing the GTA accord, the GJM leadership had also stressed the people need not pay the bills accrued before August 2011. But the electricity department had continued sending bills of that period to consumers.”

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Sunanda K Datta-Ray writes against Jaswant Singh on Darjeeling as UT

10:32 AM

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Sikkim

Should homelands be carved out for each community that has settled in a state?

Sunanda K Datta-Ray writes - It was with a sinking sense of historical inevitability that I heard Jaswant Singh murmur that Darjeeling's logical future lies in joining Sikkim. The hill district's unlikely Bharatiya Janata Party representative quickly admitted sotto voce that Sikkim was dead set against merger. But he also declared loud and clear that in no way - culturally, linguistically, ethnically - can the people of Darjeeling be called Bengalis.

Sunanda K Datta-Ray

True enough. But that can also be said of Lepchas, Kamrupis, Rajbangshis, Parsis, Anglo-Indians, Tamils, Gujaratis and especially of the Marwaris who rule Bengal's financial roost. Should homelands be carved out for each rootless community that has settled in the state? The logic of Singapore - Malay territory that has blossomed into a Chinese state - would riddle Bengal with dozens of enclaves. Aware of the intense resistance to further truncation, Jaswant Singh spoke feelingly of the partition pains of 1905 and 1947 and those emotive words "anga bhanga". He was releasing a revised edition of my book, Smash and Grab: Annexation of Sikkim, in Kolkata's Crossword bookstore when reporters asked about Darjeeling.

The Nepalese maintain they came with the land. Successive Census reports cited in Smash and Grab show they came seeking land. The Sikkimese, to whom Darjeeling belonged until the ruler was forced to lease it to the East India Company in 1835, accuse the British of sponsoring Nepalese migration for cheap labour to blast mountains, build roads and plant tea. Convinced that Hindus with cultural links with India would defend the Raj more effectively than Buddhist Bhutiya and Lepcha adivasis with roots in Tibet, a 19th century British administrator waxed lyrical about Nepalese migrants being "hereditary enemies of Tibet" and "the surest guarantee against a revival of Tibetan influence."

He wrote that in Sikkim, as in India, Hinduism would cast out Buddhism, "and the praying-wheel of the lama will give place to the sacrificial implements of the Brahman. The land will follow the creed… race and religion, the prime movers of the Asiatic world, will settle the Sikkim difficulty for us, in their own ways." Darjeeling is a relic of "the Sikkim difficulty".

Sikkim's 10-page memorandum when the British left asked India to return the territory because "on the lapse of paramountcy all sovereign powers in respect of the Darjeeling area will de jure revert to the ruler of Sikkim." Meanwhile, the undivided Communist Party of India (CPI) naively demanded that "the three contiguous areas of Darjeeling district, southern Sikkim and Nepal be formed into one single zone to be called 'Gorkhastan'." Perhaps that delusion inspired Subhash Ghisingh to send copies of his charter to Queen Elizabeth and King Birendra until, realising the danger of sounding secessionist, he reinvented the "Nepalese" as "Gorkha". His successor seems as skilled in obfuscatory tactics but may have met his match in Mamata Banerjee.

Though affirming Darjeeling's non-Bengali identity, Jaswant Singh feels that size, population and resources don't justify statehood. Hence, his suggestion of a union territory. But as Rajiv Gandhi warned, any form of "regional autonomy is the stepping stone to another state." If statehood is denied, the only alternative is union with Sikkim. Which means that Darjeeling, the amputated limb, will swallow Sikkim's somnolent body. Sikkim's first ethnic Nepalese chief minister, Nar Bahadur Bhandari, was responsible for Nepali's inclusion in the Eighth Schedule. But his famous declaration "We have merged but will not be submerged" reflected the fear of all Sikkimese - majority Nepalese and minority Bhutiya-Lepcha - of being swamped by Darjeeling's commercially acute and politically astute inhabitants.

All this follows from Sikkim's annexation which opened the Pandora's box of India's first Nepalese-majority state. But since the deed is done and can't be undone, the best course would be for Bengal again to show India the way by living up to the national ideal of unity in diversity. If Nepalese can't live amicably with Bengalis in one state, how can Hindus and Muslims, Tamils, Jats, Nagas and Kashmiris do so in one country?

Tailpiece: I once arranged for the British writer Gavin Young to see Jyoti Basu. They met in the CPI(M)'s Alimuddin Road office and The Observer newspaper in London duly published Gavin's feature. Basu, who kept abreast of British press coverage, sounded very pained the next time we spoke. "Your friend wrote I was wearing a sarong. I was in a dhoti!" he exclaimed. Basu's other complaint was that Gavin had described him as being "surrounded by Chinesey-looking types". "That was our Darjeeling district committee!" he exclaimed. I am not sure which comment gave the greater offence.

Source:Business-standard

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Gorkhaland and Kamtapur movements are poles apart - Romit Bagchi

10:40 PM

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Live News

In both, Gorkhaland and Kamtapur, the movements, demands for the recognition of the respective languages and cultures played important roles. All India Gorkha League caught the Hill people's imagination by launching a movement, demanding recognition of the Nepali language in 1950s. After a spell of quibbling, the B C Roy government made Nepali the official language of the three Hill sub-divisions in 1961. But the demand for its inclusion in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution remained unheeded for long. The former Prime Minister, Morarji Desai rejected the demand in 1981, dubbing it as an alien language. Finally, the Centre accepted the demand in 1992 in wake of the long-drawn endeavour of  former Sikkimese chief minister, Nar Bahadur Bhandari and the CPI-M in Bengal.

Gorkhaland & Kamtapur movements

In case of the Kamtapur statehood movement, the demand for recognition of the Kamrupi/ Kamtapuri language plays an important role too. The protagonists of statehood claim this is an original language that was widely spoken in the Kamtapur/ Kamrup region. But the intelligentsia of the community tends to dismiss this demand whenever raised. According to them, Kamtapuri is a mere dialect of standard Bengali. Several scholars have, however, affirmed that the Kamta language was not a dialect of Bengali but a thriving language from which both Bengali and Assamese originated. We may cite here what Dr T C Rastogir wrote in Maulana Azad Academy Journal (May 1-31) 1993. "The Kamata language should not be regarded as a mere dialect of Bengali or Assamese languages. It is the language in which the first vernacular writings of the region were attempted and may be called the root of the present Bengali and Assamese languages." The debate drags on with no possibility of a conclusion in sight.

On the plane of culture, both the movements signify revolts against the Kolkata-centric socio-cultural hegemony of the mainland state over its peripheries-demanding to be unshackled from the cramping fetters of such bondage.

Gorkhaland movement 

However, freed from the trappings of cultural assertions, this means craving of the elitist sections of their respective societies for their dues-political/cultural/economic empowerment-in the changing trajectory when the 'centre' keeps losing  its former glow with the moral force being squeezed out of it.

However, the two movements are different when it comes to identity. While the Gorkhaland movement is simple in its texture of identity the Kamtapur movement keeps encountering immense complexities on the identity of the people the separation is meant for. And herein is hidden the element of insecurity that keeps haunting the movement ~ an element that makes it different from the Gorkhaland movement. It must be mentioned here though that there are controversies over the identity of  genuine Indian Gorkhas as differentiated from the 1950 Indo-Nepal treaty beneficiaries. But things become clear if we accept that statehood is being demanded for the genuine Indian Gorkhas settled in the Hills of Bengal.

Who are the Rajbanshis? According to Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, they are principally Koch in origin, belonging to the larger Bodo group (Hinduised or semi-Hinduised Bodos) and in them blood from Austric and Dravidian stocks intermingled. They were supposed to have shunned their original Tibeto-Burman speech and adopted the northern dialect of Bengali. British ethnographers were of the view that they were Koch who, having abandoned their aboriginal culture, adopted Hinduism during the reign of the first Koch King, Viswa Singha who became a Hindu. They said, they were from the Indo-Mongoloid stock though endowed with a fair amount of the Dravidian mixture as is evident in their physiognomy. The British kept clubbing them with the non-Aryan Koch in the censuses since 1891. However, in the wake of the Kshatriya movement led principally by the social reformer, Panchanan Barman, the Rajbanshi intelligentsia discarded such theories and claimed they had descended from the Aryan stock Poundra Kshatriya, a community that during the Puranic time fled their native land in fear of Parashuram, bent, as the legend goes, on annihilating the Kshatriyas, and settled in this part of the world. They separated their identity from the ruling dynasty that was Koch in its origin, resulting in the movement being banned in the erstwhile Cooch Behar State.

Prof Ananda Gopal Ghosh, a north Bengal researcher, said, the Kshatriya movement's argument cannot be rejected outright. The confusion grows as they, in terms of physical features, are nearer to the Indo-Mongoloid stock while their language is by no means of the Tibeto-Burman origin, suffused as it is with Sanskrit terms. However, there is another opinion, saying that Sanskrit played a role in developing the local languages of the Tibeto-Burman origin like Rajbanshi/ Kamta language following the advent of the Aryan culture in this region in the pre-Vedic era.
The process of acculturation began, continuing till the early Christian era and Magadhi was accepted by the local people as a richer language, according to this school.  
Prof Ghosh opined that the present Rajbanshi community-if they are admitted to be of the Aryan Kshatriya stock- might have descended from an intense and long-drawn blood mixture with the Indo-Mongoloid people, who inhabited the land the community, persecuted by legendary Parashuram, got settled in later. However, he insisted that this is just a view based on the logic of things, asking for profound academic discourse to delve deeper.

The reality is that it is difficult to differentiate the Rajbanshi community from the Bengalis from mainland Bengal. The accomplished sections of the community prefer to call themselves Bengalis, batting for acculturation and assimilation and insisting that dwelling too much on differences from the mainstream Bengali culture and language would prove detrimental to the  community's developmental aspirations.

Here the Gorkhaland and Kamtapur movements are poles apart. In the case of the former, the identity is clear and straight while it is murky, amorphous and convoluted in  case of the latter, resulting in the movement failing to strike the right chord in the people in whose name the state is being demanded.

Source: The Statesman
By Romit Bagchi
The writer is on the staff of The Statesman

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Jalpaiguri bomb blast - separatists KLO behind it says police

11:01 PM

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West Bengal

A bicycle bomb that killed five people in eastern India was planned by militants fighting for a separate state in the famous Darjeeling tea district, police say.

Jalpaiguri bomb blast

Ten people were also injured when the bomb exploded late on Thursday in the town of Jalpaiguri in the state of West Bengal. Earlier reports said the bomb killed four people but a fifth victim died in hospital.

A senior police officer said the bomb, which went off near a school, bore many of the hallmarks of the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO).

'We suspect KLO militants are behind the explosion,' West Bengal police Inspector General Anuj Sharma told AFP.

He said the blast took place two days before the anniversary of their foundation on December 28.

The organisation is responsible for other bombings with devices strapped to bicycles and has marked anniversaries in the past with attacks.

The KLO wants to create a separate state of Kamtapur in northern West Bengal which would include the tea-growing region of Darjeeling and five other districts, some of which border Bangladesh and Bhutan.

West Bengal is one of India's largest states and Jalpaiguri is about 600 kilometres north of the state capital Kolkata.

The Indian government agreed in July to the creation of the new state of Telangana by splitting Andhra Pradesh, a move critics said would fuel separatist campaigns.

India has been racked by separatist conflicts since its independence in 1947, most notably in Kashmir and the remote northeast region.

skynews

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Gorkha National Congregation organized by Bharatia Gorkha Parisangh raises Gorkhaland demand in New Delhi

7:49 PM

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Live News

The two day Gorkha National Congregation organized by Bharatia Gorkha Parisangh to press on the demand for Gorkhaland, kicked off today at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. The first day of mass rally being co-organized by Gorkhaland Task Force saw presence of top leaders of BGP and various pro-Gorkhaland political parties along with over a thousand supporters. On the occasion BGP national president Dr. Enos Das Pradhan, executive president CP Giri, General Secretary Pravakar Dewan, members Sukhman Moktan, Munish Tamang, Arun Upadhayay and R Moktan along with CPRM General Secretary Taramani Rai, GRNM president Dawa Pakhrin among others shared the dais. Addressing the supporters, who had come from Delhi, Uttarakhand, Himachal, Haryana, Punjap, UP, Jharkhand, Sikkim, West Bengal and North Eastern states, the BGP leadership pressed the central government must address the demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland in a just manner. 

Gorkha National Congregation organized by Bharatia Gorkha Parisangh 

BGP President Pradhan asserted the Gorkha community as a linguistic minority is facing political insecurity and identity crisis and only the formation of Gorkhaland can guarantee an enduring solution to this problem. He urged the political parties and apolitical organizations to come into unison with sincerity to take the demand ahead pressing that only a united and determined struggle from the community can win a separate state for them. He also expressed optimism saying the community which has hit the road with a statehood demand will definitely achieve it someday. 

The mass congregation was also addressed by CPRM leader Taramani Rai who slammed the GJM alleging of staging drama to fool the people. He said, “Even though the GJM has already reverted to GTA, it held demonstrations at Janatar Mantar in demand of Gorkhaland.This was a total drama.” Similarly addressing the gathering GRNM president Dawa Pakhrin stated the Gorkhaland movement has lost its direction in the current political backdrop and opined the identity movement of the Gorkhas must be spearheaded by BGP. 

The first day function of Gorkha congregation was also addressed by Arun Upadhayay, CP Giri, Col. VK
Sharma, Narayan Bhandary, Bhupendrashigh Chettri among others. Today’s program was also marked by a musical presentation from child artists of Kalimpong Barnamala Pariwar and its founder Dewasis Mothey. A musical album “Rahane Vo” was also eleased in the function. BGP members rallied from Ramlila Maidan to
Jantar mantar where the demonstration was held. Meanwhile BGP Secretary Munish Tamang informed it has been decided that a joint team of BGP and GTF will submit a petition at the PMO.


Source: EOI

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