The Bengal CM is playing with fire

Mamata cannot afford to ignore the Gorkha identity issue

Any reasonably permanent solution to the Darjeeling problem cannot be achieved by brushing under the carpet the fact that the Gorkhas are aspiring to establish their identity. Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s hill strategy has treated it as a development question that, she thinks, is an outcome of the neglect of the hills by successive Bengal governments. Since she took over the reins of the state in May 2011, she has visited the hills “more than 100 times” in 73 months, which will be far more than the cumulative visits of the seven CMs before her in 64 years. Ms Banerjee has unleashed her style of ‘development’ politics that hardly recognises the Gorkha identity as a political aspiration. The Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA), the semi-autonomous body set up to run the affairs of the hills in 2012, seems to have failed. Unsurprisingly, the Trinamool Congress (TC) recently won the civic polls in Mirik – a first for a party from the plains in decades – that has encouraged leaders to think big in the hills. However, the fact remains that the TC win was attributable to its alliance with Gorkha National Liberation Front, Subhash Ghising’s party built on Gorkha identity.

The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha leaders have accused the CM of wrecking the GTA by not transferring power to it on the one hand, and by forming as many as 15 development boards of hill communities such as Tamang and Lepchas, thereby trying to wean sections to the ruling party’s fold. Ms Banerjee is within her rights to plan expansion of the party in the hills, but it will be impossible to be accepted as a party representing local aspirations. Though TC won the smallest municipality of Mirik, it was humbled in the three bigger ones – Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong – by a big margin.

Ms Banerjee is a charismatic leader, who can perhaps keep get the better of GJM and its leaders in the current round of confrontation. But if the bigger blueprint ignores the Gorkha identity, one cannot rule out the emergence of a more radical face and movement to continue the struggle for identity.