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Indian Idol to blame for Darjeeling unrest?
Published on Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 19:32, Updated on Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 08:45 in India section
Tags: Prashant Tamang, Gorkhaland , Darjeeling
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Darjeeling: India's Northeast hills have come alive with fresh demands for a separate state within India for the Gorkha people, with protests threatening the area's renowned tea and tourism industries.
Bizarrely, it was a television talent show Indian Idol, India's version of American Idol, that lit the fire of Gorkhaland last September, two decades after the end of a insurgency among ethnic Nepalis in eastern India that left more than 1,200 people dead.
Frenzied canvassing for a local boy, ethnic Nepali or Gorkha policeman Prashant Tamang, metamorphosised into a political upsurge that has ushered in a new king of the hills.
Politician Bimal Gurung surfed the wave of ethnic pride unleashed by the TV contest and now is hoping it will carry his people towards Gorkhaland, the separate state carved out of West Bengal they have been demanding for many decades.
"This is the last fight," the 44-year-old Gurung told Reuters in an interview in his party office in Darjeeling.
"Till the last drop of my blood, I will fight this battle until we have a Gorkhaland state for the Gorkhas." The green, white and yellow flags of Gurung's Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (Gorkha People's Liberation Front) fly from homes, shops and cars all around Darjeeling and nearby towns, bunting criss-crosses above the main streets.
The party's symbols are the sun, the Himalayan mountains and two crossed kukris, the heavy, curved knife used by the famously fierce Gorkha soldiers from Nepal and India who have long fought with both British and Indian armies.
On a windy hilltop by the town of Kurseong, an obelisk crowned by a huge kukri commemorates the "martyrs" of the 1980's insurgency, which formed the backdrop for Kiran Desai's Booker Prize-winning novel The Inheritance of Loss.
But Gurung insists his will be a peaceful struggle. "We want the right of self-determination within the Indian constitution," he said. "We would not like to repeat the violence of 20 years ago.
All protests will be held in a democratic and peaceful manner." Peace broke out in 1988 when Gorkha champion leader Subhash Ghising compromised with New Delhi, accepting limited autonomy under a new Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council, which he then led.
Two decades on, Gurung says Ghising betrayed the cause, and complains the Gorkha people are still neglected, pointing to the appalling state of roads, water and public services in the hills. His chance came when Tamang sang his way into the final stages of Indian Idol.
Stoking Gorkha pride, Gurung raised huge sums of money to finance a mass SMS campaign which saw the local boy win first prize. When a Delhi FM radio DJ mocked Tamang as a "chowkidar" or caretaker, a common term of abuse for people from India's northeast, the fire was well and truly lit.
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