3 months on, Darjeeling shows signs of Gorkhaland fatigue

“The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.”

–Albert Camus, Myth of Sisyphus 

There is yet a silver lining to existentialism, says Raman Chhetri, a 30-year-old political science teacher at a government school in Darjeeling. It’s nihilism that is fatal; there is no hope to be found there, he says.

In the school that he must go to every morning, there are no students. “But the district magistrate is known to make frequent checks,” he says on the 94^th day of the indefinite bandh in the hills of Darjeeling. “The teachers have started going to school since the past week following talks between (West Bengal chief minister) Mamata Banerjee and Binay Tamang (a rebel leader from the hardline Gorkhaland Janmukti Morcha party). The parents are probably waiting for the cloud of uncertainty to lift before they feel safe about sending children out.”

Darjeeling waits for the standoff to end.

The agitation in the hills is facing an existentialist crisis more than three months after it broke out over opposition to the state government’s move to make Bangla mandatory in schools. The decision was revoked but, by then, the Morcha, losing popular support over allegations of corruption and in its last leg of power before fresh elections for the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration, had successfully fomented a fresh populist surge for a separate state.

“Nihilism is creeping in now after the Centre’s consistent cold-shoulder to the demand and a frittering away of the political unity among hill parties,” says Chhetri amid efforts by the local police to open schools and businesses. “But people fear they will become the laughing stock in Bengal and the rest of the country if the bandh ends without achieving a tangible outcome.”

In the Darjeeling of 2017, the people have consistently viewed themselves as the movement’s driving force despite the Morcha’s claims of spearheading the protests. It began with people forcing the hill parties to unite amid slogans of “party bhanda jaati thulo” — community is bigger than the party. The rhetoric has acquired a more profane tone now. “Dalal (pimp), darpok (coward) and bikua (sellout) ” are some terms being hurled at the netas as the Morcha’s hardline faction tries to woo the BJP at the Centre and two of its rebel leaders along with the Gorkha National Liberation Front court CM Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata.

For people unable to grasp this heady evolution, here’s a brief recap.

The unfortunate drama began on June 8, when Banerjee, fresh from electoral gains in municipal polls in the hills and amid protests over the language issue, chaired a cabinet meeting in Darjeeling. Morcha supporters pulled a serious surprise by carrying out a bout of stone-pelting that caught the police unawares and sent the CM rolling her sleeves around town early next morning, coaxing shops to open and assuring tourists that all was well.

Bandh enforcers ensure the shops stay shut.

“It is difficult to explain the Gorkha reaction to state government’s inexplicable language gambit and what happened next,” says a former journalist. “For an outsider and clearly the administration too, the protests were political in nature and orchestrated by the GJM to restore its grip on hill affairs. After all, most of the 9 people who have died so far came from remote and impoverished corners of the hills, the mainstay of Morcha chief Bimal Gurung’s support.”

But a more nuanced watcher would argue that the protests were more organic, he says. “It was fuelled by common people, bought by the masculine, almost medieval, idea of Gorkha martial superiority and a narrative of victimhood stemming from a debilitating identity crisis,” he adds. “The administration, frankly, didn’t help matters by going to town over the seizure of a few bows and arrows from Bimal Gurung’s house and the CM invoking the T-word (terrorism) to describe the initial surge in protests. And then Internet was banned.”

Clashes followed, people died of bullet injuries. The slogan of “Jai Gorkha, Jai Gorkhaland” resonated in such melodic fury that even the paramilitary forces foot-tapped when they were not baton-charging and firing tear gas shells.

The people were clearly in charge. And local politicians had no option but fall in line. The Morcha agreed to become part of the Gorkhaland Movement Coordination Committee, a platform of hill parties and social organisations hurriedly formed at Darjeeling’s Gymkhana Club on June 29. The body lost steam after several rounds of meetings. When Binay Tamang, the Morcha’s chief coordinator and face of the party in the absence of Bimal Gurung who went into hiding fearing arrest, agreed to withdraw the bandh following a meeting with the CM, the agitation truly turned directionless.

“There is a man here in the market,” says a reputed retailer at Darjeeling’s Chowk Bazaar, referring to a local bully formerly close to Morcha chief Bimal Gurung. “He now wants us to open our shops. Just because it suits him, he is now toeing Binay Tamang’s line.”

(Tamang, as mentioned earlier, represents the Morcha’s moderate faction and was expelled from the party but has challenged the expulsion in court. He is in talks with the state government and is recognised by the CM as the legitimate representative of the hills.)

If he were to open his shop, the retailer tells me, almost everyone else, especially non-Gorkha shop owners, would follow suit in no time. “Then why did we support the strike for so long? It should have been withdrawn in time to welcome tourists during the Puja season. What’s the point of doing it now?”

Every morning, locals stream out of their homes looking to buy green vegetables. Almost the entire town, sources its supplies from shops that run with their shutters half drawn. Last week, a local daily reported how small vendors were beginning to crop up on the footpaths. The next morning, a hand-written poster slapped on a wall near Motor Stand in the heart of the town cautioned that such a trend was detrimental to the andolan. “The police come in the morning and ask us to open our shops when they leave, the boys come and ask us to close,” a 60-year-old vegetable vendor said. “There is no clarity on what’s going on.”

People buy vegetables from roadside stalls that have mushroomed because the shops are shut.

A day earlier another poster had cropped up. This one threatening GJM leaders, including president Bimal Gurung, of arson if the party continues to target “poor people” who are trying to make their ends meet. Both posters were signed by an anonymous pressure group – janata (the public).

There is a paralysis of common sense among the leaders, says a former Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League (ABGL) supporter whose son, a PhD student who aspires to become an assistant professor in a government college, frequently travels to Kolkata and Delhi for job applications and interviews.

“There is no way anyone can imagine the problems we have faced because of the bandh,” the concerned father says. “A handful of inept politicians thought they could shake Red Fort by enforcing the bandh. Now, they have realised not even Kolkata will budge. Ridiculous situation this is. The strike must be lifted. Given the current crop of leaders, there will not be a Gorkhaland in a hundred years.”

A government department official, who walks 30 km to work and home every day, also says the people have been steadfast on the demand for a separate state but the politicians have disappointed. “I can’t risk using my two-wheeler for fear of getting mugged by drug addicts. They are the ones who have really profited by waylaying innocent men and women and robbing them,” he says.

Should the strike be withdrawn then? “I don’t know. The janata will decide. It doesn’t make any sense right now,” he says.

The cause is everywhere but is losing support.

On school teacher Raman Chhetri’s bed-side table, meanwhile, Margaret Atwood’s 1985 book The Handmaid’s Tale crowns a stack of Murakami bestsellers.

“There has been no Internet here for more than two months. So I read books at home. In school, of course, we play cards,” Chhetri says. “I hear the internet was blocked for law and order reasons. Everything feels so dystopian in Darjeeling these days. This is the perfect book for the season.”

On September 17, a series based on the same book won several Emmys. “Don’t expect similar prizes for Gorkhaland anytime soon,” Chhetri told me over the phone a day later.

The writer can be contacted on Twitter @scribeling.