Storm in the hills

The assassination of Madan Tamang, president of the Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League (ABGL), allegedly by members of the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM), in Darjeeling, West Bengal, has reawakened memories of the bloodshed that accompanied the Gorkhaland agitation in the mid-1980s. The GJM leadership has denied any hand in the killing and demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry. However, the spontaneous outburst of grief and condemnation following the murder is threatening to present, for the first time, a serious challenge to the authority of the GJM. Tamang was a veteran campaigner for a separate Gorkhaland State and a strong critic of the GJM. On the morning of May 21, at the Club Side area of Darjeeling town, Tamang was organising a rally to mark the 68th anniversary of the establishment of the ABGL when over a hundred persons armed with khukris (knives traditionally carried by Gorkhas) and stones stormed the area stabbed him repeatedly. The attack was so sudden that those present, including police personnel on duty, could react only after Tamang fell down mortally wounded. He succumbed to injuries soon after.

K.L. Tamta, Inspector-General of Police, North Bengal, told Frontline: This is the handiwork of the GJM. The GJM attacked and killed Madan Tamang. GJM supremo Bimal Gurung, however, denied the charge and reportedly stated that the incident was a conspiracy of the State government and the ABGL to tarnish the GJM's image and break the unity of the Gorkha people.

The State government has ordered a Criminal Investigation Department (CID) probe into the incident.

FIR against Gurung

In the FIR lodged by ABGL general secretary Laxman Prasad, 13 top GJM leaders have been named in connection with the murder. They include Bimal Gurung, his wife Asha Gurung, GJM general secretary Roshan Giri, Harka Bahadur Chhetri and Benoy Tamang. Even as the West Bengal government announced that those found guilty in connection with the murder would not be spared, the GJM chief dared the government to arrest even a single party leader or activist.

I will sit on an indefinite hunger strike if any of my men are held. We have condemned the murder. If the police falsely implicate us, we will launch a fiery agitation, he said.

The GJM's alleged involvement in the murder may prove to be a major setback to its supremacy in the hills. Since 2007, after dethroning Subash Ghising and his Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF), which spearheaded the Gorkhaland agitation in the 1980s, and calling for a fresh agitation for a separate State, it has ruled the hills virtually unchallenged. Its programmes and policies are almost unquestioningly accepted by the people.

The silencing of one of the most respected voices of dissent has come as a blow to the GJM's image. Internally too, the party has alienated a number of senior and dedicated members, as was apparent from the spate of resignations that followed the killing. Among the first to resign in protest against Tamang's murder was Anmol Prasad, a senior leader and a member of the party think tank. He was also one of the representatives of the party in the first four rounds of tripartite talks with the Centre and the State government.

Several other senior members of the party followed suit, including Harka Bahadur Chhetri, the GJM leader from Kalimpong, and Amar Lama. Chhetri and three others subsequently withdrew their resignations.

A strong voice

Though the ABGL was not a major force in the Darjeeling hills or in the Gorkhaland agitation, Madan Tamang, 62, was a respected figure.

He entered politics in the 1970s as the head of the youth wing of the ABGL. Later he broke away from the ABGL to join Pranta Parishad and worked closely with Ghising, who was then yet to form the GNLF. However, the two parted ways when Ghising, heading the GNLF, launched his bloody agitation for a separate State of Gorkhaland. Tamang formed the Gorkha Democratic Front in the 1990s but returned to the ABGL in 2004.

Tamang was known as much for his oratory and outspokenness as for his commitment to the cause of Gorkhaland and democracy. When Bimal Gurung announced the formation of the GJM and ended by force the unchallenged 21-year-long reign of Ghising, Tamang initially welcomed it but soon fell out with the GJM as he felt that the latter was ignoring the opinions of the other parties in the region.

Subsequently, as the GJM's power in the hills became absolute, his was one of the few voices of opposition, just as it had been during the GNLF's rule. Tamang was a hardliner, as far as the issue of Gorkhaland was concerned, and his conflict with the GJM came to a head earlier this year, when the latter proposed the setting up of an interim administration in the region until the demand for Gorkhaland was conceded.

According to Tamang, the proposal was akin to Ghising's Darjeeling Gorkha Autonomous Hill Council and identical in its betrayal of the promise for a Gorkhaland State.

Tamang was among those leaders who formed recently the Democratic Front, an anti-GJM coalition involving seven parties, including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Communist Party of Revolutionary Marxists (CPRM), a breakaway faction of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The stated goal of the front is to fight for democracy in the hills.

Less than a week before his murder, he had met West Bengal Governor M.K. Narayanan and sought his intervention for restoring democracy in the region. The Governor, who was present in Darjeeling at the time of the assassination, condemned the killing and expressed his deep sense of shock and sorrow. He said the incident could only be regarded as an attack on democratic forces. Tamang's widow, Bharati, has taken his place as the president of the ABGL.

On the day of the assassination, shops and business establishments voluntarily closed down, prompting the GJM to declare a bandh the following day. The candlelight vigils and silent condolence processions attended by thousands of citizens were perhaps the strongest indictment of the prevalent situation here and those who brought it about, a resident of Darjeeling told Frontline. A protest march by the citizens of Darjeeling on May 22 began with barely a hundred people, but soon attracted over three thousand participants.

Voices raised

On May 24, the day of the funeral, the simmering tension of the previous two days erupted in a display of rage against the GJM as thousands joined the funeral procession. Chants of Bimal Gurung Quit Darjeeling could be heard from the crowds, and posters and banners of the GJM were torn down and trampled upon.

This is the first time since the GJM assumed power in the hills that the common people have raised their voices against it. For so long everybody was afraid of them, but all of a sudden people seem to have lost their fear, a participant in the procession told Frontline.

The following day, in view of Gurung's imminent arrival to Darjeeling town from Kalimpong and the mounting tension in the region, the police enforced Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code to pre-empt any flare-up. Though Gurung and his huge convoy entered Darjeeling in flagrant violation of the prohibitory order, he encountered violent protests from CPRM activists and local residents on the way.

Women lay in front of the vehicles to stop them from proceeding, crowds scuffled with Gorkhaland Personnel (a trained special force created by the GJM to enforce its writ in the hills) and tried to break through the protective line of police and IRB (India Reserve Battalion) personnel and attack passing GJM vehicles.

Ironically, it was only with the help of the police that the convoy along with Gorkhaland Personnel on the sideboards entered Darjeeling town. Gurung then addressed a gathering of GJM supporters.

The unprecedented protests against the GJM may well be the beginning of a change in the political dynamics in the Darjeeling hills. Like Ghising before him, Gurung enjoyed absolute power in the hills. Even though various sections of the populace did not subscribe to his style, had grown tired of the bandhs he repeatedly called, and resented the politics of intimidation, they quietly accepted all this. The resentment that was building against the GJM's autocratic rule seems to have found an unexpected outlet following the assassination of Tamang, who, though respected, never had a mass support base.

According to State Municipal Affairs and Urban Development Minister Ashok Bhattacharya, a CPI(M) heavyweight of Darjeeling district, the recent events indicate that the GJM has lost the support of the masses. The local people now want restoration of peace and democracy before addressing the issue of statehood. The people have been losing confidence in the GJM leadership but were too afraid to voice it. Madan Tamang's was a courageous voice that spoke out against this and he too has been silenced. The GJM has lost the mandate of the people of Darjeeling, and they do not want to be represented by the GJM in the tri-partite talks; the State government cannot ignore the sentiments of the people, he told Frontline.

Roshan Giri of the GJM, however, dismissed this view. How can anyone think that the GJM will be marginalised in the hills? Did you not see the huge crowd that gathered in Darjeeling town to greet us on our arrival? All these are rumours that are being spread to weaken the Gorkhaland movement, he told Frontline. He was equally dismissive about the protests outside Darjeeling town. Those were just a few CPRM supporters, and we allowed them to agitate, he said.

Who after GJM?

Even if it is a little too early to write off the GJM as the principal political force in the Darjeeling hills, it has emerged clearly, that its authority has been questioned, not by another political outfit, but by the people at large.

So far, the Gorkhaland movement has not seen any collective leadership. Whether it was Ghising or Bimal Gurung, politics in the last 25 years in the hills has followed a pattern a single-party dictatorial rule that brooks no dissent. For all of Gurung's expostulations that his is a Gandhian movement, the last two years have been replete with violence, both in the hills and in the foothills.

If the GJM's power is indeed on the wane, then it remains to be seen whether there is a strong enough alternative to take over the reins from it. There is little chance of a change overnight, but the GJM may find it difficult to stamp out the spark of dissent, especially when it has come from the masses.