Gorkhaland : Crisis of Statehood

Gorkhaland: Crisis of Statehood is an attempt by a journalist to unravel the various layers of the ongoing crisis in the Darjeeling hills, where the Nepali-speaking community is locked in a political struggle with the state of Bengal, of which it is a part. The author endeavours to delve into the deeper recesses of the psyche of the Gorkha community settled in these restive hills and attempts to put the prevailing stereotypes under a subjective scanner. Lurking underneath the ethnic stridency of the crisis, the author espies a profound pathos-a marginalized ethnic community's craving to come into itself, to assert its voice in order that it gets a place of its own in the national landscape. Yet, contrary to generally held conceptions, and despite a superficial ill-feeling at the collective level, the Gorkha community is not inimical to the Bengalis at large, and neither do the Bengalis nurture any hatred towards them. The author approaches the century-old tangle principally from four perspectives-the history of the region, the problem of assimilation of the various ethnic groups, the course of the movement itself, from Dambar Singh Gurung down to Bimal Gurung, and the hurdles standing in the way of the fulfillment of the collective statehood dream. The problem appears insoluble given the odds set against the formation of a separate state, and the people are poignantly aware of the impossibility of realizing this collective reverie. Yet they cannot give in. The writer attempts to give expression to this poignancy at the collective level-the frustration which gets accentuated into a fratricidal mayhem with or without provocations.