THE RISING

The words sum up Bimal Gurung—the new protagonist in Darjeeling’s statehood script. This is the man who successfully forced a regime change after 21 years, the man who orchestrated the sad plight of a regional dictator being banned from his fiefdom. Even as Gurung takes command, his politics, for the time being at least, is centred on his bitterness with Ghisingh.

When he recently led a seven-member delegation of the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha to hold talks with West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Gurung spoke to the Indian Express, narrating how deep rooted his hatred was for Ghisingh. “Ghisingh knows very well how to slit throats. For 21 years, he has been doing that. The hill people have seen his performance. The young generation is witness to the state of affairs in the hills. They have nothing to look forward to. Ghisingh would have slit my throat as well, had I not deserted him in time. Now, all the hill people have turned against him. Its the people’s ban that prevents him from entering Darjeeling now,” he said.

Gurung comes from a poor family. His parents were tea-garden workers in Takvar on the outskirts of Darjeeling town. As a child, Gurung did not have the luxury of going to schools beyond the primary level. “From his childhood he had a streak of militancy in him and abandoned studies early to look for ways to earn money for the family,” says a childhood friend. He tried his luck at many jobs—from driving tourist jeeps in Darjeeling to becoming a sub-contractor at Takvar tea estate.

When the GNLF movement began in the 1980s, Gurung took the plunge and shaped up as one of the most militant leaders that Ghisingh had in his ranks. Gurung surrendered his three firearms and grenades before the GNLF, the state government and the Centre signed the 1988 tripartite agreement that marked the end of the bloody agitation and the formation of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC).

Gurung’s close comrades say he wasn’t happy with the accord but, as a disciplined soldier, followed his leader’s orders. In the meantime, he grew to be the undisputed leader among workers in Singamari and Takvar.

In 1996, he was elected to the Gorkha Hill Council as an independent candidate. Ghisingh gave him the portfolio of Games and Sports. He was also said to be one of Ghisingh’s main fundraisers. But hill sources say that Ghisingh and Gurung always maintained a distance. While Ghisingh did not take Gurung into confidence in many cases, Gurung too had his independent ways of functioning. The Sixth Schedule issue widened the gap between the two from 2004 onwards. Gurung set up an independent organization—styled as “Parbatiya Bekari Sanghathan” (Unemployed Hill People’s Association) to support the jobless youths in the hills.

But Gurung’s real taste of success came with the Indian Idol wave when Darjeeling’s Prashant Tamang reached the finals. Gurung cleverly sensed the people’s yearning for a national icon, an underlying desire for the national acceptance of the Indian Gorkha. He turned the event into a pan-Nepali movement, raising funds, hosting guests from Nepal, Sikkim, Dooars and the Terai. Ghisingh was away in Malaysia during the final phases of the competition and Gurung exploited the situation to the full. So surcharged was the atmosphere that comments about Tamang on a FM channel sparked off trouble in the hills as well as in the Siliguri town in September 2007. Curfew was clamped and the army had to be called out as clashes broke out on communal lines. When Tamang won the contest, Gurung was seen as the main architect behind the success and took on the mantle of the region’s latest mass leader.

He formed the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha in October 2007. It is evident that unlike Ghisingh, Gurung believes in collective leadership and has formed a core group that decides the Morcha’s plan of action. Gurung himself is careful in differentiating his movement for a separate statehood and that of Ghisingh’s.

“This movement is going to be different form the Gorkhaland movement of the ‘80s. It will not have any bloodshed. The movement will be a purely a democratic one. It will have no place for autocracy,” says Gurung.