A tense calm

The Darjeeling hills need restoration of normalcy and a change of policy from the state government.

Ever since the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council accord was signed in 1988 which concluded the mid-1980s violence unleashed by the Gorkha National Liberation Front the Darjeeling hills have been framed between years of a spurious calm,nurtured in reality by the absence of the state administration,and the emergence of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha in 2007,which revived the demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland while abjuring the GNLFs bloodshed. However,if the GJM today seems to be increasingly retracing the path of the GNLF,the reason lies in the violence of the 1980s and,more importantly,in the lawlessness and economic devastation presided over by the GNLF in the DGHC. Moreover,the GJM never hid the fact that,like the GNLF,it would stifle other Gorkha voices. Tuesdays tragic deaths of two GJM supporters in police firing in the Dooars highlights the faultlines and tensions within the GJM as well as between the GJM and other Gorkha outfits,brutally peaking with Madan Tamangs murder last May. These may only sharpen as the tripartite talks bring an interim administration closer the GJMs clash with the GNLF in Kurseong last week could have been worse. There needs to be more than merely apportioning blame for Tuesdays deaths. What the Darjeeling Hills need are: in the short term,restoration of normalcy and the end of violence; in the long term,a change of policy from the state government. Even as Tuesdays incident showed the very real danger of the violence spreading to the Dooars and estranging the plains from the hills,there has to be responsible and accountable governance in Darjeeling.

That is why,regardless of the fate of the interim set-up or the distaste in the hills for the state government,that very government cannot disown the hills. What that means is the constitutional provision of security,not the claims of proprietorship over

Darjeeling. Without normalcy,no administration can function. And the hills people must cease to be a pawn in the game for Writers Building and the seasons loudest pro-Gorkhaland outfit.