GJMM the new ally of NDA

The inclusion of the grievances of the Gorkha people of Darjeeling in the BJP manifesto in some form or another was highly anticipated by the population of the Hills of Darjeeling. What surprised some of the major political analyst was the announcement of GJMM as the new ally of NDA by the BJP central leadership. By becoming the new ally of the National Democratic Alliance, NDA for short, the GJMM has created major ripples in Darjeeling and West Bengal as a whole. This definitely shows a new beginning in the political chapter for people of Darjeeling Hills.

The major change that has now occurred in Darjeeling is that the politics of Darjeeling has now finally moved beyond Siliguri and Kolkata to the places where it matters the most. For starters let me give a brief background of the political hierarchy prevalent in Darjeeling as is any where else in the country. Every major political party in India including the Congress, CPI (M), BJP etc have what is known as Central level committees which take major decisions at the national level; subordinate to this is the State level committees, followed by District level committees. District level committees are then made up of various local bodies of the respective parties based on the region, the popularity of the party in the region and its party functionaries. Suffice to say that the District level committee forms the last most significant chain in the decision making hierarchy for any political party in the country. In case of Darjeeling also there is a district level Committee, but here, there is a sharp division in the representation of its leaders from the region. The Darjeeling district is made up of four Sub-division, three of them from the Hills made up of mainly Nepali Speaking population and one, Siliguri made up of mainly Bengali speaking population. The problem lies in the fact that this one sub-division makes up nearly 51% of the population of the region. Hence, all political parties have their respective party office in Siliguri and are mainly made up of Bengali speaking leaders. The matter is made worse by the fact that the pre-dominantly Hill people favor a separate state for the Nepali-speaking population creating a sharp political division between the people of the plains and the Hills.

This has led to the Bengali speaking leaders from the plains dominating all the voice in the political parties of the region. This leads to loss of voice for the remaining 49% population of the Hill people, strangulating their reach in both the state as well as the national level politics. The only way to enable the voice of the Hill people to be heard is to ensure the Hill people vote in unison thus enabling the single undivided vote of the Hills to change the fate of the candidates in the plains. Even though this is effective in promoting a Hill based candidate among the major parties, even his political voice, is rarely heard lest he antagonizes the State party bosses. This is the main reason why political campaigners from the state only head for the Hills at the time of the election to woo the Hill voters to vote for them to swing their fate. Every other time the political rights of the Hill people is over shadowed and pushed behind by these political figures in the plains, so much so that the concerns and demands of the Hill people rarely made it outside the District party office of Darjeeling located in Siliguri, one that made out farther, got lost after approaching Kolkata. In the past the issue came to head when the Congress members from the Hills created a separate Hill congress without the approval of the PCC (Pradesh Congress Committee for the state) because of the apathy and high-handedness of their comrades in the plains who always had an “I know best” attitude towards their Hill comrades. The situation was no better for other parties whether BJP, CPI(M), or Trinamool Congress.

Thus the recent inclusion of the GJMM as an ally of the NDA; has changed all this for good. The BJP which much like other party, had always toed the posture of its State level committee vis-à-vis all decisions pertaining to the Hills of Darjeeling. All decisions to be taken were made in approval of the State committee which rarely cared for the concerns or demands of the Hill people lest it antagonize the majority plains people of Bengal. No other Hill party could ever make its voices heard beyond Siliguri. But with the inclusion of GJMM as an ally of NDA, the people of the Hills finally have a direct ear among the political circles of India. The decision now bypassed the State committees of West Bengal without rupturing the decision making hierarchies of the state BJP. This means that whatever decision the future NDA takes on Darjeeling will be dictated by GJMM and not the state unit of the BJP. The point of contact of the NDA for decisions related to not only Darjeeling but even the whole Gorkha population of India can now be GJMM. This again fills the crucial vacuum that existed relating to the political voice of the Gorkhas as a community across India. Although the population of Gorkhas in India is in excess of 1.25 Crores, the political power of the community vis-à-vis its strength is highly disproportionate. This has led to inadequate redressal of the various grievances faced by the Gorkha community across India. The main reason for this was the sharp geographical divisions among the Gorkha populated regions of India as well as the sparse population of the Gorkhas in a single contiguous location anywhere other than Darjeeling or Sikkim. While on the one hand the Gorkha people of Sikkim do have a separate political voice in the national level, their cousins in Darjeeling and elsewhere were not quite fortunate.

Now, with the announcement of GJMM as an ally of the NDA, the Hill population of Darjeeling has broken the long held political shackles around it. The voices of the people here can now be freely heard, without being misrepresented or misinterpreted by the bosses in Kolkata. Now if an all party meeting is called elsewhere outside Darjeeling, the political big wigs there will no longer be able to pass a unanimous decision opposing “Gorkhaland” without consenting with GJMM or its ally the NDA. Elsewhere in the country, the grievances of the Gorkha population can be now channeled through the GJMM to be taken seriously, and their issues resolved amicably. While, we must not be made to believe that by fielding Jaswant Singh as the LS candidate of Darjeeling or by including GJMM as the ally of NDA, Gorkhaland will come naturally, it is also true that the hurdles we have faced in the past owing to our micro population in a state already at the brink of exploding due to over population, will indeed be lesser than before. The NDA might not even form a government yet its power and influence will be enough to avoid any false misinterpretation of the concerns of the Hill people of Darjeeling, the same way that the Sixth-Schedule Bill had been pushed down the throat of the Hill people. The people of Darjeeling Hills as also the Gorkha population of India now finally have a voice of its leaders being heard directly at the center, a position they had naturally deserved all along but one they never had. Thus, with one single master stroke, the GJMM has declared it to the State as well as the center that even though Gorkhaland may be a distant dream, the Gorkhas have finally arrived!