Rediscovering the North East or Riding the Bandwagon?

It feels terrible to admit it. When I saw this photograph in the paper today, my instant reaction was, “Oh, so they had to have someone from the North East even to show rains in Mumbai.” As it turned out, I was wrong. These were described as “tourists”.

My immediate reaction tells us something, aside from the fact that people from the Oriental regions too may be mistaken for those in the North East, is that the media is going over the top to portray and project everything possible about the region. It is like dusting something from the attic and placing it on the mantelpiece. There is no attempt at trying to even examine it closely, explore its history, and look at the cracks it has suffered when it was consigned to the dark corner.

Today, we have seen how damaging stories can be. The term “chinki” that many people use for the Chinese or those with slanted eyes is being put to the test of a politically correct grinder. People of Sikkim look like that. Nepalis do. And what about those in Darjeeling who have been demanding Gorkhaland? Why is no one interested in that? Why are we suddenly concerned about what they are called? Have we never made such errors of judgment based on physical appearance?

This sort of quick-fix concern tourism does nothing for the people, educates no one, and enlightens little. Armed with a map, the “seven sisters” are not even given distinct identities that they fought for amongst themselves. Have people already forgotten the ULFA that targeted tea plantation owners, mainly Marwaris from Kolkata? Disaffection with Bangladeshis is not new, but it is not the only problem. (Read Don't Blame the Immigrant)

Film director Kalpana Lajmi, who was the late filmmaker, singer, poet, political activist Bhupen Hazarika’s longtime partner, was interviewed recently by The Times of India about the violence in the North East. She lived there for long periods. Why did she never speak before about the problems that range from “they’re often dismissed off as ‘chinkis’” to “it came as a shock to me when I realized the magnitude of the issues only after violence spilled over at Azad Maidan (Mumbai)”?

She makes dangerous simplistic statements that are no better than the rumour-mongers:

“Friends in Assam say that they have lived in harmony with the Muslims, and that the quarrel is between the Bodos and the immigrant who have outnumbered them. I tell them it is a communal issue as it is a fight between the Muslims and non-Muslims. How can you even call them Bangladeshi if they have lived in India for over 50 years?”

Has she read anything about the history? She is reaching such conclusions because that is what some people in the media and some political parties are doing. It is so conniving that she, sitting in Mumbai now, is talking about communalism. Did she not feel victimised when she was there? Did Bhupenda ever tell her any such thing?

And with as much alacrity as she effectively grants Bangladeshis local status, she contradicts it:

“There is also a feeling that one day a Bangladeshi immigrant may take over as the chief minister of a northeastern state.”

Whose feelings is she referring to? Has she gone there on an assignment recently? When she lived there, did she worry about this? If as she suggests a Bangladeshi who has lived there for 50 years is not a Bangladeshi, then is she implying that someone who has crossed over years later, maybe even recently, will contest elections and become the chief minister? Not only is her surmise ridiculous, she reduces the people of the North East, who have, despite the centre’s callous casual attitude towards them, never cowed down.

So dumb is the discourse that the interviewer asks her, “Are you planning to do anything to bring peace back in the region?” Her reply:

“I am planning to ask CM Tarun Gogoi to request artistes like Shabana Azmi, Javed Akhtar and Mahesh Bhatt to make the people feel at home. There is a need to make them understand that violence is not the solution. There is a need to get leaders and NGOs with no political ambitions to come forward. There is a need to decide once again the cut-off date for newer immigrants. But I still feel it is a deep-rooted problem as one cannot differentiate between the local and the immigrant.”

Yet, she has this crystal ball or third eye that tells her some immigrant can become chief minister. She believes that her chosen gang will bring peace, forgetting that two of them are in politics and politically sharp.

I do not know for how long this party with the North East will last. It is being played out in the most absurd manner and doing nothing for the states. We have already discovered the snowball effect of an ‘exodus’.

Political parties will make a killing of it during the elections. Will the people benefit?

MC Mary Kom, the boxer from Manipur who won the Olympic medal, apologised for not getting more than a bronze. She was feted for her gesture. This infuriates me. How many golds and silvers have we got?

Now Bollywood has jumped on the bandwagon. Sanjay Leela Bhansali wants to make on her life. It is an amazing life, no doubt, but this is not the first time she has participated in an international competition. It is understandable that she sees it positively. As she told the BBC:

“This film will help bridge the gap between people of the Indian mainland and those from the north-eastern states.”

The North East ought to be seen as much as mainland as Maharashtra or Delhi. Giving her example is like making an example of her, to be always on test, to struggle and to to triumph. Success is the barometer for acceptance.

This and the whole human interest angle to her story is part of the patronising attitude we have towards the North East. It started with politicians, it buffered ethnic strife, and now it has reached the pearly gates of our elite intellectuals with the memory span of a few minutes.

(c) Farzana Versey

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Two of my earlier pieces:

Manipur's fate and the North East States
Will Gorkhaland become a reality? 

I got mail

When I wrote about Gorkhaland, I was aware that I did not belong and my views would be different. Therefore, to get immediate reactions is important. Here are two ways of seeing:

Dear Farzana.... I read your article in counterpunch.com..... "Will Gorkhaland Be A Reality?"... being a Gorkhali myself and coming from Darjeeling, I cannot express how much your article means to all of us. Thank you so much for writing unbiased and objectively....

Especially your last paragraph was so fitting that it brought tears to my eyes... "However, for a mountain people they ought to know that echoes resound only in your own valley."...... Our troubles and frustrations... only we can see and feel... for others... we don't even exist....

My reply:

It is letters such as these that make writing about issues such as these seem worth the space we deign to occupy. When an insider can relate to how an outsider has 'sensed' her/his anguish it makes one's life, even if momentarily and captured in stark print, seem not quite so useless.

The criticism that comes with the territory seems like so much noise then.

Thank you and hope the voices do carry where it matters.

Another perspective:

Now I understand why you are NOT AN iNDIAN IN PAKISTAN RAHTER YOU REALLY ARE A PAKISTANI IN iNDIA.
YOUW WISHFUL THINKING OF WEAKENEING iNDIA THROUGH SEPERATISM WILL NEVER HAPPEN.
DREAM ON YOU TRAITOR .(NO NOT ALL MUSLIMS ARE TRAITOR -BUT YOU ARE AS ARE MANY HINDUS AND SiKHS INCLUDING THE PRESENT PRIME MINSTER manmohan singh THE MOST TREAHCEROUS OF ALL)>

My reply:

You got to be kidding if I’d reply to this.

Will Gorkhaland Become a Reality?

The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Fury

Will Gorkhaland Become a Reality?
By Farzana Versey
Counterpunch, June 19, 2008

"Indefinite shutdown" said the latest headlines and the hill region of Darjeeling becomes another political pawn.

Ten years ago when I had last visited, stepping out of the cocoon of the teakwood panelled clubby interiors of the hotel meant long walks along curvaceous streets, milky coffee from aluminium buckets on early morning visits to the snowy hills and returning to dinner that was announced with a gong and served by white-gloved bearers who whispered gentility as lace curtains reflected the candlelight.

The insulation was complete.

Little did one realise that another kind of insulation was gnawing at the entrails of the whole region. Peace is a mask Darjeeling has always worn for tourist consumption. Yak safaris provide an interesting diversion – a tourist is said to have described the animal as a buffalo wearing a petticoat. At a trade fair they had to recreate traditional houses because no one lived in those anymore. Except for their taste for meat, butter tea and home-brewed alcohol made with millet and sipped through a bamboo straw, many of the simple activities are often exaggerated exotically for vacationers. The pre-dawn sight of Mount Khang Chendongza – Kanchenjunga – the third highest peak in the world is like the tip of an iceberg touching heaven.

As the sun rises you notice the walls. Red-splattered paint that talks of a separate Gorkhaland. You sit in one of the roadside tea-stalls. Young eyes look suspiciously. Whispers are exchanged.

The blood-soaked cry has not gone away. Today it is reasserting itself with even greater vehemence. The Gorkha Janamukti Morcha president Bimal Gurung is speaking a new voice, a voice that refuses to play footsie or be content with sops. In the 1980s the government had managed to muffle opposition by co-opting the Subhas Ghising-led Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) by forming the Gorkha Darjeeling Hill Council and appointing him the titular head. It was a thorny crown, but the wearer was too enamoured of its purported glitter to care. He took the scraps as long as he could rule. He let down the movement. Self-governance and limited autonomy don't work, in any case.

It is difficult to believe that Darjeeling was gifted by the Raja of Sikkim to the East India Company for "enabling servants of the government suffering from sickness to avail of its advantage". That the king could be so generous is a bit of a surprise considering that parts of Sikkim were at various times conquered by Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet. Sikkim became a part of India only in 1975.

Yet the Centre grants the state Rs 5,400 billion in aid; Darjeeling with five times the number of voters gets only Rs 100 billion.

The establishment has been playing games. The demand for a separate state was initiated during the early part of the century when the British ruled the country.

Indian democracy has often been a compromise formula; elections work as soft options. Almost every part of the country has separatist aspirations. It isn't about terrorism. This is a crisis of identity that has been building up. The neo-fascists in power refuse to understand that we have always had principalities. Independent states were ruled by independent kings and princes. The privy purses have gone but the basic seed of regionalism remains. Is that not the reason why even metropolitan cities like Mumbai have an anti-immigrant stance?

Why does Darjeeling, which is a part of West Bengal, not feel Bengali?

It is a question of selfhood. There may be cultural incest with the border areas of Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet but Darjeeling has been looking for a distinct political identity. Here a war memorial is considered a sacred place and politicians are heroes. Subhash Ghising was deified because "he made these roads". The Hill Cart Road connecting the plains to the hills was in fact built by the British in 1839.

Looking at the awesome ruggedness of the mountains one cannot help but think of Tensing Norgay, the Sherpa who conquered Everest along with Sir Edmund Hillary. A forest official had been dismissive: "The Indian government has given him too much importance. He is a Nepali."

Bhushan, our guide at the Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling, had a different story to tell. "Once at an institute Norgay was asked his nationality. After achieving so much he felt hurt by the question. So, in anger, he replied that he was a Nepali. Why was it so difficult to accept him as an Indian? He has been one of a kind, known as a snow leopard. And his house still stands here."

The Nepalis and those from the North East were seen as outsiders though there is considerable admiration for the Pashupati border area which is packed with foreign goods.

If the Nepali initiative for smuggling is appreciated, then the Tibetans, who started making inroads in the 17th century, are not. Their refugee camp perched atop a hillock in Darjeeling is a complete village boasting of a school, college, housing and myriad self-supporting activities. It is sponsored by the Americans.

Darjeeling has been a migrant haven. While the Biharis came as sweepers, barbers, grocers and later teachers, the Marwaris came to trade from 1888 under the Raj, only too ready to express its fondness for any shopkeeper class. But due to their considerable contribution to the economy, resentment against them grew.

As one politician had told me then, "Maintaining the social balance is important. We therefore need to monitor our economic growth in a manner that guards us from a sudden impact of any kind."

The locals had found their own way towards creating harmony within. They stopped wearing traditional attire so that you could not differentiate amongst one other. Intermarriages became commonplace so even if there was simmering resentment, they kept quiet.

The Communist government of West Bengal does not take cognisance of social mores and needs. Its workers recently ransacked the homes of the dissenters and beat them up. Indian democracy will have to learn to accept that we are not a cohesive whole and unless the government provides the people with basic facilities and respects their identity, it will have to put up with such separatist aspirations.

The Leftists are happily supping with industrialists and creating havoc in villages to accommodate 'progress'. What have they done for their own people? Nothing. Except send honeymooners to chuck snowballs at each other and legally seal their fate.

The call for a Gorkhaland wakes us up to these hidden realities. However, for a mountain people they ought to know that echoes resound only in your own valley.