‘Agreement with Mamata is not a compromise on Gorkhaland’

HIMALAYAN GUARDIAN     June 15, 2011

INTERVIEW Bimal Gurung

‘Agreement with Mamata is not a compromise on Gorkhaland’

A day after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee claimed to have broken the deadlock over Darjeeling, Gorkha Janmukti Mocha (GJM) President Bimal Gurung showed faith in her politics. In an exclusive interview with Tehelka’s Ratnadip Choudhury, he accuses the Left Front of cheating the people of the hills. Excerpts:

Q: Mamata Banerjee has claimed that the recent agreement between the state government and the GJM has broken ice. How do you term this development?

A: What I can say is that it is a significant step ahead, a success for all sides involved. It is the media that coins terms for such developments; I do not want to term it anything. But, we are happy that now everyone is on the same page. This kind of conducive situation is required to take the process further if we are to arrive to a political solution. But, I can tell you that the ground situation has improved a lot. Here we see a Chief Minister who would like to keep her promise that she made to the people of the hills and North Bengal, and she is on course. We have faith in her approach.

Q: The GJM is now supporting the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government in West Bengal. What made Bimal Gurung and Mamata Banerjee come closer?

A: One might think we came closer due to political compulsion, but that is not the case. We supported the TMC because we believe in the issues on which Banerjee has based her politics for the last one decade. We value her sincerity. Her politics is for “maa, mati, manush”. Our politics is also for the same cause. We admire her struggle that threw away an autocratic power from West Bengal. So, we decided to be with her. Bengal is the pride of the people of hills, and Darjeeling is the pride of Bengal. I agree with her plan for the development of Darjeeling. Whenever we spoke to her we could see that she not only understood our struggle and objectives but had faith in us as well. She wants the crisis to end, so we have enough reasons to support her cause.

Q: Can we say that her brand of politics matches with that of Gurung?

A: Journalists can phrase it in whatever way that helps them. Both of us have been involved in politics at the grass roots. In that way I admire her, and, yes, our ideas do match. We can bring good days back in the hills.

Q: The GJM had earlier held several rounds of parleys with the Left Front government. Where do you feel the Left went wrong?

A: The Left has ruled West Bengal for decades, and all this while what the hills saw was neglect. The Communist Party of India (Marxist), perhaps, did not have the heart to solve the problem of the tribal areas. The plight of the hills fell on deaf ears of its leaders. Banerjee has shown that she has the heart to take the issue towards a possible solution. She has also proved that the Left Front government perhaps wanted the deadlock to continue. It was more difficult for the Left because there were multiple levels of decision making in the CPI(M), but in the TMC Didi takes all decisions.

Q: But, your political opponents say that the so-called agreement is just a political stunt from Banerjee and the GJM, since you fought the poll on the plank of a separate Gorkhaland state.

A: The opposition parties have no base. Both the GJM and the TMC have won huge mandate. Our victory on all seats in the hills proves that people believe that we have made no compromises. The idea is to reach to a solution and carry on with the development that was stalled by the Left Front for so many years. The new proposed administrative setup will have a lot of powers for proper developmental works. It will not be a remote-controlled council like the one the Left Front managed from the Writers’ Building through Subas Ghisingh.

   The demand for Gorkhaland is not a new one. It is not like that Bimal Gurung spoke of it for the first time. After me, other people will raise this demand. So, the political movement for the creation of Gorkhaland will continue. We do not want to mix the creation of the new administrative setup with the political movement. This was the mistake the Left Front made. Politics and developmental works can go hand in hand. Had the Left been sensitive to the region, we could have cooperated with them. We tried our best, but they gave us step-motherly treatment.

Q: Are you saying that even if you get more power with a new administrative setup, you will not give up the demand for a separate state?

A: Gorkhaland is a long-standing demand and the aspiration of our people. The birth of the GJM is to achieve the dream and aspiration of our people. So, till the time our people aspire, we will carry on the political movement for Gorkhaland. Let the new administrative setup take place, let us get enough power to implement the decision and policies that will help the region, then all other things will settle down. We need the new government to settle as well. Look at the neighbouring Sikkim. It has progressed so much, but West Bengal remains poor. Our human resource goes outside to work. We need to keep them at home. The CPI(M) never thought of this.

Q: In the hills, the GJM has no opponent now. But you want a larger part of Terai and Dooars in the new administrative setup. The other communities in that area do not want that. How will you and the TMC tackle this issue?

A: A high-level joint committee has been set up to look into this issue. Let the report come in. I appreciate the seriousness of the state government for setting up such a committee. Like the GJM, Mamata Didi does not believe in vote-bank politics. If you take up the cause of the downtrodden, votes will follow. There have been scuffles earlier, but now everyone is more matured. No community faces any threat from the GJM. I can tell you that we enjoy support everywhere. We will press on the issue of delimitation and prevail upon the state government to get it done as a part of our political movement.

Q: How will the didi’s chota bhai– as she fondly refers to you – going to build shining hills?

A: Our movement has been a political one. Earlier people’s voice was not heard. Both Didi and the GJM have a dream for Darjeeling and the entire region that will come under the new administrative setup. We will strive hard to realise those dreams. If we cannot deliver, people will show us the way, as they have done to the Left Front. (tehelka)

China cannot embrace democracy overnight: Dalai Lama

Himalayan News Network

Melbourne, June 14:  His Holiness the Dalai Lama has told a gathering of Chinese community in Melbourne on Sunday that transparent governance and freedom of press are stepping stones for China to embrace democracy.

His Holiness met with a large group of Chinese youth, Buddhists and democracy activists on his fourth day in Melbourne. Many of them are members of the Chinese-Tibetan Friendship Group in Melbourne, which was established on suggestions from His Holiness the Dalai Lama on a previous visit.

He said the Tibet-China relationship spans over 1000 years. "As far as Buddhism is concerned, it flourished in China long before Tibet. So the Chinese are more senior students of the Buddha," he said.

On the political front, His Holiness reiterated his position on seeking autonomy within China. He said, "We should resolve the issue through friendship and mutual cooperation."

His Holiness told the Chinese gathering that he is proud to show the Chinese government on what he has done in achieving a genuine Tibetan democracy, adding it is now the Chinese Communist Party's turn to retire after being in power for 60 years.

However, he made it clear that it is not his expectation that China would change into a democratic country overnight. He said, "China is a big country and is not used to democracy. It is good to take go on that path gradually. The first step to take could be to be more transparent and more open. It should start with allowing freedom of press and to stop means to spread false information."

His Holiness was touched by the warm reception from the Chinese community. A group of Chinese women recited a prayer song in Tibetan for him. He told them it was the same prayer that he has been reciting every single day since his childhood.

Earlier in the day, His Holiness met with the members of Tibetan, Mongolian and Bhutanese communities. He told the audience that "we should be 21st century Buddhists. By this, I mean we must have full understanding of the Buddha dharma."

He encouraged the Tibetans living in Australia to pay special attention in preserving our culture. He said, "We are in exile not because of a natural disaster or a civil war. We left our country because of a foreign occupation. It is our duty to keep our rich and ancient heritage alive."

After the British left, China increased its control of Tibet

Tibet’s heroic resistance to Younghusband mission

A battle here in 1904 changed the course of Tibetan history. A British expedition led by Sir Francis E. Younghusband, the imperial adventurer, seized the fort and marched to Lhasa, the capital, becoming the first Western force to pry open Tibet and wrest commercial concessions from its senior lamas.

The bloody invasion made the Manchu rulers of the Qing court in Beijing realize that they had to bring Tibet under their control rather than continue to treat it as a vassal state.

So, in 1910, well after the British had departed, 2,000 Chinese soldiers occupied Lhasa. That ended in 1913, after the disintegration of the Qing dynasty, ushering in a period of de facto independence that many Tibetans cite as the modern basis for a sovereign Tibet.

The Chinese Communists seized Tibet again in 1951, perhaps influenced by the Qing emperor’s earlier decision to invade the mountain kingdom.

These days, Gyantse resembles other towns in central Tibet. Its dusty roads are lined with shops and restaurants run by ethnic Han migrants, whom many Tibetans see as the most recent wave of invaders.

But Chinese officials prefer to direct the world’s attention away from that and to the brutal events at Gyantse in 1904, which conveniently fit into their master narrative for Tibetan and Chinese history.

The Chinese government insists Tibet is an “inalienable” part of China, and it has appropriated the 1904 invasion as another chapter in the long history of imperialist efforts to dismantle China — what the Communist education system calls the “100 years of humiliation.”

In that Communist narrative of Gyantse, the Tibetans are a stand-in for the Chinese who were victimized by foreign powers during the Qing dynasty.

“The local people resisted the British there,” said Dechu, a Tibetan woman from the foreign affairs office in Lhasa who accompanied foreign journalists on a recent official tour of Tibet. “They put up a great resistance, so it’s called the City of Heroes.”

In the late 1990s, when Britain was handing Hong Kong back to China, the Chinese government started a propaganda campaign to highlight that theme.

A melodramatic movie about the 1904 British invasion, “Red River Valley,” was released in 1997. It was a hit, and Chinese still rave about it. It was also required viewing for officials in Tibet and for many schoolchildren.

“I’ve also seen a musical, two plays, another feature film and a novella on the same topic, all from that time,” Robert Barnett, a Tibet scholar at Columbia University, said of the late 1990s. He said that he had not seen any reference in Tibetan literature to Gyantse as the City of Heroes before then.

In 2004, the centenary of the British invasion, officials staged activities to commemorate it, including a musical, “The Bloodbath in the Red River Valley.”

Then there is the museum in the fort. A sign in English once identified it as “the Memorial Hall of Anti-British.” In 1999, it displayed “shoddy relief sculptures of battle scenes, with unintelligible captions,” according to Patrick French, a historian who described his visit there in his book “Tibet, Tibet.”

So what did happen in Gyantse in 1904?

The Younghusband expedition was sent by Lord Curzon, the viceroy of India, to force the 13th Dalai Lama to agree to commercial concessions. Tibet had also begun to figure prominently in what was known as the Great Game, where the British and Russian empires vied for influence in Central Asia.

British officials had heard of a Russian presence in the court of the Dalai Lama and wanted to learn the truth. That meant getting officers to Lhasa, which had never been done before.

Colonel Younghusband was teamed with Brig. Gen. J. R. L. Macdonald to lead a force from Sikkim, in British India, across the Jelap Pass into Tibet. They crossed the border on Dec. 12, 1903, with more than 1,000 soldiers, 2 Maxim guns and 4 artillery pieces, according to “Trespassers on the Roof of the World,” a history of Western efforts to open Tibet, by Peter Hopkirk. Behind them, in the snow, trailed 10,000 laborers, 7,000 mules, 4,000 yaks and 6 camels.

Outside the village of Guru, they encountered an encampment of 1,500 Tibetan troops. Hostilities broke out. The British troops, which included Sikhs and Gurkhas, opened fire. In four minutes, 700 poorly armed Tibetans lay dead or dying.

Later, at Red Idol Gorge, a narrow defile just 20 miles from Gyantse, the British slaughtered another 200 Tibetans.

The Tibetans made their final stand at the fort at Gyantse, called a dzong, or jong, in Tibetan. After they missed a deadline to surrender on July 5, the British attacked from the southeast corner of the fort.

A thin line of officers and soldiers clambered up the sheer rock face. “The steepness was so great that a man who slipped almost necessarily carried away the man below him also,” wrote Perceval Landon of The Times of London.

The Tibetans rained down ammunition and stones. But one lieutenant and an Indian soldier made it through the breach, followed by others. The Tibetans fled, shimmying down two ropes.

“The surrender of the jong was to have a crushing effect on Tibetan morale,” Mr. Hopkirk wrote. “There was an ancient superstition that if ever the great fortress were to fall into the hands of an invader, then further resistance would be pointless.”

The British reached Lhasa soon afterward. Two months later, the evening before leaving Lhasa for good, Colonel Younghusband rode out to a mountain and gazed down at the ancient city, where he experienced a curious epiphany that inspired him to end all acts of bloodshed and found a religious movement, the World Congress of Faiths.

“This exhilaration of the moment grew and grew till it thrilled through me with overpowering intensity,” he wrote in a memoir, “India and Tibet.” “Never again could I think evil, or ever again be at enmity with any man. All nature and all humanity were bathed in a rosy glowing radiancy; and life for the future seemed naught but buoyancy and light.” (New York Times)

GJM has betrayed people’s trust: Opp parties

TMC leader to meet Bimal Gurung in Darjeeling today

Himalayan News Network

Darjeeling, June 14: Senior Trinamool Congress leader and Union Minister of State for Health Dinesh Trivedi is expected to meet Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) chief Bimal Gurung here today.

Trivedi is expected to inspect Eden Hospital during his visit here.

Trivedi and Gurung will participate in a panel discussion in Shruberry Park in Darjeeling. "Our president has asked all the frontal organizations to assemble tomorrow for a meeting," said a senior GJM leader, according to a national daily.

 Gurung has called a meeting to apprise them about what transpired in the meeting with Mamata Banerjee. With the GJM leadership showing lenience towards an interim setup, voices of resentment have cropped up from various quarters.

Opposition parties in the Darjeeling hills have accused Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) of backstabbing the people there by diluting the Gorkhaland demand while signing an agreement with West Bengal government. The GJM had betrayed the people of the hills who had overwhelmingly voted for the party in the recent Assembly polls for its promise to carve out a separate state of Gorkhaland, they said.

The All India Gorkha League (AIGL) has already sent a letter to the Bengal CM expressing their dissatisfaction on being left out of the meeting. "Whatever arrangement that has been made between the GJM and the Bengal CM is only temporary and is not acceptable. In fact, the CM should have invited all the stakeholders for a meeting," said Laxman Pradhan, the AIGL secretary.

The Communist Party of Revolutionary Marxist (CPRM), too, has opposed the settlement saying it was against the wishes of the people. "It is a betrayal of people's trust. The GJM was given such an unprecedented mandate only because of a separate state and nothing else," said Govind Chhetri, a CPRM spokesperson.

The proposed administrative set-up to be put in place as per the agreement would be even weaker than the Sixth Schedule Council proposed by Subash Ghising, CPRM President R B Rai.

The Bharatiya Gorkha Parisangh (BGP) also said a temporary arrangement would neither fulfill nor provide identity to the Gorkhas living in the country.

New hill council will strengthen statehood demand: Harka Bahadur Chhetri

Kalimpong, June 14: Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) MLA and spokesperson Harka Bahadur Chhetri said the recent agreement with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will not only strengthen the demand for Gorkhaland but will give more power and geographical area to the proposed new council.

In an exclusive interview with a national daily, Chhetri said the proposed council will have greater financial power and the right to frame rules and regulations on hill affairs.

"Except home and judiciary, we achieved all the major powers needed for a state," said Chhetri.

"The new agreement says that soon after the formation of the new council, the body will be empowered to collect all the revenues which state government collects from the area at present,” the newly-elected MLA from Kalimpong pointed out.

"We have planned for infrastructural development utilizing the revenue in next few years before going for a fresh statehood movement," Chhetri said once again confirming that the GJM never gave up their Gorkhaland demand.

Chhetri also claimed that the council has been empowered to distribute power generated by National Hydro Power Corporation, which will be another major source of revenue.

Referring to inclusion of Gorkha-dominated territories in the foothills, Chhetri said, "The new council will be functional only after area demarcation is completed. If government delays on this issue, the trouble will remain at the same place."

 Chhetri added that the new council "will be able to set up a new education board with new syllabus, cutting off links with the West Bengal's school education system."

He also pointed out that 'Gorkhaland' word will be in the name, suggesting that the platform is now set for a separate state.

J&K, Arunachal Pradesh missing from India's map on Oz govt website

Himalayan News Network

Sydney, June 14: A map of India on an Australian government website has omitted the states of J&K and Arunachal Pradesh triggering protests from the Indian community in the country. The wrong map was put out on the website of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship ( DIAC) in its country profiles section.

The Council of Indian Australians Inc (CIA), the body representing the Indian-Australian community in New South Wales, said in a statement that it has "expressed its strongest displeasure at the incorrect map of India in the DIAC's website".

Later, Australia admitted the map was an "error" and said it will be removed from the website. "The map is being removed from the website," an Australian high commission spokesperson in New Delhi said.

Sikkim BJP begins anti-corruption padyatra

Sikkim BJP President Padam Chettri (left) with central party leaders.

By A Staff Reporter

Gangtok, June 14: The Sikkim unit of the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), began its six- month state-wide padyatra against corruption on Sunday.

The six-member BJP team comprises Sikkim BJP President Padam Chettri, General Secretary Padam Sharma,  and party members: Prabhuram Kharka, Laten Sherpa, Amber Sunwar and Dawa Sherpa.

Briefing the media before the padyatra here Chettri informed that they will focus on South and West Districts and plan to visit remote areas where Chief Minister Pawan Chamling failed to reach during his current village-to-village tour of the State.

During their visit, the BJP team will collect complaints from the public in a complaint form. The team will focus on issues related to health, education and food.

Chettri has also asked government officials to accompany the team during the tour to explain the various developmental activities undertaken by the Chamling Government in the last 17 years.

EDITORIAL

INDIA’S NORTH EAST

Follow The Middle Path

Despite the many peace accords signed with insurgent groups sub-nationalism sentiment still persist in India’s troubled-torn Northeast region. While the demand for sovereignty in certain parts of the region, including Assam, is still making its presence felt regionalism is still a core political issue for most people in the region. Laldenga’s Mizo National Front, NB Bhandari’s Sikkim Parishad and Prafulla Kumar Mahanta’s Asom Gana Parishad to a large extent captured the imagination of the people of the northeast in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Bhandari and Mahanta’s betrayal of the people’s trust for their failure to follow the ‘sons of the soil’ policy gave space to national parties such as the Congress party to make inroads into the region. Torn between violent insurgent groups and failed regional party leaders the people of the northeast, who have much in common with the peoples of the South East than mainstream India, are now being forced to embrace national parties which provide them with semblance of democracy and development. The bitter truth is that the people of this region deserve more than what they have got since independence.

   New Delhi needs to take a new look to the problems and prospects of the Northeast. It cannot and must not continue to encourage corrupt politicians with dictatorial tendencies to rule the region. The Centre must realize that in pursuing a US-type of policy in Middle East in the vulnerable Northeast region would prove futile in the long run. Propping up leaders to maintain a façade of peace in the region by suppressing genuine urges of the people will prove counterproductive. There is the need for genuine leaders from all walks of life in the region to join hands and carve out a better future for the people. New Delhi must and should take a new look and evolve a ‘middle path’ policy to face the growing challenges in the region. There is no other alternative if it wants to avoid a united uprising in the region in the near future.