GJM leader and ideologue Roshan Giri’s latest comments to the press on the ongoing Gorkha agitation prove this beyond doubt. ‘It seems the West Bengal government is more bent on arresting our leaders than solving the problems of the hills… Despite talking about the situation in different fora, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has not yet sent any communication to the GJM for talks,’ he said.

The response from the state government was quick. Said Gautam Deb, Minister for Tourism, ’Giri is misleading the people. As early as on June 23, our Chief Minister had called for an all party meet to discuss the situation. The GJM shot down her proposal out of hand, saying it would not sit with any state representative either in Kolkata or in Delhi.’ He did not add that the GJM had reiterated this stand several times during the present spell of unrest.

On the same day that Giri spoke, the strident high-pitch agitation for a separate Gorkha state attracted notice for a highly unusual incident: someone had set fire to the GJM town committee office this time, at Chowkbazar area in Darjeeling! ’This is akin to someone wearing saffron setting fire to the RSS office at Nagpur,’ remarked a senior Trinamool Congress leader in Kolkata.

The political context of the attack on the GJM office is puzzling. Regardless of routine denials from the GJM leaders, the fact remains that its more militant cadres and supporters have burnt down most of the state government buildings and offices, not sparing libraries or power plants in the hills. This was also a trend during the earlier agitations launched by the Subas Ghishing-led GNLF in the eighties on a smaller scale.

Small wonder that given this background, the GJM”s allegation that the state government had engineered the arson at Chowkbazar did not cut much ice, nor did the state administration bother to respond. The reaction of GNLF secretary Mahendra Lama was more to the point: ’We are not sure who is responsible for setting the GJM office aflame,’ he said.

North Bengal local media however reports that for quite some time now the reins of leadership of the present phase of agitation had passed from established GJM leaders like Bimal Gurung, Giri and their colleagues to more militant (if faceless) youth leaders, who constitute a new extremist fringe within the GJM. It is this new leadership that favours talks only with the Centre on the basis of a one-point agenda,’ a separate homeland for the Gorkhas.’

There is no doubt that the new faction enjoys more support among youths and common Nepalis, who have been exposed to several phases of the ongoing struggle for an identity assertion for the Gorkhas. These people virtually gherao leaders of the GJM, the GNLF and other parties whenever all-party discussions and meetings are held to chalk out the future of the present agitation, which has hit something of a roadblock for some time now.

Whenever the GJM and other local parties have broached the possibility of attending tripartite talks called by the centre, they have been overruled and out-shouted by angry brigades of young men and women, who usually wait outside the meeting venues. Every time under their pressure, more established leaders and parties have been forced to announce to the media,’Nothing doing, we will continue our programmes until the Centre concedes Gorkhaland ‘

Worried by such trends, Harka Bahadur Chhetri, formerly of the GJM and presently head of the Jan Andolan Party(JAP), felt it necessary to dissociate himself and his party from the present phase of the struggle for separate statehood.

It appears that when the GJM first announced plans to launch an indefinite bandh in the hills, it had not bothered to study the political backdrop of its programme. To begin with, a limited bandh for 48 hours or so would have been more advisable, many feel. It would have given the GJM an opportunity to carry out a total closure of the hills and force the state government to come to terms.

The GJM could also have retained its options regarding the course and political momentum of the subsequent stages of its agitation, going forward step by step. ‘By going for broke at the outset, the GJM foreclosed its options and made it easier for the state government,’ says a Kolkata-based analyst. ‘Its utterly obdurate stand of ignoring the state government totally made it difficult for the Centre to come in either’. Again, its hectoring insistence that only a new Gorkhaland state would be the topic for a tripartite discussion irritated political leaders and officials both in Delhi and Kolkata.

It is time for the GJM leaders to realise that their own hardline uni-dimensional approach to the sensitive issue of a new Gorkha state at the expense of a partition of Bengal has landed them in a situation where they are now forced to call for a meeting with the state government and Mamata Banerjee. Observers feel that the GJM’s pressure tactics and its sustained campaign of arson have not weakened the resolve of either the state or the Centre into making any positive concessions in a hurry

True, the state has suffered major losses to the tea and tourism industry, now estimated at over Rs 500 crore. Governance, business, trade, education and the overall economy has taken a hit. But the outcome has been more painful for the hills: severe wage and salary losses for government servants and civic employees, shutdown of small business shops and transport operators, starvation among tea industry labour and common people as the movement of food from the plains suffered, shutdown and shifting of schools and colleges, lack of power and medicines, mindless destruction of public property…

But in the end, there is still no sign that a separate state of Gorkhaland is about to be achieved. The BJP-ruled Centre cannot afford to antagonise the people of a state with 42 Lok Sabha seats, for the sake of winning one seat in the hills---- not especially at a time when the BJP plans to spread its political wings in Bengal and Odisha, prior to consolidating its position in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. (IPA Service)