Open letter to Bimal Gurung ... Rhetoric’s of Dola Mitra/Dipak Ghosh/ Romit Basu simply a sham.

Hillman the Analyst. KalimNews, Kalimpong: In the present Gorkhaland state demand imbroglio enmeshed between the GTA and the paramount concern of Darjeeling District enshrined in the Constitution of India, are only perceptions in play in the drama which is unfolding in the very near future. 

This is in full understanding of the fact , there is no elementary doubt whatsoever at all that the rights , or if you insist calling it identity of its inhabitants, have been constituted within the framework of the Constitution itself and which properly implemented would eventually lead the agitation to its inevitable goal – directly to statehood, or its equivalent Union Territory. 

This is the understanding of this writer conscribed in the book, Roadmap on the trail to Gorkhaland (Partially Excluded Area-The Constitutional Guarantee). It is in the full understanding of the constitutional implications of the Fifth Schedule provisions applied to Darjeeling Dist conventionally understood in the Act of 1935 as a Partially Excluded Area (PEA). 

This aspect is graphically explained in the book wherein new state formations are subject to finite legal guarantees as provided by the various articles of the Constitution itself. Without which implicating priorities and their citations, statehood demand is a dire near impossibility. However this is not the case with Darjeeling District. It is perceived a probable implication with the Dooars area of Darjeeling Dist also thereby allowing imagination of a possibility in the near future, legally constructing a state of Darjeeling and Dooars or UT of the same name. With these clear constitutional realities in sight, fully accounting this claim in understanding the provision of the Fifth Schedule, wherein doubtlessly a Tribes Advisory Council (TAC) exists in West Bengal happens to be a statutory body (therefore constitutionally guaranteed) in understanding that both Darjeeling District and Jalpaiguri District, identities of the inhabitants are safeguarded within the articulations of the referred Schedule. Since the working of the Constitution in 1952, when the first Parliament of India was elected, and which august representative of the peoples body enacted the Fifth Amendment 1955 and Seventh Amendment 1956 Bill into acts, was primarily targeted to effect new state formations as directed by law, meaning here, the provision of the V&VI Schedules. The Fifth Amendment placed the name of the President of India as the sole authority to determine the legal process provided by the provisions of the V&VI Schedules, i.e. the sole right of new state formations being the prerogative of the President of India only and none other besides, nor the Centre or the State govt. concerned. Infact Parliament on its own authority is invisible as far as state formation is concerned. However this is not to disregard the fact that eventually Parliament in conformity with the recommendation of the President eventually legislates the bill into an act for incorporation into the Constitution of India as well as its implementation within the specified territories, in the state or elsewhere. 

These conventions are well addressed in the book by documentary evidences in the form of tables indicating how new states were created by the specific criteria’s implied by law. In which it is advised the readers to understand the implicating meanings of such designations implicit to the general meanings of Backward Tracts (1870), Scheduled Districts or Local Laws Extent Act (1874), Partially Excluded Area (Act of 1935 and Order 1936), Fifth Schedule (Scheduled Tribes & Scheduled Area), Fifth Schedule (Scheduled Tribes- Tribes Advisory Council deficit of Scheduled Area), Absorbed Area (laws) Act 1954, Inner Line Permit regulation of 1873 (relaxed/withdrawn in 1990 only, for whatever reasons require to be addressed in time). These specific details infact describe the true identity of the inhabitants of the District as distinct and different from the plains of India as understood by census 1931. Wherein the people of the district including Sikkim 376,369 (total population) were described in the heading as ‘Hill tribes of the Himalayas’. Given the population figure, the Hill tribes of the Himalayas comprised over 80% of the total population (pop). 

This raises a very complex question in relation to determining the existing Backward Tracts (1870) for exclusion (from general administration of the Centre and the Provinces) implied by the phraseology Excluded & Partially Excluded Areas (E&PEA) in the Act of 1935 and Order 1936 (determining the specified areas). Had proper ethnological aspects been applied, as already described by the phrase Hill tribes of the Himalayas, constituting over 80% of the population of Darjeeling Dist inclusive of Sikkim, Darjeeling Dist by the majority implication should properly have been included as an excluded area (EA) and not partially excluded area as per the pop statistics of census 1931. However despite the title ‘Hill tribes of the Himalayas’ of 1931 census, fully expressing the concept, the majority portion of the hill tribes were omitted mention in the Order of 1936. The Hill tribes were reduced seemingly to a minority from a majority in pop thereby marginalising the tribal identity of the District to a less significant identity as Partially Excluded Area. (The reader is reminded here to notice the writer of the book has not been able to detect the documents which details the hill tribes concerned in respect of the Order of 1936). Not finding this document in the net which raises the suspicion of a doubt that PEA implied to Darjeeling Dist, seemed to have been maneuvered for a targeted objective. This was to marginalise the hill tribes from an impacting majority, to an insignificant number in pop count in considering the identity of the District as being dominated by non tribes (these being the marginalised hill tribes). This is to suggest that the PEA designation was misleadingly conceived to ensure that the identity of most of the hill tribes was dissolved in composing actually into the non tribe pop. This is to understand that the rulers of Provincial Bengal being well versed in the implications and meaning of backward areas (prior to 1870), Backward Tracts (1870), Scheduled Districts (1874), Backward Tracts (1919) and finally phrased as Excluded &Partially Excluded Areas (1935) which Act implied such territories were infact outside British India under treaty obligations and therefore required a different set of rules and administration outside the purview of the Centre and the Provinces. Consequently in census 1941 implying identification of pop of individuals mother language, unfortunately was misinterpreted as the spoken language of the mother, which is not what it intended really, but on the contrary, meant the mother’s ethnological background as a tribe in contrast to the majority pop of India. As a matter of allusion it can be historically imagined that the Hill tribes of the Himalayas is a composite of Sino-Tibetan now covered under the indigenous Indo-Tibetans mostly speaking the Tibeto-Burman dialects as the mother tongue, infact comprises the entire range of the constellation of Himalayan tribe pop along the entire northern borders of India with the Tibetan plateau, from Kashmir Ladakh in the west extending all along the hill ranges to the far eastern borders of India with Burma. This accounts for the fact that the Inner Line Permit (ILP) regime was initially titled as Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation (BEFR) 1873. This permit regime interestingly points to the fact that North Bengal comprising five Districts (Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Malda, Cooch Behar & West Dinajpur) more properly, had vested political inferences not intervened, in legal context, parentally should form part of Assam and administered as a Chief Commissioners Province (1824). 

Even without this distinction, the North Bengal districts were infact under Commissionership and still exists till now, is a reckoned fact which none can deny, no matter under which blanket it is covered by the State. All stakeholders interested to learn more about Darjeeling District require enquiring into the importance of the post of the Divisional Commissioner and the specifics implied within the purview of the post. 

For some strange reason reference West Bengal District Gazette 1980, Darjiling, quote last para “According to the Constitution of India, the district no longer enjoys special privileges and all statues, except the Bengal Tenancy Act in certain of its particulars apply to it. The Deputy Commissioner of Darjiling is now also a District Magistrate and has to be notified as such in the Official Gazette when a new Deputy Commissioner is appointed”. If the above contention of the Gazette is to stand still, it requires taking the stakeholders into confidence building measure as to prove the legality of the source on which the declaration is founded. 

Unless this is adhered to and transparently declared in writ to the public domain, to eliminate any undue apprehension in the minds of the stakeholders who still are unable to express how the perceptual devolution of power was exchanged, so to say, between the contentious implications of the Deputy Commissioner to the prevalence of District Magistrate. 

Whether this is an aspect of synonymous with free expression or replacing the content of the names to any specific agenda, the free will of the pop concerned is required to be consulted, unless and otherwise, the aspect has already been condoled by TAC without whose concussion the exchange in name could not have taken place. Whatever may have been the past history of this name change as well as the lifting of the ILP in Darjeeling District and North Bengal per se the govt. as an institution conducting the rules of law or the executive, legislature and judiciary, and above all the entire gamut of administrations, require to explain to the people of the district the stakeholders, where they stand as a matter of law within the constitutional boundary. Unless this is freely expressed by the state, and not through managed media such as provided by the likes of Dola Mitra, Dipak Ghosh and Romit Basu in national news magazines and newspapers, and that too without explaining any constitutional implications of Darjeeling District as a Partially Excluded Area, TAC implications of the Fifth Schedule (without Scheduled Area), Absorbed Area (Laws) Act 1954, Deputy Commissionership, Inner Line Permit, etc., which are all aspects of deaf, dumb and blind, to the concerns of the state which is using all weapons within its means to dislodge the statehood demand. This is truly a sad day for Bengal. This was somehow predicted by a journal of Asok Sen some years back when he addressed in his article in either The Statesman /Telegraph, the details is beyond for recollection, declaring that no intelligentsia exists in West Bengal and goes on to implicate its contention, that had it been so, the state would not be in this state of complete disarray. This logic applies to Darjeeling Dist as well, after all the Dist is still in West Bengal. Unless and otherwise the detachment takes place the fate of the District will remain irreversible as that of the state. Which is why a separate state is the only solution for the hill people of the District is to determine their future. Is history repeating itself in India wherein the state is obviously behaving like a British colonial power, at least they gave independence to the democratic aspirations of the Indian people whereas West Bengal is still denying the people of the District since the Constitution of India started functioning in 1952. Even India attained independence in a shorter period of time, considering Darjeeling Dist has been under Wes Bengal for 61 years. Earlier the leftist govt. rule dubiously opposed the statehood demand and the same is now followed by a govt. which replaced it tooth and nail following the same route, does not bode well in reckoning the mindset of the people of the state in the larger map of India. If three new states were formed out of UP, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh in 2000 AD in the constitutional implications as Scheduled Areas in the state, Darjeeling Dist & Dooars should not be far behind in being declared as Scheduled Area in time. This is visualized in consequence to the working of the central govt. in implementing the provision of Fifth Schedule in respect to the two districts in creating a new state of Darjeeling & Dooars (or possibly as a UT).

Therefore the present array facing the statehood agitation whether it is the GTA or the paramount demand itself, the unit dispensation the movement whether in agitation demonstration or other democratic activities least be bothered of the present tense which will pass by every day, and experience it from time to time. This is expected to end when the district is finally scheduled appendaged by the consideration of the marginalized group of the hill tribes of the Himalayas being listed as ST which event is reckoned already placed in the Rajya Sabha under order of the Supreme Court of India however under complaint of the leader of the opposition, BJP MP Arun Jaitley the Bill has been forwarded to the Parliamentary Standing Committee for their observation. This is regrettable considering the fact that Darjeeling District MP is none other than BJP MP Jaswant Singh who on the other side has spoken on the floor of the house regarding the statehood demand. Maybe we expect in future time space when the district becomes a Scheduled Area, who will bail the cat of statehood in the House of Parliament, the BJP or Congress members would be worth the note. Since the Congress declared the creation of Telangana (also under provision of V Schedule aspects as a Scheduled Area) here is less doubt that BJP will be allowed to formerly announce the creation of Gorkhaland or its legally proper announcement as UT or Darjeeling & Dooars. In order Dooars to be incorporated as such the area also requires to be scheduled within the ambit of census 2011. 

Those citing various allegations and innuendoes, individuals, persons, associations, politicians , political parties and so called intellectuals such as Aditi Chatterji ‘Contested landscapes: The story of Darjeeling’ (2007 published by Intac) has researched infact an antithesis. Barun Roy’s ‘Gorkha and Gorkhaland’ (Pub. By Parbati Roy Foundation no date?) has given a bundle of discourses quite appreciatively about the Gorkhas but the second part of the title Gorkhaland his research is practically nil and therefore the book as a whole requires to be discarded lock, stock and barrel as far as the statehood demand is concerned. 

He just cites the evolution of the demand and places them verbatim as some sort of socio-political agitation without implying the constitutional history of the area as expressed in this very article in former paragraphs. Even an inkling of this aspect is denied in the book therefore confirming that the statehood demand alleged more as a democratic demand without accounting the constitutional aspects. But the best of it, is the book by Dr. D.P.Kar ‘The Gorkhaland movement a clandestine invasion’ (Pub.2009/2nd Ed.2012) is totally directed to mislead the readers and that too from a particularly chauvinistic angle as a writer from a majority community and ruling the state no matter what brand of political dispensation. Primarily Dr.Kar associated with Jana Chetna bespeaks his language as totally motivated and directed towards a single pointed agenda to dislodge any opposition to the majority pop of the state whether they be citizens of the country or perceived citizens (immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh registered in the electoral rolls via media of the ration card certificate) abounds in most of the eastern states and now thronging the metropolitan cities of Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta identified as labours from West Bengal with no questions asked. 

This perspective has been well camouflaged as the intended antithesis while implying the immigrant hill tribes of Nepal as the afflictions of the Gorkhaland movement as the thesis of his book. Like Barun Roy, Kar has chronologically placed the hill tribes (Gorkhas) of Nepal migration which no doubt is a historical reality, but what he fails to realize is that the very ground of his residence in Siliguri to be precise the Terai or malaria infected boggy land was developed by these hardy immigrants by clear felling the densely forested lands to a habitable location is a landmark which none can dispute. 

Infact the entire northeast regions of India including Bhutan and Sikkim for what they are now, is the work of these hard working tribes of Nepal. It was these immigrant laboring hill tribes of Nepal who were identified in census 1931 as legitimate tribes. That is, they were there when the British invaders entered Sikkim and Bhutan. Now the same hill tribes are referred in common parlance, whether wrongly or rightly, as a matter of reference as Gorkhas. Therefore these Gorkha tribes were already there during and after takeover of Darjeeling Dist and the Dooars long before any settlers from the plains arrived. No doubt after baring the lands for tea cultivation more influxes of Gorkha labourers arrived from Nepal for service in the industry. Infact the tribal pop of the plains migrating into these Sikkimese and Bhutanese Dooars and Terai lands was more flooding than that of the Gorkha influx. Whatever maybe said about these immigrants they were the actual performers of converting this land into agricultural and habitable plots and in which soil of their death also became the soil of their descendants. Without taking this historical aspect into consideration and instead indict their descendants as foreigners by Kar and his lot in fact becomes suspect of his own ulterior intention, that is, to claim Siliguri Terai distinct from Darjeeling hills seems to be the motive in alleging the inadequacy of the statehood demand by confounding it with the Gorkhas of Nepali nationality. No question of a doubt there may be a substance of truth in his claim, however this does not give him the right nor the authority to speak on the statehood demand based on constitutional guaranteed rights as a perception of the Fifth Schedule. 

Although the demand may be named as Gorkhaland, already accepted by the state govt. in establishing the GTA which by itself virtually accepts the claim therefore there his bone of contention alleging the demand for state including Darjeeling Dist and the Dooars to his imagination of the footprints of the Gorkhas as displayed pictorially in the front & last pgs of his book is condemnable and vituperative in contempt. In the same voice it requires to be stated that his book also contains various aspects of history related to Gorkha/Nepali (to be precise) the hill tribes of the Himalayas, known as Gorkhas for whatever specific reasons was actually intended, which was to induct the conquered tribes of Nepal into the British army after the treaty of Segauli 1816, under the designation as Gorkhas in order to indicate (or to hide the fact of the matter) from international observation that it was not Nepalese nationals inducted as soldiers but mercenary in aspect as Gorkhas. To legalise the Gorkha term originating from Nepal, the Tripartite Agreement in 1947 and its following amendments, in the very inception of the agreement, clarifies that 1. Gorkha is a citizen of Nepal at the point of induction into the British/Indian Gorkha regiment 2. Gorkha remains as Nepali citizens during the period of their service within the concerned regiment and 3. Even at the time of termination of service Gorkha remains a citizen of Nepal. 

The distinction between an Indian and Nepali Gorkha is clearly notified in 1988 after the signing of the DGHC Accord. Any Nepali/Gorkha born in India before 1950 is an Indian national, thus to raise any issue within the Indian context is valid ground for projecting it. Therefore for Dipak Ghosh to suggest to repatriate all Gorkhas/Nepalis after census 1931 bespeaks his ignorance of history as law. Or is he only sycophaning his leaders up ante against Gorkhaland. This is disastrous in hindsight as the very foundation of his premise is incorrect and therefore suspect by nature. Infact this is a typical stance of the non Bhadraloke. As already stated earlier the true Bhadraloks of yester years do not exist at this moment of time. It is high time now someone from the plains be it whoever Bengali, Bihari, Assamese, or even a Bangladeshi, should endeavour to write the true history of north Bengal without policising it with emotions which is a trademark of the Indian psychic.