The #FightForGorkhaland
The #FightForGorkhaland I originally wrote this July 3 2017 in reply to Urbashi Pradhan's "Ma, mati, manush and my mother tongue: Bengal’s language politics & the unrest in Darjeeling", June 30, 2017 (See: http://scroll.in/article/842066/ma-mati-manush-and-my-mother-tongue-bengals-language-politics-is-behind-the-unrest-in-darjeeling) as a Letter to the Editor, Scroll.in. This has now been largely rewritten here.I am motivated to write this article by notions of justice, truth, morality, as taught by the Natural Law that applies to non-Christians, and by Divine Law, as applies to Christians. Natural Law states that all mankind is descended from Adam and Eve, created by God, and that in the Natural Order, all people have a natural right to their homeland, homes, societies, communities, cultures. Divine Law amends that to an extent, but these yet remain true.
Gorkhas, Nepalese settlers in the last 150 years in the Darjeeling Hills or South Sikkim, the Darjeeling-Kalimpong-Kurseong tract, have revived an agitation demanding the creation of an Indian "State of Gorkhaland" to be carved out of the present Indian State of West Bengal. This was triggered, they claim, by the Government of West Bengal making the Bengali language compulsory throughout West Bengal.
There is now a wave building, almost yet not very visible, driven by the Media, that shows that the Gorkhaland agitation by Nepalese settlers in India is just, that the Gorkhas are being wronged, and that India should welcome the creation of a new "State of Gorkhaland" carved out of the northern parts of West Bengal, being Darjeeling Hills, and including Kalimpong and Kurseong etc. The Indian "State of Sikkim" populated largely by Nepalese settlers in the former (northern parts) of the Kingdom of Sikkim, has not unexpectedly come out in support of the "#FightForGorkhaland."
The Darjeeling Hills region including Kalimpong & Kurseong is a historic part of the Kingdom of Sikkim, homeland of the Sikkimese,a fusion of local Lepchas with Bhutias who invaded a thousand years ago from Tibet; the Bhutias founded the Kingdom of Sikkim.
Nepal was founded when Sub-Himalayan principalities threw off the yoke of the collapsing Mughal Empire, their overlords; the Principality of Gorkha took advantage of the anarchy to invade and annex its neighbours. This war of expansion took the Gorkhas into Sikkim and Bhutan, and into Bihar and UP, Uttaranchal, Himachal areas of modern India and parts of Tibet. This inevitably brought the Gorkha Empire into conflict with England which was expanding into the same territories at the same time, from a bit longer, in fact, than the Gorkhas.
The largest kingdom of these Sub-Himalayan principalities was Newar. The Gorkhas conquered the larger Newar and adopted the name of that more prestigious state as that of their own, but corrupted it to Nepal.
England defeated the Gorkha or Nepalese empire, and Nepal was more or less confined to its present international borders. As part of the Anglo-Nepalese War, the Kingdom of Sikkim was liberated from Nepal. However, the English were not themselves honest, and took advantage of Sikkim to force the lease of South Sikkim to the East India Company, the Darjeeling Hills including Kalimpong, Kurseong, etc.
Under the English, the land was opened to systematic plantations and Nepalese subjects were imported to work the tea plantants of South Sikkim. The Nepalese began to outnumber the native Sikkimese in South Sikkim (Darjeeling Hills).
The Kingdom of Sikkim periodically protested the forced lease and alienation of South Sikkim and demanded it be returned.
After India's Independence, Sikkim's American-born queen Hope Cooke, repeated Sikkim's demand that India evacuated & restore South Sikkim. Indira Gandhi was provoked by this demand to instigate Nepalese citizens in Sikkim to demand "democracy" and to invade & annex the Kingdom of Sikkim, an act of patent and aggravated illegality and criminality then and now.
India then demonstrated hypocrisy when it helped the Kingdom of Bhutan (Bhutan has no real army of its own, Indian Army mans its frontiers with China) to suppress the demand for "democracy" by Nepalese settlers-colonialists in Bhutan, and in helping Bhutan expel the bulk of the foreigners, in sharp contrast to its actions in Sikkim.
India's hypocrisy, duplicity, opportunism, hegemonism, imperialism stands exposed by its own contrasting actions in the adjacent Kingdoms of Sikkim & Bhutan.
The Nepalese people and languages were and are foreigners in Sikkim and in South Sikkim (Darjeeling-Kurseong), as foreign as Bengali is.
India must evacuate its Nepalese colonialists from all of Sikkim, eg "Chamling", including Darjeeling-Kurseong, and restore the Kingdom of Sikkim as it was before India's patently illegal & criminal occupation.
The "argument" for a Gorkhaland is a farce, a fraud. There already exists a Gorkhaland - in Central Nepal, the historic "Gorkha District".
In Nepal, the Nepalese, the Hill Peoples of Nepal despise the "Madhesi" peoples of the Terai Plains falsely as Indians and refuse them their own state, suppressing them, oppressing them, outlawing the Hindi language so much that the Supreme Court of Nepal declared that the Hindi language Oath of Office by a Madhesi elected figurehead President was null and void, forced him to take a fresh oath in Nepalese.
The same Nepalese have no compunction pretending to a right to a "Gorkhaland" carved out of South Sikkim (Darjeeling-Kurseong), a land that they are not the natives and locals of anymore than Bengalis are.
Let us forget the questionable rights of India over South Sikkim also called Darjeeling Hills or "Gorkhaland." The natives of these lands are the Sikkimese, not the Nepalese "Gorkhas." If this region is legitimately a part of India, then fellow-Indians have a duty and an obligation to defend the exclusive and primary rights of the Sikkimese in this land. However, there is not a whisper of this anywhere, from anybody whatsoever in India.
Indians instead demonstrate open contempt and indifference for the native Sikkimese of the Darjeeling Hills, of the so-called Gorkhaland, which proves that they do not truly regard this land and its people as their own.
There are other consequences of this bad behaviour. It means that the "Peoples of India" officially consider themselves, to put it impolitely yet precisely "chutiyas" - If they can allow foreigners to colonize one of their "sister people" under their own noses, they forfeit all "native rights" themselves! There is no other way to read and understand India's attitude towards the "#FightForGorkhaland."
The name "Gorkhaland" is a fraud. Gorkhaland already exists, in Nepal, as the core of Nepal, the founding state or nation that created modern Nepal. It is the historic "Gorkha District" of Nepal. It is nowhere near, and nowhere touches South Sikkim / Darjeeling Hills, but is far from it. If anybody wants a separate Indian State of Gorkhaland, they can and must fight only for the separation of the "Gorkha District" of Nepal from Nepal and its admission to India as the "State of Gorkhaland." There is no other way in honesty and truty.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorkha_District
Creating "Gorkhaland" in South Sikkim will be a great mistake on India's part and one that will quickly lead in a few decades to India's break up. It is the height of stupidity and of open criminality. All who support and justify Gorkhaland participate in an aggravated crime against the native Sikkimese of South Sikkim / Darjeeling Hills, and against the Natural Law and Order of states, nations, peoples and communities, a crime that God will not allow to go unpunished.
By creating "Gorkhaland" India will have committed suicide.
The BJP party is openly known to be in allied with the "#FightForGorkhaland" from behind the scenes, this is not an open secret. The BJP ideology is Hinduism first, which is why it blindly supports claims of the Hindu Nepalese and has contempt for the Buddhist Sikkimese. At the same time, the BJP claims to be hyper-patriotic, hyper-nationalists. Yet, they are quite openly aiding, supporting, justifying and orchestrating the "#FightForGorkhaland" which is a fight to carve out a new Indian State exclusively for people who are, legally speaking, citizens and subjects, or at the least, natives, of Nepal, and who are not really Indians at all. This is a great act of folly that will lead to the break up of India. The BJP Hindumania madness blinds itself to this great act of folly on its part.
If the BJP supports the "Gorkhaland" fraud, it must not name it "Gorkhaland." Name it "New Nepal" along with the rest of Sikkim, and hand it over to Nepal. That is what Nepalese Imperialists truly claim, after all; the "Gorkhaland" myth is a smokescreen for Greater Nepal.
Contrast the "#FightForGorkhaland" with the "Fight for Twipraland" or "Tipraland." The kings of the former Kingdom of Tripura were successively Hinduized and favoured the colonization of Tripura by Bengalis. Today, Bengalis vastly outnumber the native Tripurans. The native Tripurans agitated and succeeded ultimately in the formation of a "Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council" similarly to that of the Nepalese or "Gorkha" colonists in South Sikkim, over 2/3rd of the modern province and likewise now demand the formation of a separate "Tipraland" or "Twipraland" state. This is again a foolish demand, because they should fight for primary and exclusive native rights for themselves for the whole of Tripura, not just of the carved out enclave. The BJP and Indian Media's lunacy and hypocrisy is shown up by the total disregard for the Tripurans' fight.
See also: http://twitter.com/hashtag/FightForGorkhaland
http://www.pictaram.eu/tag/fightforgorkhaland
http://copysta.com/hashtag/fightforgorkhaland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorkhaland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lhotshampa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhutanese_refugees
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipraland
http://twitter.com/hashtag/Twipraland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamtapur
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithila,_India
Mithila, Kamtapur and Tipraland are legitimate Indian peoples and legitimate land. A Nepalese colony in India is not a legitimate demand.
Lucio Mascarenhas, Goa
