Another issue for Darjeeling is the separatist movement by ethnic Gorkhas, who make up three-fourths of the region’s population and essentially all of the tea industry’s workforce. Darjeeling is the northernmost part of West Bengal, a state about the size of Maine or Portugal with a population of more than 90 million people (to Maine’s 1.3 million and Portugal’s 10.5 million). Darjeeling remains under the administrative power of Kolkata, at the opposite end of the state some four hundred miles away, although not without significant local opposition. Bandhs, or shutdowns—those who dare open their shop risk having it burnt down—strikes, “agitations,” violence, and curfews have been roiling the area and disrupting life in the hills (and even tea production) as Gorkhas press their demands for their own independent state within India.
The Darjeeling hills have, over centuries, been under the control of Sikkim, Nepal, and Bhutan, and then the British after they scooped it up in the 1830s, but not Bengal, argue statehood proponents, nor has it ever been politically, socially, linguistically, or culturally part of it. Outside the hills, Indian Gorkhas feel—and are treated like—foreigners, they say. “Historically and geographically, Darjeeling, the land of the Indian Gorkhas, has always been part of the Indian Nation—but the people of Darjeeling never were, and have no desire to ever be, part of the State of Bengal. It’s as simple as that,” wrote Basant Lama in the preface of his The Story of Darjeeling,13 relying heavily on italics throughout for emphasis. “All the Indian Gorkha is asking for is that Darjeeling, the land of his forefathers … be once again detached from Bengal and restored to its original status as a separate homeland for the Indian Gorkhas within the constitutional framework of India.”14
Sikkim, to the north of Darjeeling, with a population of only half a million and a land area of just 2,740 square miles (the size of Delaware), has its own state. But not Darjeeling.
According to the current chief minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, who has reiterated her stand in area rallies, West Bengal and Darjeeling are inseparable. Opponents of Gorkhaland’s aspirations often argue against further fragmenting the country, or even the state. Bengal has been painfully divided before. In 1905 the viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, effected the partition of Bengal, only to have it reunited in 1911, until it was, again, divided in 1947 between West Bengal and East Bengal (which eventually became Bangladesh). Some opponents to independent statehood argue that the Gorkhas are new immigrants, settling only a century and a half ago, recent by Indian standards, and not entitled to carve out their own state.
Gorkhaland statehood demands aren’t new. Calls for autonomy from West Bengal first sounded in 1907. In 1980, the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) was formed and launched a series of often violent protests. In 1987 a forty-day bandh culminated in the establishment of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC). Some years of stability followed. But a harder-line faction within the party thought the GNFL had traded the council for statehood ambitions. With conflicts and infighting marring the organization, a splinter group formed, Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM), which took over power of the Darjeeling hills in 2008 and ratcheted up the bid for Gorkhaland with fitful and disruptive agitations.
At the end of January 2011, the GJM began a lengthy bandh—with a single exemption: tea plantations. That changed by early February when police killed three GJM activists. As 2011’s first flush readied to be plucked, the hills were silent, businesses shuttered, roads empty. At the time, the managing director of one of Darjeeling’s largest groups of tea estates said, “If the political problems remain, the Darjeeling tea industry will be ruined.” Another group head agreed: “If political problems and shutdowns continue, it will spell the doom for the Darjeeling tea industry.”15
Politically, though, the move proved effective. In July 2011, the GJM, the West Bengal state government, and the federal Indian government signed an agreement to set up an autonomous administrative body for the Darjeeling hills with substantially more powers over socioeconomic, agricultural, infrastructural, educational, cultural, and linguistic issues. Elections took place at the end of July 2012, with the GJM sweeping all 45 seats unopposed.
From the outset, whether this would lead to a significant level of autonomy, even independence, or whether it was merely a placating move on the part of the government remained to be seen. The leader of the GJM, Bimal Gurung, continued to insist that the agreement was “only the preparation for the separate state of Gorkhaland.”16 While Chief Minister Banerjee categorically refused to consider this option, Gurung saw it happening within a year. When Gurung was sworn in as the president of the newly created Gorkha Territorial Administration (GTA) in August, he reiterated his push for independence. “I will not let it delay further,” he stressed. “In six months.”17
The relationship between Gurung’s GJM and Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress Party settled into an uneasy truce, even with the GJM rhetoric of “violence and bloodbath” if its demand for separated statehood was not met. While uncertainty dominated, 2013’s first and second flushes passed without major political incidents on the tea estates.
But then at the end of July 2013, as monsoon teas were being plucked and processed, India’s ruling Congress Party offered statehood to Telangana, in Andhra Pradesh. “They granted Telangana statehood, so why not Gorkhaland?” went the familiar cry. Gurung resigned as head of the GTA and called an indefinite bandh. A GJM supporter immolated himself. Tourists and students were asked to leave. Shops closed, roads emptied, and hotels shut. Schools canceled classes. Boarding students were sent home. Nothing could move. Vehicles on the road were burned. “There will be hardships but our movement will continue,” Gurung said.18
Again, tea estates were given an exemption. Yet this time they could not bring anything into the estates—food, fuel—nor take any tea out. Bushes need to be plucked; harvesting continued. Sacks of finished tea stacked up as stocks of coal, fuel, atta flour, and rice dwindled. Whenever a day’s relaxation in the bandh allowed people to restock basic necessities, convoys of trucks loaded with tea made their way down out of the hills as quickly as possible.
Finally, on September 10, 2013, after nearly six weeks, the bandh was suspended. Traffic returned to the roads. At the end of October, Chief Minister Banerjee arrived in the Darjeeling hills for a five-day visit. Gurung reversed his stance, met with her, and promised to call no more bandhs.
In the run-up to the 2014 Indian general election, Gurung took a new approach. The GJM switched its support to the Narendra Modi–led Bharatiya Janata Party’s parliamentary candidate for Darjeeling. After the BJP’s landside victory, Gurung was rewarded with an invitation to Modi’s swearing-in ceremony in Delhi at the end of May. When the West Bengal chief minister returned to the hills for a visit in July to help rekindle her relationship, Gurung gave her the cold shoulder.19 Their relationship had soured. The struggle for statehood continues, but now with a new ally.
During the 2013 monsoon season bandh, as tea piled up in Darjeeling factories and orders went unfilled, some buyers began sourcing their long-leaf orthodox teas for blending from other places. “This year with all of the problems [certain blenders] bought from Nepal,” said one planter.
While Sikkim’s lone tea estate, Temi, produces teas most similar in character to Darjeeling’s, the neighbor to the west—Nepal—is the biggest potential competition, even threat, as the recent crisis laid bare.