Nepalese Demand for a Separate State in India & its Implications

FROM INDIA VARTA

By Dr. Dipak Basu

Veteran Naxalite leader and the CPI-ML general secretary, Mr Kanu Sanyal has expressed support towards the ongoing agitation in the Darjeeling hills demanding a separate Gorkhaland state. The Maoist leader said, his party had favoured the Gorkhaland demand earlier and supports it now as well. “The Nepalis in Darjeeling have got every right to self-rule and the demand for Gorkhaland is very genuine.

But how genuine is that demand? The fact remains that the Nepalese are not the original inhabitants of Darjeeling. By all means, except for the few who were in Darjeeling before 1950, almost all of them are Nepalese citizens i.e., foreigners but due to the Indo-Nepal Treaty of 1950 were allowed to stay in India. Does that treaty gave them the right to demand a separate state?

If we look back in history Nepalese were in expansionary mode before. The Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814 - 1816, was fought between Nepal and the British East India Company as a result of aggresive attacks by Nepalese on both India and Tibet. Gorkhas were originated in West-central Nepal. The Gorkha army, after occupying all of eastern Nepal by 1773, invaded Sikkim in 1788. In the west, the Kumaon region and its capital Almora, were occupied by Gorkhas as well. To the north however, aggression against Tibet forced China in 1792 to attack Nepal and occupy areas very close to the capital Kathmandu. However, the Gurkha appetite of invasion was not stopped. In 1803, the Kingdom of Garhwal was occupied by the Gurkhas. Further west, even Kangra was occupied until in 1809, but Ranjit Singh the Sikh Emperor drove them out. Finally the British defeated them and drove them out of all these areas in India and Sikkim. In the Treaty of Sugauli in 1816, Darjeeling was returned back to Sikkim. According to the treaty, Nepal lost Sikkim, the territories of Kumaon and Garhwal, and most of the lands of the Tarai in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Darjeeling was annexed by the British Indian Empire in 1849. Immigrants from Nepal were recruited to work at construction sites, tea gardens, and on other agriculture-related projects; but their numbers were few and far between.

After the independence of India in 1947, Darjeeling was merged with the state of West Bengal. The separate district of Darjeeling was established consisting of the hill towns of Darjeeling, Kurseong, Kalimpong and some parts of the Terai region. When Tibet was occupied by in 1950, thousands of Tibetan refugees settled across Darjeeling district. Darjeeling has seen significant growth in its population during and after 1950, when the Nepalese started coming in, especially since the 1970s. Annual growth rates reached as high as 45% in the 1990s, far above the national, state, and district averages.

Nepalese were mainly labourers as they could work at high altitudes. They stayed on in India but they still identify themselves with Nepali music, culture, art and tradition.

During the 1980s, encouraged by some section of The Congress party, particularly Arjun Singh, who wanted to destabilise the leftist government of West Bengal, a violent movement by the Gorkha National Liberation Front started demanding a separate state. As a compromise Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council was given semi-autonomous powers to govern the district. Later its name was changed to “Darjeeling Gorkha Autonomous Hill Council” (DGAHC), although Gurkha are not the original people but immigrants to Darjeling from Nepal.

Gurkhs are Nepalese, not Indian at all. The land in Darjeeling was always belonged to the Lepchas. This was true during the signing of the brotherhood treaty between Tibetans and Lepchas in the 1420s, during the Nepalese invasion of the 1760s, or when the East India Company took Darjeeling in 1816. However, the Indo-Nepal Treaty of 1950, Article VII, grants citizens of both countries to move, reside and own property and participate in trade and commerce in each other”s territory. Nepalese taking advantage of that treaty came to India to demand a separate state, but would Nepal tolerate a similar demand by the Indian citizens who are now settled in Nepal?

India is always a soft state without any strategy, without any policy and even it does not react but always give in to the demands by its neighbouring countries. In similar circumstances in 1950s when large numbers of Indians were settled in Burma and Sri Lanka, they got expelled and India had accepted them back without protests. Both Pakistan and Bangladesh have expelled almost all non-Muslims. However, now when India is facing the prospect of a very violent country Nepal, controlled by vicious Maoists closely linked with China, and expanding through the emigrations of its citizens, India”s response is to offer more autonomy to these foreign citizens in India and allow them to come to India more and more to take over even larger areas. Nepalese demand today is not restricted to the Darjeeling District any more; they are demanding practically the whole of north Bengal as a part of their new state of Gurkhaland. Nepalese immigrants already taken over Sikkim, where they are today more than 70 percent of the population.

Two questions should be asked. How long would it take these Nepalese through immigration to take over parts of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarachal, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which they had occupied during the early 19th century? What would be implications of that given the close relationship between the present government of Nepal and China for the security of India? The government of India does not care about these, but it is urging the West Bengal government to compromise more, although the creation of Gurkhaland as a Nepalese controlled area threatens the link between India and the whole of the North Eastern India.