From: dipakde27@gmail.com   
      
    ETHNICITY OF GORKHAS HAS NOT ESTABLISHED   
      
   -	DIPAK DE [HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST; M. PHIL IN HUMAN RIGHTS]    
      
                             While Darjeeling became the wreckers' ball, Nepal   
   has become a viable, vibrant space of thinking, learning and searching the way   
   for development. Nepalese of Darjeeling have not dumbed down the   
   pre-independent philosophy and    
   tactics to wrest-away Darjeeling from not only from Bengal but also from   
   India. Nepalese leaders of Darjeeling behaving and uttering in such a way that   
   they are the locum tenens of past leaders but in post-independent India there   
   is no such locus standi    
   and as a result the fidelity and integrity of the Nepalese of Darjeeling are   
   in question. In addition there is no raison d'etre of Gorkha ethnicity and in   
   spite of that in the unconstitutional tripartite agreement in 2011 for the   
   creation of Gorkhaland    
   Territorial Administration [GTA], the sentence "the ethnicity of Gorkhas   
   established" inserted in the development paragraph. News appeared on 30th   
   January, 2015 that Subash Ghisingh, the president of Gorkha National   
   Liberation Front, died on 29th January,   
    2015. He was in exile, far away from the kingdom [Darjeeling hills] that had   
   once been his and that he had lost to a one time vassal. Like King, he said   
   the last word; similarly his former trusted aide Bimal Gurung is at present,   
   saying the last word in    
   Darjeeling hills. But in death, he may be luckier than his wife, who was   
   denied the privilege of having her last rites performed back at her long-lost   
   home in the hills. What happens in Darjeeling reverberates far beyond those   
   hills. The echoes,    
   political and strategic, travel to Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan, Tibet and also to   
   the distant capital cities of Delhi and Beijing. Ghisingh's struggle for   
   Gorkhaland [at first for independent country, thereafter separate state] was a   
   very different affair,    
   not just because of the scale of its violence, but also because it was seen by   
   many in Delhi as a Himalayan conspiracy for a Greater Nepal, which aimed at   
   creating a confederation of mountain kingdoms and states away from India's   
   control. Ghisingh    
   himself added much to the making of the conspiracy. He talked of historical   
   wrongs committed in the region and wanted to rewrite its history. He raised   
   the issue of the legality of the Sugouli Treaty of 1815 between East India   
   Company and Nepal and of    
   India's treaties with Nepal and Bhutan. John Whelpton in his book 'A History   
   of Nepal' writes, From 1986 to 1988, a violent campaign was conducted by the   
   some of the Nepali-speaking majority in Darjeeling .......The leaders of the   
   agitation eventually    
   settled for limited autonomy while still remaining part of West Bengal, and   
   the central government had seemed at times almost to welcome the movement as a   
   tool to be used against the Communist Party of India (Marxist) administration   
   in Calcutta. However,    
   the whole episode raised suspicion in Indian minds that some Nepalese still   
   nursed the dream of a 'Greater Nepal' reaching all along the Eastern   
   Himalayas. This was so even though the Gorkhaland activists themselves   
   stressed that they wanted recognition    
   as a community within India, not closer links with Nepal itself.   
      
                          Indians of Nepalese Origin or the Nepamul Bharatiya   
   feel handicapped, as their name, is willy-nilly associated with and tagged to   
   another sovereign state, Nepal. The very nomenclature of the community creates   
   confusion even among    
   them and their neighbours. They are invariably accused of being Nepalese, the   
   citizens of Nepal, who are then charged to be usurping rights and privileges   
   meant for the bonafide Indians. The protestations that they have been living   
   in India for    
   generations and were born and brought up in India are not taken    
   eriously........From the second quarter of nineteenth century, the British   
   opened up Darjeeling, Sikkim, Duars, and Assam for the Nepalese settlement.   
   That was the beginning of an organized    
   colonization and extensive presence of the Nepalese in certain pockets of   
   Northeast India.  Precisely after the Anglo-Burmese War of 1826 Nepalese did   
   come as soldiers of fortune to begin with and their settlement could be   
   located on strategically    
   significant landmarks around British settlements and army cantonments. The   
   second set of immigrants were the herdsmen, graziers, cattle rearing,   
   dairymen, lumber jacks and other sundry men, who could not be employed in the   
   armed forces. Nepalese were the    
   favoured ethnic stock of the white colonial rulers. Willy-nilly, they came to   
   be identified as the 'sahibs' faithful boys. Indian Nepalese have struggled to   
   forge an identity for themselves that distinguishes them from the Nepalese of   
   Nepal, so that they    
   might emerge as a distinct ethnic group within India - writes a Nepali   
   intellectual Awadesh Coomer Sinha, retired as Professor of Sociology from   
   North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong. Nepalese of Darjeeling and adjoining   
   areas, after elapse of 'Gurkha'    
   word magic when their beloved masters British colonials [till date they are   
   carrying this feeling in their inner-heart], efforts made in the past to coin   
   terms describing Bhargoli, Bharpali, Bhopali, Nepamul, Gorkhali and Gorkha. At   
   last since 1980s the    
   term 'Gorkha' has been successful but not with the same interpretation of   
   'Gurkha'. In British era Gurkha was not any race, community, ethnic/tribal   
   group connotation. In "Concise History of Darjeeling District Since 1835" by   
   E.C. Dozey, mentioned that    
   Gurkha does not mean a race. In 1920, we had 10 Gurkha regiments of 2   
   battalions each. He wrote - every work on the subject to be found in private   
   as well as public libraries in Darjeeling, Calcutta and even the British   
   Museum has, during the past five    
   years, been referred to in order that each even and project which had   
   contributed to the growth and prosperity of Darjeeling should find a place in   
   this record.    
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)