The Hindu : North Bengal's politics of cultural identity

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Tuesday, Mar 30, 2004

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National - Elections 2004

North Bengal's politics of cultural identity

Will the demand for a Kamtapur State go the way of Gorkhaland? This is the main talking point in north Bengal in the tun-up to the election, writes Marcus Dam.

North Bengal is a veritable cauldron of sub-nationalist passion and linguistic sentiment. A place where people define themselves in terms of ethnic groups and where politics is often used to determine cultural identities.

From the hills of Darjeeling to the plains of the Dooars and the Terai, political loyalties have been structured along ethnic and community lines.

Over the years, the region has been witness to social and political implosions that have resulted in calls for political autonomy, Statehood, and boycott of the elections. In the most extreme cases, these exhortations have led to demands for sovereignty.

The impact of such aspirations on the polity can hardly be overemphasised. While the movement for a Gorkhaland State to be carved out of the Darjeeling hills in the mid-1980s was a watershed in the history of local electoral politics, the rumblings for a Kamtapur State in the sub-Himalayan region have reverberated through the plains of north Bengal since the mid-1990s, re-defining the political idiom there.

The lid was finally put on the Statehood demand in the Darjeeling hills with the formation of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Autonomous Council (DGAHC) in 1998, spawning a set of imperatives which has since governed electoral politics in the hills.

The Gorkha National Liberation Front under the stewardship of Subash Ghisingh, chairman of the DGHAC, has largely determined the fate of those participating in the electoral process either by staying away from the fray or by lending covert support.

Three of the seven Assembly segments which comprise the Darjeeling Lok Sabha constituency lie in the hills. How Mr. Ghisingh chooses to play his political cards will undoubtedly go a long way, yet again, in determining the fortunes of the contestants.

His party has not participated directly in the past three successive parliamentary polls. This time too the GNLF is likely to restrict itself to pulling the strings from the wings rather than coming onto the stage. It is against such a political backdrop that the recent meeting between the Chief Minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, and Mr. Ghisingh is considered significant.

Even before the echoes of Statehood had died down in the Darjeeling hills the first stirrings of a similar demand propelled by ethnic aspirations in the north Bengal plains were discernible.

As if taking a cue from their militant neighbours in the hills and those demanding a separate Bodoland in Assam, extremists set up the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation in Jalpaiguri's Kumargram block in 1993. With the experience of combating separatist forces in the hills behind it, the West Bengal Government cracked down on it, scarring the political landscape.

In a bid to strengthen the "Kamtapuri cause" and give it a "democratic image", the Kamtapur People's Party (KPP) was set up in January 1996, threatening to re-sketch the region's political profile.

The KPP, notwithstanding its alleged links with the KLO, has contested in elections in the past with, at best, only marginal success. Its support base is mainly confined to segments of the tribal communities — primarily the Rajbangshis — in the tea-growing areas of Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri and Cooch Behar districts. Spanning the last two are the three Lok Sabha constituencies of Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar and Cooch Behar.

The KPP's leadership today is fractured. It s founder-president, Atul Roy, is at loggerheads with the present chief, Nikhil Roy. The two have been accusing each other of playing into the hands of the CPI (M), which remains the principal political force in the region despite the presence of the RSP and the Forward Bloc. Nonetheless, the emergence of the KPP [Mr. Nikhil Roy claims that the KPP got nearly two lakh votes in the last Lok Sabha polls] is a factor the Left Front has to contend with.

This is particularly so in view of a renewed call for Statehood by the KPP earlier this year, when the KLO was still reeling under the impact of the December 2003 offensive by the Royal Bhutan Army against its activists in south Bhutan.

The spectre of KLO militants — some of whom are said to have escaped the Bhutan offensive — striking again during the run-up to the polls is not only a matter of concern to the local administration but also to leaders of the mainstream political parties. Neither of the Roys discounts this possibility even though internal bickering within the KPP could see rebel candidates owing allegiance to one faction pitted against those of the other.

Whether such an inter-party electoral feud will sound the death knell to the campaign for a separate Kamtapur State and precipitate its sliding into political oblivion just the way the Gorkhaland movement did in the Darjeeling hills a decade-and-a-half ago remains to be seen.

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