Tranquility, Tradition Torn Apart by Gurkhas’ Violent Separatist Movement : On India’s Famed Tea Plantations, a Battle Is Brewing

The Takvar Estate is the oldest and largest of the great Darjeeling tea plantations. For 134 years, the finest tea in the world has been plucked by hand from its emerald green hillsides.

The sprawling estate in the shadow of majestic Mount Kanchenjunga has survived, practically untouched, the fall of the British Empire, a war with China, the election of a Communist state government and the red rust blight.

However, one day this month, it was a battlefield. Takvar Estate manager S.M. Kambat looked down from the teakwood veranda of his colonial bungalow to see armed combat in the tea fields. Five hundred men from the Gurkhaland National Liberation Front, flashing the curved kukri knives that are the trademark of Gurkha warriors, confronted 200 men from a tea workers union affiliated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

Violent Clash

“It was war,” Kambat, 41, said. “They had rifles. They had kukris. They had spears. Thank God the police arrived just in time or 20 to 30 people would have died easily.”

One man did die after police opened fire on the combatants. Eight tea workers’ homes also were destroyed in the melee.

India’s famous mountain tea country is one of the last bastions of British colonial traditions; tweed-jacketed planters still gather over gin at the Darjeeling Club to discuss the “first flush” of the tea bush. Now it finds its tranquility and traditions torn by a violent separatist movement.

The movement has disrupted the tea harvest, spread fear among the planters and presented the government of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi with yet another test of its ability to keep India together despite feuding linguistic, religious, tribal and caste forces.

Separate State Sought

Inspired by similar movements in other parts of India, including the Sikh separatist struggle in Punjab, Nepali-speaking residents in the Darjeeling hill districts have demanded a separate state to be called Gurkhaland, after the famous Gurkha soldiers who serve in the British and Indian armies.

Inside Nepal, the term Gurkha --it literally means “protector of cows,”--is used to describe a particular tribe of Nepalese known for their fighting skills. Like the Sikhs, the Gurkhas were identified by the British as a warrior race. Inside India, however, the word has been expanded--probably because of its heroic connotations--to include all persons of Nepalese descent.

The proposed new state of Gurkhaland--it would be India’s 24th--would theoretically have a population of about 1.4 million residents in what is now the northern tip of West Bengal state.

‘Kukris Are Forever’

Gurkhaland National Liberation Front leader Subash Ghising, 51, is a retired Gurkha trooper in the Indian army who writes romantic novels and poetry. He is a thin, dapper man who speaks in the style of the pulp novels that he writes; for example, “Guns may run out of bullets but kukris are forever.”

At a recent interview, he wore a wool plaid jacket and matching vest, jogging shoes and a brightly colored Nepalese topi cap.

Ghising insisted that the proposed Gurkhaland state would remain as part of India. “Our demand,” he said, “is for a separate state within the framework of the Indian constitution.”

Ghising claimed to represent Indians of Nepalese origin who live mainly in the Himalayan hill country on the Nepal border.

Since a 1950 bilateral treaty, Indians and Nepalese have been able to cross the border and live without few restrictions, although they are not permitted to vote. About six million Nepalese live in India. About the same number of Indians, including many merchants and traders, live in Nepal.

Homeland Stressed

Ghising claims to represent those Nepali-speaking Indians who have spent generations in India, mostly in the eastern Himalayan range area surrounding Darjeeling. His purported constituency includes the 250,000 Nepali-Indians who live on the tea estates. Ghising himself was born on an estate.

He claims that these Indian Nepalese, to whom he applies the term “Gurkhas,” will not be fully accepted as Indians until they have a homeland. Their status would be imperiled if relations soured between India and Nepal, he said, noting that during India’s 1962 war with China, hundreds of Chinese living in Darjeeling were expelled.

“We are creating a homeland for the sake of our identity. Only the name Gurkhaland can identify us as true citizens of India. Otherwise, at any time, we could be kicked out,” Ghising said.

Ghising’s movement gained impetus this summer when the government of nearby Meghalaya state expelled several hundred Nepalese who were working in the Jowai Hill coal mines on the grounds that they did not have proper credentials. Then the same workers were expelled from Assam state.

Divided Nation

India is a land increasingly divided by ethnically based movements, several of which, including those in Meghalaya and Assam, have managed to win control of state governments. The trend began in the 1950s with the South Indian linguistic movement in Tamil Nadu and has evolved until nearly every state has an identifiable linguistic or ethnic character. This trend puts pressure on minorities within states to create their own homeland.

The Gurkhas who follow Ghising claim that they are dominated by the majority Bengali population in West Bengal state. In May, 30 Gurkhaland supporters, cutting themselves with the points of their kukris, wrote an anti-Bengali poster in blood.

Since that relatively mild beginning, at least 26 persons have died in clashes between Gurkhaland supporters and police. In one incident, in Kalimpong on July 27, 13 Gurkhas were killed. The West Bengal government said one policemen was killed and 25 other injured in that incident. A government report claimed that the Gurkhas used their kukris to cut off the arms and legs of one policeman.

The Kalimpong deaths have since become the rallying cry for the movement. A short book on the incident, written in English by a Gurkhaland supporter, describes the attack on the police in romantic terms:

“Suddenly to these young men, death lost its terrifying meaning--that stamp of utter finality which all mortals dread. . . . Almost blinded by tears in their eyes, these young men with naked kukris in their hands went on a rampage that left many (police) mortally wounded and felled.”

Ghising claims to have 40,000 retired Gurkha soldiers in his movement, each skilled with the kukri. He said his followers are prepared to kill or be killed to achieve their goal of a new state. “Even the father or mother will not be spared if they go against Gurkhaland,” he said in the interview in Darjeeling.

In recent weeks, the violent mood here appears to have intensified. Several battles like the one Oct. 3 at the Takvar Estate have occurred on the tea plantations.

Threats Amid Attacks

Homes of Gurkhaland opponents in Darjeeling and other cities have been attacked. The office of the Communist Party that controls the West Bengal government, was recently bombed.

“They are rowdies and antisocials,” Communist Party leader Ratna Bahadur Rai said of the Gurkhaland forces. “Although small in number, they can terrorize the people easily.”

The following day, West Bengal Education Minister Nirmal Bose said Bengali school teachers and professors in Darjeeling had received anonymous letters warning them to leave the city or “be beheaded.” The letters were signed with the slogan, “Long live Gurkhaland.”

There are also national political issues in the Gurkhaland controversy.

The Communist-led Left Front government in West Bengal claims that the Rajiv Gandhi government has encouraged the problems in Darjeeling in order to embarrass it before elections in February. The Communist Party of India--Marxist and its allies in the Left Front government currently control more than two-thirds of the 295 seats in the state assembly, four times more than Gandhi’s Congress I party.

Government Blamed

Additionally, the Bengal Communists blame the Gandhi government for creating a favorable atmosphere for such separatist movements by signing accords with Sikh leaders in Punjab and nationalists in Assam last year.

The West Bengal government’s position paper on Gurkhaland stated: “The accords signed by the central government with the separatist forces helped to confer some legitimacy on these movements and created expectations that, given time, such forces anywhere would be able to extract major concessions from the national government.”

There is some evidence that the Gandhi government has manipulated the Gurkhaland issue. Gandhi himself aggravated the situation by saying he does not consider the Gurkhaland movement “anti-national.”

India Today Magazine commented in an editorial, “Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his aides have chosen to play political football with the issue, which, if left to bubble, could spread the poison of ethnic separatism throughout the land.”

No Longer a Pipe Dream

Many observers, in fact, think the Gurkhaland issue will continue to boil in Darjeeling until the elections. Although initially the idea of a separate Gurkhaland state was treated as Ghising’s personal pipe dream, it now appears to enjoy the support of most of the people in the Darjeeling district. The green flags with a silver kukri, designed by Ghising to represent his movement, adorn many roofs alongside the black protest flags of Gurkhaland supporters.

Gurkhaland or not, the revolt has already forced changes on the famous tea plantations that blanket the Darjeeling hills.

What the French cities of Reims and Epernay are to champagne, Darjeeling is to tea. Last year, in the Calcutta Tea Traders Assn. auction, a kilogram of choice Darjeeling sold for a record $136, or about $62 a pound.

Darjeeling tea is prized for its light amber color and lack of bitterness. Although it competes with other “high country” teas from Sri Lanka and Kenya, it is universally recognized as the finest tea in the world and annually sells for the highest prices.

Little Profits

Although India is the largest producer of tea in the world, most of its prestige as a tea grower comes from the 74 tea estates near Darjeeling that account for only 2.5% of the national tea crop.

The fame of Darjeeling tea, like that of champagne, has created a trademark problem. Although the Darjeeling mountain estates produce only 12 million kilograms of tea annually, more than 48 million kilograms are sold around the world as “Darjeeling tea.” Little of the real Darjeeling tea ever reaches the American market.

Partially because of the trademark problem, few of the Darjeeling plantations have been able to make a profit in recent years. Many, in fact, have been forced out of business.

According to Darjeeling Planters Assn. secretary Ranen Datta, the local industry was beginning to make a comeback last spring just as the Gurkhaland issue caught fire. Strikes called by Ghising in May and July cost the tea industry here more than 10% of its crop, he said.

‘Hurting Us Badly’

“We are very worried,” said one planters association member. “This hammering we are taking is hurting us very badly. This industry has been in the doldrums for 20 years. It was just beginning to look up when this happened.”

In recent days, Communist Party unions on the tea estates have been replaced by groups affiliated with the Gurkhaland movement. The battle on the Takvar estate, in fact, was a fight for supremacy over the tea workers in a place long dominated by the Communist unions.

Meanwhile, Ghising has promised tea workers that his organization will remove Bengali domination from their fields. Wages, he told them, will be raised from 11 rupees (86 cents) a day to 30 rupees (about $2.34).

In the process, the bucolic existence of the gentleman tea planter has been seriously disrupted. Many of the planters and managers are Bengalis, main targets of the Gurkhaland movement. An October meeting at the Darjeeling Club was a gloomy scene of planters exchanging tales about the tension.

“If the workers are good and there is peace on the estate,” said Kambat, the Takvar Estate manager, “then we are living like kings. With this trouble, we are living like dogs.”