Mamata near a peak Basu couldn’t climb Grudging admiration from CPM on hills

Calcutta, Oct. 24: Mamata Banerjee’s success in bringing the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha back to the talks table has prompted the CPM to concede that a solution through talks was welcome and inadvertently give credit to the government for breaking the deadlock.

“We have been watching how repeated agitations in the Darjeeling hills disrupted peace. The Morcha should sit with the state government and resolve the problem through talks,” Biman Bose, the CPM state secretary, said in Siliguri yesterday.

Three Morcha MLAs are scheduled to meet the chief minister in Darjeeling tomorrow. They had also come down to Calcutta and met Trinamul leader Mukul Roy, apparently to seek an audience with Mamata.

Analysed in isolation, Bose’s comments when asked about the Morcha’s eagerness for a dialogue with the government after restarting the statehood agitation barely two months ago and its earlier refusal to speak to the state administration, might not sound significant.

But if assessed against the backdrop of what CPM leaders have been saying since the Morcha renewed its Gorkhaland demand, it marks a departure from its recent stand.

CPM leaders have always been critical of Mamata’s way of handling the trouble in the hills. After the signing of the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) pact, questions were raised about why the word “Gorkhaland” was included in the accord.

Whenever the chief minister said “pahar hasche (the hills are smiling)”, CPM leaders mocked her at public rallies, news conferences and in Facebook posts.

After the Morcha leadership organised a series of indefinite strikes to demand Gorkhaland following the Centre’s nod to Telangana in July, the Bengal government addressed the unrest through firm administrative action, but the Opposition accused it of mishandling the situation.

“The response that the chief minister has got in the hills has proved that her way of handling the situation there was right,” industries minister Partha Chatterjee said. 

The fact that Mamata has communicated to the people of the hills in no uncertain terms that Darjeeling is an integral part of Bengal is her “biggest success”, Chatterjee added.

No one can predict how the situation will play out in the hills eventually but, as of now, Mamata holds the advantage.

CPM sources said Bose’s stress on the need for talks was an admission that the Trinamul government had managed to achieve a breakthrough in the hills.

“Mamata has been able to force the Morcha to submit to her. We couldn’t do that when our party was in power,” a CPM state committee leader said. “Obviously, we cannot say this in public but there is little doubt that she (Mamata) has handled the problem much better.”

Mamata’s frequent visits to the hills, organising rallies in Darjeeling town to stress on development and her virtual challenge to Morcha chief Bimal Gurung has been in stark contrast to former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s response to the problem.

Since the Morcha’s formation in 2007, Bhattacharjee didn’t set foot in the hills once even though he visited Siliguri and Mongpong, 80km from Darjeeling town.

The fact that the then chief minister had steered clear of Darjeeling because of the Morcha’s announcement that it would not allow Bhattacharjee to enter the hills had embarrassed the CPM, especially because he was overseeing the district on behalf of the party.

CPM leader and former hill affairs minister Asok Bhattacharya said Mamata succeeded because she used “force”, an option the “democratic Left government” didn’t want to exercise.

“Mamata succeeded to enter the hills because of her threats to the Morcha. Her government has arrested many Morcha leaders. She has driven fear into the minds of Morcha leaders. She is also weaning away Morcha supporters to Trinamul. That’s why, the Morcha is keen on having a dialogue with her,” he said.

Asked why the Left government did not exert its administrative might to ensure Bhattacharjee’s entry into Darjeeling, Asok Bhattacharya cited the “fear of a Nandigram rerun”. According to the former minister, the CPM’s policy was not that of confronting the Morcha like Mamata.

“We didn’t believe in confrontation with the Gorkhas. Rather, we appreciated their sentiments even though we were against statehood. But the Morcha told its supporters that that the CPM was anti-Gorkha. That’s why we lost a good number of Assembly seats, including my Siliguri constituency, in Darjeeling in the 2011 Assembly elections,” Asok Bhattacharya said.

The CPM had applied the same policy of non-intervention during Jyoti Basu’s tenure as chief minister after the government signed a peace pact with Subash Ghisingh, who had launched an agitation in Darjeeling in early 1980s demanding a separate state.

Ghisingh’s strategy of prolonged bandhs and violent agitations forced the government to buy peace with him, which resulted in the formation of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council.

“Since then, the Left government left it to Ghisingh to take care of Darjeeling and he reciprocated by ensuring the Gorkha National Liberation Front’s support to CPM candidates in the hills in every election,” said a retired IAS officer who had worked both with Basu and Bhattacharjee.

As Ghisingh gradually withdrew from public life, it allowed Gurung, his former understudy, to pull the rug from under his feet and launch the Morcha, which renewed the Gorkhaland demand that the GNLF chief had abandoned after his treaty with the Left government.

“Our party continued backing Ghisingh, who had lost touch with people. We did not intervene even as Gurung’s power increased. This is how we lost the political battle in the hills…. Mamata has been proactive and that’s why she has emerged the winner,” a CPM leader admitted.