Subash Ghisingh is certainly no longer the uncrowned king of the Darjeeling hills. In the last two decades or so, he has seen his once-trusted lieutenants leave him, he has been shot at, his party has split and the air is heavy with various charges of irregularities against him. Facing the next elections to the Darjeeling Gorkha hill council, he is today less sure of romping home yet again. But the man from Mirik?s Manju tea estate can draw immense comfort from one single fact. His slogan of a separate Gorkhaland has been picked up even by his detractors. Indeed, at times, they have been equally vociferous on the issue while targetting him for having betrayed the cause. In the process, it has remained a valid issue in people?s minds, and that is exactly what Ghisingh wished for when he embarked on his journey in the Eighties.

The only people to have stayed away from the bandwagon are the Marxists. But do they really count in the hills today? Darjeeling must be the only district where the Communist Party of India (Marxist) functions not from the headquarters but from the sub-divisional town of Siliguri. A respected leader like Ananda Pathak had to leave his home in Kurseong because of Gorkha National Liberation Front attacks and there was little his comrades could do about this. Bijonbari is no longer the bastion of the CPI(M) and its Chia Kaman Mazdoor Union as it once was. In his last years, the once-legendary Ratanlal Brahmin had the misfortune of seeing himself practically reduced to a non-entity, though it was under his leadership that the tea garden workers had risen in protest against the oppression of the British planters.

Ghisingh, of course, cannot claim any credit for creating such an atmosphere; the ground had been prepared long ago. The ethnic minorities? rights of self-determination, as stressed by the undivided Communist Party of India, the relentless struggle for ?proper recognition? of the Nepali language launched by the Gorkha League and the Bhasa Samiti and the less-than-adequate attention that the hills received from the authorities in Calcutta, created a sense of alienation in Nepali minds. They felt that though the British had left, the Bengali masters still saw them as no more than kanchas and kanchis ? a feeling whose growth was undoubtedly helped by the Christian missionaries. So when Ghisingh took to the streets, the response was wholehearted.

When the Left Front ministry under Jyoti Basu decided to strike a truce with Ghisingh and the DGHC was created, the purpose was clear. Bring Ghisingh into the mainstream of political life, expose him and his men to the lure of the goodies that are always there for people in authority and they are bound to swallow the bait. Gorkhaland will die a natural death.

It cannot be said that the ploy failed totally. The stories doing the rounds since the man became chairman of the council cannot all be baseless. But that was all. Ghisingh was far too wily to give up his old slogan, for he knew his leadership depended upon keeping the fire of separatism burning in people?s hearts. Those who broke away from him, those who parted company with the Gorkha League also realized that ?Gorkhaland? was too effective a weapon to be neglected. Today, they threaten every now and then to raise it in an even bigger way. And now the CPI(M) has a tactical agreement with these forces, which means that at best it will have to remain silent on the subject in the hills.

Not only that. Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee seems keen to grant more authority to the hill council, which will only help Ghisingh claim yet another success for his ways which may appear to be ?blackmailing? in the plains but not in Darjeeling, Kurseong or Kalimpong. Also, he can keep on explaining his failures with the claim of ?stinginess? on the part of Calcutta and assert that ?real freedom? will come only with a Gorkhaland. And even if he loses the elections, there can be no guarantee that his successors would not follow the same course also. Therein lies the real danger for the state government and the success of Ghisingh.

In one way, of course, Ghisingh has changed tracks. In an interview in 1986, he had told this writer, ?We are not uncivilized tribals living in jungles that we will be satisfied with some kind of autonomy.? Now it appears that it is autonomy under the Sixth Schedule that he is demanding, an autonomy reserved for tribals. Perhaps in the intervening years, he has realized that his description of tribals was far off the mark and, more important, he needed more funds to play with. As usual, he seems to have ignored the larger question of how Nepalis in other parts of the country, and more relevantly in Sikkim, should be treated if those in Darjeeling are given privileges enjoyed by tribals in Tripura or the Bodos in Assam.

But then, why should Ghisingh bother about what may happen to Sikkim? The tiny Himalayan state is, in any case, a de facto Gorkhaland in the sense that it is the Nepalis who call the shots there, the Lepcha-Bhutias having been long ago reduced to a horrible minority and their only hope, the Chogyal, dethroned in 1975 in a movement that still raises some questions. There has also never been much love lost between the Nepalis of Darjeeling and Sikkim. One reason perhaps is that the former consider themselves more advanced than their brothers on the other side.

The DGHC election may be held in September or even later. That is of no importance in the larger context of ethnic tension in a sensitive part of the state. Bhattacharjee?s ministry has realized the problem that such tension may create but he seems to see the problem only in relation to the turmoil in Nepal. The problem, however, is far too deep-rooted to be affected either way by how things turn out in the Himalayan kingdom. It is a problem of ethnicity which the communists do not seem to have addressed properly. This writer was a frequent visitor to the hills and saw how helpless the ruling Marxists looked as Ghisingh waged his battle. That helplessness could later be seen in the manner they wooed Ghisingh to win the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat. Last year Ghisingh turned the other way and the CPI(M) lost.

The helplessness of the CPI(M) would not have been a matter of concern but for the fact that it is still the ruling party and may remain so. So its helplessness affects the state as a whole, for if Darjeeling again becomes restive then ultimately the plains will also be affected. The situation will be no different even in the unlikely event of a change of custodian at Writers? Buildings. Darjeeling will continue to be a tinder box in the foreseeable future and the former army subedar can claim that this is a campaign he has conducted with full success.