DARJEELING HILLS:BIMAL GURUNG lord of the DARJELLING hills


FROM TIMES OF INDIA

BY KESHAV PRADHAN



Bimal Gurung, 44, is often called a mass leader born out of the television tube. In 2007, the Nepali diaspora across the globe was seized by frenzy when Prashant Tamang, a Kolkata Police constable and native of Darjeeling, reached the voting round of Indian Idol-III , a reality TV show. In no time, numerous fan clubs named after the new singing sensation sprouted everywhere.

Gurung, then a Subash Ghisingh loyalist , volunteered to raise funds to help people vote for Prashant. Money poured in from India, Nepal, Bhutan, the Gulf, the US, Britain, Hong Kong and Brunei (the last three have a sizeable number of serving and retired Gorkha soldiers from the British army). Prashant is believed to have got over five crore votes, twice the size of the Nepali population, in the final. Prashant’s victory turned Gurung into a hero. Grateful Gorkhas rallied behind him as he geared up to take on Ghisingh, who had refused to help Prashant. The impulsive former militant leader quit Ghisingh’s GNLF to float the GJM in collaboration with leaders of Prashant Fan Clubs on October 7, 2007. By then, Ghisingh’s popularity was on the wane for a number of factors. The crafty former bantamweight boxer had landed himself in a mess by trying to bring the Darjeeling hills under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution . People were very unhappy with him for not helping Prashant, the way Sikkim chief minister Pawan Kumar Chamling did. Gurung was waiting to avenge the raw deal he had always got from Ghisingh. A school dropout, Gurung roped in intellectuals , whom Ghisingh always shunned, to add respectability to his party. Within weeks, he hounded his discredited mentor, who headed the DGHC for 19 years, out of the hills. To consolidate his hold, he shifted his focus to the Gorkhaland issue. This paid immediate dividends as West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee invited him to Kolkata in February 2008. Since then, Writers’ Building has always treated Gurung as the sole representative of the hills. A rabble rouser, Gurung has declared that he will shoot himself dead if he fails to achieve Gorkhaland by March 10, 2010. Like Ghisingh, he is superstitious and consults astrologers before taking any crucial decision.

All through the 1986-88 Gorkhaland stir, Gurung was attached to Gorkha Volunteers’ Cell, the GNLF’s police wing that beheaded people, burnt down houses of CPM workers and launched armed attacks on government installations and security posts. He went into hiding for years thereafter . When he resurfaced in the ’90s, he organised unemployed youth under the banner of the Parbatiya Bekari Sangathan and worked as a contractor. Later, he returned to the GNLF and represented Tukvar , his native place, in the DGHC after disgruntled party workers killed sitting councillor Rudra Kumar Pradhan in 1999.

“We took up arms because Ghisingh misguided us. I have now realised that violence is bad for everybody,” Gurung once said. Possibly because of this, he has so far desisted from arming his cadres, including those from Gorkhaland Personnel. The man who has seen poverty and suffering from close, now talks about Gandhi and his non-violent agitations like noncooperation and satyagraha. His party workers pointedly display his portrait along with that of Gandhi. His wife, Asha, leads the GJM’s women wing.