Cradled in the hush of colonial isolation and sustained by the heartbeat of an ever-evolving ethnopolitical odyssey, Gorkhaland’s century-long yearning is far more than a local aspiration—it reflects India’s own quest to define who belongs, and how. It bears the scars of resistance and the tremors of remembrance, the blood-tinted fragments of broken hope, and the undying throb of a dream that refuses to vanish into silence.
Through the drifting mists of the Darjeeling hills, this longing rises again—a quiet ache woven into the roar of justice, a fight not merely for territory but for acknowledgment, dignity, and voice. Beneath the fragile skin of politics lies a people’s unrelenting will to be seen and understood. Their story, written in struggle and faith, continues to echo through India’s political labyrinth—restless, resolute, and unforgotten.
Since 2007, when the flame was rekindled beyond the rhododendrons and fir trees of the picturesque Darjeeling hills, the demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland has swelled again, carried on the sighing mountain breeze and the voices of a people who say: we too belong.
“Jai Gorkha, Jai Gorkhaland” — two simple words, uttered with hope in tremulous voices across mist-shrouded ridges and winding tea-estate lanes. For the Nepali-speaking Indian Gorkhas of the Darjeeling-Dooars region, these words carry the weight of centuries: of history, memory, injustice—and an un-diminished dream of belonging.
Under the banner of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) and other faithful supporters, the movement has once more taken shape, gathering hope and grievance alike in its folds. Across the plains of north Bengal, the stirrings of the Kamtapur People’s Party and its allies too have gained momentum, as the quest for a separate “Kamtapur” state glides through river valleys of the Dooars and across the lowlands. But in the hills, where mist clings to tea leaf and pine, the Gorkhaland story remains perhaps the most poignant: a tale of identity, neglect and yearning.
In the lie of the land — the steep slopes of Darjeeling, the crisp air of Kalimpong, the vast spans of the Dooars and Terai — the Nepali‐speaking Indian Gorkhas say they are part of the Indian fabric yet often treated as outsiders in their own home. The demand for Gorkhaland is not only a political slogan; it is a plea for recognition, an assertion of self-worth, an affirmation of dignity that has for too long felt denied.
A CENTURY’S YEARNING IN THE HILLS
The story of the Gorkhaland movement is woven into the slopes of the Darjeeling hills, the green tea-carpets of the Terai, and the lowland expanse of the Dooars. It’s a tale of a people who have long felt that their identity lies in a twilight zone—not quite accepted, never quite invisible. A demand for a separate administrative unit date back to 1909, when the Hillmen’s Association of Darjeeling submitted a memorandum under the Minto-Morley Reforms asking for distinct governance.
Under British rule, the hills of Darjeeling were treated as a buffer zone, set apart from Bengal’s plains. Their strategic location—sharing borders with Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and lying near the “chicken-neck” corridor connecting northeastern India—meant that colonial administrators chose integration with caution, if at all. The Nepali-speaking immigrants whom the British recruited for tea estates, roadworks and the army-built lives in these slopes, yet the institutional belonging they sought remained elusive.
Post-Independence, the decision to merge the Darjeeling-Duars region into West Bengal was taken without fully consulting the wishes of its people. Key criteria laid out by India’s State Reorganisation Commission—linguistic and cultural compatibility, administrative viability—were arguably overlooked. This historical misstep planted deep seeds of alienation. Into that expanse the Gorkha community looked for recognition: not just in law, but in feeling.
THE ROOTS OF A DREAM
To trace the genealogy of this movement is to walk in the shadows of tea‐plantations and the echoes of colonial voices. The demand for a separate administrative unit in Darjeeling stretches back to 1909, when the Hillmen’s Association of Darjeeling submitted a memorandum to the Minto-Morley Reforms, seeking a voice of their own.
The Darjeeling hills are nature’s own poetry—every ridge a verse, every breeze a whisper. Draped in veils of mist, they rise like emerald waves beneath the silent gaze of the snow-crowned Kanchenjunga, whose peaks blush pink at dawn. The valleys below cradle an ocean of green—tea gardens rolling endlessly, their leaves shimmering under the soft mountain light. Between clouds and sunlight, the land breathes serenity: winding trails, prayer flags fluttering in rhythm with the wind, and villages that rest gently on the hillsides like scattered dreams.
Here, beauty is not just seen—it is felt. It lingers in the scent of tea, in the melody of distant monks’ chants, in the hush that follows a drifting fog. The picturesque Darjeeling hills are not merely a destination; they are an awakening of the senses—a living painting brushed by heaven’s own hand.
During the British era, Darjeeling was carved out of Bengal, planted into new divisions, reorganized, re-imaged — and through it all, the Nepali‐speaking immigrants who had settled the hills found themselves ever the “other”.
The British, in their wisdom or expedience, developed Darjeeling as a hill station from about 1835, and needed labour — and so many young men from Nepal and surrounding regions came, drawn by the promise of employment on tea estates, in building roads, and in the colonial army. They settled, their tongues carried Nepali vowels into the slope and valley, they built lives. Over time, their language, culture and memories crystallized into the identity of “Gorkha” — a name borrowed from a hill‐town in Nepal, adopted by Indian hill‐dwellers as their own.
But identity is not only heritage — it is also recognition. And recognition did not come in full. The Indian Gorkha finds that despite belonging — by birth, by citizenship, by heart — he or she is often marked by the threshold of marginalization. In the hills, the line between “us” and “them” is drawn not only by the sweeping tea‐hedges but by the exclusion of face and voice.
THE AWAKENING OF A MOVEMENT
It was in the early 1980s that this longing found a political anchor. The founding of the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) under the leadership of Subhash Ghisingh in 1980 marked a new chapter.
The term “Gorkhaland” itself is credited to Ghisingh, and the rallying cry was at once simple and profound: a homeland for the Gorkhas, carved from the hills of Darjeeling and the contiguous regions of the Dooars and Terai.
By 1986, the agitation reached its most intense phase. The hills echoed with mass gatherings, fire and fury. On July 27, 1986, in Kalimpong, police opened fire on an agitating crowd — fifteen lives lost, many of them women and children.
THE MOVEMENT HAD MATURED FROM GRIEVANCE TO RESISTANCE
In the three hill constituencies of Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong, the call for boycott of the 1987 assembly elections by the GNLF was met with near‐silence at the polling booths — only around 7 % voter turnout in that region.
Finally, in 1988, a tripartite accord between the Central Government, West Bengal and the GNLF produced the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC) — a semi‐autonomous body that many saw as a compromise, not complete fulfilment.
A FLAME REKINDLED
The fires of 1980s did not extinguish the longing; rather they smouldered in the valley mists, to be fanned again. In 2007, the GJM under Bimal Gurung took up the banner anew, and the demand for Gorkhaland surged once more.
The hills, with their tea‐green slopes and their peoples of many tongues, whispered once more of separation and belonging. The proposed state would encompass over 7,500 sq. km, covering Darjeeling, Kalimpong, the Dooars and parts of Cooch Behar, larger than Goa or Sikkim. Its population, about four million, mirrors that of Manipur or Tripura.
Yet within this claim lies a paradox: Gorkhas constitute only about 35 percent of the population in the proposed state—with Nepali spoken by roughly 40 percent in Darjeeling, 51 percent in Kalimpong, but only about 15-20 percent in the Dooars-Terai regions. The remaining population comprises Rajbongshis (25 percent), Adivasis (20 percent), Bengalis (15 percent) and others (5 percent).
Such numbers do not diminish the moral question at the heart of the movement: is this simply about state lines or about dignity? The Gorkhaland movement is, at its essence, a campaign for belonging.
THE TWIN AXES OF IDENTITY AND NEGLECT
At the core of the Gorkhaland demand lie two intertwined threads: linguistic identity and economic marginalization.
Firstly, the language of the hills — Nepali — is both lifeline and barrier. When one’s mother‐tongue is not treated as equal, the soul bristles. The Gorkhas feel their language, their heritage, their voice, once celebrated for its bravery in colonial army and mountain service, now reduced to an “other” in official corridors. The alienation of being labelled a foreigner in one’s own land has haunted the community since the 1960s and 70s, with expulsions of Nepali‐speaking Indians from states such as Meghalaya serving as grim reminders.
Secondly, the hills have been neglected in development: the slope that once yielded tea and opportunity now carries the weight of underinvestment, poor infrastructure, limited learning, patchy roads, fragile livelihood. Studies speak of the backwardness of the region despite its picturesque terrain and strategic location.
In this neglect the movement finds its fuel. Thus, the Gorkhaland demand is less about drawing a new border and more about rewriting one’s history — the rewriting of identity, of justice, of voice.
“In Darjeeling, in Kalimpong, in Siliguri’s edge and across the expanse of the Dooars, the morning mist carries the echoes of Gorkha and Gorkhaland. But the region is not simply echoing its own past—it is speaking its own future”
THE COMPLEXITY OF LEGITIMACY
Any demand for statehood must face the measure of legitimacy: who speaks, who counts, whose voice is heard? The Gorkhaland movement raises this question sharply. Since Gorkhas are not the majority in the territorially defined proposed state, critics point out the difficulty of the claim. Yet the movement’s proponents argue: legitimacy does not rest purely on numbers, but on the recognition of distinct identity and equal belonging within the Indian constitution.
Moreover, the hundreds of thousands who fought, suffered, died in the hills between 1986-88, and again in later refurbishments of the demand — their memory binds legitimacy. But the path remains fraught: will the demand become exclusionary, or will it embrace the heterogeneity of the region — the Rajbongshis, the Adivasis, the Bengalis, the Mechs, the Totos whose lands and lives intersect with the hills?
Scholars argue that the movement must engage not just with statehood, but with integration and cohesion in a plural society. The question is whether Gorkhaland can be a state of inclusion, not retreating into narrow identity, but forging an inclusive new home for all hill‐ and Dooars‐dwellers.
IDENTITY AND ECONOMY: TWIN AXES OF DISSENT
What drives this movement is not merely the drawing of a line on a map, but the very fabric of identity and dignity.
First, language and culture. Nepali-speaking Indian Gorkhas assert a distinct cultural imprint in India, one that is often overshadowed, mis-interpreted or lost in translation. They argue that having a state of their own would draw a clear distinction between them and citizens of Nepal—one that today remains blurred, and thus contributes to their sense of alienation.
Second, economic neglect. The hills and Dooars, rich in tea, forestry and tourism, still bear the scars of underinvestment. Roads remain precarious, infrastructure fragile, schools and hospitals sketchy. Social scientists note that deprivation of opportunity and the sidelining of voices in governance have fed the urgency of statehood. IJRPR+1
Thus the clarion cry of “Gorkhaland!” emerges as both defiance and longing—a refusal to be peripheral, a demand to be central in one’s own homeland.
INTERIM ARRANGEMENTS, UNFULFILLED DREAMS
Over the decades the wheels of governance churned out solutions—yet none quite matched the yearning of the hills.
In 1988, under a three-party agreement among the Government of India, the West Bengal government and the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) led by Subhash Ghisingh, the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC) was born. It offered semi-autonomy to the Darjeeling Hills.
Then in 2012 the semi-autonomous body metamorphosed into the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA), replacing the DGHC. It was meant to deliver more devolved powers and better governance.
Yet these institutional architectures, however well-intended, were viewed by many as mere band-aids over deep wounds. Governance remained weak, political interference rife; autonomy in name did not match autonomy in spirit. The sense of being kept on the margins only intensified. The hills remembered the cries of those years of agitation—the violent marches of 1986-88 when more than a thousand lives were lost. ScoopWhoop+1
POLITICS, PROMISES AND THE LONG WAIT
If institutions faltered, political promises raised expectation—only to leave longing in their wake. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in its 2019 Lok Sabha election manifesto, made specific commitments to the Gorkha community: a “permanent political solution” for the Darjeeling-Duars region, and recognition of 11 Gorkha sub-tribes as Scheduled Tribes. While the sub-tribe recognition has been under review since 2014, formal decision remains pending. Critics argue that these pledges have stalled, suggesting that rhetoric outpaced action.
Politicians such as Darjeeling’s Member of Parliament Raju Bista have raised the issue in the national parliament; senior leaders like Subramanian Swamy have advocated for the region to become a Union Territory. And yet, as the hills observe, the fate of substantial change remains distant.
Much is drawn in comparison with the creation of Telangana in 2014—a smaller state born of genuine political will. For the Gorkhas, this contrast deepens the frustration.
- Four broad pathways lie on the table today.
- A full-fledged separate state of “Gorkhaland.”
- A Union Territory.
- A “state-within-a-state” under Article 244(A) of the Indian Constitution.
- A sixth-schedule tribal arrangement.
The first two options command the most extensive support among Gorkhas for the autonomy and identity they promise. The latter two—while more modest—are viewed by many as inadequate.
LINES ON A MAP, LIVES IN THE MIST: THE LEPCHA STORY IN THE DARJEELING HILLS
Once, the ridges that sweep from North Bengal to Sikkim, from East Nepal to West Bhutan, breathed as one mountain world. People moved with the seasons, languages braided together, and the hills held a shared memory. Today, the same landscape is divided by federal borders—clean lines on a map that cut through older, gentler geographies of kinship and place.
Among those most closely bound to this terrain are the Lepcha people, who remember their ancestral homeland as Máyel Lyáng—a living tapestry that existed long before the modern nation-state. In the post-Independence years, administrative boundaries hardened: India’s borders were fixed, West Bengal took shape, and Sikkim merged with the Union. In that moment of cartography, a community was parted. The Lepchas found themselves anchored in two predominant fragments—one in Sikkim, another in West Bengal—each now carried along different political currents.
These “absolute margins,” as the language of governance calls them, did more than separate jurisdictions; they fractured what had once been a continuous social landscape. A people who shared memory, myth, and mountain paths were asked to live by two separate calendars of policy and power. Over time, those differences deepened. Though Lepchas in Sikkim and West Bengal still share a common past, their lived realities—institutions, representation, development, and cultural protections—have diverged, like twin rivers forced into separate beds.
In the Darjeeling Hills, that divergence is not an abstraction; it is daily life. School syllabi, land rights, access to welfare, cultural boards, and the pace of infrastructure—each is shaped by the state in which one happens to reside. The result is a quiet, complex transformation of identity: the same people, the same mountains, but different administrative skies. What was once a shared hearth is now a split home, and the doorway between rooms has narrowed.
Layered atop this is the long, resonant demand for Gorkhaland—a quest for a separate state that has defined hill politics for decades. The Lepcha experience is inevitably entwined with this larger agitation. While the Gorkha movement centers on recognition and autonomy for Nepali-speaking Indians, Lepchas carry their own ethnopolitical articulation: affirmation of indigeneity, protection of land and culture, and dignity within the constitutional promise. In public squares and policy halls alike, these voices meet—sometimes aligned, sometimes at angles—each seeking to be seen by the same state that drew the borders.
This is the quiet drama of the Darjeeling Hills: borders that promised order but produced fragmentation; policies that sought governance but refashioned belonging. To speak with Lepcha elders is to hear the old place-names of Máyel Lyáng—names that run like water under the hard clay of contemporary maps. To listen to the young is to hear new vocabularies of rights and representation, a language alert to both heritage and the realities of federal rule.
The hills, meanwhile, keep their counsel. Tea gardens bend to the wind. Monsoon fog unspools across the toy-train tracks. And in village courtyards, the conversations continue—about schools and roads, about culture and law, about how to remain whole in a landscape learned anew. The story here is not of nostalgia alone; it is a negotiation between memory and statute, between the soft borders of belonging and the sharp borders of the state.
What emerges is a portrait at once tender and political: a community split by lines it did not draw, yet insistent on stitching its world together—through language, ritual, and the steady work of civic claim-making. In the shadow of larger contests over Gorkhaland and regional autonomy, the Lepcha narrative stands as a reminder: that identity is not an annex to territory, but its heartbeat. And that in these mountains, where clouds cross borders without papers, people still seek a way to live whole—beyond the edges of a map, and within the promises of a nation.
CURRENTS IN THE CLOUDS: ETHNOPOLITICS OF THE DARJEELING HILLS
The Darjeeling–Kalimpong hills have always been more than coordinates on a map. They are a living crossroads where languages meet like tributaries, where memory holds the scent of tea and cedar, and where politics moves—slow at times, sudden at others—like fog slipping across a ridge. Over centuries, this landscape has been shaped by shifting sovereignties and economic tides, leaving behind a dense weave of communities, claims, and counterclaims. What emerges today is a terrain of identity that is both intimate and contested: a chorus of peoples asking, each in their own register, where do we belong, and on what terms?
LINES OF BELONGING, LINES OF POWER
For generations the hill peoples have bargained with those who held the pen—first the courts of Sikkim and Bhutan, then the British Raj, now the postcolonial Indian state. The negotiations have rarely been simple. In the modern frame, these borderland districts have become synonymous with the long, resonant call for Gorkhaland, a demand rooted in recognition and self-rule for Nepali-speaking Indians of the region.
The very word “Gorkha” bears the imprint of history: once a colonial regiment label applied to soldiers drawn from many Nepalese ethnicities, it has since evolved into a civic and political identity in India—no longer a military category, but a banner under which hill communities seek dignity, clarity, and a home in law.
A COLLECTIVE MADE OF MANY
Within this greater Gorkha canopy live distinct Nepali-speaking groups—Bahun, Bhujel, Chhetri, Damai, Gurung, Jogi, Kami, Limbu, Magar, Newar, Rai, Sarki, Sunwar, Tamang, Thami, Yakha—each with its own lineage and lore. Their shared presence in the hills owes much to the nineteenth century, when imperial ambition turned Darjeeling into a laboratory of tea. Estates needed hands and hearts; migration from Nepal answered that call.
But if labor was welcomed, legal belonging lagged behind. Colonial authorities were content to extract work while leaving civic status ill-defined. That ambiguity—productive yet precarious—hardened into a more profound anxiety: people who built roads and terraced fields found themselves only partially seen by the state. Independence did not wipe the slate clean. The question of standing and recognition—the right to be counted without suspicion—became the keel of a movement that would, in time, take the name Gorkhaland.
AGITATIONS THAT REDREW THE CONVERSATION
Two significant surges mark the political memory of the hills. The first, launched in 1986 under Subash Ghisingh and the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF), shook the region and exposed the limits of business-as-usual governance. The second, beginning in 2007 under Bimal Gurung and the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM), reignited aspirations with new force and vocabularies.
Both waves brought upheaval: protest and passion, disruption and grief, a democratic apparatus stretched thin. Out of that crucible came semi-autonomous arrangements—the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC) in 1988 and, later, the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) in 2012. These bodies promised local stewardship but stopped short of statehood. For many, they read as way stations rather than destinations: partial remedies that eased pressure without addressing the foundational wound of recognition.
THE TRIBAL TURN: NEW PATHWAYS TO THE STATE
Alongside the headline push for a separate state, another current has gathered strength within the Gorkha fold: a strategic and earnest turn toward Scheduled Tribe (ST) recognition. As the Mandal era expanded affirmative action in the 1990s—broadening reservations for SC, ST, and OBC communities—many non-tribal Nepali-speaking groups reassessed their political tools. If the door to full statehood remained heavy, could the doorway of social justice open faster?
The results were not theoretical. Tamang and Limbu communities secured ST status in 2002—a milestone that rippled across the hills. It coincided with efforts to extend the Sixth Schedule to the region, further normalizing a rights-based discourse of indigeneity and protection. What followed was neither retreat from Gorkhaland nor mere opportunism; it was a recalibration. Communities long subsumed under the “Gorkha” umbrella began to articulate their own claims—distinct histories, distinct disadvantages, distinct remedies—without abandoning the shared horizon of hill autonomy.
Today, groups including Bahun, Bhujel, Chhetri, Gurung, Jogi, Magar, Newar, Rai, Sunwar, Thami, and Yakha continue to pursue recognition pathways in tandem with the broader political project. The strategy is double-threaded: hold the larger banner high and stitch one’s own name upon it.
AUTONOMY, IDENTITY, AND THE GRAMMAR OF THE POSSIBLE
The hills are learning to speak in several languages at once: the language of federal bargaining; the language of cultural rights; the language of public employment and education, where quotas and categories translate into concrete life chances. Each vocabulary matters. Together, they form a grammar of the possible in which communities press for both symbolic dignity and material relief.
This mosaic politics is not without friction. When many voices ask to be heard, the harmony can fracture. Yet plurality is the truth of the hills: monastery bells beside church choirs, tea workers beside traders, older tongues beside new aspirations. The challenge is to build institutions that can carry this complexity without flattening it, that can distribute resources without demanding erasure.
WHAT THE HILLS REMEMBER—AND WHAT THEY DEMAND
Every movement carries memory. The Darjeeling–Kalimpong story remembers the uncertainty of migrant status, the pride of service, the sorrow of crackdowns, the stubborn hope of petitions and rallies. It remembers councils that governed but could not fully guarantee; it remembers years when the toy train chugged past shuttered shops and quiet streets; it remembers the taste of tea grown by hands uncertain of their place.
From that memory flows an unadorned insistence: to be seen whole. Not as a labor reserve, not as an administrative afterthought, not as a slogan in election season—but as citizens whose identities are layered and legitimate. For many, that insistence still spells Gorkhaland. For others, it reads as tribal recognition, Sixth Schedule protections, or retooled autonomy with firmer powers. The pathways differ, the destination rhymes.
A FUTURE WRITTEN IN MANY INKS
What happens next will depend on craft as much as conviction. Autonomy that lives only on paper is a mirage. It must arrive as better schools and safer roads, as accountable councils and transparent budgets, as fair hiring and secure land tenure. It must show up in the everyday—how a widow registers a property, how a student wins a scholarship, how a village clinic stays stocked in the rains.
For their part, hill communities continue to organize, to research, to litigate, to vote. The movement that began with the question “Who are we in this nation?” has matured into the practice of citizenship: patient, insistent, creative. If the nineteenth century gave Darjeeling tea, the twenty-first must give it institutions worthy of the people who tend those leaves.
THE VALLEYS SPEAK IN SILENCE TOO
Walking through the tea gardens at dawn, one sees the hills awaken — the mists roll off the leaves, the pigeons flutter in white clouds, the mountain ridges trace the sky. Yet beneath this serene beauty lies the silence of unmet aspirations. The children of the region look out to the plains beyond the “chicken-neck” corridor that links the Northeast to India, and ask: why do we remain the path, not the destination?
In the parlours of Darjeeling town, in the classrooms perched on steeps, in the memories of men whose forefathers came to build roads, plantations, regiments — there is a longing to belong wholly not just as labour, not just as “Gorkha” who fights abroad or mans kitchens, but as citizens whose name, land, voice is recognized. And so the hills talk, in their quiet way.
THE POLITICAL TERRAIN TODAY
The landscape of politics in the hills is layered. The GJM remains a major actor; the GNLF has faded; the semi‐autonomous Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) established in 2011 stands as an intermediate structure.
The GTA replaced – in effect – the earlier Hill Council, but it falls short of full statehood, and many in the hills view it as an unsatisfactory compromise. The demand for full Gorkhaland remains alive.
At the same time, the rival demand for a separate state of Kamtapur in North Bengal reminds us that the contours of sub-regional identity are shifting everywhere: river valleys, plains, hills all whisper of states yet to be. Yet the Gorkhaland case is distinctive for its height, its history, its people who look up to peaks even as they stare at the plains.
THE CHALLENGE AHEAD
If the Gorkhaland dream is to move from mist to mountain, several challenges loom. Firstly, the issue of pluralism must be honoured. With Gorkhas being a plurality but not majority, the movement must find its legitimacy in inclusion rather than exclusion. Bringing in Rajbongshis, Adivasis, Bengalis, Mechs, Totos into a shared vision is not only wise but essential.
Secondly, economic transformation must accompany identity. A state carved only in maps is hollow unless tea estates thrive, roads link remote hamlets, schools flourish, livelihoods expand, youth see hope. The hills deserve not only recognition but opportunity.
Thirdly, the question of integration with India cannot be lost. The Gorkha identity is Indian — citizenship, service, sacrifice attest to that — yet the perpetual “alien” tag must be removed. The proposed state must affirm that identity, not sever it.
Finally, the politics of statehood must be peaceful, democratic and forward‐looking. Too often the hills have known violence, uncertainty and shutdowns. The future must prefer dialogue, voice, development.
WHISPERED HOPES, ENDURING LONGING
And now the hills wait. As tea pluckers bend in rhythmic dance over emerald leaves, as children in Kalimpong recite poems in Nepali beneath rhododendron blossoms, the waiting continues. The wind carries the slogan: Gorkhaland. It is a word of promise, a word of memory, a word of possibility.
In the crisp air of dawn, a woman in Kurseong lights incense at the small temple that watches the ridge. She prays that her grandchildren find their names in registers, their lands in their names, their voices on voting lists. The hills listen. The clouds drift. The question remains: when shall the waiting end?
The dream is not only for a separate boundary but for a belonging that does not exclude. For an identity that does not flee. For a state that is more than a line on a map. The sun rises over Tiger Hill and lights the world beyond — the world of hope and history, of roots and longing.
THE JOURNEY YET TO TRAVEL
In the months and years ahead, the Gorkhaland movement will face decisions that test its soul. Will it be content with autonomy, or press on for statehood? Will it draw in allies, build consensus, weave new coalitions? Will it repair the scars of struggle, the memories of loss, the grievances of exclusion?
In that negotiation lies the promise of the hills: that identity is not the province of one people alone, and that justice is not served by staying silent. The tea bushes will still bloom; the pine needles will still whisper. But the shape of the horizon may yet change.
For the Nepali-speaking Indian Gorkhas, the rush of the river may seem endless, the mountain high. Yet they are no less citizens of this vast nation, no less claimants of dignity. Their cry is simple: We are here. And when the hills echo with that cry, the plains must listen.
THE HEART OF THE HILLS STILL BEATS
In Darjeeling, in Kalimpong, in Siliguri’s edge and across the expanse of the Dooars, the morning mist carries the echoes of “Gorkha” and “Gorkhaland”. But the region is not simply echoing its own past—it is speaking its own future.
Tea-plucking hands glide across green slopes from dawn. Students climb narrow staircases in hostels perched above cloud-lines. The hills cast long shadows, the train whistles through switch-backs, the pine-wind whispers of old returns and new departures.
In each of those moments, the question pulses: where do we belong—and with whom? To the contours drawn by neighbours and administrators, or to the shape we ourselves choose?
The drive for statehood is, then, far from abstract. It is nestled in the infant’s first step in a hillside village; in the teenager’s yearning for recognition; in the elder’s memory of displacement or invisibility. It is in the flicker of outrage when the language you speak is treated as alien. It is in the silence of the potato-fields when the rain comes late, and the roads remain broken.
A STRATEGIC LAND, A STEADFAST PEOPLE
The region’s geography lends the demand additional gravity. The Darjeeling-Duars belt is not only beautiful; it is strategic. Sharing borders with Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and fringing the corridor linking the Northeast to mainland India, its governance is entwined with national security considerations. British colonizers knew this—and post-Independence administrators did as well. The region’s isolation thus has historical roots in strategy, not just geography.
What this underscores is that a demand for Gorkhaland is not simply regional agitation—it touches questions of federal balance, borderland governance, cultural rights and development. A state carved for the people of the hills would not only recognize their identity—it would recognize their place in India’s mosaic.
THE CHALLENGE OF UNITY AND INCLUSION
Yet, the pathway ahead is not free of thorns. Critics often point to the fact that the Gorkhas are not a numerical majority in the proposed territory. The hills, the Terai and the Dooars include Rajbongshis, Adivasis, Bengalis and several other communities whose identities are part of the land’s fabric. Questions of inclusion, representation and cohesion therefore weigh heavily.
For the dream of Gorkhaland to endure, it must transcend narrow identity and embrace the region’s pluralism—not for reasons of convenience but of justice. It must build a home where Nepali-speaking Indian Gorkhas stand proudly as citizens—not outsiders—and where the other communities also find voice, respect and shared future.
WHAT LIES AHEAD: HOPE, SKEPTICISM, MOMENTUM
So what comes next—beyond slogans and petitions? If a state of Gorkhaland is to take shape, it must, in practical terms, show up in improved roads and schools, in livelihoods and land rights, in cultural dignity and institutional power. Autonomy without functioning institutions is still disempowerment.
If the Union Territory route is chosen, the central government must ensure local voice is not drowned in bureaucratic control, and that the life of the hills is not subsumed by administrative fiat.
If either of the modest options is selected, they must not serve as placeholders for sustained neglect; they must lead to empowerment, not containment.
The hills hold their breath. The tea bushes glisten with dew. Children chatter in Nepali in schoolyards. Widows tend pots in kitchens high above valley clouds. These moments are fragile, beautiful, human—and they call for governance that sees them, not overlooks them.
THE MOUNTAIN’S QUIET COUNSEL
At dusk, the slopes gather their shadows. Prayer flags lilt; a horn sounds in the distance; a child recites a lesson in a language that crossed borders before borders were drawn. The hills keep their quiet counsel. They have seen empires rise and fall, rulers come and go. Through it all, people have remained, resilient as the rhododendron that blooms after frost.
The dominant currents of hill ethnopolitics are not tempests to be stilled; they are rivers to be channeled—toward fairness, towards belonging, toward a settlement that feels like home. Call it Gorkhaland, call it recognition, call it justice by any constitutional name: the ask is elemental. To live with one’s head unbowed, one’s history honored, one’s future not forever deferred.
In the end, the mist will lift. And when it does, may the lines that remain be the ones communities choose together—lines of care, of law, of shared promise—drawn not to divide a people, but to bind them to their rights and to each other.
