PERSPECTIVE

Respect the Indian Gorkhas

Arun Kumar Pokhrel

The Gorkhaland movement, now led by Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha (GJMM), has gained a new momentum reviving Indian Nepalis' long-cherished but forlorn dream of an autonomous Gorkhaland that was sabotaged many times in the past. Needless to say, Indian Nepalis have been oppressed and marginalised for generations, and until today, they had no choice except to internalise all forms of oppression as part of their daily lives. They are perpetually outsiders and inferior 'others', who are second or third grade citizens only fit for lowly manual jobs. This systemic exclusion of Gorkhas from the major public domains of the world's largest democracy has caused a deep sense of alienation and frustration.

The racist stereotypes of Indian Nepalis are deeply embedded in the larger Indian unconscious, which has been manifested in the dominant political, historical, literary and media discourses. As always, these Indian narratives, promoting the interests of the repressive bourgeois Indian establishment, often misrepresent the root causes of the Gorkhaland movement. Bypassing those genuine causes, they deliberately put blinders on the socio-historical, political, and cultural realities behind the movement. One striking example of such stereotypical narrative representation of the Gorkhas is Kiran Desai's novel, The Inheritance of Loss (2006).

In her novel, Ms Desai intricately weaves the fragmented stories of different characters in the shifting cultural worlds between Kalimpong and New York. The major threads of the storyline, however, tell us a story of 16-year old Indian girl Sai's love affair with an Indian Nepali mathematics tutor, Gyan, and the story of Sai's grandfather Jemubhai Patel, a retired judge educated in colonial Britain. Overwhelmed with the feeling of social inequities and bourgeois oppression as well as carried away by the greater cause of the Gorkhas' collective identity, Gyan abruptly ends his affair with Sai. In contrast, Jemubhai makes a lot of investment in imperial British culture and looks down upon local Indian peoples and their cultures so as to gain cultural power. However, in postcolonial India, such investment makes him culturally, economically and spiritually bankrupt.

Interestingly, embedded within the fractured and unrequited love story of Sai and Gyan are the fragmented narratives of the Gorkhas, who struggle for their liberation and the reclamation of their cultural identity. The title itself suggests the loss of cultural inheritance. As the characters in the novel move between the two worlds and cultures, they are spatially and temporally positioned in the novel. Gyan and the agitating Gorkhas in Kalimpong represent the voice of the marginalised and oppressed group, who are treated like aliens in their own homeland. But what is more intriguing to me here is Ms Desai's use of negative stereotypes to describe Gyan and the Nepali community, thereby creating binaries between 'we/us' and 'they/them', 'insiders/outsiders', and 'mainstream Indians/subaltern Nepalis'.

Consider, for example, the judge's cook, who is himself oppressed and is in a precarious economic position, but ironically looks down upon Gyan saying, "It is strange the tutor is Nepali." The cook considers himself an insider Indian, who hardly believes in outsider Gyan's ability to teach Sai, who is from an aristocratic family. Ms Desai's creation of the cook is overtly an outgrowth of Indianness, a feeling of superiority, no matter how oppressed he is. Considering Nepalis the inferior 'others', only suitable for menial jobs, the cook says: "Nepalis make good soldiers, coolies, but they are not so bright at their studies. Not their fault, poor things."

 
Another vivid example is the cosmopolitanism of two Anglophile sisters Lola and Noni. Lola boasts of her egotistical sense of being a superior Indian citizen, and she views Indian Nepalis as outsiders dismissing their genuine cause for struggle as nothing other than a case of "illegal immigration". Similar racist views come from an Indian newsagent, Mr Iype: "Nepalis making trouble . . . They should kick the bastards back to Nepal...Bangladeshis to Bangladesh, Afghans to Afghanistan, all Muslims to Pakistan, Tibetans, Bhutanese, why are they sitting in our country?"

Although Ms Desai's novel significantly draws on the theme of Gorkhas' local struggles for collective identity in the modernising space of India in the mid-1980s, the representation of Gorkhas' identity in multicultural democratic India is clearly biased. No wonder, Indian Nepalis expressed their strong resentment and protested against the novel when it first appeared. Instead of making a truthful representation of the Gorkhaland movement, Ms Desai describes it as an ethnic insurgency promoted by Nepalis from across the Nepal-India border for the larger interests of Nepalis. Putting the movement into the ambit of ethnic enclosure, she blatantly distorts the historical truth foreshadowing the genuine causes of the Gorkhas.

As the victims of centuries-old oppression, inequality, and injustice, the Gorkhas struggle for recognition, freedom, dignity, and justice. They do not want to be treated like a minority where they are a majority.

In fact, India, a big brother in South Asia, annexed some independent states into India such as Sikkim and nearly one-third of Nepali territory, which was lost in the Sugauli Treaty, signed on 2 December 1812 with the British East India Company. But it has always ignored the problems of the new populations in the newly drawn geographic boundaries. The "liberation" movement, what the Gorkhas would call it, is a fight for their collective identity, which could be restored through the recognition of collective history that they shared with their ancestors, who were already the inhabitants of that region or arrived later from the Nepali villages centuries ago.

In this regard, the collective identity that demands recognition in the Gorkhas' liberation movement cannot be defined in a monolithic term. Their identities could be multiple, referring to their culture, religion, tradition, ethnicity, race, sexuality, among other things, as Mr K Anthony Appiah mentions with regards to the case of North America. Mr Appiah says, "Social acknowledgement of that collective identity, which requires not just recognizing its existence but actually demonstrating respect for it."

The Indian government should practically demonstrate respect for the Gorkhas and recognise their voices. It is important to acknowledge that the Gorkhas are an oppressed ethnic and cultural minority, who are fighting against "oppression, marginalisation and disrespect and thereby struggle for recognition of collective identities...with...collective political goals", to quote Jurgen Habermas.
It is high time India recognised the identity of Indian Nepalis as respectful citizens who not only fought for the Britishers for 200 years but have also fought many wars in defence of Indian sovereignty.

They have left no stone unturned to fulfil their responsibilities as responsible citizens of the country. So, with due respect, these Indian Nepalis deserve freedom, security, a better life with all the democratic rights they want. And, it goes without saying, that Nepalis must extend their moral and ethical support to the GJMM's historic initiative.

(The writer is a PhD student in English at Indiana University in Pennsylvania)

The Kathmandu Post/ANN