BOOK REVIEW Economic & Political Weekly EPW march 14, 2015 vol l no 11 33 Understanding Gorkhaland Miriam Wenner Gorkhaland Movement: Ethnic Conflict and State Response by Swatahsiddha Sarkar, New Delhi: Concept Publishing House, 2013; pp 700, Rs 700. Gorkhaland: Crisis of Statehood by Romit Bagchi, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2012; pp 480, Rs 925. T he reorganisation of India’s union states is a recurrent issue in Indian politics. At present, there are about 30 demands for new states in various parts of the country. By questioning the governmental authority and sovereignty over claimed areas, such movements do not only touch issues such as minority representation, India’s dealing with its cultural diversity, governance systems, decentralisation, or the working of auton- omy and federalism, but also raise broader questions regarding state–society relations, democratisation, and forms of political authority. The importance of statehood move- ments was underlined in July 2013, when the government’s announcement to give in to the long-standing demand for Telan- gana to be carved out of Andhra Pradesh sparked fierce protests in other parts of the country, where demands for Bodoland (Assam), Kamtapur (West Bengal/Assam), or Vidarbha (Maharashtra) were reiter- ated. Also Darjeeling District in northern West Bengal, where the first demand for an administrative separation had already been raised in 1907, observed a month- long shutdown and various protest pro- grammes to press for the creation of “Gorkhaland”. Statehood Struggle The Nepali-speaking population known as “Gorkhas” demands this new state to be carved out of Darjeeling District and the adjoining Dooars at the southern fringe of Bhutan. The leaders of the various regional parties argue that only the creation of a separate state can guarantee the Gorkhas, who share lin- guistic and cultural similarities with neighbouring Nepal, a recognised Indian identity and secure their political repre- sentation while fostering the develop- ment of the region in the foothills of the Himalayas. Already from 1986 to 1988, the region observed a violent movement for Gorkha- land under the leadership of Subash Ghising and the Gorkha National Libera- tion Front ( GNLF ) which resulted in the formation of the autonomous Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC). After 18 years of GNLF supremacy, in 2007, popular dissatisfaction with Ghising and the DGHC culminated in the formation of a new party, the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM) which revived the statehood struggle. Former GNLF leader and now GJM President Bimal Gurung proclaimed that in contrast to the 1986 movement, this movement would be “democratic, non-violent and Gandhian.” Despite his promise not to divert from the statehood agenda, after a four-year long agitation the GJM signed a deal with the newly-elected Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal and the central government for the establishment of a new autonomous council, the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration ( GTA). In July 2012 Bimal Gurung was elected chief of the council. Although the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, tri- umphantly proclaimed to have “solved” the Darjeeling problem, the fierce protests sparked by the Telangana announcement and Gurung’s temporary resignation as GTA chief in July 2013, as well as the reiteration of the statehood demand by other regional parties suggests that the autonomous council model is not a durable solution to the crisis. In response to the revived Gorkhaland demand, some books were published in recent years that look at the movement from different perspectives. Gorkha Ethnicity Swatahsiddha Sarkar’s book ( Gorkhaland Movement: Ethnic Conflict and State Response ) looks into the working and failure of regional autonomy models. His study addressed the question of “Why do ethnic conflicts in Darjeeling hills survive despite several efforts to resolve the same from time to time?” (p 11). Grounded in the sociology of conflict resolution, he approaches this question by analysing the historical emergence of ethnic conflict in Darjeeling in response to state policy and forms of governance. Sarkar argues that a main reason for the failure of the government approach to solve such conflicts through autonomous councils is its unrespon- siveness to the reality of ethnic conflict and ethnicity formation. The author claims that in the imagi- nation of the state, the problem of Gorkha ethnicity is expressed by a single party and its leader that represents the broader masses to forward their elitist benefits (p 130), which render its approach state-centric and elite-based. In its instrumentalist reading of Gorkha ethnicity, the state does not only fail to account for the aspirations of the broader masses, but also ignores intra-ethnic competition which fosters the emergence of new leaders that hold demands for statehood alive when the regional elite has already compromised on regional authority (p 131). Thus, instead of account- ing for the horizontal construction of ethnicity which forms an important part of people’s lives and culture “conflict resolution measures undertaken in ethnic conflict situations in India took care of the elites’ interest and aspirations (mis) conceiving the same as the true reflec- tion of the masses” (p 38). Inbuilt Contradictions Sarkar identifies a second weakness in the state’s failure to address the contradictions inbuilt in its nation state project. Instead of accommodating difference through recognition and fostering a “we-ness” of Indians, autonomous councils expressed a “walling-in” of the nation’s “other.” This leads the author to a central find- ing: Autonomy packages are themselves contradictory as they ‘exclude[s]’ people of territorially concentrated and insulated cultural experiences while simultaneously ‘including’ them (read control- ling) through the same initiative. Autonomy,