The book Ethnicity, State and Development by Tanka Subba, an anthropologist at the North Eastern Hill University in Shillong, is about political conflict in an Indian hill territory that has common borders with three (four until 1975) other countries.
Political geography defines boundary as a demarcated territorial limit which is more specific than fuzzy frontiers. In fact, boundaries evolve out of frontiers. Boundaries are also malleable, tending to shift with changes in power dynamics. For example, the Darjeeling area, with which this book is concerned, originally belonged to Sikkim, until annexed by Nepal in 1783. The latter was ejected by the East India Company in 1816 and the territory returned to Sikkim. In 1835, part of Darjeeling area was "granted" away by the Raja of Sikkim to the British. Adjoining divisions of Kalimpong and Dooars were annexed in 1865, from Bhutan and Sikkim, respectively. All these territories became part of Bengal during the imperial heyday. Neither did Bengal's own boundaries remain sacrosanct. The most traumatic was the partition of 1905. Until then one provincial unit encompassed Bengal, Bihar and Orissa.. Dacca, Chittagong and Rajshahi divisions were transferred to Assam in order to reduce the Bengali majority. Bengal regained these divisions in 1912 but 35 years later came the historic partition of 1947.
Bounded territories, whether. national or sub-national, also refer to the people that inhabit it and provide the substance. Subba's book is all about a people's endeavors for political space. He presents a lucid account of the Gorkhaland movement. It is the usual story of highland-lowland interaction, expressed in the political struggle of a martial people (Gorkhali) against a highly cultured host society (Bengali).
The Bengali people have been the pioneers of modernisation in India, be it in social reform, arts, literature or revolutionary politics. Of the last category, two Bengalis whose reference is pertinent are Subash Chandra Bose and Charu Majumdar. Some of Bose's Most prominent followers were Gorkhali (see Subba, p. 59), and Majumdar's heritage is alive in the main opposition party in the Nepal's House of Representatives. In comparison to the Bengali, the Gorkhali of the Darjeeling area, as well as their neighbours the Lepcha and Bhotia, are rustic highlanders. Thus, what transpired in the Darjeeling hills during 1986-88 was a clash of divergent values of societies at different levels of development and sophistication. The confrontation was, in a way, predicted in the title of the book Baas Salki Rahe Cha ("The house is on the fire") by Bhagirath Rawat on the life and times of Ari Bahadur Gurung along with Gorkha League history (Kalimpong, 1981).