Most connosieurs of South Asian news and politics claim not to believe that there is a movement afoot to create a "Greater Nepal" along the Himalayan rim-land of South Asia. Like Jyoti Basu, the Chief Minister of West Bengal, they maintain that the concept is a "bogey" pushed opportunistically by a handful of regional actors.
But there are some diplomatic and media circles in the Indian capital of New Delhi, who profess to lake seriously the idea of a Greater Nepal "conspiracy" or "gameplan". Whether anyone believes it or not, therefore, "Greater Nepal" becomes an issue of geopolitical significance.
Those who have given Greater Nepal a high media profile over the last two years, apparently acting independently of each other, are Dawa Tshering, Foreign Minister of Bhutan, and Subhas Ghising, Chairman of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council.
Ghising has had ongoing spats with West Bengal´s Left Front government and Sikkim´s Chief Minister Nar Bahadur Bhandari. His method of confronting these challenges has been to raise a scare with issues relating to territory, language and nationalism. Over the last couple of years, Ghising has claimed that: Darjeeling is a no-man´s-land due to lacunae in the 1950 Indo-Nepal Friendship Treaty; that Kalimpong is leased territory actually belonging to Bhutan; that ´Gorkhali´ rather than Nepali should have been the officially recognised language in India; and that there exists a conspiracy for Greater Nepal.