The shocking slaying of Madan Tamang, the main opposition leader of Darjeeling, in the centre of town on the morning of 21 May, plunged politics in the Hills to a new low, deepening the political crisis that has pummelled the area in recent years. The political leadership of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (Gorkha People's Liberation Front, GJMM), until recently riding a popularity wave for challenging the aging satrap Subhash Ghisingh and the Kolkata politicians, is suddenly being reviled by the local populace. Most critically, the situation threatens the legitimacy of the ongoing tripartite talks in New Delhi regarding the Hills' political future.
Sixty-two-year-old Tamang was overseeing preparations for a public meeting to mark the foundation day of the All India Gorkha League (AIGL), a party that he headed, when a mob, believed to be made up of GJMM supporters, attacked him with khukuri knives. He was hacked to death in full view of office-goers, local residents and tourists – and a whole contingent of police expressly deployed to the spot to maintain order during the public meeting. The killing of the veteran leader stunned the Hills and sent shock waves through the Gorkha diaspora around the world, even leading some senior GJMM leaders to resign from the party. Most of these resignations were later taken back, however, indicative more of duress than desire.
In Kolkata, Tamang's many well-placed friends, including actor Victor Banerjee, expressed their anguish in a long public letter. Although admitting he did not know Tamang well, the former governor of West Bengal, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, wrote in The Telegraph: 'Like all children of those hills, Tamang had courage. But his courage had a distinctive feature. It was the courage of a Gorkha among the rest, but also of a Gorkha among the Gorkhas. It was the courage of the daring bushel on a hill that is used to only one tree at its crest.' In contrast to the outpouring of grief and outrage, however, the governments in Kolkata and New Delhi stirred only slightly, perpetuating the public belief that Darjeeling and its residents continue to be seen by policymakers as dispensable.
Tamang had been an outspoken opposition leader for three decades, the bulk of that time railing against the long time autocrat of Darjeeling, Subhash Ghisingh. The latter had ruled the area with an iron first for two decades, but he and many of his colleagues in the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) were finally hounded out in March 2008 by a popular movement led by the GJMM and its leader, Bimal Gurung (see Himal July 2008, 'Whither now Darjeeling?'). Prior to that point, Tamang was essentially the only, but certainly the fiercest, critic of Ghisingh's autocratic rule. However, he refused to join the GJMM wave, questioning the credibility of Gurung who had, after all, been Ghisingh's top henchman. Now, it looks as though Tamang's opposition was deemed an unavoidable nuisance by Bimal Gurung, the new satrap of the Darjeeling Hills. Since the rise of the GJMM, Tamang's party office had been ransacked twice and his personal property damaged, which Morcha leaders described as 'acts of the janata'.