ROUSING STUFF The hills are alive — and fighting. Surprisingly, behind the unrest, there is the sound of music — that produced by Prashant Tamang in the show called Indian Idol. Tamang-worship has reached fanatical heights in a land where Subash Ghisingh has forbidden the worship of idols. The joke now doing the rounds in the Darjeeling area is that Tamang is about to give Ghisingh a run for his post. Twenty years after the Gorkhaland agitation, and after much water has flown down the Teesta, comes Tamang — literally out of the blue. And the people of the hills, who have treated Ghisingh as nothing short of a demi-god, go berserk in making Tamang the Indian Idol. What is it about this boy that caused a riot in the hills? He is all but 24 years, a mere police constable and a singer who was a lesser match to his rival, Amit Paul, according to everyone but his blind supporters. Bad roads and landslides had hit essential supplies, but it was the timely availability of mobile recharge vouchers that people were more worried about. The woes of a difficult pahari life were forgotten for the Gorkhali singer. Tamang had little or nothing to do with Ghisingh. And yet, anonymous posters threatened to oust Ghisingh if Tamang lost. By the time Tamang’s idolization was complete, a loquacious radio jockey’s sense of humour suddenly went awry and spoilt the party. This time too, the people’s ire was directed at Ghisingh — openly on Darjeeling’s Chowrasta. “Give power to us if you cannot stand up for your people”: that was the message. Only those who miss the wood for the trees will dismiss the entire episode — from frenzied voting to unprecedented clashes in Siliguri — as euphoria or madness. Tamang has emerged as the new mascot of Nepali nationalism — a symbol of everything that the hill people have aspired to over the years. He is the promise of deliverance, as Ghisingh used to be until it was clear that he had failed to deliver. This frenzy is born out of a deep-rooted crisis of identity and a sense of being wronged — in the hands of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council, the state government, the Centre, the police, even Sony TV and the mobile service providers. A lawyer went to the extent of claiming that the sound-engineers had conspired to distort Tamang’s voice. Thus, when Tamang sang on the Indian Idol stage, he represented the desire of the people not only to break free from the stereotype of chowkidars and durwans, but also to be seen and accepted as ‘Indians’. These sentiments would not have been so strong if the hills had had their rightful share of the development pie — jobs, education, roads, electricity, water. In the absence of these, Tamang came to stand for the political void — the failed leaders and their broken promises. It is true that the Indian Idol glory is short-lived. For Tamang, however, it will last a little longer than usual — for, in his journey to the top, he had been able to bring a scattered community together. His victory thus becomes a show of strength for the Gorkhas, as well as a proof of their determination to bring about change. The people of the hills are no strangers to political agitation. But a show of such strong resentment has not happened in a long time. The stage is set. All that is needed now are leaders who will be able to make proper use of the collective energy that Tamang has been instrumental in unleashing. His ‘political’ role ends here. saraswati