Subhash Ghisingh, once the uncrowned king of Darjeeling who championed the cause of Gorkhaland, today passed away in oblivion in New Delhi, far away from his love -Darjeeling hills.
The founder of Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) Ghisingh (78), died in a hospital today in New Delhi after suffering from liver ailments and cancer for last few years.
Born in 1936 in Darjeeling, Ghisingh joined the Indian Army at a young age of 18 in 1954, but left it in 1960 and worked as a teacher in a primary school in the hills.
The poor living conditions of the people of the hills attracted him towards Tarun Sangh, a social organisation, where he was baptized in the world of politics.
Ghisingh, after forming a political outfit "Nilo Jhanda", started organising political programs highlighting the cause of the people of the hills, which not only gained him popularity among the people in the hills but also helped him in expanding his mass base in Darjeeling.
Accusing the successive state governments of West Bengal and Centre of ignoring the cause of the people of the hills and just treating them as a vote bank, Ghisingh in April 1979, for the first time raised the demand for a separate state based on linguistic and ethnic lines.
With a demand for the separate state for the people of Darjeeling, Ghisingh coined the term "Gorkhaland" and launched a violent movement in Darjeeling in 1980 under the banner of GNLF, thus turning the queen of the hills into a battlefield where bloodshed and killings became an order of the day, leading to deaths of more than one thousand people till 1988.
After the intervention of the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, a historic tripartite agreement was signed between the Centre, state and Ghisingh, thus leading to the formation of an semi autonomous body, Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC) in 1988.
