NEW DELHI, India, June 29, Reuter: Militant Gurkhas demanding a separate State in northeastern India ended a strike today after Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi agreed to meet them.
Shops opened and life returned to normal in most areas when the Gurkha National Liberation Front called off its planned 13day protest after only nine days, residents said.
Three people were killed and government buildings burned in the tea growing areas of Darjeeling during the strike called to put pressure on the government to accept the group’s demands for autonomy in a state they would call Gorkhaland.
Front leader Subhash Ghising told reporters in Darjeeling last night that Gandhi had agreed to meet a 42member delegation of his group in the Indian capital New Delhi on July 22.
Gandhi has rejected the establishment of Gorkhaland for the 900,000 Nepal speaking Gurkhas
who make up 90 per cent of the population in the Darjeeling area bordering the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal.
The Gurkhas are a minority among the rest of West Bengal State’s 60 million people.
The State’s Marxist Chief Minister Jyotti Basu, who met Gandhi last week, said all demands were negotiable except that for a separate state.
Streams of supporters with marigold garlands went to the Front’s headquarters this morning to congratulate Ghising, reporters there said.
Some hardliners said they felt let down by the decision to call off the protest.
In return for halting the strike the Front secured a promise that several prominent members detained under a special Antiterrorist Ordinance last week would be released, Ghising said.
Ghising, who met Home (Interior) Minister Buta Singh in New Delhi, last week, said he urged the state government to stop raids by security forces on the homes and offices of Gurkha activists to encourage a “peaceful solution” to the issue.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 3, 1987
