Gorkhaland Agitation in Darjeeling Hills - bandh and shutdowns again

In April 1986 the Gorkha National Liberation Front had launched an agitation for a separate state in the Darjeeling Hills for the Gorkhaland as they call it. It was an agitation on spontaneity took the other dominant political parties of the Darjeeling Hills by surprise. The momentum of the movement and the identity of the local people with the GNLF leadership made most other parties seemingly irrelevant. The question which haunts the politician of West Bengal to this day is whether in the early stages they had in fact underestimated the strength of the agitation. The Chief Minister of West Bengal, Jyoti Basu speaks about GNLF, he says, " At the beginning, it was a new party so we didn't know much about it and it was not active when it first raised the demands asking for a separate Gorkhaland as they called it outside of West Bengal but then it caught on the kind of movement they started, the slogans they gave, they caught on although it was unrealistic according to us and bad for the country. We thought it was not only the problem of West Bengal but it is a problem of the whole of India". The early phase of Subhash Kinsingh's agitation was based on a series of demands which he claimed were linked with the reinforcement of the Gorkha Identity. But there was a popular perception that cloaked within these demands actually in need to recognize the economical neglect of the Darjeeling Hill areas. This footage is part of the broadcast stock footage archive of Wilderness Films India Ltd., the largest collection of HD imagery from South Asia. The collection comprises of 150, 000+ hours of high quality broadcast imagery, mostly shot on 4K, 200 fps slow motion, Full HD, HDCAM 1080i High Definition, Alexa and XDCAM. Write to us for licensing this footage on a broadcast format, for use in your production! We are happy to be commissioned to film for you or else provide you with broadcast crewing and production solutions across South Asia. We pride ourselves in bringing the best of India and South Asia to the world... Please subscribe to our channel wildfilmsindia on Youtube    / wildfilmsindia   for a steady stream of videos from across India. Also, visit and enjoy your journey across India at www.clipahoy.com , India's first video-based social networking experience. Reach us at rupindang [at] gmail [dot] com and [email protected] To SUBSCRIBE click the below link: www.youtube.com/subscription_center?a... Like & Follow Us on: Facebook: www.facebook.com/WildernessFilmsIndiaLimited Website: www.wildfilmsindia.com