Provincialising Bengal: The View from Darjeeling

Abstract

Written against the backdrop of Darjeeling’s 2017 Gorkhaland agitation, this essay chronicles the colonialisations—first British, now Bengali—that undergird this subnationalist struggle. The analysis challenges romanticised views of Darjeeling, presenting instead a case study of internal colonialism. As an exercise in post-colonial thought, it leverages the view from Darjeeling to explore a notable lacuna in our reckonings of subalternity. A place long thought to be ‘above it all’ here begs its own history from below. Heeding Gorkhaland’s call, the essay proposes ‘provincialising Bengal’ as a means to productively address the internal colonialism at hand, and therein rethink Bengal and its peripheries.