KALIMPONG, ONE of three subdivisions of Darjeeling district, is barely a stone’s throw away when a band of youth — girls and boys not more than 18 years of age — flags your car to a halt. They order the doors and boot of the car unlocked. As the others rummage through our belongings, one of them asks, “Rakshi (liquor)?”

Not very far away, past a rutted road running 80 kilometres, a similar group has gathered atop an isolated platform in Darjeeling town. You ask them what brings them there and a Class 9 dropout who claims she is 18 — but looks not a day older than 16 — answers readily, “Our maa (mother), mitti (soil) and Gorkhaland.” Rashmika Thapa is one of the 8,500 members of the “peacekeeping” outfit Gorkhaland Personnel (GLP), a wing of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) led by its self-appointed chief Bimal Gurung.

The task of the group, which is being trained by ex-servicemen in seven camps across the West Bengal hills, is to enforce bandhs called by GJM, ensure locals wear traditional Nepali attire to exhibit their cultural differences to a larger audience, seize and smash liquor bottles and protect Gurung himself. What they get in return is a promise of being absorbed in police services once Gorkhaland, a separate state for Nepali speakers in the three hill sub-divisions of Darjeeling (Kalimpong, Kurseong and Darjeeling), the Siliguri Terai and the Dooars area, is created.

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