Subhash Ghisingh, founder of Gorkha National Liberation Front, dies

29 January 2015 :: Subhash Ghisingh founder of Gorkha National Liberation Front, died in a Delhi hospital on Thursday. He was 79. He is survived by his son. His body will be flown in from Delhi on Friday.

 Subhash Ghisingh, a former Gorkha Rifles soldier who later became a teacher, founded the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) in 1980. He led the GNLF to a violent movement for carving a separate Gorkhaland out of Bengal resulting in bloodbath in the Darjeeling Hills between 1986 and 1988.

He was the chairman of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council in West Bengal, India from 1988 to 2008. He spearheaded the Gorkhaland movement in the 1980s.

 The Gorkhaland movement grew from the demand of ethnic Gorkha (Nepali) living in Darjeeling District of West Bengal for a separate state. The Gorkhaland National Liberation Front led the movement, which disrupted the district with massive violence between 1986 and 1988. The issue was resolved, at least temporarily, in 1988 with the establishment of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council within West Bengal.

Subhash Ghisingh was born on 22 June 1936 at Manju Tea Estate, near Mirik, in Darjeeling district. While a student of Class IX in St. Robert’s High School, Darjeeling, his father died. As a result, he left school and joined the Gorkha Rifles of the Indian Army as a soldier in 1954. He completed his matriculation in 1959 while in the army, but quit the army in 1960 and returned to Darjeeling.