Darjeeling/Kolkata: For the Nepali-speaking community living along the India-Nepal border, nationality is a status that is often called into question. The lifelong fear this created in Raju Chhetri's mind turned into reality when a landslide killed five relatives – including his mother and his daughter – in their village, and the country he calls his own refused to see them as its own.

“Our ancestors came from Nepal, but we were born here. We are Indians,” said Raju, seated at a mourning ritual for his 67-year-old mother and his ten-year-old daughter.

Raju's troubles fester in the fact that the bodies of his mother and daughter, along with those of his Nepali citizen relatives, were taken away by the Nepali authorities after their recovery. But at the root of his suffering is a border and the question of who belongs on which side of it.

While the West Bengal government compensated other victims' families with Rs 5 lakh and a government job, Raju's family was excluded from relief due to what he believes is his contested citizenship.

His village, Manebhanjan, is home to about 5,700 people. Situated right along the India-Nepal border, Manebhanjan is considered a gateway to the Kanchenjunga range.

In Bengal’s Darjeeling district, roughly 50% of the population is Nepali-speaking, a figure that rises to 90% in the hilly areas. This linguistic dominance is not the result of recent migration; as early as the 1961 census, Nepali speakers constituted 60% of the district's population. 

Raju, 37, is a trekking guide by profession. On the night of October 5, when a landslide struck Manebhanjan, he was away from home and was leading a group through the mountains. That night, torrential rains across the north Bengal hills and the Terai and Dooars regions claimed at least 40 lives, including 21 in the Darjeeling district alone. 

For Raju, the loss was immeasurable. The landslide claimed five members of his family.

Apart from his mother and his daughter, who lived with him in Manebhanjan, Raju's aunt, her husband and their daughter, who were Nepali citizens and had come from across the border to celebrate the Nepali festival of Dashain, were also killed.

“The landslide took everything from me,” Raju said. “My house, my mother, my child – there was nothing left.”

Unmaking citizens?

Two days later, chief minister Mamata Banerjee began a five-day visit to north Bengal to assess the situation. She distributed cheques of Rs 5 lakh and gave government jobs to the families of most of the victims as immediate relief. But the names of Raju's Nepali-speaking mother and daughter appear to have gone missing from the list.

Raju said, “I heard that other people have received it, but I haven't received anything yet.”

At the time of writing this report, the state government has offered Raju no help, even though Raju has in his possession his mother and his daughter’s birth certificate, his mother’s voter ID card and their Aadhaar cards among them.

“We have all the documents,” Raju said. He said he had already been a registered Indian voter at the time of his daughter Rashmika's birth in India, and presented his current voter ID card to this reporter.

When contacted, sub-divisional officer (SDO) of Darjeeling Sadar, Richard Lepcha, declined to comment directly. “The district magistrate wants to speak with you on this before leaving to meet with the chief minister,” he said.

However, in comments to the media earlier, Lepcha had declared that “all five of them [Raju’s relatives who died] are Nepali citizens. The Nepal government can give them compensation.” He asserted to another outlet: “The Manebhanjan landslide area falls under Nepal's jurisdiction,” a claim he said was confirmed by the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB).

After the SDO declined to comment further, Darjeeling district magistrate Preeti Goyal said officially: “In our Darjeeling district, 21 people died in the disaster, of which 20 were Indian citizens and one was a Nepali citizen. We have provided compensation to all 20 Indian citizens. We also offered government jobs to 16 Indian citizens earlier and four more recently.”

The Wire noted to Goyal that Raju holds an Indian voter ID and that his daughter has a birth certificate issued by the Darjeeling district hospital, and that he is still yet to receive any compensation for the deaths in his family. Goyal replied: “We are looking into it.”

Chief minister Banerjee, in a public statement on October 7, said that apart from Indian citizens, one Nepali and one Bhutanese national had died in the north Bengal disaster, and that their bodies would be handed over to their respective governments.

It is unknown why the SDO told multiple news outlets that the five people who died in the Manebhanjan area were Nepali citizens and under Nepal's jurisdiction. Neither the SDO, nor the DM, or the chief minister have clarified why the latter two pegged the number of Nepali casualties at one.

The Darjeeling district administration has also not said where the Nepali citizen died if not in Manebhanjan under India's jurisdiction. It has not provided any concrete information on whether the body of that supposedly lone Nepali citizen was formally handed over to the Nepal government.

When contacted, block development officer Arghya Guha, under whose jurisdiction Manebhanjan falls, said: “As this involves international citizens, I am not authorised to comment.”

Emails were also sent to Gorkhaland Territorial Administration chairman and CEO Anit Thapa, under whose semi-autonomous council Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts fall, but no response had been received yet. The story will be updated if any response is received.

Also read: In Bengal's Kolkata-Centred Politics, Darjeeling Has Always Been the ‘Other’

The stakes of arbitrary denial

This lack of clarity on the part of higher-ranking officials is in contrast to the in-person verification done by someone like booth-level officer Rohit Thapa, who said that Raju and his wife Mira Chhetri are registered on the voter list. “Raju's daughter … was my student,” Thapa said. “They are Indians.”

A public representative, who requested anonymity, claimed: “The victims did not receive any help from the Indian administration, except from the SSB. During the recovery of the bodies, the Nepal army, Nepal police, SSB and local residents all worked together to clear the debris.”

In disasters, the standard procedure is for police to communicate casualties. However, in Manebhanjan's case, neither Indian nor Nepali police informed the administration, according to a local official who requested anonymity. The source stated that while Manebhanjan spans both Nepal and India, the incident occurred in Nepal's jurisdiction. He also repeated the SDO's claim that the SSB had confirmed that all the victims were Nepali citizens.

Another local source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “I have sent all related documents of Raju's mother and daughter to the block development officer, but he said, ‘Don't expect anything from my end’.” The source added: “I don't have any hope Raju will receive any compensation.” He further said: “Basically a local reporter went to the authorities and claimed Raju has ‘dual citizenship’.”

When asked about this, Raju said: “I am a guide tracker, and for my profession I take a rented room on the Nepal side. It costs less than the India side, and that place is five minutes away from my home, where my family members and relatives died in the landslide. Just because of this, that local reporter misled the authorities and said that I am a Nepali citizen. But I am Indian.” Nepal, like India, does not allow dual citizenship.

The Wire was unable to get in touch with this reporter.

A senior district official, speaking on condition of anonymity, claimed: “All five Nepali-speaking victims were killed on foreign soil. Their post-mortem and cremation also happened there.”

However, this official acknowledged that Raju and his daughter are Indian citizens. “It is common in border families; some members are Indian, while others are Nepali citizens,” the official added.

But ground reporting by Indian journalists from Manebhanjan, without crossing into Nepal, contests the officials’ claim that the deaths occurred outside Indian jurisdiction. At the same time, a report in the Kathmandu Post stated that Raju's home was on the Nepal side of the border.

Such bureaucratic language of cold denial contradicts the Indian law that recognises citizenship by birth. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 1986, states that every person born in India on or after January 26, 1950, shall be a citizen of India by birth if either of their parents were Indian citizens at the time of their birth.

Whereas Article 15 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms: “Everyone has the right to a nationality. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.”

According to reports, the affected village did not receive any aid until three days after the disaster. Officials reportedly reached the village only after journalists arrived and highlighted the situation.

Raju's home is just a ten-minute drive from the Jorebunglow-Sukhia Pokhri block headquarters, making the delay a questionable one. Raju said that Darjeeling's additional superintendent of police (HQ) Debraj Daj did visit and took photographs of his mother's and daughter's documents for identification as citizens for possible compensation, but the family still does not know what decision was made.

Years of shared heritage turn into a liability

India and Nepal share a 1,751 km border, a line that barely divides centuries of shared culture, language and kinship. People cross the border daily for work, shopping or family ties, and it is said that in some houses, one door opens to Nepal and the other to India.

Here, unlike the India-Bangladesh border, there is no fencing. Yet, for Raju, shared heritage played against his family: the citizenship of his deceased mother and daughter has been questioned.

Amid this chaos of contested recognition and personal loss, Raju's condition has become even more dire. His livelihood has always been precarious, barely enough to make ends meet. He earned about Rs 1,200 a day as a trekking guide, but work is irregular, just five or six days a month, and only for nine months in the year. Now, with the loss of his elder daughter and his five-year-old younger daughter battling a serious brain-related illness, Raju's suffering knows no end.

Raju said: “My elder daughter was very bright; she was good at her studies and healthy. But now she is no more.”

Seeing his situation, members of the local Nepali-speaking community on the Indian side are now considering raising funds to support Raju, hoping to save his younger daughter – whom he calls his ‘only hope’.

In a show of solidarity, the Society for Highlander Guides and Porters Welfare Association Darjeeling, also held a large candlelight gathering to express condolences to him for the loss of his mother and daughter.

A local Nepali-speaking resident, describing the feeling of being constantly under scrutiny, expressed how they face the distrust of the authorities, making this tragedy not an anomaly but part of a pattern: “Living near the border only brings us loss. The authorities are always suspicious of our identity. Whenever we go with any request, they conduct a full investigation.”

Rizwan Rahman is a Delhi-based independent journalist, researcher and documentary filmmaker. His work focuses on Indigenous communities, human rights and climate change.

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