Place:Darjiling, Darjeeling, West Bengal, India

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source: Family History Library Catalog

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Darjeeling is a town and municipality in the Eastern Himalayas in India, lying at an average elevation of in the northernmost region of the state of West Bengal.^[1] Kangchenjunga, the world's third-highest mountain, rises to the north and is prominently visible on clear days.^[2] Darjeeling tea, among the world's most expensive and a source of large revenues, is grown on the slopes below the town and the steam-powered Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, a UNESCO World Heritage site, attracts tourists for the experience of late 19th-century travel.

In the early 19th century, during East India Company rule in India, Darjeeling was identified as a potential summer retreat for British officials, soldiers and their families. The narrow mountain ridge was leased from the Kingdom of Sikkim and eventually annexed to British India. Thousands of labourers were recruited from Nepal, from the local population, and from the other neighbouring Himalayan kingdoms, to clear the forests, build European-style cottages, and work in the tea plantations. Private schools were established in the region for the education of children of the domiciled British in India. After India's independence in 1947, as the British left Darjeeling, its cottages were purchased by wealthy Indians from the plains and its tea plantations by out-of-town Indian business owners and conglomerates. After 1959, refugees from Tibet poured into the Darjeeling area, establishing Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the region.

The Darjeeling hills were created by the same geological processes that created the Great Himalayas. The town's climate is temperate, but rainy from June to September during southwest monsoon. Darjeeling's population is constituted largely of the descendants of the indigenous and immigrant labourers that were employed in the original development of the town. Their common language, the Nepali language, was declared an official language at the state and federal levels. Darjeeling's population increased four-fold between 1951 and 2011, largely from immigration. Tourists flock to Darjeeling in numbers that are annually three to four times the town's population. Surrounded by tea gardens and forestry department land, the town has no room for expansion. Unregulated development, traffic congestion and water shortages are common. Darjeeling's culture is highly cosmopolitan the result of diverse ethnic and religious groups richly intermixing. Darjeeling's native cuisine is rich in fermented foods and beverages. The town is surrounded by semi-evergreen forests. The red panda and Himalayan bear are natives of the region.

Darjeeling's British-era schools attract children from India's upper classes, commonly from out of town. Many young educated locals, educated in government schools, have taken to migrating out for a lack of local employment. Like out-migrants from other regions of northeastern India, they have been subjected to discrimination and racism in some Indian cities. Darjeeling is the headquarters of the Darjeeling district, a semi-autonomous region governed by the Gorkhaland Territorial administration. The quest for statehood for the region, an original goal of the Gorkhaland movement, continues to prove elusive.

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