Prashant Tamang (1983-2026): When An Indian Idol Star Caused A Political Upheaval in Darjeeling

The death of the singer Prashant Tamang, who had shot to fame by winning the third season of Indian Idol back in 2007, has triggered an outpouring of public grief across the Nepali-speaking population in India and elsewhere in Nepal and across the globe. The 43 year old died from a suspected cardiac arrest in Delhi on January 11, and, at the time of writing this report, his body was being transported to Darjeeling, the town of his birth, where an arrangement for an elaborate funeral has been made.

It would only make sense that such care would be taken. Tamang’s tryst with fame would mark one of those rare moments where an individual’s journey in a reality TV show would trigger a much wider movement in the real world, coalescing a community’s identity, reviving old aspirations of a state of their own, and eventually leading to the overthrowing of the local political regime.

Tamang was born in Darjeeling, although he would move to Kolkata, still only around 19 years old, to take on the job of his father, a traffic constable in Kolkata Police who had died in an accident. When he entered <Indian Idol>, then the most popular TV show around, the story of a humble untrained youth from a modest background who had honed his love for music while working in the police, captivated the show’s viewers. But back in the Darjeeling hills, and elsewhere in Nepali-speaking communities in India and abroad, Tamang’s progression through the show came to mean much more. Nepali speakers in India who have often been subject to suspicions about their identity had never witnessed this kind of representation on a popular national stage before. Projecting their own aspirations on the singer, Prashant Tamang fan clubs sprang up across these regions. Since the show’s voting format hinged on SMSes, which were costlier then, donations were organised, and even those of Nepali origin living abroad would send money. Recharge vouchers and top up cards were distributed and many booths came up across the hills where fans could show up to cast votes on scale. There were even demands for the then West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to direct everyone in the state to vote for Tamang. Tamang would eventually go on to win Indian Idol by a landslide. According to reports, he got about 10 times more votes (or a total of 70 million votes) than the runner up.

The only person in Darjeeling who seemed untouched by the hysteria around the singer was the hills’ then political supremo Subhas Ghising. This was ironical because Ghising had spearheaded a violent agitation for the creation of a separate state of Gorkhaland in the 1980s, but he had now failed to get the whiff of a growing popular sentiment around identity. The agitation of the 1980s hadn’t delivered a new state, but led to the creation of a hill council (the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council), and Ghising had come to effectively rule this region for the next few decades.

His once trusted henchman, Bimal Gurung, who had cut his political teeth in the 1980s agitation, sensed an opportunity. Spearheading a campaign to get Tamang to win the competition, organising rallies and mobilising funds in support, Gurung soon managed to turn this wave of mass support against his boss. Ghising had to quit the chairmanship of DGHC, and effectively lived out the rest of his life in exile, down in the plains of Jalpaiguri some hours away by road from Darjeeling town.

In the years since then, all these figures would go on to see much ups and downs. Ghising (and later his son) would try to revive his party Gorkha National Liberation Front, but with little success. He spent of much of his later life in political hibernation, away from Darjeeling, before his death in 2015. Gurung would go on to lead a new agitation for statehood, but has since suffered a big loss of face, after he was seen as not having delivered on the promise of a new state and presumably cut a deal with the powers that be in Kolkata.

Tamang however remained a popular figure within the community. He travelled all around to perform at music shows for the Nepali speaking diaspora, and acted in movies and shows, including the second season of Paatal Lok.

His death has unsurprisingly moved many.