Prashant Tamang: Forever the Pride of the Hills

NIKESH SUBBA LIMBU

On a cold January 11, 2026, the news of Prashant Tamang’s death initially felt like yet another piece of fake news, so common on social media today. Several close contacts on my WhatsApp had already mourned his passing through their statuses.

To confirm the news, I logged into Facebook. By then, many blue-ticked news pages and artists from my home region of Darjeeling had already acknowledged the shock of Prashant’s untimely demise.According to reports, Prashant suffered a cardiac arrest at his residence in Delhi. He was just 42. Having grown up listening to remixed Nepali songs sung by him—such as Rato Rani Phule Jhai Sanjhama, originally sung by the popular actor-singer Danny Denzongpa—dancing to his Maan Saili, and watching him wield the iconic khukuri in the Nepali film Gorkha Paltan (2010), I am overwhelmed by nostalgia. These memories belong to a time when, in our part of the world, television signals were still adjusted by desperately twisting long antennas to steady flickering visuals.

In the pre-internet era, colour televisions were rare in villages. People would gather to watch popular Hindi soap operas and even the advertisements for Harpic, Mentos, and Lifebuoy that aired in between. It was during those television-driven days that video cassettes of Indian Idol were sold and watched in large numbers. A young Prashant, who auditioned for Indian Idol Season 3 in 2007, soon became a household name. With every episode aired on Sony TV, his steady march towards victory was watched with bated breath. His eventual win felt like a collective victory for the community he represented.

Prashant’s rise on national television coincided with the emergence of a local political force in Darjeeling—the Gorkha Jana Mukti Morcha (GJM), led by Bimal Gurung. Intense political mobilisation had stirred the hills, tapping into the long-suppressed subnational identity of Indian Nepalis, also known as Gorkhas. In this charged atmosphere, Prashant’s victory assumed a symbolic importance, representing much more than a singing competition. His win sparked a renewed sense of aspiration among Gorkhas in West Bengal and underscored the call for new political engineering to dismantle entrenched autocracies in the region—an outcome from which the GJM clearly benefited.

It is important to acknowledge the political undertones of Prashant’s victory, even as he had to come to terms with being both celebrated and derided for his singing. After his win, a national radio jockey infamously referred to him as a “guard,” invoking a deeply hurtful stereotype associated with Nepalis. It took another decade or more for Prashant to firmly establish himself in the national imagination, particularly through his acclaimed role as a sharpshooter in the Hindi web series Paatal Lok 2 (2025).

Today, many artists from the Darjeeling hills openly acknowledge that Prashant’s journey gave them the courage and confidence to step onto national platforms like Indian Idol. Talent shows—national and international—no longer feel distant or homogenised. Prashant paved the way, setting a path for others to follow. He will always be remembered as a trailblazer who believed in his dreams and inspired countless others to pursue theirs.

He was a great dreamer. Even now, I cannot shake off the sense of loss when I watch an old video of him singing “Zindagi pehle kabhi itni hansi kahan?”—where has life ever smiled so much before? Prashant Tamang will forever remain the pride of the hills.

(Nikesh Subba Limbu is a PhD student at the Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Email: nikeshlimbu47@gmail.com)