King Palden
Thondup Namgyal, the Chogyal of Sikkim was in his palace on the morning of 6
April, 1975 when the roar of army trucks climbing the steep streets of Gangtok
brought him running to the window. There were Indian soldiers everywhere, they
had surrounded the palace, and short rapid bursts of machine-gun fire could be
heard. Basanta Kumar Chhetri, a 19-year-old guard at the palace's main gate,
was struck by a bullet and the killed-the first casualty of the takeover. The
5,000-strong Indian force didn't take more than 30 minutes to subdue the palace
guards who numbered only 243. By 12.45 it was all over, Sikkim ceased to exist
as an independent kingdom.
Captured
palace guards, hands raised high were packed into trucks and taken away,
singing: "Dela sil, li gi, gang changka chibso" (may my country keep
blooming like a flower). But by the, the Indian tri-colour had replaced the
Sikkimese flag at the palace where the 12th king of the Namgyal dynasty was
held, prisoner. "The Chogyal was a great believer in India. He had huge
respect for Mahatma Gnadhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Not in his wildest dreams did
he think India would ever swallow up his kingdom," recalls Captain Sonam
Yongda, the Chogyal's aide-de-camp. Nehru himself had told journalist Kuldip
Nayar in 1960: "Taking a small country like Sikkim by force would be like
shooting a fly with a rifle." Ironically it was Nehru's daughter Indira
Gandhi who cited "national interest" to make Sikkim the 22nd state in
the Indian union.
In the years
leading up to the 1975 annexation, there was enough evidence that all was not
well in relations between New Delhi and Gangtok. The seeds were sown as far
back as 1947 after India gained independence when the Sikkim State Congress
started an anti-monarchist movement to introduce democracy, end feudalism and
merge with India. "We went to Delhi to talk to Nehru about these
demands," recalls CD Rai, a rebel leader. "He told us, we'll help you
with democracy and getting rid of feudalism, but don't talk about merger
now." Relenting to pressure from pro-democracy supporters, the 11th
Chogyal was forced to include Rai in a five-member council of ministers, to
sign a one-sided treaty with India which would effectively turn Sikkim into an
Indian
"protectorate", and allow the stationing of an Indian "political officer" in Gangtok.
"protectorate", and allow the stationing of an Indian "political officer" in Gangtok.
As a leader
of international stature with an anti-imperialist role on the world stage,
Nehru did not want to be seen to be bullying small neighbours in his own
backyard. But by 1964 Nehru had died and so had the 11th Chogyal, Sir Tashi
Namgyal. There was a new breed of young and impatient political people emerging
in Sikkim and things were in ferment. The plot thickened when Kaji Lendup Dorji
(also known as LD Kaji) of the Sikkim National Congress, who had an ancestral
feud with the Chogyal's family, entered the fray. By 1973, New Delhi was openly
supporting the Kaji's Sikkim National Congress. Pushed into a corner, the new
Chogyal signed a tripartite agreement with political parties and India under
which there was further erosion of his powers. LD Kaji's Sikkim National
Congress won an overwhelming majority in the 1974 elections, and within a year
the cabinet passed a bill asking for the Chogyal's removal. The house sought a
referendum, during which the decision was endorsed. "That was a
charade," says KC Pradhan, who was then minister of agriculture."The
voting was directed by the
Indian military.
Indian military.
India's
"Chief Executive" in Gangtok wrote: "Sikkim's merger was
necessary for Indian national interest. And we worked to that end. Maybe if the
Chogyal had been smarter, and played his cards better, it wouldn't have turned
out the way it did." It is also
said that the real battle was not between the Chogyal and Kaji Lendup Dorji,
but between their wives. On one side was Queen Hope Cook, the American wife of
the Chogyal and on the other was the Belgian wife of the Kaji, Elisa-Maria
Standford. "This was a proxy war between the American and the
Belgian," says former chief minister, BB Gurung. But there was a third
woman involved: Indira Gandhi in New Delhi.
Chogyal
Palden met the 24-year-old New Yorker, Hope Cook, in Darjeeling in 1963 and
married her. For Cook, this was a dream come true: to become the queen of an
independent kingdom in Shangrila. She started taking the message of Sikkimese
independence to the youth, and the allegations started flying thick and fast
that she was a CIA agent. These were the coldest years of the Cold War, and
there was a tendency in India to see a "foreign hand" behind
everything so it was not unusual for the American queen to be labeled a CIA
agent. However, as Hope Cook's relations with Delhi deteriorated, so did her
marriage with the Chogyal. In 1973, she took her two children and went back to
New York. She hasn't returned to Sikkim since. Then there was Elisa-Maria,
daughter of a Belgian father and German mother who left her Scottish husband in
Burma and married LD Kaji in Delhi in 1957. The two couldn't have been more
different. Elisa-Maria wanted to be Sikkim's First Lady, but Hope Cook stood in
the way. "She didn't just want to be the wife of an Indian chief minister,
she wanted to be the wife of the prime minister of an independent Sikkim."
With that kind of ambition, it was not surprising that with annexation,
neither Hope Cook nor Elisa-Maria got what they wanted.
Meanwhile, in
New Delhi, Indira Gandhi was going from strength to strength, and India was
flexing its muscles. The 1971 Bangladesh war and the atomic test in 1974 gave
Delhi the confidence to take care of Sikkim once and for all. Indira Gandhi was
concerned that Sikkim may show independent tendencies and become a UN member
like Bhutan did in 1971, and she also didn't take kindly to the three Himalayan
kingdoms, Bhutan, Sikkim and Nepal, getting too cosy with each other. The
Chogyal attended King Birendra's coronation in Kathmandu in 1975 and hobnobbed
with the Pakistanis and the Chinese, and there was a lobby in Delhi that felt
Sikkim may get Chinese help to become independent.
In his book on the Indian intelligence agency, Inside RAW, The story of India's secret service, Ashok Raina writes that New Delhi had taken the decision to annex Sikkim in 1971 and that the RAW used the next two years to create the right conditions within Sikkim to make that happen. The key here was to use the predominantly-Hindu Sikkimese of Nepali origin who complained of discrimination from the Buddhist king and elite to rise up. "What we felt then was that the Chogyal was unjust to us," says CD Rai, editor of Gangtok Times and ex-minister. "We thought it may be better to be Indian than to be oppressed by the king." So, when the Indian troops moved in there was general jubilation on the streets of Gangtok. It was in fact in faraway Kathmandu that there were reverberations. Beijing expressed grave concern. But in the absence of popular protests against the Indian move, there was only muted reaction at the United Nations in New York. It was only later that there were contrary opinions within India-Morarji Desai said in 1978 that the merger was a mistake. Even Sikkimese political leaders who fought for the merger said it was a blunder and worked to roll it back. But by then it was too late.
In his book on the Indian intelligence agency, Inside RAW, The story of India's secret service, Ashok Raina writes that New Delhi had taken the decision to annex Sikkim in 1971 and that the RAW used the next two years to create the right conditions within Sikkim to make that happen. The key here was to use the predominantly-Hindu Sikkimese of Nepali origin who complained of discrimination from the Buddhist king and elite to rise up. "What we felt then was that the Chogyal was unjust to us," says CD Rai, editor of Gangtok Times and ex-minister. "We thought it may be better to be Indian than to be oppressed by the king." So, when the Indian troops moved in there was general jubilation on the streets of Gangtok. It was in fact in faraway Kathmandu that there were reverberations. Beijing expressed grave concern. But in the absence of popular protests against the Indian move, there was only muted reaction at the United Nations in New York. It was only later that there were contrary opinions within India-Morarji Desai said in 1978 that the merger was a mistake. Even Sikkimese political leaders who fought for the merger said it was a blunder and worked to roll it back. But by then it was too late.
Today, most
Sikkimese know they lost their independence in 1975, and Siliguri-bound
passengers in Gangtok still say they are "going to India". The elite
has benefited from New Delhi's largesse and isn't complaining. As ex-chief
minister BB Gurung says: "We can't turn the clock back now."
No comments:
Post a Comment