Sikkim history should be re-written

At Kavi

BY SHITAL PRADHAN

Last month I was on a visit to the ruins of Tumlong, the third capital of Sikkim and the view to that site and the half done repairing work made me feel are we, I hear say are we Sikkimese really concern about our prime past. When I was going through the different pages of Sikkim's history, I believe there are many things we still do not know about Sikkim, or I can say we know very little about it. The time has come for the account of Sikkim's history to be re-written from its initial stages, though we know that we have limited resources along with us.

I am sorry to say that I find many things missing and vacant spaces that need to be filled up. Just to say that we know little of Sikkim's prime is more of a layman's excuse. If the effort is made, we can make the most of it. Until recently, we have looked back at Sikkim's earliest record dating back to the 9th century when Guru Padmasambhava had mystically flown to Tibet via Sikkim. Well, let's not make our prime past much of a folk tale; we have the evidence of the findings of the Neolithic tools from the state, which says that the earliest men were present in Sikkim before 10,000 BC, and I believe that is much before Guru Padmasambhava's visit. 

Another instance is the finding of the murali maize fossils in the 1950s from Sikkim, which placed Sikkim as the secondary origin of maize and dates our existence to 5,000 to 10,000 BC. If only we dare to find out our prime past, we have ample chances to trace our origins.

A petrified fossil found at Shantinagar, Singtam

Let me talk about a few stories that try to defy what we have been following so far. Let's begin with Kavi, a journal that mentions that the blood of a limbu woman was used for the treaty; one of the books on Sikkim history mentions Chanakya's death was successfully planned by the Lepchas. Our so-called history say the generation of Khaye Bhumsa was predicted to rule the mountainous region of Sikkim but it is strange it took 300 years to prove, can we give surety it was all due to that prediction. Where is the written version of the blood brotherhood treaty? 

The list seems long…..so to the latest, how many of us know about S. Mahinda Thero, a Tibetan Buddhist from Sikkim who is regarded as a saint in Sri Lanka for spreading Buddhism on that tiny island. Let's be more specific: can anyone name the mountain shown on Sikkim's revenue stamps since the 1930s? Strangely, the photograph used has never changed for the last 80 years; how about the Sikkim Rocket mail Experiment 1935, which made Sikkim the first country to have the world's first parcel mail dispatched over the river?

The history of a place seems incomplete without proper documentation, let us say. We have old photographs of Sikkim at our houses; can we not share these immemorial treasures? The history of Sikkim is not confined to you and me; it is more of ours for our coming generations. We need to give our coming generations the correct and appropriate presentation of accounts of Sikkim rather than blaming our ancestors for not documenting their records properly.