Extracted from Pakistan Defence 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 Kazi 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 Kazi, 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 thic...
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Kazini Elisa Maria was my grandmother and she wasn't Belgian - she just used to say that because she had an odd sense of humour and she liked to mess with journalists' minds. She was a mixture of Scots, English and Southern Irish and was born Ethel Maud Shirran in Doune, Perthshire, and raised in Edinburgh.
ReplyDeleteHi...i am honoured to have some one from a family that is a part of Sikkim History in my blog. I would be more than happy if you add some more interesting things about your grand mother...
ReplyDeleteShital Pradhan (himalayanreview@gmail.com)