Very little is known about the four unknown burial that were found at Aritar. According to the oral documentation from the elderly local people of this region, the burials of four dead bodies are believed to be of soldiers of the British contingent representing the “1904 British expedition to Tibet” led by Lieutenant Colonel Sir Francis Edward Younghusband that entered Tibet via Aritar (Old Silk Route). It is believed that the four soldiers were injured during the massacre and brought to the Health Camp at Aritar Dak Bungalow, where they latter died. A century later, the present burial site was re-constructed into cemetery by the Aritar Panchayat in due honour to those four unknown Britishers.
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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