My articles on Sikkim History

India’s illegal occupation of independent Sikkim has to be reversed

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...

The Gorkhas - Sons of the Soil, Pride of the Nation

Nanda Kirati Dewan, a journalist from Assam traces the origin of the Gorkhas in India. Many people have misconceptions about the Gorkhas in India - that they are foreigners and have migrated from Nepal. There could not be a greater mistake than this. The Gorkhas are in fact the aborigines of India and they can trace their history back to ancient times. The Gorkha community is the product of Indo-Aryan and Mongoloid assimilation from ages past. As a linguistic group, they can trace their origin back to Indo-Aryan and Tibeto-Burman beginnings. In fact, the Gorkhas consist of both Indo-Aryan and Mongoloid racial groups. In the Mahabharata and Manusmriti names of Khasa are mentioned. They are in fact the Gorkhas. The Gorkhas spoke the language then known as Khaskura Khasas as a community existed in Nepal which it later changed to another ethnic name. The Lichchhavis, one of the aboriginal tribes of India originally lived in the plains of present Nepal. During the early centu...

The legend of April "73" Agitation in Sikkim

I was not born when Sikkim got merged with the mighty Indian Union, but being a student of Sikkim History, all that is available to me is a rack of books by different authors and those old folks who had been part of that historical “April ‘73’ Agitation”. When I go through the history of Sikkim, April ‘73 Agitation holds an important role, mostly as the turning point of the Independent Sikkim and the Sikkim State. The mass demonstrations against the Chogyal rule shocked the 300-year-old monarchy system and ushered in democratic rule in Sikkim. The agitation was a result “due to big differences which ensued with the demand of repoll in one booth by Kazi Lhendup Dorji and Mr. Krishna Chandra Pradhan, as such the Chogyal had to face the people’s agitation launched by the Joint Action Committee with the tacit blessings of the Government of India. This people’s political movement spearheaded by Kazi Lhendup Dorji finally resulted in Sikkim joining the mainstream as the 22nd State...

Proud to be a Sikkimese: Sikkim Travel, Culture & Local Heritage

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