Sikkim

by Andrew Duff

  Nevertheless, Thondup left Delhi for Gangtok satisfied. Although nothing had actually been agreed, Sikkim’s special position had been recognised, giving hope that he could maintain a Sikkim outside of India.

  In Sikkim, few people took to the streets to celebrate or commemorate the handover of power to India in 1947. Gangtok was significantly closer to Lhasa than to Calcutta – let alone Delhi. In fact, the town was so removed from the world of Indian politics that it took quite some time to locate the solitary Indian flag that was in the town.18

  There were some Sikkimese, however, who recognised the momentous shift that had taken place. One such person was 22-year-old Chandra Das Rai, who was in Darjeeling at the time of the handover and felt a great sense of excitement at this new dawn.19 Born into a poor family in a small village near Namchi Bazaar in south of Sikkim in 1925, he had been sent to Darjeeling, paid for by a local kazi,* to be educated. As political consciousness grew in the hill town, Rai was swept up in the excitement. The hill town had become a symbol of the Raj and was an easy target for those seeking to highlight the excesses of the colonial project. In the central market the Union Jack was ‘thrown down’20 and the Indian tricolor proudly raised.

  In late 1947, after witnessing the celebrations in Darjeeling, Rai set off back to his home town of Namchi Bazaar to help his comrades in Sikkim celebrate throwing off the shackles of British rule. What he found left him ‘thunderstruck! There was nothing going on!’ Despite being only a few miles from Darjeeling, Namchi Bazaar was almost entirely isolated from the political feelings being expressed there, so Rai moved on to the Sikkimese capital.

  In Gangtok he found that a more urgent local political problem had sparked the agitation he sought. During the 1940s the antiquated system of land laws in Sikkim had come under pressure. The system was based on a simple feudal hierarchy: all land was ultimately owned by the Chogyal, who leased land to the kazis, who collected taxes and ran the estates on his behalf. At the bottom of the heap were the landless tenants, with few rights and many obligations.

  Most of these tenants were Nepalis who had been brought in as part of a mass programme during the late nineteenth century. The British had made no bones about the purpose: at a time when relations with the Buddhist Namgyal ruling family were at a low ebb, the advent of the Nepalis had one purpose: ‘Hinduism will assuredly cast out Buddhism and the praying wheel of the Lama will give place to the sacrificial implements of Brahman.’21 They were also said to be more industrious workers. In 1873, there was reportedly not a single Nepali in Sikkim. By the 1940s they constituted 75 per cent of the population, outnumbering the Bhutias (those who had come to Sikkim with the Namgyals) and the Lepchas (who were considered to be close to ‘indigenous’ in Sikkim), who together constituted the ruling minority.

  Thondup had inched towards a process of reform of the land laws,22 but the basics of a feudal system remained.* In 1946–7, while Thondup had been darting back and forth to Delhi, the discontent had boiled over with a wide-scale ‘no-rent’ campaign involving the mostly Nepali tenant population of southern Sikkim. The kazis, many of whom in the southwest of Sikkim were Lepchas, came under intense pressure and were unable to perform their basic duties as tax collectors, provoking a minor crisis in finances in the country.

  When Rai arrived in December 1947, therefore, he found a number of nascent political movements coalescing around the no-rent campaign. It was hardly an insurrection, but Rai was pleased to find that some of the leaders thought that the ‘good old patriarchal monarchy of ancient days of oriental civilization’ that the British had so consciously supported should be replaced with a system more akin to a democracy. A small group approached the British Political Officer, Arthur Hopkinson (who had ‘stayed on’ as directed, and was still regarded as holding sway), in the hope that he might support their call for change. But Hopkinson disappointed them: for years the British had upheld Sikkim’s autocratic government, run by a small cabinet responsible only to the Chogyal, with not even a nod to the ‘virus of democracy’. With no wish to upset what he saw as a perfectly good system, Hopkinson steered well clear of an awkward situation.* The small group turned their attention to the palace, organising a picnic gathering in Gangtok on the hillside near the top of the ridge, which quickly turned into a minor political rally. Rai wasted no time in getting involved. Someone read out a small tract entitled ‘A few facts about Sikkim’, which questioned the legitimacy of the current system of government. Rai, as one of the few educated Nepalis present, was asked to translate it into Nepali. He clambered onto a table and read it out. The very act of translation was political, bringing the disenfranchised ordinary Nepalis into the political arena in a way that had previously been unthinkable.

  Thondup was astute enough to come out and meet the protestors, promising to consider reform. It was enough to break up the small meeting. But a flame had been ignited. In the days following the picnic, a political party took shape: the Sikkim State Congress (SSC) emerged, designed to be more representative of the real ethnic make-up of Sikkim – Nepalis, Bhutias and Lepchas. A new, more pointed memo was sent to the Palace with three more specific demands: first that ‘landlordism’ should be abolished; second that a ‘responsible government’ should be formed as a precursor to democracy; and third that Sikkim should agree to accede to India.

  For 24-year-old Thondup the demands posed an irritating challenge. He could accept the first demand: he knew that the land laws needed to change, but he also knew that the problem was deeply ingrained and could not be addressed overnight.

  As for the second demand, he was willing to consider change, but he also had grave concerns. For decades the ethnic make-up of Sikkim had been altered with the wide-scale immigration from Nepal. Any move towards more representative government would give the Nepalis more power. Thondup was deeply concerned by the obvious implication – that his Buddhist community might lose its strong connection with the land in the face of the growing Nepali, and largely Hindu, population. Conferring with Hopkinson, the Namgyals came up with a clever compromise that seemed to promise much but in reality changed little. The Palace suggested that the new political party should send three representatives, one from each community – the Bhutias, Lepchas and Nepalis – to function as official ‘secretaries’ to the Chogyal. It was a shrewd move by Thondup and his father, calculated to ensure that the Nepalis (who were now more than 50 per cent of the population) remained in minority representation and that truly representative government was parked as an issue. It seemed to be enough to satisfy those who sought change – for now.

  It was the third demand, however – that Sikkim should join India – that Thondup found most frustrating. He was certain that such a move was incompatible with Sikkim maintaining its identity separate from India. For Sikkimese Nepalis like Rai on the other hand, the demand made perfect sense: many were Hindus and did not feel the same sense of religious and cultural separation from India. Moreover, if accession to India would bring economic benefits – and increase the likelihood of political reform and more representative government – then most of the new members of the SSC believed this was in Sikkim’s interest.

  For Thondup, it was quite different. Over the last five years he had become utterly convinced that he was laying the foundations for a strong Sikkim, and that its best chance of success lay in gradual political reform within the current monarchical system.

  In the event, the issue was conveniently postponed. With the blood flowing from the tragedy of Partition, the Indian government was quite willing to put off engaging with the complexities of the issue of Sikkim’s future. On 27 February 1948, the governments of India and Sikkim signed a standstill agreement stating that existing arrangements would continue ‘pending the conclusion of a new agreement or treaty’ in due course.

  None of the three issues raised by the SSC had actually been addressed, but, with the appointment of the three secretaries, the Palace had effectively bought off the leaders of the campaign for reform.
Many in the SSC, including Rai, realised that the new set-up was nothing more than a sop and grew frustrated and distrustful of the situation. They were even more concerned by the emergence of what looked like a Palace-sponsored political party, the National Party, the leaders of which wasted no time in issuing a declaration that ‘Sikkim shall not under any circumstances accede to the dominion of India.’ A further statement that the party intended by all means available to them ‘to maintain intact the indigenous character of Sikkim and to preserve its integrity’ was seen by some in the SSC as a thinly veiled anti-Nepali-immigrant platform. As a result, the SSC were able to attract sizeable crowds to a rally in the southern Sikkimese town of Namchi Bazaar in October.

  In December, representatives from the SSC decided to approach Nehru himself (now undisputed head of the Indian polity following the assassination of Gandhi) to maintain some momentum. Three young politicians, including Rai, travelled to Delhi to meet with Nehru and present him with the same three demands.

  Nehru received the three petitioners personally. He quickly brushed aside ‘landlordism’ as irrelevant: he was, he said, in the process of dealing with much larger landlords; there was no need to worry – as British influence receded so the influence of unscrupulous Sikkimese landlords would gently fade away. As for ‘responsible government’, he told the three men that he had been fighting for it his whole life and would happily continue doing so on Sikkim’s behalf. But it was on the demand for accession to India that Nehru’s response was unexpected. He told them not to push for accession to India. If accession was rushed through, Nehru said, ‘we will be accused by international opinion that a small state like Sikkim has been coerced to join India. Sikkim, Bhutan and Nepal should all grow according to their own genius.’ The three men, somewhat overawed by being in Nehru’s presence at all, thanked him profusely and headed back to Gangtok none the wiser. Nehru had once more postponed any decisions on Sikkim’s future.

  Back in Sikkim the situation deteriorated in early 1949. Further demonstrations broke out in the south, leading to the temporary arrest of Rai and others, piling the pressure on Thondup and his three hapless secretaries. Thondup, aware of the mission to Delhi, was suspicious about the disturbances. Hopkinson had by now been replaced by a new Indian political officer, Harishwar Dayal; Thondup wondered if Dayal had a hidden agenda to promote political change that would threaten his own position. In April 1949 he wrote to his friend Nari Rustomji, now an adviser to the government in nearby Assam, another equally troubled north-eastern state, revealing his frustrations:

  I am in a hell of a spot as you may have learnt from your intelligence people. Sikkim is not what she used to be. These damn exploiters are raising hell. I am all for fulfilling the wishes of our Bhutia-Lepchas, the real wishes. But I will sooner be damned than let these mean conspirators and job-hunters have their way if I can. We are on the verge of getting independence of sorts like Bhutan and I think we have achieved a miracle in not having had to accede. Our greatest drawback is that the PO and the GoI seem to favour the other side, and we have to proceed so that we give you people no chance to butt in. The second trouble which I feel is common is the unruly Nepalese element against whom I cannot take action like I would like to have.23

  On 1 May the SSC organised a demonstration outside the palace. This time, far from the banal picnic of 18 months earlier, 5,000 agitators moved on the Palace. Thondup sensed real trouble. Running out of options, he approached the Indian Political Officer, Harishwar Dayal, for protection. Two companies of Indian Army soldiers in the state were able to disperse the troublemakers, but now the balance had tilted. Dayal advised Thondup to declare a new form of government. Thondup hurriedly agreed to a new arrangement – three SSC members and two appointees from the Palace would form a small ministry with a degree of independence from the Palace itself – hoping that it would bring some measure of calm to the state.

  This ‘popular ministry’, set up on 9 May 1948, was a disaster. None of the members trusted each other. Meanwhile some in the SSC continued their agitation. Within days the divisions between the factions were severe enough to concern the Indian government, who had one eye on a tense regional situation. In West Bengal to Sikkim’s south, the political situation was so dire that the state government had taken the extreme step of banning the communist party. To Sikkim’s west, the Indians were also worried about the emergence of communism in Nepal. An official in the Indian government told a British official that they were ‘classing Sikkim with Nepal as an area of communist activity’. Worst of all, the situation in Tibet, to Sikkim’s north, was also unclear; with the Chinese communists all but victorious in the mainland, no one knew what might happen next.

  The Indian government decided it could take no chances. In late May they sent the External Affairs Minister to visit the state and make an assessment. At the beginning of June, Dayal dismissed the government that had been formed only a few weeks earlier. It had lasted 28 days. Instead, Dayal announced, an Indian dewan, or prime minister, in Sikkim was to be appointed as a ‘temporary’ solution, pending a full-blown treaty between India and Sikkim. Thondup and his father were persuaded that this was the only way to guarantee stability – and the survival of the existing order. But for the young Crown Prince the whole episode smacked of underhand tactics. The Palace had requested assistance from the Indians to restore order in Gangtok. Instead they now had an Indian-appointed prime minister at the heart of the state. Thondup was convinced that the Indian political officer was working alongside the politicians in a bid to challenge Sikkim’s separate identity from India. The official press organ in Sikkim, with Thondup’s knowledge, put out an angry piece, emphasising what they called India’s ‘fascist policy’. Meanwhile the leaders of the SSC were equally suspicious of Dayal and the Indian actions but for different reasons – they were convinced that Dayal and Thondup were in cahoots, and that the new government had been dismissed in order to bolster the Namgyal family’s position.

  In London, the Foreign Office (which now had sole responsibility for policy towards India, Sikkim and Tibet) found it hard to keep up with events. At first they presumed that the Indian deployment in Sikkim meant that the state had been ‘persuaded’ to accede to the Indian Union; it was hard not to think of the forced accession of Hyderabad the previous year. In June, one baffled British diplomat wrote disdainfully of the Indian action:

  It would now appear that Sikkim has not acceded to the Indian Union. If this is so, the action of the Government of India is a considerable extension of the theory of intervention which they have been developing during the past two years in relation to acceding states.

  One thing was for certain: the British government no longer had the right nor the inclination to intervene.

  Meanwhile the question of Sikkim’s real constitutional status remained as elusive as ever.

  * A term coined by historian Alex McKay in his book Tibet and the British Raj.

  † Thondup’s mother lived in a separate house in Gangtok for the rest of her life, where she brought up the child who over time became an integral part of the extended family.

  * A state in India’s north-east, south of Bhutan, and not far from Sikkim.

  † Maraini, author of Secret Tibet, visited Sikkim twice in the 1930s and 1940s on his way to explore Tibet.

  * This was the Indian name for the Crown Prince in common usage in Sikkim at the time.

  * It was not a popular war with the troops; Lt Iggulden’s account continues: ‘. . . unique because it took place at altitude and under climactic conditions unparalleled in the history of British frontier wars, and irksome on account of its long duration and the negative and indecisive action of the British government, due to fear of complications with China.’

  † The 1890 Anglo-Chinese Convention and a subsequent 1893 Sikkim–Tibet Convention have a good claim to represent the nadir of British imperial influence. Remarkably, the negotiators for both sides were British: Henry Durand, the Government of India’s F
oreign Secretary, represented the British interests in India; James Hart represented the Chinese Maritime Imperial Customs service that managed the Chinese government’s relations with the Treaty Ports and other frontiers. Durand and Hart agreed that the two empires they represented (Indian and Chinese) would respect the other’s claims to ‘suzerainty’ over Sikkim and Tibet respectively.

  * Despite Francis Younghusband’s expedition being touted as a political mission, it had a military escort of 1,150 men. Younghusband was obsessed with getting to Lhasa and frequently and wilfully misinterpreted orders from London counselling restraint. In one terrible confrontation nearly 700 Tibetans were massacred with Maxim guns.

  * A Bhutia-Lepcha term for the local landowners in Sikkim.

  * One obligation that was nominally curtailed in 1945 was the despised jharlangi. This obliged locals to provide free porterage for Sikkim government or British officials on tour.

  * Fosco Maraini recalls a conversation with Hopkinson around this time, which brilliantly captures the mentality of the British withdrawal. In reply to an enquiry as to what he might do next, Hopkinson replied: ‘My dear fellow, these are difficult times for us all. Now they are dismantling the British Empire, and I shall have to look for a job, what can one do when one is nearly half a century old and has spent the best years of one’s life among official documents? I know several Indian languages, and I know Tibetan, but is that of any use? Do you think you could find me a job teaching in Italy, for instance? Just look at what we are reduced to, after being lords of half the earth! Apart from that I feel old already. You see India is a great lady, but she sucks the life out of you.’