Sikkim

by Andrew Duff

  CHAPTER TWO

  Under the Shadow of Tibet

  1949–59

  -1-

  The events in Sikkim in 1949 had not taken place in a vacuum. The rapidly developing regional situation in Tibet – and elsewhere in Asia – had been a major factor behind India’s firm actions. Over the next decade, the situation in Tibet would cast a long shadow over events in Sikkim.

  Tibet posed a headache for India’s diplomats. For more than 30 years, Britain had supported the ‘de facto’ independence of Tibet, believing it acted as a ‘buffer’, protecting the British Empire’s possessions in India. From their base in Gangtok, British political officers had maintained close relations with elements within the Tibetan leadership. During the 1920s they had funded and trained a Tibetan army who paraded in uniforms based on British designs. In 1936 they even managed to establish a permanent ‘Residency’ in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. It was, at its heart, a policy of realpolitik designed to keep the Chinese at arms length from British Indian possessions. As such, it had worked.

  When the new Indian government took over in 1947, the question of how to deal with Tibet created significant divisions in the cabinet. Sardar Patel, the hawkish Indian Home Affairs Minster, felt strongly that Tibet was a vital buffer against the Chinese. It was imperative that India continue to support the idea of autonomy for Tibet. Nehru held a quite different view. His vision was for a pan-Asia federation, with China and India as close partners in a post-imperial world. The Indian presence in Tibet was a hangover of British imperial policy; he saw no reason to make a firm commitment to Tibet’s autonomy, something that he knew would cause unnecessary tensions with the Chinese. During 1947–9, as the Chinese civil war between Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists and Chairman Mao’s communists had played out, it had not been clear which of the Indian views would prevail.

  The Tibetan leadership, aware that they could not rely on Indian support, sent a trade mission trooping through Britain and the USA during 1948 and 1949 in an attempt to gain support for their independent status and forge relations with the major trading nations.1 In London they found the British government alarmingly disengaged, unwilling to take any position on its former imperial obligations.

  The response in Washington was slightly more positive. A new administration, determined to back the concept of self-determination, expressed mild support for the Tibetan cause. This support strengthened when, in October 1949, only months after the Indian intervention in Sikkim, Mao’s communists declared victory over the nationalists, announcing the formation of the People’s Republic of China. The US administration was determined to combat the growing threat of global communism: it did not take long for the State Department to identify Tibet as a potential front for ‘checking Chi Commie advances’.2

  The issue assumed greater urgency when, on 1 January 1950, Radio Peking announced ‘the tasks for the People’s Liberation Army for 1950 are to liberate Taiwan, Hainan and Tibet’. Within weeks, units of the People’s Liberation Army started to move rapidly across the mountainous terrain of western China’s Sichuan Province towards the Tibetan border.3 The Indian action to assert some control in Sikkim six months earlier suddenly looked very prescient.

  In Gangtok, Sikkim, Crown Prince Thondup had watched events unfold in Tibet during 1950 with some concern. Sikkim’s royal family shared more than a belief in Buddhism with their northern neighbour; they considered the Tibetan nobility as their kin. Familial ties with Tibet had been strengthened in the 1940s by his sister Coocoola’s marriage to the governor of Gyantse, son of one of the four ministers of Tibet. Thondup himself was also about to get married – he wrote to Rustomji that ‘my parents have at last caught up with me and they have made me agree to marriage . . .’ The bride chosen for him – a beautiful Tibetan girl, Sangey Deki – was from an important Tibetan family. He already had two children through a Lepcha mistress,4 but at 27, marriage, his father felt, would confer responsibility on the Crown Prince.

  During 1950 Thondup knew that his focus had to remain on the survival of Sikkim itself. In August 1949, John Lall, a tall Indian ICS officer with a clipped British accent, had been appointed as the new Indian dewan. Lall had set about his task with an alarming gusto, ‘inspired by a sense of mission to clean the Augean stables’5 of Sikkim. He immediately stripped the landowning kazis of their feudal rights, from tax collection to judicial privileges, and set about a rapid modernisation of the state, reshaping Sikkim ‘along the lines of an Indian state or district’.6 ‘Everything and everybody existed, or so it appeared, on the sufferance of the Dewan Omnipotent,’ wrote one observer.7

  Faced with such an onslaught, Thondup headed down to Delhi in early 1950 determined to clarify Sikkim’s nebulous status with the Nehru administration. Sikkim was now the only one of the three Himalayan states whose status was still under review. There was no question that Nepal would remain independent; meanwhile Bhutan’s treaty of the previous year had guaranteed the country internal autonomy and conceded only that India should ‘guide’ its foreign affairs. But, with the Chinese assertion of its rights in Tibet highlighting the pressures on India’s northern border, Sikkim’s negotiating position was significantly weaker. Nevertheless, Thondup recalled, the appointment of an Indian dewan had been only temporary. He hoped he could achieve a status analogous to Bhutan.

  Despite the actions of the previous year, Nehru’s government was still divided about how to deal with the Sikkim issue. Sardar Patel, Minister of Home Affairs, was highly sensitive to the threat posed by the new Chinese government to the north and advocated a clear assertion of Indian control in Sikkim. On the other side stood Nehru with his Himalayan bias, still fixated on the idea of a new Asia rising out of the ashes of colonialism, a ‘Third Way’ encompassing shades of different opinion under one pan-Asia umbrella. Why, Nehru asked Patel, was there any need to change the status of Sikkim, particularly now that Thondup had sanctioned an Indian dewan to assist with Sikkim’s administration? Sikkim could continue to flourish as a buffer state alongside Bhutan, with a similar status to that which they’d both had before 1947, he argued. As Thondup left Delhi, he declared in a letter to his friend Rustomji that he was confident ‘there is going to be a Sikkim on the map and outside the grip of Sardar Patel’.8

  But events to the north of Sikkim were moving fast.

  In March, as Chinese communist troops headed towards Tibet, the Tibetans turned to their nearest neighbours, the new Indian government, for support. The British had regularly supplied arms to the Tibetans; they hoped the Indians would maintain the commitment. They made a request for 38 two-inch mortars with 14,000 bombs, 63 three-inch mortars with 14,00 bombs, 150 Bren guns, and a million rounds of rifle ammunition – enough for a single brigade. But India refused – Nehru, an ardent anti-imperialist, did not want to be seen as siding with the USA and the UK against China. He was also still convinced that an accommodation with Mao and the Chinese communists was possible.

  But the picture across Asia was changing rapidly. The invasion of the south of Korea in June 1950 was a further sign of the new confrontational geopolitics in the region. With Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists now also established in Taiwan, it looked like a new Asian dimension to the emerging Cold War could be opening up, with the potential for multiple fronts to the east and west of China.

  When a large earthquake struck Eastern Tibet in August, the Tibetans had no doubt that it was a deadly omen, compounding the appearance of a comet streaking across the sky the previous year. There were still those old enough to remember that a similar comet had been seen in 1910 just before the Chinese invasion that had led to the 13th Dalai Lama’s flight from Tibet into Sikkim and into the arms of Charles Bell, the British Political Officer in Gangtok.*

  On 7 October 1950 all the prophecies came true, as Chinese troops once more marched into Tibet. There were pockets of resistance, but the training and weaponry on the Chinese side gave them an overwhelming advantage. The result was a foregone conclusion: the Chines
e were now back in Lhasa, and in broad control of Tibet.

  The Tibetan leadership refused to give up hope. In November, they made an appeal to the newly formed United Nations to restrain the Chinese aggression, but few countries were willing to stand up for Tibet. It fell to the tiny nation of El Salvador to demand a debate in the UN. The British representative at the UN, Sir Gladwyn Jebb, summed up the evasive British position: ‘Politically, I have no doubt at all that what we want to do is to create a situation which does not oblige us in practice to do anything about the Communist invasion of Tibet.’9 In Delhi, Nehru was not willing to do anything for the Tibetans either. The government in Washington, knee deep in the quagmire of the Korean War, also held their counsel – for the time being. Urgent telegrams from the Dalai Lama and his Kashag to all three governments went unanswered. The lack of response from the British was especially galling. The Dalai Lama recalled later in My Land and My People:

  The replies to these telegrams were particularly disheartening. The British Government expressed their deepest sympathy for the people of Tibet and regretted that owing to Tibet’s geographical position, since India had been granted independence, they could not offer help. The Government of the United States also replied in the same sense, and declined to receive our delegation. The Indian Government also made it clear that they would not give us military help, and advised us not to offer any armed resistance, but to open negotiations to a peaceful settlement on the basis of the Simla Agreement of 1914. So we learned that, in military matters, we were alone.

  Meanwhile, the Chinese troop presence in Lhasa was growing daily. On 15 November the Dalai Lama, still only 15 years old, was declared temporal ruler of Tibet in an effort to bolster the spirits in the capital. But as December passed it became clear that, for his own safety, the Dalai Lama would have to leave Lhasa. At 2 a.m. in the morning on 19 December he fled the capital, heading down the Chumbi Valley with a substantial escort of his personal bodyguard.

  Four decades earlier the 13th Dalai Lama had used the same route to escape Chinese troops. He had spent three years in exile in Darjeeling before the collapse of the Chinese Empire had allowed him to return. Now, the 14th Dalai Lama, too, had to consider the prospect of exile in the face of a new Chinese army. But he was not ready to leave Tibet altogether. At Yatung, just short of the Sikkimese border, the party halted. The treasury, considered too valuable to leave within the grasp of the Chinese, was sent on across the Nathu La for safekeeping in Sikkim. It would remain there until 1959.10

  The Dalai Lama and his advisers considered their next move.

  -2-

  On 14 December 1950, five days before the Dalai Lama fled Lhasa, Thondup’s father, Sir Tashi, finally signed a new treaty formalising the arrangements between India and Sikkim. Given the worsening situation in Tibet, no one was under any illusions about the strategic rationale behind the terms. Sikkim’s status as a protectorate of India was confirmed; Sikkim would ‘enjoy autonomy in regard to its internal affairs’ while the government of India would remain ‘responsible for the defence and territorial integrity of Sikkim’, with the right to station troops there too. The government of Sikkim was to have ‘no dealings with any foreign power’.

  Behind the scenes, however, the two signatories and other interested parties walked away with very different views on what the treaty meant for the future. The Government of India’s External Affairs ministry was confident it had asserted its protectorate over Sikkim. Some in the Indian cabinet thought of it merely as an ‘extended lease of life’. Sikkim’s politicians, in the Sikkim State Congress, told their supporters that the ‘demand to accede to India has in principle been accepted’.

  Thondup viewed it entirely differently. He felt that he had successfully avoided being swallowed up by India and asserted Sikkim’s distinct personality: it was not quite as good as Bhutan had achieved, but he felt that the very fact he had concluded a treaty meant that Sikkim’s separate identity from the new Indian Republic had been recognised. However, he was conscious that something significant had changed. Writing to Rustomji in January 1951, he said:

  Sikkim is still pulling on, but the good old happy days are gone. Although we have been able to save ourselves from merger etc., at present we are being led by the nose by the Indian Govt.

  As the new arrangements bedded down, everyone recognised that the question of how Sikkim’s government was going to be chosen was critical. For Thondup, the major unresolved issue remained how to protect the Buddhist heritage of his country and the interests of his own Bhutia-Lepcha community in the face of the majority Nepali population. He asked his friend and unofficial adviser, Nari Rustomji, for advice. Rustomji was wrestling with some of the same questions in Assam, so Thondup asked how the Assamese state differentiated between ‘Assamese, Tribal and non-Assamese’ and how ‘domicile’ was defined in regard to land acquisition. Rustomji, unwilling to become involved in this highly contentious issue, advised him to discuss the issue with Lall.

  Lall recognised the depth of Thondup’s concerns but had to perform a delicate balancing act. He knew that he had to ensure that the Nepali community also felt they had gained something. The compromise he devised was a convoluted system called the ‘parity formula’. The Bhutia-Lepcha community (by now only 25 per cent of the population) was to have at least 50 per cent of the seats in elections reserved for them. The other 50 per cent of seats was reserved for the Nepali community (roughly 75 per cent of the electorate). For the Nepalis, it was an advance from the 33 per cent representation that they had been given under the earlier ‘three secretaries’ system, but it came nowhere near the fully representative government that the Nepali-dominated SSC were campaigning for. No one was entirely satisfied, but all parties agreed to work within the proposed new system. Reluctant compromises and half-hearted moves towards representative government would continue to plague communal relations throughout the next three decades.

  From his desk in Gangtok, Thondup and his family wondered if he had won a hollow victory. ‘Here in Sikkim things are not so good,’ he wrote to Rustomji, ‘and the Government of India is pretending that we rule while they rule through a Dewan.’11

  But the Namgyal family would soon have other matters on their minds. They were about to get directly involved in the Tibetan struggle for survival.

  -3-

  Less than 30 miles away in Yatung, just over the Tibetan border, the Dalai Lama was approaching his 16th birthday. He was many miles from his capital Lhasa; his advisers told him that there was no realistic prospect of a return while Chinese troops remained in the city. Naturally, he continued to explore his options, including whether it would make more sense to head south to friendly Sikkim, to Bhutan or even to Kalimpong in northern India than to return to the Tibetan capital.

  Meanwhile a new Tibetan delegation had arrived in Beijing to try and open negotiations directly with Chairman Mao. The man heading this delegation, Ngabo Ngawang Jigme, was more willing to consider the possibility of cooperation with the Chinese. In May 1951 news reached Yatung that Ngabo had been persuaded that it was in Tibet’s interests to sign a new 17-Point Agreement, a document that essentially legitimised the Chinese occupation of Tibet, affixed with the seals of the Tibetan government (which many believe must have been forged).

  The Dalai Lama and his entourage were astounded when they heard the Chinese broadcast reporting the agreement as the ‘return of the Tibetan people to the big family of the Motherland – the People’s Republic of China’.12 They had not expected anything of the sort. As winter ended, the Dalai Lama cast around for signs of hope. One potential source of assistance lay in two telegrams that had arrived in Yatung during the spring. They were from the American Ambassador in Delhi, Loy Henderson. Henderson, a forthright man who was deeply distrustful of communism, had been watching the developing situation carefully. In his dialogue with Washington, he was now finding a consistently sympathetic ear when he raised the Tibetan issue. The increasingly fraught war in Korea had al
ready highlighted the Asian dimension to the Cold War; Henderson urged Washington to see Mao’s expansion westwards into Lhasa in the same light. Tibet was becoming a potential front in the proxy war against the Chinese, he told them, who in turn could now be viewed as an extension of the Soviet threat. It was as if Henderson had just put a Cold War gloss on the old Great Game that the British had played, this time seeing the necessity of holding back the encroaching Communist (Soviet) threat in the guise of the Chinese.

  In May, when the news of the 17-Point Agreement legitimising the Chinese presence in Tibet reached him, Henderson took the bold decision to send a young CIA officer, Larry Dalley, to Kalimpong. The hill town was only a few miles from where the Dalai Lama was in Yatung. Dalley was told to make contact with the rebel Tibetan leaders who were gathering there and assess the situation. Meanwhile Henderson concocted an extraordinary plan to get the Dalai Lama out of Yatung and across the border: the explorer Heinrich Harrer (of Seven Years in Tibet fame) and a young Scottish adventurer, George Patterson, were to meet the Dalai Lama on the border and escort him into Bhutan initially, before whisking him to safety.13

  But in Yatung the Dalai Lama was still not convinced that it was right to leave Tibet. The monks of the powerful major monasteries urged him to stay and to return to Lhasa. His presence was needed, they told him, to maintain morale in the rapidly changing situation. The Dalai Lama, still only 16, consulted the Tibetan Oracle. The answer was clear: he must stay in Tibet with his people. In late July he set off with a 900-mule caravan for Lhasa, arriving back in the capital on 17 August 1951. Henderson’s bizarre exfiltration plan was scrapped.