Sikkim

by Andrew Duff

  Late one night the six Khampas were driven across the border into Pakistan (with Gyalo at the wheel of the jeep), where they made their way through tea plantations and jungles and forded rivers before being met by another CIA officer waiting with hot tea and biscuits in a small bungalow. From there, a jeep took them to an old Second World War airfield, Kurmitola in Bangladesh, where a specialist unit of the US Air Force was waiting with a converted DC-6. After a short refuelling stop in Bangkok, they were taken to Okinawa in Japan, where they were met by another of the Dalai Lama’s brothers, before proceeding to Saipan, a volcanic ‘teardrop shaped island in the western Pacific’ that was a US trust territory.44

  The CIA involvement with Tibet was well and truly under way.

  -7-

  After the Buddha Jayanti, Thondup had returned to Gangtok. After a difficult period, he was finally finding some peace. He had been buoyed by the visit of the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama to Sikkim. The visit had inspired a sense of unity and reinforced ties between the Buddhists of Sikkim and Tibet. He was also pleased with the progress in the construction of the ropeway snaking up towards the Chumbi Valley, a project particularly close to his heart. For centuries traders had used the Jelep and the Nathu La passes into the valley to carry goods between Sikkim and Tibet. Tibetan muleteers would bring wool down from Lhasa, and return with goods from India. This trade had been a key reason for British interest in Sikkim in the nineteenth century. He was convinced that the ropeway could transform Sikkim’s prospects.

  Underneath the surface, however, both Rustomji and Pant noticed that Thondup’s passion for Sikkim would occasionally overcome him. Pant supported all the prince’s efforts but worried that his ego was sometimes preventing him from understanding the limits of what was achievable. He could see that Thondup firmly believed that his position in Sikkim was about far more than just worldly rule; he saw himself as a protector of the country’s integrity, and of the Buddhist faith there. When the mountaineer George Evans approached the Palace in 1955 with a request to climb Khangchendzonga, it was with great reluctance that Thondup agreed to an ascent of the mountain. Among mountaineers, Evans and his climbers, George Band and Joe Brown, received praise for respecting the mountain, having stopped a few feet short of the summit. But Nari Rustomji (who was involved in the negotiations) tells a different story – that the Palace granted permission for the expedition to ‘proceed only as far as necessary to ascertain whether or not there was an approach’. When the party claimed they had got within touching distance of the summit, Thondup was ‘enraged, convinced that this was a deliberate breach, in spirit at least, of the solemn undertaking given by Evans’. Rustomji also noticed that Thondup’s moods could quickly take a dark turn. In 1955, Thondup’s brother George-la had challenged him: ‘Why do you get so worked up about Sikkim? I give Sikkim twenty years at a modest guess, after which God only knows what.’ A wounded Thondup had replied, ‘If even my own family feel so little about the country, how can I expect more from my people? I might as well pack up and be done with it all.’ That night he had swallowed ‘a lot of pills’, prompting an emergency call from Sangey Deki in the middle of the night.45

  Despite these troubling outbursts, there was a sense within Sikkim in 1957 that things might be looking up. Rustomji had extended his tenure as dewan; Apa Pant was supportive. Thondup also now had a third child, a girl, and his wife Sangey Deki was once again pregnant.

  Then, in June, tragedy struck. Sangey Deki was taken ill; within days she was dead. Thondup, ‘broken in grief’, withdrew inside himself for a number of months. Thondup’s father Tashi, who had now lost a half-brother, a son and a (pregnant) daughter-in-law through untimely deaths, could only mutter that it must have been Sangey Deki’s ‘critical year’.

  Rustomji looked for ways to distract Thondup. Together they galvanised their efforts to substantiate Sikkim’s ‘Seven Year Plan’, mastering ‘the tricks of salesmanship’ to promote Sikkim’s nascent enterprises, including a new fruit-canning factory with the slogan ‘SIKKIM SUPREME’, with marketing materials showing Khanchendzonga’s pinnacles rising supremely aloft. Whisky from the new Sikkim distillery was named ‘Snow Lion’ and marketed as matching Scottish malts. More funds were found for the ropeway. The diversity of the projects supported (and their intended outcome) brought a biting satirical attack from the American John Sack, in the first of his articles in Playboy magazine after visiting Sikkim. He described a plethora of activity, including

  mills, wool presses, canneries, distilleries downstream, with coal, copper, graphite, gypsum rolling from the hillsides, and twice as many roads, and twice as many hospitals, and twice twice twice as many kids in school, taught, too, by teachers who went to school – a land of plenty, of happy people.

  In 1957–8, two visits from Indian Prime Minster Pandit Nehru also cheered Thondup. The two men got on well. The Indian prime minister had a soft spot for the country; he admitted that he was considering retiring there, that he ‘dreamed of passing the twilight of his life in a quiet retreat’ in the country, where he ‘could contemplate and record the essence of his life’s experience’.

  Nehru’s first visit was to open the new Namgyal Institute of Tibetology, a project he fully supported in its aim to promote Sikkim’s Himalayan status. The second visit in 1958 was en route to Bhutan. Again, he was accompanied by his daughter Indira, as he had been in 1953. To get to Bhutan, the small party, consisting of Chogyal Tashi, Thondup, Rustomji, Pant, Nehru and Indira, knew they would have to cross the Nathu La into the Tibetan Chumbi Valley. Despite the fact that Bhutan had already sent 20 bodyguards to protect the party, the Chinese insisted on sending a captain in the PLA and 50 further armed soldiers to escort them, citing rumours that Khampa rebels wished to stage a dramatic protest by kidnapping the Indian prime minister. Nehru, who ‘could not have felt freer or more relaxed’, laughed it all off; but it was an insight into the growing tensions in the region.

  Sangey Deki’s death, meanwhile, had another consequence: it gave Princess Coocoola a more prominent role in Sikkim’s affairs. She too tried to distract the bereaved prince, becoming the consummate host, welcoming diplomats, travellers and businessmen into the palace and entertaining them with grace and style around an expansive table.* Many of the guests were well-to-do Tibetans, great numbers of whom continued to come down the Chumbi Valley and into Sikkim. Naturally, she also became more involved in political affairs, in particular with the continuing issue of immigration, a topic she was just as passionate about (if not more so) than her brother. When, in 1958, it was suggested that one of the seats in the parliament should be made available to ‘any resident of fixed habitat’, she raised the issue loudly with Rustomji, protesting that it could mean Indian traders would get representation in parliament. Her letter contained more than a hint of threat:

  Desperation can drive people, Uncle, and the Marwarees† being who they are, once they have the Sikkimese in economic bondage – what solution is there? What would you do as a Sikkimese? Would you try and combat one evil with yet another one? So many in the world today have been driven to it. Wouldn’t you, with the interests of your heart, fight money with money?46

  It was an issue for the Namgyals that just would not go away.

  -8-

  On his return to Lhasa in 1957, the Dalai Lama had found that Mao, far from postponing the pace of change in Tibet, had sped things up with a massive crackdown on dissent. Having promised to ‘let a hundred flowers bloom, a hundred schools of thought contend’ across Greater China, he had then performed a complete U-turn. In Tibet, as in the rest of China, the consequences were terrible. The Chinese ruthlessly suppressed the revolt in Kham, obliterating entire villages and holding public executions – including crucifixions – in an attempt to assert control.47

  Meanwhile, on a small island in the West Pacific, the effort to train up the six Tibetan Khampas in CIA techniques was well under way. On arrival in the west Pacific island of Saipan where they were to receive thei
r training, they found the place occupied by a variety of nationalities alongside their American trainers. Chinese nationalists, Koreans, Laotians, Vietnamese – all were being readied for the fight against the growing spread of communism. The Tibetans, like everyone else, were given new names that were easier on the tongue for the instructors (Bill, Dick, Tom, Walt, Lou, Sam) and started their training in an endless list of techniques to equip them for the task to come:

  Morse code, cut numbers, radio signal plans, the US-made RS-1 crystal operated radio transmitter and receiver, encoding and decoding using one-time pads, use of telecodes (Tibetan telecode was developed during the training), map and compass reading, small arms up to and including 60-mm mortar and 57-mm recoilless rifles, fragmentation and incendiary grenades, fire and movement tactics . . . offensive and defensive ambushes, an array of simple sabotage techniques, use of demolitions, Molotov cocktails, booby traps, unarmed and hand-to-hand combat, cross-country and night movement, observation, casing, authentication, elicitation, information collection, reports writing, tradecraft techniques, resistance organisations, sketching, preparation of drop zones, parachute ground training, simple psychological warfare techniques, first aid, simple disguise techniques, and physical fitness.48

  It didn’t take long for the Tibetans to become firm favourites with their CIA handlers. One, Roger McCarthy, recalled later that ‘demolition was like “happy hour” . . . the bigger the bang and the more damage that the explosives achieved, the better! More than once we had to call in the base fire department to put out fires.’49

  By October, the training was over; the men were considered ready to be flown to the American base in Japan’s Okinawa for parachute training. Reserve chutes were considered unnecessary: they were to be dropped over land that rose to 14,000 feet above sea level, where the air was so thin that there was a risk that the smaller canopies would not even deploy. In place of the reserves, which would normally have been on their chests, the six men were given a small pack with ‘some ammo, money (Tibetan, Nepali, and gold coins), emergency rations, compass, signal plans and crystals for radio operators, a knife, and a small flashlight’. They were also given a small cyanide ampoule, known as an L-tablet, carefully packed into a tiny box cushioned by sawdust.

  In mid-October the first of the Khampas were flown back to Kurmitola airfield in East Pakistan and parachuted back into Tibet; a second infiltration took place in December. Once in Tibet the guerrilla-trained men buried their chutes and started to report back to their handlers on the situation, which had now deteriorated further. In January 1958, the Chinese committed eight PLA divisions and at least 150,000 men to Eastern Tibet alone. But the vastness of Tibet made it impossible to prevent the continued emergence of an organised opposition. In Lhoka, a town south of Lhasa, Gompo Tashi, a thickset Khampa, rallied 20,000 fighters under the banner of the Chushi Gangdrok, meaning ‘Four Rivers Six Gorges’, to represent the extraordinary landscape of Eastern Kham where the resistance to Chinese rule was strongest. In June, Tashi’s Chushi Gangdrok was given an alternative name, the National Volunteer Defense Army. The old flag – a mythical snow lion against a blue background – was replaced by one of an altogether more military feel: crossed Tibetan swords on a yellow field. In the Daily Mail, correspondent Noel Barber, who had become embedded with the rebels, likened the story that he was finding to ‘flicking over the pages of Dante’s Inferno: monasteries bombed, monks shot at prayer, old Tibetans used as slaves’. Three days later he headlined an article ‘Mao Sets His Sights on India’, detailing what he called ‘training schools for agents who infiltrate south, disguised as traders’.

  There was little doubt that Gompo Tashi and his men were ready for a full-scale guerrilla conflict in the Kham region.

  Tibet was by now considered important enough in Washington to have its own Task Force within the CIA’s Far East Division. As they assessed the situation in mid-1958, it was clear that the infiltration of the first six CIA-trained guerrillas into Tibet had been only a limited success. Communications had regularly failed, and the training in the tropical environment of Saipan had been too removed from the conditions of Tibet to prove useful. The newly appointed head of the division, Desmond Fitzgerald, gave his approval for another exfiltration of trainees from Kalimpong. But this time, he told his team, the Tibetans would be taken to a more suitable location, one that would allow training in the kind of conditions they would encounter in Tibet: Camp Hale, in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains.

  Camp Hale was, like Saipan, a relic from the Second World War. But the environment could not have been more different. The camp had been set up in 1942 for training the 10th Mountain Division in ‘skiing, rock climbing and cold weather survival skills’. Now it was to be resurrected for training Tibetans in guerrilla tactics. The aim of the training had now been stepped up a notch: rather than simply providing intelligence, the recruits were now to be trained to deploy more active resistance techniques. In fact, Camp Hale would not be ready for another six months; in the interim the next set of Tibetans – ‘eighteen young recruits (average age, twenty-two) and three translators plus two older Khampas in their mid-forties’ – were trained in a corner of the CIA’s infamous training school, ‘The Farm’, in Virginia.50

  Back in Tibet at the beginning of 1959 the Tibetans who had been parachuted back into their motherland in 1957 were busier than they had ever been. CIA-sponsored operations were now making regular airdrops of arms, supplies – and cash – into pre-designated dropzones in remote areas of the country, sending as many as three C-130 aeroplanes over at a time.* But the sheer volume of the Chinese presence – and its superior coordination – was beginning to have a drastic effect across the country, and in particular in Lhasa. The capital, for so long the focal point for the country, was increasingly under the firm grip of the Chinese. And it was in Lhasa that things were about to come to boiling point.

  There had been an indication in early February 1959 that the Chinese might be preparing to make a move against the Dalai Lama. Radio Peking had announced that the Tibetan leader ‘had made plans to visit the Chinese capital’. In fact, the Dalai Lama had made no such plans.

  On 5 March, the Chinese commander in Lhasa, General Tan, made his move. At the time, the Dalai Lama was in the Jokhang, the central religious building, which constituted the heart of the city, preparing for the tough final examinations of his monastic training. Two Chinese officers entered unannounced and demanded to be given a date when the Tibetan leader could attend ‘a theatrical show’ in the Chinese army camp. The Dalai Lama’s advisers were immediately struck by the emphasis that General Tan seemed to be laying on fixing an early date. Under pressure and against the advice of his closest officials, the Dalai Lama gave a date of 10 March.

  On the streets of the city, the rumour mill went into overdrive. Many feared that it was a plot to kidnap the Dalai Lama. The ordinary people of Lhasa piled onto the streets, surrounding the Norbulingka, the Dalai Lama’s summer palace, where he had returned after passing his examinations with flying colours. Suddenly it was the people who were in control: even if the Dalai Lama had wanted to make the 10 March appointment, he would not have been able to.

  That same day a Tibetan who had been working with the Chinese was killed as he tried to make it through the crowd from the Norbulingka to talk with General Tan, raising tensions further. Later, in an attempt to start discussions with the Chinese, a Tibetan delegation managed to make it through to the Chinese camp. There they found a furious General Tan, who demanded that they gain control of the crowd. The delegation returned to the palace and explained the situation to a powerless Dalai Lama. Outside the palace the people – not just Lhasans, but Khams and Amdoans too – had now set up their own ‘Freedom Committee’. Slogans started appearing daubed on walls, saying, ‘Chinese return to China!’, ‘Tibet belongs to Tibet!’ and ‘We will wipe out the Chinese!’

  In the Dekyi Lingka next door, the British Resident’s old bastion, the Indian consul radioed Delhi a
bout the rapid escalation in the violence. But Nehru dismissed him, telling the consul to stick to his own business and ‘not get entangled’. A day or two later, British journalist George Patterson – who was based in Kalimpong and had direct access to news in Lhasa – wrote a full account of what had happened. Nehru dismissed him as ‘an absurdist’.

  The Chinese and the Dalai Lama watched from their respective positions for five days as pockets of violence and confrontation sprang up across the city. The Chinese were reluctant to intervene; the Dalai Lama and his advisers were powerless to do so. There was also a split of opinion among the Tibetan leadership – what should the Dalai Lama do? He was desperate to prevent a massacre and wanted to stay with his people, but those close to him urged him to flee while he could.

  Everything changed on 17 March, when a shell exploded inside the grounds of the Dalai Lama’s palace. With a potential threat to his life, he and his advisers agreed there was now no option but to flee. Together they hastily constructed an escape plan that minimised the chances of being caught. That night, as a sandstorm whipped through Lhasa, the Dalai Lama slung a rifle across his shoulder and was smuggled out of the palace and headed across the Kyi Chu river that ran across the edge of the city. On the southern side of the river he was met by a group of Khampa warriors. Any hesitation that the Dalai Lama had in supporting their violent cause was put to one side as he mounted a horse for the long ride south towards India.

  Over the next week the violence in Lhasa spiralled out of control. There were fierce pitched battles and shelling of all the major buildings. The Chinese were still unaware that the Dalai Lama had escaped. The destruction was on a major scale – some estimated the Tibetan dead and wounded at more than 15,000.51 In Delhi Nehru spoke of the situation in Tibet as ‘a clash of minds rather than a clash of arms’.