Sikkim

by Andrew Duff

  Bangladesh was RAW’s first serious deployment on the ground, running agents, gathering intelligence and working with the leaders of East Pakistan’s resistance movement. They exceeded expectations. The war of 1971 cemented Indira’s loyalty to and support of the new intelligence chief and his outfit, who (in inner circles) rapidly became known as Indira’s ‘Kaoboys’. They would play an important role in Sikkim in the coming years.

  The Chinese reaction to the events of December 1971 was strangely muted compared to 1965. But they did use their new seat on the UN Security Council to make a specific point about Tibet. India, with Soviet support, had used the pretext of national liberation in the war over East Pakistan; one of their justifications for invading East Pakistan was that the refugees who had poured into India from East Pakistan needed to be returned to their legitimate homeland. For the Chinese, this set a very dangerous precedent, as the new PRC Ambassador to the UN, Qiao Guanghua, made clear:

  The Indian ruling circle . . . some time ago forcibly coerced several tens of thousands of the inhabitants of China’s Tibet into going to India [to] set up a so-called government-in-exile headed by the Chinese traitor Dalai Lama. To agree that the Indian Government is justified to use the so-called refugee question as a pretext for invading Pakistan is tantamount to agreeing that the Indian Government will be justified in using the question of the so-called ‘Tibetan refugees’ as a pretext for invading China.8

  Indira Gandhi had been worried that Sikkim and the Chumbi Valley represented a route for the Chinese to cut off the Siliguri Corridor. The Chinese thought Sikkim and the Chumbi Valley represented the route that the Indians might take into Tibet.

  The Bangladesh war had, if anything, increased the geopolitical importance of Sikkim.

  -2-

  At the height of the tensions in late November 1971, Hope Cooke and Thondup were nowhere near Sikkim. While Indira Gandhi and Richard Nixon had their fateful meeting in Washington, the Sikkimese royal couple were to be found further up the US East Coast, running a fashion show in one of New York’s finest high-end department stores, Bergdorf Goodman. The owners, who were friends of friends of Hope, agreed to display and sell the collection (designed by Hope and the royal tailor in Gangtok) and put on other events around the show.

  Ever since her arrival in Sikkim a decade earlier, Hope had been struck by the beauty of the handicrafts in the country. She was certain that, if presented in the right way, they could find an international audience. During the summer of 1971 she worked with designers to combine some of the elements of Sikkimese dress with the latest New York fashions, so that they could put on a show, the kind that would attract the attention of the cream of fashionable New York society.

  For a week in November 1971, Sikkim took over the shop windows of Bergdorf Goodman and a stretch of Fifth Avenue:

  There were not only Sikkimese things in their windows but they had coordinated their efforts with those of their neighbours Van Cleef & Arpels and Delman, both of which filled their windows with Sikkimese art. On the night of the opening, Sikkimese flags flew on both sides of Fifth Avenue from Fifty-seventh to Fifty-eighth streets [the heart of Manhattan]. The next day there was another fashion show, in the ballroom of the Colony Club, and the following day the clothes were shown in the guest-of-honour spot by the Pan Pacific Association at the Waldorf. Our final and most satisfying success – as the space was big enough to show the fashions to full advantage – was the jam-packed show in the Smithsonian’s Red Hall in Washington.9

  The show was a success, but underneath all the glamour there was a lack of clarity as to what it was all for. As Hope herself later wrote, the whole thing

  had the earmarks of a fund-raising event – and yet we never asked for money. That would have been very un-Sikkimese. What did we want? The answer was simple and not so simple. Often we didn’t dare define it ourselves, let alone to the people we were mutely appealing to. We wanted people to have Sikkim in their consciousness. If, God help us, something happened, we wouldn’t be quite so alone.10

  It was an ill-defined aim, more style than substance, as the Washington Post hinted:

  His majesty [. . .] looked calm throughout the pre-show confusion . . . In place of Sikkimese boots, he was wearing gray wool socks and black Gucci shoes. Some of the guests got the idea that the clothes had been taken off the backs of natives in the Himalayas, and maybe some had. But they were mixed in with exotic evening gear, replete with zippers, leotards and Isotoner body suits which caused a little puzzlement among serious students of historical costume.11

  Reports in US newspapers at the time, painting a picture of Sikkim as a fragile Himalayan state in need of support, unsurprisingly irritated Indira Gandhi. India was supposed to be responsible for Sikkim’s external relations; although the fashion show was not officially a diplomatic event, Hope and Thondup used it ceaselessly to promote the idea of Sikkim as ‘a country’.

  But it was the constant reference to the Chogyal as ‘His Majesty’ in the US newspapers that irked Indira most. After 1950, when the Indian government had agreed that Sikkim and Bhutan should not be merged into India or Pakistan along with the other Indian Princely States, only the King of Bhutan had been addressed as ‘Your Majesty’ by the Indian government: the Sikkimese Chogyal had continued to be addressed with the less honorific ‘Your Highness’. This was deliberate: from the Indian point of view, it made a distinction between the status of Bhutan (whose sovereignty India had all but recognised in the 1949 treaty) and Sikkim (which they considered to be a protectorate and therefore of a lesser status). By ostentatiously using the more prestigious term, Thondup and Hope Cooke were highlighting what they saw as their equal status with Bhutan.

  Indira was well aware of why they were doing it: that year she had helped Bhutan gain its place in the UN, alongside the PRC and a quartet of Middle Eastern states – Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and the UAE. For the Bhutanese, UN membership was a reward for years of patient diplomacy, but it left Sikkim as the only country in the region without UN recognition, showing up the latter’s continued status as a protectorate of India. A few months earlier an amendment to the Indian constitution, forced through by Indira Gandhi, had further highlighted the idiosyncrasies surrounding Sikkim’s constitutional status. In introducing radical legislation to abolish the privy purses of the Princely States across India, she had reduced the former rulers of the Princely States to virtually nought by removing ‘their revenues and their titles in this brave new world of post-imperial egalitarianism’.12 But Sikkim and the Namgyals escaped the legislation. As a ‘protectorate’, Sikkim had never been considered a typical Princely State. This raised a tricky question: if Sikkim was not to be considered a Princely State, and it wasn’t a constituent part of India, what exactly was it?

  Thondup and Hope arrived back in Sikkim in early 1972, confident that they had boosted the country’s international profile with their fashion show. But almost immediately Thondup was faced with signs of an increased demand for political change from Sikkim’s aspiring politicians. Some were driven by a genuine desire to see democracy flourish; others resented being second-class citizens behind a coterie of unelected palace favourites from aristocratic families. Worse, they felt they got less respect than the representatives of the Indian Army in Sikkim. Grievances sometimes seemed petty: the Executive Councillors were not allowed flags on their cars while Indian Army officers were. When events were held in Gangtok, this meant that the Executive Councillors had to walk, being passed by cars carrying Indian Army officers.

  But it was the SNC party and its leading couple, the Kazi and Kazini, who were most active in their opposition. The Kazi had finally been appointed as an Executive Councillor after the 1970 elections. Towards the end of January 1972 an anonymous article appeared in the Sikkim Bulletin highlighting the growing divisions. Entitled ‘Sikkim at the Crossroads’, the author fired a broadside at the Chogyal, accusing him of absolutism and warning ‘there can be no king without a people’. Perhaps most s
ignificantly the article ended by making a comparison to the time of the Russian Revolution, saying

  And to those who persist in seeking their own petty, personal benefits, who will neither listen to the voice of wisdom or decency, who will not read the writing on the wall, for those whose pastime is a desultory indulgence in barley-water diplomacy, Kerensky’s words to the Duma in 1917 are pregnant with meaning: ‘If you will not listen to the voice of warning, you will find yourself face to face with facts not warnings.’

  To those in the know, the article, with its reference to the Russian Revolution, bore all the hallmarks of the Kazini and the coterie of radical and adventurous young men – almost all Nepali – who were now frequent visitors to her home in Kalimpong. Prime among them was Nar Bahadur Khatiawara, who she and the Kazi had adopted. Khatiawara, just turned 20, would become the president of the Youth Congress in Sikkim, with a passion for oratory matched only by his willingness to fight for what he believed. The Kazini had immediately recognised that Khatiawara was just what she needed – some fight and fire.*

  Thondup knew that he had to respond. He summoned the Kazi to the palace and asked him to explain the article. The Kazi apologised profusely, claiming the article had been published against his advice, but the damage had been done. The article was on everybody’s lips. Thondup stripped the Kazi of his position as an Executive Councillor.

  Thondup had now become so bound up in the belief that the treaty with India needed to be revised that his own identity was starting to merge with that of his country. He took attacks on Sikkim and the system of government as personal attacks on him and his family. There were growing signs that it was also having an effect on his marriage.

  Hope was now 32. Thondup was a year away from turning 50. In February, Ishbel Ritchie noticed the impact of the age gap: ‘Here we tend to regard the Gyalmo as the one who is always ready to take part in the dances organised by the young folks etc. and the Chogyal who puts in an appearance (not always) but is not terribly interested, or should I say not terribly keen on dancing.’

  In fact, there was a more serious problem developing. Bitterly frustrated by the lack of progress he was making on clarifying Sikkim’s future, and perhaps feeling slightly upstaged by his wife’s efforts in New York, Thondup had started drinking more heavily than usual. In April, the FCO in London received a request for help with alcoholism. Sir Alec Douglas-Home, then a junior minister, picked it up and sent it on to the Treasury medical adviser, who recommended specific treatment:

  [His] royal patient should come to the Liver Unit at King’s College Hospital, which is under Dr Roger Williams who specialises in the treatment and care of alcoholics. Whilst at King’s College Hospital, psychiatric treatment can be arranged with the help of Dr Griffith Edwards of the Medical Research Council who is also attached to the Maudsley Hospital where he undertakes research into the problems of alcoholism. Dr Lorriman confirms that this would be the best arrangement as there are few clinics taking alcoholic patients and many charlatans offering speedy cure.13

  The pressure was beginning to tell on Thondup.

  -3-

  In the aftermath of the Bangladesh war, Indira Gandhi’s personal popularity across India reached cult levels. In the parliament ‘she was praised as a new Durga’, the Hindu warrior goddess, and likened to Shakti, the manifestation of female energy and power. Even the foreign press viewed her in grandiose terms, as the new ‘Empress of India’.14 In March fresh elections took place in 13 states across the country. As one opposition leader ruefully remarked, ‘while the opposition had put up 2,700 separate candidates, the ruling party had in effect fielded the same person in every constituency – Indira Gandhi’.15 She captured 70 per cent of the seats contested.

  But victory in West Bengal, to the south of Sikkim, had required manipulation and coercion. The state had been in a political mess for nearly five years, with factional wars within the Communist Party causing endless problems. In West Bengal more than anywhere else, the splits in the Communist Party had become evident: first a group had broken away from the Communist Party of India (CPI), accusing them of straying from the Marxist-Leninist line. The new grouping, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) – or CPM – had emerged as the main alternative to Congress in West Bengal. But within the CPM splits had also emerged, mirroring the increasingly antagonistic split between the different interpretations of communism in China and Russia. Naxalbari, near the state’s hill towns of Kalimpong and Darjeeling (and within a stone’s throw of the Chumbi Valley and Chinese-occupied Tibet) had become the base for those who supported Mao’s violent interpretation of class struggle. By 1970 and 1971 Naxalite influence had reached Calcutta, creating a violent and dark political atmosphere in the city. The CPM fought to disassociate themselves from the breakaway Naxalites; the Congress tried to tar the CPM and the terrorists with the same brush. Governance, such as it existed at all, had been through a series of weak coalitions and a period of centrally imposed ‘president’s rule’. Delhi found the existence of the openly Maoist rebels particularly troubling.

  Re-establishing Congress control in the state elections of 1972 was, therefore, a priority for both the local Bangla Congress and the national Congress Party; to make sure of victory, Bangla Congress employed a ‘mixture of terror, intimidation and fraud’ at the ballot box. ‘There was “mass-scale rigging” . . . as one activist recalled, goondas paid by the Congress told voters assembled outside polling stations that they might as well go home, since they had already cast all the registered votes.’16

  More than ever before, underhand tactics became almost an accepted part of the democratic process in West Bengal.

  High up in the Gangtok Residency (now renamed India House), Political Officer Bajpai observed the deepening divisions in West Bengal carefully. The rigged Congress victory had taken care of the immediate problem of CPM political power, but in the north of the state, the politically disenfranchised Nepalis had naturally allied with the leftist factions. Thus far the Nepali majority in Sikkim had shown less leftist tendencies but, with frequent interchange across the border, that could change quickly. Bajpai reiterated to Delhi that it might not take much for the volatile political atmosphere in West Bengal to spread to Sikkim, particularly given the problems in the Palace. He continued to advocate that something needed to change.

  Everyone in Delhi understood the logic: since Bhutan’s accession to the UN, the antiquated constitutional status of Sikkim stood out as a painful reminder of the pre-independence past. Indira Gandhi, in particular, was hurt by accusations that India’s relationship with Sikkim smacked of outdated colonialism. But the practical implications of loosening India’s grip on Sikkim were not quite so attractive. As things stood, Delhi retained almost total control over the political agenda in Sikkim. On the one hand, agreeing to Thondup’s call for greater autonomy under his own leadership raised the spectre of a weak independent state at the mercy of the Chinese in Tibet; some even rumoured darkly that Thondup was sympathising with the Chinese. On the other hand, democratisation leading to political power for the Nepali majority raised the possibility of an unpredictable Gorkhaland movement (based in Darjeeling, calling for an independent Nepali state in North Bengal, and suspected of allegiance with the Chinese) causing further instability.

  The status quo – or something like it – definitely had its attractions.

  In March 1972, Indira sent Tikki Kaul back up to Sikkim to take the political temperature. It was Kaul’s first visit to Sikkim for a while. At a dinner in the palace, Kaul was shocked by the greatly increased vehemence of opinion against India’s continued presence in Sikkim among those who represented political opinion in Sikkim. Ishbel Ritchie, who was also invited to the dinner, recalled, ‘The chief interest of the evening was the (verbal) attack launched on the chief guest by some of the Councillors – the circle round them in the middle of the big “durbar room” got bigger & bigger!’

  There were other signs of growing anti-Indian sentiment.
When the head of the Indian Air Force visited later in the month, there ‘were considerably less in attendance than usual’. A few weeks later the new brigadier in charge of the Indian Army contingent in Sikkim was ‘furious’ when he was kept waiting for two hours for dinner because other guests (from the political elite) had ‘been at another cocktail party’.

  Palace life had indeed taken on an increasingly frenetic pace, led, like a female Pan, by Hope Cooke. Late one evening Ritchie received unexpected visitors at her small bungalow down the hill from the palace grounds:

  Yesterday evening after I’d gone to bed, about 11.30pm, there was the most terrific hullaballoo outside – drums & cymbals & flute etc. – & I thought we’d acquired a drunk wedding band. This lot ended up on my doorstep however and when I went to see (in my dressing-gown and bare feet with hair standing up on end) I found some of my most distinguished friends on the doorstep – there’s a slightly nightmarish quality, though, when one expects to confront either a crowd of drunk strangers or some of one’s more disreputable acquaintances and finds one is confronted with Mr Chopra* banging cymbals, and on further investigation, the Gyalmo bashing a big drum.

  During the first half of 1972, Thondup continued to surround himself with symbols intended to assert Sikkim’s separate identity from India which, with the opposition to his rule largely coming from the Nepali population, had the effect of making the Palace appear more and more biased towards his own Bhutia-Lepcha community. Sir Terence Garvey, Britain’s High Commissioner in Delhi, visited Sikkim around this time. Garvey, a highly experienced diplomat who had already served in Peking and would go on to serve as ambassador in Moscow, had little doubt about what was happening: