by Andrew Duff
Don’t think I’m just a sham.
Chorus of Lepchas (after partaking of marriage chang)
She’s Hope the Yankee Lepcha
Oh, yes she really is
Despite her Bowery accent
And her pure Caucasian phiz.
She’s Hope, the Kumarani,
Our unfed children weep;
But ten lakhs* for a wedding
Is really very cheap.37
The evening festivities reflected the diversity of the guest list. During the meal, one overzealous American evangelist distributed stacks of Christian tracts with an anti-Buddhist picture on the front, even giving one to the bride. Meanwhile the Maharaja of Jaipur, still one of the richest men in India, had ‘true to legend, brought with him his own cases of champagne’. Later, Ambassador Galbraith twisted the night away with Coocoola, while the band (from the former Portuguese colony of Goa, recently annexed by India) played Dixie music.38 Galbraith recalled rather wistfully that while the ‘dancing was good fun’ his arthritic hip was what got ‘generous attention from the press’.39 Later, ‘mountain tribesmen in blue pajama-like clothes danced in the streets’.
The extraordinary clash of cultures at the wedding put Sikkim well and truly under the spotlight of the world’s press.* Later in 1963 National Geographic ran a further feature, this time with colour pictures from the event. But it was Time magazine that caught the culture clash best in an article entitled ‘Where There’s Hope’ a week after the wedding:
Guests in top hats and cutaways mingled with others in fur-flapped caps and knee-length yakskin boots last week outside the tiny Buddhist chapel in Sikkim’s dollhouse Himalayan capital of Gangtok. Wedding parcels from Tiffany’s were piled side by side with bundled gifts of rank-smelling tiger and leopard skins. Over 28,146 ft Mount Kanchenjunga, the world’s third highest mountain and Sikkim’s ‘protecting deity,’ hung a blue haze. It was an ‘auspicious sign,’ said Gangtok astrologers. [. . .] Outside the chapel door was the only distinctively American touch in the $60,000 Buddhist rite – a mat on which was written in English, ‘Good Luck.’ [. . .] Mixing happily with the celebrators, Hope settled into her new role with aplomb. When a pigtailed Sikkimese girl asked for her autograph, the new crown princess signed without a moment’s hesitation: ‘Hope Namgyal.’40
Like it or not, with Thondup’s marriage to Hope Cooke, Sikkim had been put well and truly under the spotlight.
-8-
In the midst of the two weeks of festivities, news arrived that Hope’s uncle Selden had died of a heart attack. The couple rushed down to Calcutta to catch a flight to Washington. Before they left India, Hope formally renounced her US citizenship to qualify for an ‘Indian Protected Person’ passport under which residents of Sikkim travelled. It was a move that would have major complications only ten years later.
Back in Gangtok in May, despite what she herself called a continuing ‘obsession with [her husband’s] infidelities’, Hope Cooke discovered she was pregnant. It was a self-confessed bid to ‘make some kind of statement of femaleness’. But despite – or perhaps because of – the pregnancy she was struck by a deep loneliness: ‘Upstairs in my room I listen to Joan Baez records all day and cry. I know how the Sikkimese got their eyes – little damn Mongolian eyes; they damn well cried all the time.’41
In September, less than six months after the wedding, the elderly Chogyal Tashi contracted cancer. If nothing else, it provided a distraction for the young couple’s challenging relationship – a focus beyond themselves. As it became increasingly clear that he would die, Hope Cooke, Coocoola and Thondup flew between London and Calcutta, seeking the best treatment possible. As Tashi neared the end of his life in November 1963, the USA was plunged into a crisis when Kennedy was shot. Sikkim was so isolated that Martha Hamilton initially missed the news: ‘How appalling about Kennedy – my wireless is broken so I didn’t hear till late . . .’
In December, Chogyal Tashi Namgyal lost his fight with cancer. After nearly 50 years on the throne of Sikkim, his death marked the beginning of a new era for the country. Thousands of villagers turned out to follow the funeral procession. But the death, far from uniting the couple in grief, brought tensions back into the Palace. With her record player banned during the traditional 49 days of Buddhist mourning, Hope had to sit with her ear to the machine, playing her music softly while her husband wandered the house muttering, ‘Poor Sikkim! What will happen now?’
Thondup’s concerns were exacerbated by the arrival of a film crew from CBS, arranged by India’s External Affairs ministry to show off India’s defence efforts. In response, he and Hope arranged for another crew from NBC to film a ‘scenic beauty cum social development’ documentary, soon reported in the ‘People’ section of Time magazine. ‘One of the most important things to know for any girl hoping to become a princess is how to conduct a TV tour,’ they wrote. ‘Grace Kelly led the way in Monaco, and now the US’s only other princess in a ruling family is doing it too. NBC is traveling to the Indian Himalayan protectorate of Sikkim to be shown up and down and all around by Hope Cooke, 22.’ Hope, now several months pregnant, knew she was the real ‘news peg’. But even as she gave an interview in a room carefully arranged with ‘typically Sikkimese’ objects and walked the crew through ‘our small shabby house à la Jackie Kennedy’, she could hear the ‘BOOM, BOOM, BOOM’ of the Indian artillery blasting away, as they created new roads up to the Sikkim–Tibet border.
At Christmas the tensions boiled over when Coocoola sent a Christmas tree down to the NBC crew. ‘It’s a time for mourning!’ Thondup shouted at her. ‘You want everyone to know that you are making a Christmas party for a bunch of foreigners?’42
As one scion of the Namgyal dynasty passed, Hope Cooke gave birth to another. For Hope, it was another possibility, another chance at integrating with this society that she still felt destiny pulling her towards. As she looked at her new baby she recalled her husband’s ‘Gauguin-handsome face’ and told herself, ‘This baby is going to belong, really belong to these people, and through him I will belong too.’43
Thondup and the Palace, conscious of the increasing presence of the Indian military, also saw an opportunity to capitalise on the birth and create a renaissance in national identity within the state after his father’s death. One obvious way of doing this was to emphasise the importance of Sikkim’s own tiny military force. Delhi had abandoned support for his attempts to raise a militia, but he had won agreement to double the size of the Sikkim Guards shortly before the 1962 war. The Guards, originally intended for ceremonial duties only, claimed origins from the thirteenth century. Although only a token gesture, it was one that aggravated those, such as the Kazi, who were adamant that Sikkim did not need such impractical symbols.
An even more thorny issue was the language used to describe the royal family. Sir Tashi had been far more interested in his meditation and improving his painting technique than in stoking any confrontation with either the British or the new Indian government over titles. So he had been perfectly content to use the Indian term ‘Maharaja’ that the British had brought with them when they concluded the very first treaty with the Sikkimese. For the new Indian government, too, the term had fitted their perspective: ‘Maharaja’ – or ‘Great King’ – was very firmly an Indo-Aryan term, rooting Sikkim firmly in the Indian orbit.
Thondup, on the other hand, while appreciating the reality of the Indian protection afforded to his country (especially since the events of 1962), felt a need to continually assert the fact that Sikkim tended towards independence rather than assimilation into the Indian state. He had watched neighbouring Bhutan – where his cousin Jigme Dorji held the hereditary prime ministerial post – carefully build up its deck of playing cards in the game of poker being played with the Indian government. Why not Sikkim too? He was also convinced that the Indians, perhaps seeking to check his credentials, had been spying on him during a visit to the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling. It made him even more dete
rmined to assert Sikkim’s rights.
The question of nomenclature presented an opportunity to change – or at least to challenge – the status quo. Thondup informed Delhi that he and Hope wished to use the ancient Sikkimese titles Chogyal and Gyalmo rather than Indian terms such as ‘Maharaja’ and ‘Maharani’.
The Indian government, however, was in no mood for any change that might signal a weakening of their resolve in the Himalayas. Nehru’s administration had been seriously shaken by the Sino-Indian conflict of 1962 and Indian newspapers were delighting in painting the Chinese as evil aggressors. China’s attack had been ‘dastardly’, the ‘theory of coexistence had been exposed and the real face of the devil, a wolf in sheep’s clothing’ had been unmasked. Nehru himself came under attack for having been an idealist and a pacifist, too trusting of the ‘wily enemy’.44
Neither had the tensions between the two countries dissipated with the ceasefire. In January 1963 the focus moved right onto the Sikkimese frontier, as Beijing accused the Indian government of putting up pillboxes on the Chinese side of the Nathu La. India naturally refuted the allegations as ‘preposterous and baseless’. But the war of words rumbled on and Tashi’s death created another diplomatic incident. When Liu Shaoqi, Vice-Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, sent a message expressing his condolences directly to Thondup, it was considered a major affront. Nehru’s response was an indication of just how seriously he was taking the issue:
The government of China has in contravention of normal diplomatic courtesies in its relations with the government of India, addressed a telegram from Chairman Liu Shao Chi directly to the Maharaja of Sikkim, on the 5th of December, 1963, instead of forwarding it to this government for onward transmission. The government of China is well aware that the external relations of Sikkim are entirely the responsibility of the government of India and that any communication, either formal or informal from the government of China to the government of Sikkim or its ruler, should be channelled through the Indian government. The procedure adopted by the Chinese government is, therefore, entirely unacceptable to the Indian government and they trust that in future all communications pertaining to Sikkim will be addressed to the government of India only.45
In early 1964 there were reports of further incursions, this time into Sikkim. They happened across both the Jelep La and the Nathu La into the Chumbi Valley, and on the northern border by the Kongra La, the area where a similar lack of border definition had so frustrated Sikkim’s first Political Officer, Claude White, more than 70 years earlier. Tensions were further raised when Thondup’s cousin and friend Jigme Dorji, the Prime Minister of Bhutan, was assassinated in an attempted palace coup. For Thondup, it was a bitter blow – and a warning of sorts. Only a few weeks earlier Jigme had told Thondup that he felt ‘he’d done enough for the country’ and that he ‘really wanted to get out of harness’. The night before he was killed he had slept on the floor, afraid that his life was under threat. Hope had to hold Thondup all night as he lay awake, shaking. Understandably the atmosphere in the region tightened further.
Within the context of all these events, it is perhaps understandable that the Indians viewed the request for a change in the titles used by Thondup and his new American wife (with diplomatic family connections) with some suspicion.
-9-
The Sino-Indian conflict of 1962 had also radically shifted Indian thinking about its defences in the Himalayas. Before 1959, it had fallen to the intelligence chief B. N. Mullik to establish a series of informal checkpoints along the border staffed by Tibetan speakers; after 1962, the northern border became a military as well as an intelligence priority. Proposals for new mountain divisions were put forward in Delhi, and a road-building programme was put in place to enable the rapid deployment of troops in the event of war. Over the next decade the regular Indian Army doubled in size to 750,000.
There was also a major change in the Indian attitude towards the Tibetan community-in-exile and the operations taking place out of the kingdom of Mustang in northern Nepal. The tacit acceptance of US supply flights before September 1962 was replaced by a much higher level of cooperation with the CIA in 1963, now that the Chinese were more clearly a joint ‘enemy’. Working with the Dalai Lama’s brother Gyalo Thondup, Mullik helped to coordinate the creation of a new force comprised of Tibetan fighters. The ‘Special Frontier Force’ would be based and trained in India. As cover, the new regiment – Tibetan apart from a few senior officers – was named the 12th Gurkha Rifles. Major General Uban, a tough Sikh who had commanded the Indian 22 Mountain Regiment in the Second World War, was recruited to run the new outfit, which would later come to be known as Establishment 22. The Tibetans viewed it as another step on the way to a return to their homeland; the Americans saw the whole exercise as an opportunity to further strengthen their ties with the Indian government. By March 1963 Indians were being trained in the US; in September a joint centre was set up in Delhi to direct the despatch of CIA-trained operatives overland into Tibet.46
The Indian intelligence service also underwent a significant development. For arcane reasons dating back to the handover from British rule, India had inherited an intelligence service that was firmly focused on domestic threats. Now, with a real and present external threat, the Indians took steps towards creating their own external intelligence service. In 1963 R. N. Kao, a ‘Kashmiri with piercing eyes and razor sharp mind’,47 was chosen to head up what was initially called the ‘Aviation Research Centre’ (ARC) within the Indian Intelligence Directorate-General. The extent of Kao’s focus on the Chinese threat made quite an impression on his American counterparts: one CIA officer remembered driving back from Kathmandu to India with Kao while he recounted the technical specs of each bridge they crossed, providing an assessment of their ability to support the heaviest tank in the Chinese inventory.48
From a base in Orissa province, Kao oversaw the creation of ARC, including ‘two large receivers and transmitters [that] were hooked up to special antennas to maintain regular, encrypted radio contact with Tibetan insurgent forces’. The CIA, too, were involved in providing radio equipment for the Tibetan teams on the ground in the Himalayas, including, by the spring of 1964, one in Gangtok.49
By coincidence, Thondup Namgyal had also just acquired his own new radio set. During 1964 an American, Gus Browning, had passed through Sikkim. Browning, an amateur radio maniac,* was obsessed with introducing radio to ‘countries that had never been heard of before’ and transmitting from far-flung countries. In September 1963, after successfully activating a set in Bhutan, he turned up in Gangtok. It did not take much persuasion to get Thondup interested, and Browning had soon arranged for Sikkim to have its own ‘country’ code of AC3. Thondup naturally welcomed this as further recognition of the status of Sikkim. In early 1964, Thondup ordered a complete Collins-S-Line radio system and started transmitting under the callsign AC3PT.†
The radio set provided a distraction from the events of 1964, which had been particularly difficult. His father had died just before the start of the year; his cousin Jigme was assassinated in April, only a month after the birth of a son to his new American wife, who was herself attracting the attention of the world’s press, not all of it welcome.
Then, on 27 May, Pandit Nehru died.
Nehru had been a hugely important supporter of Sikkim. He had always regarded the place with fondness, and had talked about Sikkim as the one place that he would like to retire. His love for the land, combined with his idealism, had persuaded him to agree to the 1950 settlement. He had been a good personal friend to Thondup too, willing to listen whenever the young prince came to Delhi with a grievance. On the day of his death he had been about to open talks with Thondup and his representatives on Sikkim’s future relations with India.
Thondup’s reaction on hearing the news was to break down in tears. It was a personal blow, felt particularly keenly due to the mentoring relationship the two had developed. Thondup and Hope attended the funeral, which drew more t
han two million mourners to the banks of the Jumna river, where Rajiv, the eldest grandson, rose to light the funeral pyre.50 Afterwards, in their room in the Raj Bhavan, the potential wider significance for Sikkim seemed to hit Thondup. As he sat on his bed, he stared into the darkness.
‘I don’t know’ he said, ‘what’s for Sikkim now.’51
Nehru’s ashes arrived in Sikkim a month later as part of a tour round India and were greeted with genuine affection. Thondup was not the only one to have formed a close bond with Nehru – he had been a much-loved leader throughout the region.
The succession of events had hit Thondup hard, but they had also been challenging for his wife, still not 25 years old. By August, Martha Hamilton reported with some concern that ‘Hope needs a break I think.’ And that’s what Hope planned. Along with Thondup and the new baby, she set off for New York to honour the Sikkimese tradition of returning a baby to its mother’s birthplace within a year of its birth.
Unsurprisingly their progress through America was the focus of intense media scrutiny. Hope and Thondup were now a bona fide celebrity couple, with a press relationship to match. Their lives had become a regular feature of the Time magazine ‘People’ section. ‘They travel in separate planes for “Precautionary reasons”,’ an article said on their arrival in the States, fawning over the royal family with American connections.
The Maharani in native gown and raw silk cloak, was first to land in New York last month with her six-month-old son, Prince Palden, and Crown Prince Tenzing. The mysterious Occident is what the Maharajah digs, however, and so does his other son, Prince Topgyal Wangchuk, 11. One of the boy’s dearest possessions, beamed Pa when they touched down the next day, is a wild west gun and holster.
