Sikkim

by Andrew Duff

  Meanwhile everyone who had been at the wedding – and quite a few who hadn’t – clamoured to entertain the intriguing couple. It was enough to leave the vulnerable Hope feeling ‘oppressed’, ‘exhausted’ and ‘eaten alive’. In her autobiography she recalled the media hype:

  Articles on us, as one friend says teasingly, have run the gamut from ‘Princess Hope’s Dilemma: Should I Raise My Children by Astrology or Doctor Spock?’ to ‘My Thirty Favorite Ways of Preparing Yak’ to ‘How will I Tell My Children About the Communist Chinese in Tibet?’ Thank God in Sikkim I just get the Herald Tribune, which Clover [a friend] has subscribed to for us, and don’t have to read or be around when others read the things written about us. The stuff written is not vicious, simply banal, but its effect on me here is paralysing. We are owned by strangers.52

  Nehru’s death in 1964 left India bereft. Since long before independence, there had always been strong and undisputed leadership of the Congress Party (and thus of India), bringing a sense of stability to the country. The death of the architect of Independence left a hole at the top of the party and of the state. Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, had been shadowing her father for years, travelling with him as he toured the country. In 1958, when they visited Sikkim and Bhutan together, she and her father had travelled by horseback through the Chumbi Valley to get from Gangtok to the Bhutanese capital, Thimpu. In Delhi, she had become an important part of his informal decision-making forum.

  But Indira Gandhi would have to bide her time. On Nehru’s death, it was Lal Bahadur Shastri who took up the reins of power in India’s capital. One of his early diplomatic duties was to attend a meeting of the nonaligned movement (so carefully crafted by Nehru and others) in Cairo in October 1964. With the break-up of imperial power across the globe well under way, the conference took on a more polarised feel than ever. Radicals from Indonesia, Ghana, and Algeria – who argued strongly for the struggle against what President Sukarno of Indonesia called the ‘Old Established forces’ – were lined up against the Indian-led moderate viewpoints, arguing that peace and abolishing war (in particular nuclear war) was a primary objective.

  From the sidelines of the conference Beijing criticised Shastri’s moderate line. The Peking Review noted that the Indian prime minister had ‘made no mention at all of fighting imperialism, the common enemy of the people of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.’53 ‘Protectorate’ relationships, such as India had in Sikkim, some even muttered, made India look imperialist themselves.

  -10-

  In Sikkim, after the return of Thondup and Hope from the USA, the preparations for the coronation started in earnest. The designated year of mourning after Tashi’s death had passed.

  During the past two decades, many Sikkimese had studied in India or further overseas, bringing skills and knowledge back to their country and creating a strong and active group of bureaucrats to help build the country’s infrastructure. The advent of the coronation brought everyone together, as Hope Cooke noticed. ‘From high and low, everyone is doing some kind of work for the upcoming festivities. Carpeting, tenting, music rehearsing – everyone is contributing.’54

  Lama artists spent days painting the roof of the coronation room a golden yellow, the Sikkim Guards practised their drills for hours on the palace lawn, hairdressers were brought up from Calcutta, ‘waiters, cooks, sweepers, drivers, guards, caretakers, the police and officials saw that nothing was misplaced’.55 The best tailors in Sikkim worked on beautiful robes for the royal couple; the inside of the palace was redecorated to impress ‘Mrs Gandhi, who’s staying with us’.56 Nothing was spared to show Sikkim to the world’s press.

  The Government of India watched these preparations carefully. The tensions along the border with China were by no means resolved, and they felt they had to tread carefully when it came to Sikkim’s position as a protectorate of India. Some felt the significance of the event should be downplayed. At times this ambivalence slipped out, as Martha Hamilton noted:

  India House London has put its foot in it as usual. Reported in the papers here that they had told the wife of the Sunday Times Editor not to bother going to the Coronation as Sikkim affairs were of no importance at all. They may think it, but not the best moment to say it so forcibly.

  The Indian government also consciously delayed giving official approval of the use of the ancient titles Chogyal and Gyalmo (essentially King and Queen), only removing its silent objection shortly before the ceremony. The switch to the new titles was clearly an important one for the Sikkimese ruler and his advisers – only two weeks before the coronation Martha Hamilton noted in her letter home: ‘We’re all trained to Chogyal and Gyalmo now as Govt of India has at last accepted their titles.’ Nari Rustomji, now an adviser to the King of Bhutan, worried about the confused Indian approach. While a strong supporter of Thondup and of Sikkim, he was also a realist. He harped back to pre-1947 days – the British, he thought, would never have allowed this kind of situation to develop, where ‘it was the Prince, not the Indian Political Officer, who was the centre of attention’.57

  The coronation was, if anything, ‘conducted in an even ampler style than the wedding’.* The newspapers found ever more ways to romanticise Sikkim. ‘Americans are well aware that Monaco is touched by Grace,’ an editorial in the Washington Post read, ‘now Sikkim is radiant with Hope.’ Messages from Queen Elizabeth II, and from Dean Rusk, the US Secretary of State, were proudly displayed in official programmes. Time magazine once again caught the sharp contrasts:

  Last week excitement galore gripped the populace as chic photographers, starchy diplomats and perfumed post-debs from abroad suddenly inundated the charming little capital of Gangtok. Hope Cooke (Sarah Lawrence, ’63) . . . wore a pearl chaplet, a red bhakku over a white silk gown, and high-heeled shoes for the occasion. Her vast hazel eyes downcast, she whispered “Thank you, thank you” as a parade of lamas and top-hatted guests pressed forward to present the royal couple with cards marked with mystic symbols and heaps of white scarves for good luck.

  With that, corks popped from champagne bottles, and turbaned bandsmen struck up tunes from My Fair Lady as lissome American girls, friends of the Queen flown in for the occasion, joined young Sikkkimese aristocrats in dancing. Even the King and Queen did the twist and a quartet of Sikkimese Beatles shrilled their Himalayan version of “I Want to Hold your Hand” . . .58

  As the new Chogyal, Thondup knew that his accession speech was just as important as the celebrations and summoned Rustomji from Bhutan to help prepare it. Rustomji was concerned to see that ‘rather more importance was attached to the seating of guests from abroad than to important dignitaries from Sikkim itself’.59 He also noticed that Hope was beginning to relish ‘playing Queen . . . gifted with a sense of the theatrical’. She now had, he wrote, ‘for backdrop the snow-capped peaks of Sikkim’s guardian mountain deity, Kanchenjungha, for plot the diplomatic manoeuvrings over Sikkim’s identity and the Prince’s role in a democratic set-up, and for audience the world itself.’

  Despite any reservations he may have had, Rustomji helped prepare a speech for the Chogyal that was remembered by all who heard it. The representatives of the Government of India – Indira Gandhi, then Minister for Information and Broadcasting, and Mrs Lakshmi Menon, the Minister of State for External Affairs* – must have been aware of the calculations involved in the new Chogyal’s carefully crafted words:

  We recall with profound affection the memory of Jawaharlal Nehru, a true and steadfast friend of Sikkim, and we have confidence that the Government of India will continue to hold out to us the hand of friendship. Our good neighbours, Bhutan and Nepal, are also much in our thoughts today and we shall continue to cherish their friendship . . . Ours is a small country, but we have pride in our institutions, our way of life and cultural heritage. It is for this that we are resolved to maintain our national identity and so direct our affairs that our land may develop according to its own natural genius.60

  The talk of ‘national identi
ty’ and ‘our country’ (and the referral to the words ‘natural genius’ that C. D. Rai recalled used by Nehru himself) raised the eyebrows of the Mrs Gandhi and Menon. Mrs Menon replied in kind, saying that ‘India has had long and historic bonds with Sikkim which,’ she pointedly remarked, ‘go far beyond the terms which Your Highness’s late distinguished father concluded with India.’

  The event acted as a national unifier for those living in Sikkim. ‘It might well be regarded,’ Rustomji wrote later, ‘as the Prince’s Finest Hour.’ The editors of the glossy booklet that was produced to celebrate the event worked hard to portray the pride of the people. The ‘national flag of Sikkim’ was proudly presented as the opening picture on the first page; a picture of Thondup’s uncle, Sidkeong Namgyal, in 1906 at Oxford drew a link with the British rule in the country; sections on the history and the religions of the country celebrated the distinct nature of the Bhutia-Lepcha inheritance.

  But the Nepali majority in the country still received scant recognition in the pictures and text. It was a further sign of the inability of the Chogyal to fully accept that the ethnic make-up of his country had changed. The pressure for fair representation of the Nepalis may have been momentarily suppressed in the heady celebrations of Sikkim’s wider identity, but it was an issue that was not going away.

  It would come back to haunt the Namgyals only a decade later.

  Among the congratulatory messages that the new royal couple received was another one from the Chinese government. It was a deliberate affront to the Indian demand for communications to be conducted via the Indian External Affairs Ministry, and a further escalation of tensions between the two countries.

  The press were never afraid to link these tensions to Sikkim. When Thondup gave an interview to a reporter from the New York Times in 1964 about the relations with China, the headline had read ‘Sikkim Ruler Hails Red Chinese Ties’. The US was being sucked into Asian politics via the Vietnam War and the spectre of the expansion of Chinese influence was not a hard one to conjure up.

  Meanwhile, in the post-1962-conflict atmosphere, some in India questioned Hope Cooke’s motives for being in Sikkim. Years later Indian journalist Satyendra Shukla, in his account entitled Sikkim: The Story of Integration*, wrote about the rumours surrounding Hope Cooke’s presence:

  What a coincidence that Sikkim was the most-talked about subject on the international chess-board then, with rival armies of India and China facing each other on the Sikkim–Tibet border. In certain quarters it was openly suggested that Cook [sic] was a CIA plant and was sent there to fish out information of logistic and diplomatic importance and to send the same to her masters. Her duties perhaps also included to wean the Maharajkumar – who was shortly to be the new Maharaja – away from India and help as far as possible the establishment of an Independent state, where US might build up some sort of defence structures against China. This also suited India at that time because India was also opposed to China. But perhaps even then India would not have entertained any proposal for the Independent Sikkim. [. . .] The US had been looking for some days to find a foothold on Indian soil since it started its world-wide programme to contain communism, just after World War II.61

  The rumours about Hope Cooke were contrived. But Shukla was undoubtedly right about one thing – the patchwork of alliances and enmities surrounding and within Sikkim had the characteristics of a fiendishly complex multi-player game of chess.

  Things were about to get even more complicated by events on India’s western border with Pakistan.

  -11-

  In 1947, the problems of the Himalayan nations’ continued existence had paled into insignificance when compared to the challenge of creating an entirely new country, Pakistan. It was a state that almost by definition was set up in opposition to and competition with India. A sense of rivalry had not taken long to surface: the messy question of Kashmir had been one of the first items on the newly formed United Nations’ agenda in its early years.

  The rivalry soon infected diplomacy too, with both countries competing for favours from more established countries during the 1950s. Both developed open relations with the USA, and both were quick to recognise the People’s Republic of China. The Pakistani leadership in particular recognised the importance of strong relations with China. In 1956, it tried to enlist Chinese support for its position over Kashmir. Zhou Enlai refused,62 but the approach was an indication of the importance the Pakistanis laid on having the ear of the Chinese.

  In 1959, at the time of the Chinese suppression of the Lhasa Uprising and the flight of the Dalai Lama, a new leader, General Ayub Khan, assumed control of Pakistan in a military coup d’etat. Khan was a pragmatist. Seeing the growing tensions between India and China, he made an early offer to the Indian government to resolve the Kashmir issue once and for all, proposing that in return Pakistan and India would work together to defend the subcontinent against ‘external powers’, i.e. China. For a brief moment there was the prospect of Indo-Pakistani cooperation; but Nehru, under pressure to show India’s strength, brushed Ayub Khan’s offer aside, just as he had when Zhou proposed to resolve the India–China border dispute around the same time. Instead, Nehru had authorised the Forward Policy that contributed to the 1962 Sino-Indian war.

  India’s unconvincing military display in the 1962 conflict gave the Pakistanis fresh hope that their neighbour might be vulnerable diplomatically – or even militarily – over Kashmir. The Pakistanis also felt aggrieved at the sudden increase in military aid flowing to India from the US. What, the Pakistanis asked themselves, had been the point in supporting the US during the 1950s in the battle against communism if the Americans were willing to turn on a sixpence and provide military support for the Indians? It was a reasonable question.

  After 1962, therefore, as India and Pakistan both embarked on significant armaments programmes, the pieces on the board started to arrange themselves into a quite different configuration. China, already involved in a shadowy proxy conflict with the US in Vietnam*, sensed an opportunity – or perhaps even a diplomatic necessity – to align itself with Pakistan against India. Suddenly there was a real basis for Sino-Pakistani cooperation, tacit or otherwise.

  By 1965, Pakistan’s relationship with China had deepened significantly. As the preparations for the Sikkimese coronation took place in Gangtok in March 1965, Mao and Ayub Khan met in Beijing. Chairman Mao’s view was clear. ‘Pakistan and China [can] trust each other,’ Mao said, ‘as neither has the intention of pulling the rug [out from] under the feet of the other.’63 As Ayub Khan left Beijing, Mao reportedly told the Pakistani general that there was now no doubt that the Chinese would side with the Pakistanis, not with the Indians, in the event of any future conflict.

  Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Ayub’s aggressive Foreign Minister, spotted an opportunity. Within a couple of months he had persuaded Ayub to activate a plan that he had been developing for some time. Under the codename ‘Operation Gibraltar’, it involved encouraging an anti-Indian uprising by infiltrating Indian Kashmir and creating an ‘urban insurrection’ in Srinagar.64

  The language that the Pakistani press used to characterise the conflict was very carefully chosen. By calling the struggle in Kashmir one of ‘national liberation’, a link was drawn with North Vietnam’s efforts to ‘liberate’ South Vietnam. This allowed some Chinese Communist Party editorials to also draw this link, tarring the Government of India with the brush of imperialism. In June 1965, the CCP-controlled Hong Kong paper Da Gong Bao crowed that ‘the crest of the anti-imperialist revolutionary struggles in Asia, Africa and Latin America is rising to a new high . . . US imperialism is being battered everywhere.’65

  There was, they said, a need to ‘strengthen their unity, and support and help each other in their common struggle against imperialism, colonialism, and neo-colonialism’ in the wake of an ‘unprecedented upsurge of the national liberation movement in Asia and Africa’. There was no doubt that things were changing across Asia. While tensions in Kashmir inten
sified, America moved its first combat troops into Vietnam. This was the year that America’s military presence in Vietnam went from 23,500 ‘military advisers’ to nearly 200,000 total troop strength.

  While the Chinese, with the proxy war against the US in Vietnam intensifying, did not wish to encourage direct conflict between Pakistan and India, there was no doubt that they were lining up behind the former – while the Americans were backing the latter.

  Meanwhile in Sikkim, the rising tensions in the region made the Indian government even more cautious about the Chogyal’s continued desire for increased autonomy in Sikkim.

  Trouble occurred on a post-coronation visit to Delhi, when Thondup annoyed one of the army officers sent to escort him by insisting on the Sikkimese flag flying on the official car alongside the Indian one.66 There were other signs of the growing assertion of Sikkimese national identity, in particular the growth of the term ‘Tibeto-Burman’ to describe the basis of Sikkimese nationality and language. It was a clear attempt to reinforce the idea of separateness from India. It also allowed the Sikkimese Nepali immigrants to claim a more ‘culturally Buddhist’ heritage than that given them by Indo-Aryan theorists in India.67

  Sometimes the tensions were all too obvious to the people of Sikkim. In 1965 the political officer was so concerned at the increasing prominence of the expanded Sikkim Guard and its ostentatious use in Palace ceremonies that he boycotted the Guard’s annual presentation and advised other Indians against attending the ceremony too.68

  All this posturing even made dinner parties in Gangtok problematic – Martha Hamilton recalled in a letter home: ‘I’m thinking of having two parties, one for HH and one for PO* and India lot. Definitely better in separate parties.’69 The increasing tensions had other implications too: when Princess Coocoola tried to use the normal channels to apply for a visa to visit outside the country, the Indian government at first refused to give her foreign exchange. (They later relented.)70 To complicate matters further, in Kalimpong the Kazini was slowly mustering support for the anti-Chogyal (though not yet pro-Indian) elements in the country, with her clever publicity on behalf of the Sikkim National Congress party.