by Andrew Duff
In London, too, supporters of the Chogyal tried to raise a voice of concern. Denys Rhodes, a relative by marriage of Queen Elizabeth II and the appointed guardian of Thondup’s children in the UK, approached the British Foreign Office accompanied by a firm of solicitors, Macfarlanes (who acted as trustees for the Namgyal children). Rhodes charged that ‘the Indians had long been looking for a reason to intervene’ and told the Foreign Office official that he was prepared to take the matter to the United Nations. The sniffy Foreign Office official, dismissing their ‘somewhat romantic view of their connection with the Sikkimese royal family and the idealist faith, common amongst lawyers, in the power of written communications’,24 managed to convince them to hold their fire; but Rhodes’ sentiment was shared by others in Britain who, in the post-colonial world, felt it was their duty to support the underdog.
The matter had not escaped the attention of the Americans either. Questioned in Washington, a press officer gave a low-key response, making clear that the US felt ‘no compulsion to express an American view where American interests are so tangential’; pressed on the fact that the ‘Queen is an American citizen’, the press officer responded that the US ‘may have some consular interests but none other’. But the new Ambassador in Delhi, Pat Moynihan, took a keener interest and was trying hard to stay on top of events in Sikkim. Moynihan had been posted to Delhi to try and repair relations between the US and India; he was, therefore, assiduous in seeking the truth behind what he knew to be an effective government press machine.25 In a typically detailed analysis, he said he had the impression the Indian government was ‘not averse’ to the demonstrations, although stopped short of an outright accusation of complicity. The ‘dilemma’ for the Indians, he continued, lay in the ‘ironic fact that chastened Chogyal will be easier to deal with than aggressive Nepali youth’ whose militant demands ‘may soon produce a situation which is less easily controlled by the Government of India’.26
Inevitably, news of the American and British interest in events filtered through to the Indian Foreign Ministry. Combined with Coocoola’s accusations and some adverse reaction in Delhi itself, they were enough to cause Mrs Gandhi and Kewal Singh pause for thought.
But it was the US ambassador in Kathmandu, Carol Laise, who reported the most interesting piece of intelligence. One informed diplomat told her that he thought India would not ‘swallow’ Sikkim without a ‘green light’ from the Soviets.27
Whether from Soviet pressure or not, Singh made the decision that Indian action in Sikkim needed to have, at the very least, a sheen of legitimacy.
When Singh arrived in Gangtok on 15 April, the Indian government’s approach changed overnight, from ‘aggressiveness to conciliation’.28 There was a certain amount of relief from Bajpai and Das. In Ishbel Ritchie’s words, it had been a ‘gey orra’* few days. ‘I was glad to hear on the radio last Monday evening that things were returning to normal,’ she wrote sarcastically. ‘You could have fooled me.’ Advising her mother to have her ‘interlineal glasses handy’ (to read between the lines), she referred to the ‘stadium-based entertainment’ that had lasted the whole week.
Kewal Singh’s arrival meant that all thoughts of encouraging or even tolerating confrontation evaporated. Neither Das nor Bajpai was ever made fully aware of why the approach had changed; but Das put two and two together when Kewal Singh told him that Mrs Gandhi had been unhappy with the ‘unusual publicity’ her actions had attracted, confirming Das’s ‘suspicion that some foreign governments friendly to India cautioned against hasty steps’.29 It seems likely that this was the USSR cautioning against unleashing a democracy that might not turn out to be as supportive of Indian policy as expected.30
Singh’s new approach was simple: instead of supporting the democratic forces of change, India would assume all important powers within Sikkim. These powers would be transferred to an Indian chief executive who, it was planned, ‘would virtually rule the State at Delhi’s behest’. Thondup, meanwhile, would be maintained as Chogyal; this would be merely as a constitutional monarch – a figurehead – but allowing him to retain his position would deflect any serious criticism of the Indian actions.
Now that the decision had been taken that India herself would assume such complete control, the effect was immediate: the police were reinstated in their duties in Gangtok, administrative offices were reopened, order was restored albeit with a heavy Indian presence on the streets in the form of the Central Reserve Police.
Das had some concerns about the new approach, particularly the reception he knew it would get from those who had cheered his arrival as a liberator in Gangtok only one week earlier. He knew that if Delhi effectively tried to assume the powers that the Chogyal had formerly occupied, it risked the possibility that Delhi would be in ‘direct confrontation with the political parties we were supporting’. Further, the demands of the protestors for genuine democratic reform would not be met.
To counteract the possibility of serious opposition from the leaders of the agitation, they were, as Das put it, ‘assured, in unusually large doses, of Delhi’s full support to their demands for a democratic set-up’. In other words, money was dispensed with a largesse hitherto unknown in the Himalayan state. Bags full of cash were parcelled out to influential people in order to win their acquiescence to the new state of affairs.* Some found it easy to adjust to the new realities. The Kazi was one of them. He had never hidden his belief that closer ties with India were necessary, and he was quickly identified as the key to maintaining Indian control in Sikkim.
As soon as Singh started discussions with Thondup, the Sikkimese ruler saw ‘a ray of hope in the position being restored to the status quo ante with minor changes’. He railed at Delhi for instigating ‘those hooligans’ to cause trouble and insisted that Kazi, the Kazini and Khatiawara were ‘communists and consequently a danger to both Sikkim and India’. He had warned Indira Gandhi that something like this might happen, he reminded Singh, adding that he would do everything in his power to ensure Sikkim would retain its distinct identity.
There was no doubt that Das would be the man in charge and would be answerable only to Delhi in the new set-up. But to retain Thondup’s support, Singh conceded two vital points: first, that a form of parity voting might be allowed to continue, and second, that the institution of the Chogyal would be protected. A bemused Das pointed out that, given these concessions were directly opposed to the main demands of the agitators, the agreement changed nothing of substance in Sikkim – apart from making Delhi (in other words, Das himself) the focal point for any discontent within the state, rather than the Chogyal. Nevertheless, a secret bilateral agreement was signed between Singh and the Chogyal on 23 April to this effect.
As Singh left for Delhi to get final approval, he asked Das and Bajpai to finesse the proposal with the elected leaders, primarily the Kazi. It quickly became apparent to Das that for the agreement to work at all, at least a semblance of authority would need to be given to the politicians. He relayed his view back to Singh. Thus when Foreign Secretary Singh returned in early May he carried with him a somewhat different agreement to the one he had signed with Thondup. The new agreement – which was to be tripartite (that is, signed by Singh, the Chogyal and representatives of the politicians) – passed some (admittedly limited) powers to the politicians; made clear that one man, one vote was to be instituted; and, crucially, did not include the precious guarantees about the Chogyal’s position.
Thondup blew up at Singh, who tried to mollify him by saying that the new revised agreement was for ‘Public Relations’ purposes only; the agreement that really counted, Singh reassured Thondup, was the bipartite one signed on 23 April. Thondup begrudgingly accepted Singh’s smooth reassurances but asked Singh to reaffirm that the 1950 treaty still ruled all arrangements between Sikkim and India. Singh, knowing that his plan needed an acquiescent Chogyal, agreed to give him such a commitment.
The tripartite agreement that was finally signed on 8 May 1973 was therefore a co
mplete fudge, acceptable to everyone within the confines of their own narrow interpretation: Delhi was confident that it had fully protected its interests in Sikkim; Thondup, although he had not enjoyed the whole proceedings, was reassured that the agreement that really mattered was the one signed in secret on 23 April that allowed him to retain his position; the Kazi was convinced that he and the other politicians had inherited the mantle of power in Sikkim, albeit under Indian protection.
At the signing ceremony, the underlying tensions could not be hidden away. The timing – 9 p.m. – was not ideal for Thondup, who had started drinking again. Das recalled him turning up
full of liquor already and surcharged with emotions; he accused the leaders of betrayal and sell-out to India. Sikkim and her people would never forgive them for their treachery. They were not worthy of being called Sikkimese having sold their country. None uttered a word, as if they were under his spell.31
The reference to ‘betrayal’ was deliberate: the term ‘desh bechoa’ (sellers of the country) was one that would, over the coming years, become a hauntingly familiar one, levelled at the Kazi and his supporters. But for now the Himalayan Observer’s headline – ‘Sikkimese Magna Carta: Kazi, Father of Democracy in Sikkim’ – suggested a new dawn.
In reality India had assumed a position remarkably similar to that held by the British in the pre-1947 days – with a political officer, K. Shankar Bajpai, in the Residency and a highly powerful Indian-appointed dewan, B. S. Das, running the show.
To give the semblance of modernity, Das was to be given the official title of ‘chief executive’. But even he was left in little doubt as to the bizarre imperial echo of the new arrangements: ‘I was greeted by the Chogyal the next day with the words “Welcome Mr. Das, our new Chogyal.” It summed up the agreement.’32
-4-
On 25 April, during the tense negotiations over the future of the country, Hope and Thondup had somehow found the time to send a congratulatory birthday telegram to the British consulate in Calcutta for onward transmission to Queen Elizabeth II. ‘We thought it rather remarkable this year,’ the consulate wrote in a dry covering note as they forwarded the telegram to London, ‘in view of all the other events competing for their attention.’33
Attending to royal protocol, however, could not mask the bitter truth that life in the palace had changed irrevocably. After the 8 May Agreement, both Thondup and Hope sunk into morose moods. Thondup knew that his power had been irreversibly reduced; all Hope wanted was to be in New York with her new lover. The Indian authorities no longer tried to hide the fact that they were opening mail; Hope became paranoid that references to her New York lover in earlier letters might be used against her.34
By late May, once Das and the Indians had established a good measure of control across the state, the siege mentality lifted a little. At a palace dinner, Ishbel Ritchie noticed a welcome ‘return to a little lightheartedness’. Thondup, she wrote to her mother, was ‘in one of his teasing moods, saying outrageous things because he knows I haven’t a comeback’, though she added that he was ‘on the whole much affected – naturally – by what has been going on and tends to be gloomy and rather backward-looking’.
That summer, life took on a slightly surreal feel. Thondup took up baking; Hope started knitting, ‘something I haven’t done since kindergarten’. Searching desperately for things that would keep spirits light and take Thondup’s mind off the reality of his changed circumstances, she organised a play at the palace. Every week a small group – including Ishbel Ritchie – would meet in the palace to rehearse The Enchanted by French playwright Jean Giraudoux.* Proud Coocoola watched from the sidelines, complaining bitterly that the palace was becoming a mockery, reduced to play-acting by a woman of whom she had never approved.
The play would never see the light of day, a casualty of fast-moving events. During May and June, a series of articles appeared in Newsweek impugning her character. Hope had become used to attacks on her character in the Indian press, but when she saw what the American press was now writing about her, she was horrified. Former US Ambassador J. K. Galbraith wrote to the magazine in her defence, but the final straw broke when a feature article appeared in early July. The earlier effusive and fawning reports of her time in Sikkim were replaced by something altogether darker. This time Newsweek described her as a ‘Himalayan Marie Antoinette’. Where Time had lauded her efforts to develop the country, she now stood accused of rewriting history ‘to establish the kingdom’s validity as a sovereign land’.
It was the personal assault that hurt the most. She was mocked for her ‘Jackie Kennedy whisper’ and her ‘burbling letters back home’, which had suggested ‘a story-book land where orchids grew like weeds, oranges were the sweetest in the world, and everybody lived happily ever after’. Sikkim’s story was, the article went on, ‘the classic tragedy of a dull man pushed along by a scheming ambitious woman’; it had been ‘her influence, many Sikkimese believe, that launched Namgyal on the pursuit of the trappings and appurtenances of monarchy.’ Four years earlier, Time had written of her modest spending habits; now Newsweek drew a link between her lifestyle and the troubles. ‘While the pretensions and the required kowtowing were hard enough to swallow,’ they wrote,
Sikkimese refugees said the royal family’s profligate spending in a land of poverty was a bitter pill indeed. The Chogyal and Hope seemed to be dashing off to Europe or the United States almost constantly. On each return, the palace-controlled Sikkim Herald would make a big thing of announcing just which kings and queens had entertained the Sikkimese rulers – a not very subtle attempt to imply parity between the royal houses of Europe and the rustic court of Gangtok. ‘We are a poor people,’ a Sikkimese journalist told me, ‘but we are not fools, and we know how much money it takes to travel like that.’
The royal couple had been ‘playing with fire,’ living ‘a life of imitation royalty’ with Hope ‘obsessed with the desire to be a real queen – of an independent nation’. Now, the closing paragraph hinted, there was no way back.
‘It was so stupid and ridiculous,’ a Sikkimese politician said. ‘It did not need to have happened this way. But they kept flaunting this monarchy thing until it blew up in their faces.’ The explosion left Hope’s delusions of grandeur shattered and the future of the ruling house of Gangtok very much in question. ‘How long,’ a prominent Sikkimese asked me last week, ‘can we go on putting up with this sort of mediocrity?’
It was a crushing blow for a delicate personality. With few pushing her to stay, she calculated it was time to go. Thondup had no desire to stand in her way. For reasons of political sensitivity, the departure date was delayed until after Indian Independence Day, 15 August. ‘I drag myself toward this date with bleeding hands and knees,’ she wrote.
When the day came, Hope found it impossible not to notice the irony as the band played the Indian national anthem and an Indian flag was triumphantly unfurled during the morning’s celebrations.
In the afternoon, accompanied by her children, Hope Cooke left Sikkim for the last time.
* Zhou Enlai
† The Vietnamese communist leader.
* The term ‘South Asia’ refers to India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
* B. B. Gurung, one of the leaders of the agitation, admitted in 2014 that the agitators were well aware of the support they had from behind the scenes from RAW.
† A lathi is a long wooden stick used by the authorities across India; a kukri is a Nepalese knife, similar to a machete.
* Clover was an American friend.
* ‘There seemed to be a lot of Singhs floating around,’ Princess Coocoola later commented to the journalist Sunanda Datta-Ray. (Datta-Ray, Smash and Grab, p. 307)
* Translation from Scots: ‘hirple’ means to hobble, or walk unevenly.
† Translation from Scots: ‘You’ll realise I have to be careful – before this letter reaches you, there will have been a few people looking at it.’
/> * Translation from Scots: ‘those in control aren’t sure what to do, and no government officials are working’.
* Also known as the New China News Agency.
* Translation from Scots: ‘very odd’.
* A number of people in Sikkim were open about witnessing this when I talked to them in 2009; understandably none were willing to go on the record.
* The summary of the plot may provide some clues as to why Hope chose this particular play. From a 1950 edition, published by Samuel French: ‘STORY OF THE PLAY: It is the biography of a critical moment in the life of a young girl – the moment when she turns from girlhood to womanhood. In this moment, Isabel’s belief in the life of the spirit is so strong that it is sufficient to evoke a real phantom, and even to threaten this world with a spiritual revolution. But where the Inspector, who represents the powers of Government and Science, is powerless against Isabel, the Eligible Young Man succeeds, and for Isabel, as for all young girls, the adventure of love proves more attractive than the adventure of death.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
We Also Want Our Place in the Sun
1973–4
-1-
Thondup’s marriage to Hope had been disintegrating for some time, but her departure for New York, along with the younger children, left a gaping hole in Thondup’s life. ‘I think the Chogyal is missing the Gyalmo and the children quite a bit,’ Ishbel Ritchie wrote after a dinner in the palace later in the month, ‘although these days he has v much less business to occupy his attention anyway.’ Not only had his wife left him; he had also been deprived of his life’s passion, the thing that he felt was his solemn duty – the administration and protection of Sikkim.
