Sikkim

by Andrew Duff

  Which is exactly what happened.

  During the demonstrations on the 20th, Thondup had been powerless, confined to the palace ‘for his own safety’. Initially Bajpai had reassured him that ‘if he did not agree with the resolution to be passed by the Assembly he could inform the Government of India and the Assembly of changes he desired and the Government of India would consider the matter’. But on the 23rd, after three days of demonstrations (and the appearance of Tenzing’s article in London), Bajpai told Thondup that the situation had changed. ‘It has now become necessary for you to give your assent,’ he wrote bluntly from India House. There was, he implied, no alternative. It was time to stop ‘this nonsense’.18

  Thondup gave Bajpai and Das a sharp reminder that he had said he would take ten days to consider the bill, and those ten days were not yet expired. He also reminded both men of the three conditions he had set for agreeing to a new constitution, which he knew had not been met. Finally, he reiterated that since the bill involved renegotiation of a treaty between sovereign states he would be flying to the capital to discuss matters with Indira Gandhi herself.

  But even as he was on the plane to Delhi further signs of what he was up against emerged. In Gangtok, events unfolded in just the way the American embassy had predicted. On 25 and 26 June, protestors from south and west Sikkim and beyond, many of Nepali origin, started arriving in the capital to demonstrate. Few were in any doubt that the protestors, who had been gathered from villages, had been paid to be there.* The Kazi, who had now recovered his composure, addressed the hastily assembled crowd, demanding that Das call another Assembly meeting to finally ratify the bill. Meanwhile some of the major Indian newspapers obediently reported the government’s charge that Thondup was stifling democracy in Sikkim by refusing to assent to the proposed constitution.

  One newspaper went further, insinuating that there might be ‘invisible foreign hands working from behind to influence the palace thinking’. Such allegations were easy for Indian policy hawks to substantiate – they only had to point to the report from the Xinhua news agency, which criticised India’s ‘expansionist ambition to annex Sikkim’, alleging ‘interference in the internal affairs of another state’.19

  In Delhi, Thondup set up base in his favourite hotel, the Ashoka. On 27 and 28 June, he met with both Swaran Singh and Kewal Singh, haranguing them with his account of what had taken place. But they were both equally blunt: Swaran Singh advised him ‘politely but firmly’ that he should reach a settlement with the Assembly in Gangtok; Kewal Singh reiterated the message, ‘with a bit more of a cutting edge’. They were giving Thondup ‘the option of holding his nose and swallowing the new constitution’.20

  But Thondup had by no means given up hope. Feeling like he was bashing his head against a brick wall with the Singhs, he demanded another meeting with Mrs Gandhi.

  While Thondup was ‘cooling his heels’ in the Ashoka Hotel in Delhi, awaiting a meeting with Mrs Gandhi, Das called another meeting of the Assembly in Gangtok for 7 p.m. on the evening of Friday, 28 June. As a sop to procedure, he opened the session by reading out an earlier telegram from Thondup, outlining his three pre-conditions for the bill. The Kazi then took the floor. Decrying the ‘nefarious activities’ of the Palace and expressing shock ‘at the tactics adopted by the Chogyal’, the Kazi thundered that Thondup had ‘one last chance to come to reason’. He gave him 48 hours – in absentia – to agree to the new bill. The young firebrand Khatiawara reiterated the ultimatum, warning that the Chogyal had failed to see ‘the writing on the wall’.

  In his role as president of the Assembly, Das knew full well what he was expected to achieve – the introduction of the bill.21 The Assembly members (31 of the 32 were present) duly obliged. But it had taken some heavy tactics – Khatiawara would later write that many of the members were ‘threatened to support the bill or else face the consequences’.22

  Meanwhile, in Delhi, Thondup finally got his meeting with Mrs Gandhi. He found the Indian prime minister in an intransigent mood. In a desperate throw of the dice, he threatened to resign as Chogyal in the hope that Mrs Gandhi might baulk at the prospect of a chaotic power vacuum in Sikkim. But the Indian prime minister was unmoved. P. N. Dhar, a member of her inner circle, later recalled the icy ending to the meeting:

  He wanted the discussion to continue but Mrs Gandhi fell silent and looked aloof. She had perfected the use of silence as a negative response. After an oppressive moment in which nothing was said, the Chogyal stood up to leave. Mrs Gandhi bade him farewell with folded hands and an enigmatic smile, still without saying anything.23

  Mrs Gandhi’s silent message came as a bitter blow to Thondup. He had always believed that, whatever else happened, she would honour her father’s commitments to Sikkim. Now it seemed that was not the case. He sent out an acid press release to demonstrate his deep sense of betrayal. In it he laid everything bare: he enclosed the correspondence from Bajpai on the 20th and the 23rd; he alleged that he had been deliberately duped by the Indian government over timings; the press had also been guilty of ‘one-sided reporting and unrestrained attacks’ on him personally; worst of all, the bill was ‘deficient, particularly with regard to financial matters, and vested real executive and legislative power in the (Indian) Chief Executive, which was contrary to the objectives of the reform’.24

  But few were now listening. The press release was also – implicitly – an acknowledgement that he had been outplayed. Perhaps for the first time he recognised the enormity of the task of saving Sikkim.

  Dejected and deflated, Thondup returned to Gangtok.

  On 4 July 1974, in the presence of Indian Foreign Secretary Kewal Singh, Thondup ‘held his nose’ and gave his assent to the Government of Sikkim Bill. The Assembly had passed the bill the previous day; two days later, the bill came into force as an act.

  ‘The Chogyal blinked,’ wrote a US embassy officer, summing up the game of political poker that had taken place.25 But many in Gangtok knew that it had been far more sinister. Ishbel Ritchie summed up the mood in her latest missive home:

  It looks as though sufficient people have been intimidated into supporting the proposals they’d protested about – or at least have been forced to keep quiet for now. I’m afraid the sellout is now complete, and there’s little anyone can do now. It is very sad to see things done in this manipulated way.

  Even as Thondup was signing the act into force, the Chinese Xinhua news agency went on the offensive, describing the whole thing as ‘a mini-Czechoslovakia’ incident and railing against the ‘truculent and unjustified interference’ by India in another country’s affairs.26

  It was water off a duck’s back for the Delhi machine, which embarked on a charm offensive with its new docile Sikkimese politicians. The Kazi and his entire Assembly were flown to Delhi, where they were put up in the same hotel that Thondup had stayed in only days earlier. No expense was spared, as the group were whisked around the corridors of power, introduced to the President and the Vice President and cabinet members. Swaran Singh flattered them as ‘the founders of the democratic set-up’ in a private meeting. Later they were taken to see the Taj Mahal by moonlight and Varanasi’s famous ghats.27

  On the final day they were ushered into the presence of Mrs Gandhi. She smoothly reassured them that Sikkim’s ‘individuality’ would be preserved, and that India’s purpose was to support ‘the unfolding of the “new great experiment” of democracy in Sikkim’. Now, she concluded, it was ‘for the leaders and people of Sikkim to visualise the kind of Sikkim that they want . . . India’s “sympathy”, “cooperation” and “good neighbourliness”’ would be offered to Sikkim and its new politicians to help with this endeavour.28

  They were warm words; but the American embassy, diligent as ever, noted a distinct change in tone in Delhi. As the Kazi boarded the plane for Gangtok, he pointedly told the press that the ‘immediate’ problem facing Sikkim was to draft a new constitution. Meanwhile Swaran Singh had subtly changed the tone of his la
nguage: what he had previously referred to as the ‘Constitution Bill’ had now become the ‘Government of Sikkim Bill’ that India would ‘assist Sikkim in implementing’.

  The embassy cabled Washington immediately. There was every indication, they concluded, that the events of June had been only the start and that ‘a new or revised constitution – with Indian acquiescence – is in the offing’.*29

  In the British High Commission, too, they were trying to work out what would come next and how they might respond. One of the officials, Chris Stitt, tried to provide some guidance for British policy makers in London. While admitting to feeling some ‘human sympathy for the Chogyal’, his analysis was brutally frank:

  In this sorry and confused story scarcely any of the participants emerges with any credit. Over the years the Chogyal has been extraordinarily inept in handling his own subjects . . . A more skilful and less hidebound leader might have been able to manage not only relations with the Indian Government but also to keep his own people quiet or on his side, if necessary by calculated adjustments to the need for change. By the same token the Sikkim Congress appears to have gone overboard for hamstringing or removing the Chogyal even at the expense of near-integration into India, perhaps under pressure from the younger, more radical elements. In the long run this may well prove an expensive error since they could find they have exchanged a relatively weak if stubborn master for a much more powerful and determined one.30

  He went on to speculate, through what he admitted was a ‘clouded glass’, as to what the motives of the various parties were. For the Kazi and the Sikkim Congress,

  [it] may be that they are simply blindly opposed to the Chogyal; or perhaps that they see a pro-Indian stance as prudent until power is theirs; or equally possibly India may have quietly made clear that if the Chogyal is to go, then there is no possibility of a successor Sikkimese republic: the price of the Chogyal’s head is absorption.

  As for the Indians, while Stitt could see their ‘main interest throughout has been preserving stability in an area of the utmost strategic sensitivity at a time when relations with China are still cool’, he was ‘quite prepared to believe that they have been unscrupulous and dishonest over some of the detailed steps’ in achieving that stability. ‘I have no doubt,’ he wrote, ‘that Indira Gandhi and her government will topple the Chogyal with the same ruthlessness with which they dealt with the rail strike,* if necessary in the teeth of international opinion. [. . .] They can rely on a malleable and chauvinistic Indian press to support them.’

  ‘The Indian government handling of the crisis,’ he concluded, ‘while inept presentationally, is a further illustration of the distance Indira Gandhi has travelled from the ways of her father.’

  * The monk I met at Pemayangtse in 2009 (see Introduction).

  * In his autobiography, William Saxbe, US Ambassador after Moynihan (Feb. 1975 – Nov. 1976), says that ‘New Delhi was a communications center for much of Asia, clear up into the Mediterranean – top secret operations.’

  * As an indication of how important a role Pakistan and India played in Cold War thinking in this period, in the same Washington meeting Kissinger admitted that during the 1971 war he had ‘told the PRC [People’s Republic of China] that if they came into the [Bangladesh] war in support of Pakistan, and if they were attacked, they would have our full support’. He had also told ‘Brezhnev that we would consider an attack on Pakistan in any form as inconsistent with the detente between us’. Nixon then added that he had also told Brezhnev that he considered ‘Soviet aid to India as one way the Soviets commit aggression through using third countries’. (Memorandum of conversation, 18 Sept. 1973, available online at us.gov)

  * In early December Ishbel Ritchie found herself rather disappointed at having enjoyed a dinner at the palace but returning home in time to do the ironing. ‘With the Gyalmo away and the Chogyal not drinking, things seem to be getting more and more speedy,’ she wrote.

  * P. N. Dhar, Principal Secretary to Indira Gandhi from 1973 to 1977, dealt with this election somewhat ambiguously in his book Indira Gandhi, the ‘Emergency’ and Indian Democracy, stating that ‘there was no interference whatsoever from outside – unless the efforts of RAW to boost the morale of Congress leaders is considered interference’.

  * Ambassador Moynihan writes of the way Mrs Gandhi used to ‘nod, smile’ without responding directly to questions in 1973–4, leading to many pleasant but totally unproductive meetings with her in this period. (see Weisman, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, p. 310)

  * The young firebrand who had been involved with coordinating the events outside Sikkim in April 1973 had won a seat in the Assembly by forging records on the voters’ roll to show that he was 25 years old and could therefore stand as a candidate. Having fallen out with the Kazi and Kazini, he campaigned as an independent candidate; but once elected the Kazi had little option but to allow him to rejoin the Sikkim Congress.

  * Confirmed to the author by a number of people, including a member of the Special Security Bureau operating out of nearby Haflong.

  * Despite the pressure that Thondup was under during this period, he still found time to attend to protocol. US officials in Delhi reported that the embassy had received a cable addressed to the ambassador from the Chogyal and Gyalmo, dated Gangtok, 4 July: ‘Our sincere good wishes on the American National Day. Please convey our warmest greetings and felicitations to His Excellency the President of America on this occasion.’ It echoed the British High Commission’s surprise in April 1973 when they received a birthday greeting for the Queen at the height of the troubles.

  * In May 1974, after Indian trade union leader George Fernandes had called a rail strike, Mrs Gandhi responded by arresting some 20,000 railway workers, crushing the strike within 20 days.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘How Can We Fight With India?’

  1974

  -1-

  Thondup arrived back in Gangtok utterly dejected, bitter and angry about the way he had been treated in Delhi. During his thorough examination of the documents while in the capital, he and his legal advisers had noticed that one clause – Clause 30 – of the new act seemed to have been designed to allow for intervention in his country, by stating that ‘the Sikkim Government may . . . seek participation and representation for the people of Sikkim in the political institutions of India’.

  He still found it hard to believe that Mrs Gandhi would actually allow for the clause to be used, even if, as Thondup knew was likely, the Kazi had made the request. A week after returning from Delhi, he fired off a letter to her, perhaps more in hope than expectation:

  The events of the recent weeks have been disastrous to all of us. After much agony the Government of Sikkim Bill 1974 has received my assent since your Excellency advised me to give it a try, after my constitutional right of firmly placing my views before the Assembly had been completed. I still have fears over clause 30 of the Act which I pray, under your protection, will never be invoked to destroy our separate identity which has been given to us under the treaty and which has been reassured to us.1

  But he could feel his lifelines disappearing. A few days later he wrote a morose letter to Martha Hamilton, Ishbel Ritchie’s predecessor, with whom he maintained a correspondence relationship, enclosing voluminous documentation about what had taken place. ‘We have been through a thoroughly bad eighteen months,’ he wrote:

  What the External Affairs have done is despicable and shameful. When the whole of Gangtok from the Chief Secretary to Chaprassi, from drivers to school children, went on a peaceful demonstration they were teargassed etc., whilst other demonstrators were stopped by the CRP counter-demonstrators (mostly hired) and Border road coolies were allowed to come into Gangtok on a rampage. People were openly beaten up and some officers and their wives as well. M.S. Basnett, President of the National Party, was made to carry Congress flag and shout slogans against the Chogyal and everybody else. I feel it was only this massive demonstration by the Gangtokians that have saved
us from merger. As you have always been interested in our affairs I am sending a complete set of papers which will give you the actual legal position. There is an absolute Chief Executive with an Assembly that enjoys less powers than the old Council and an enabling clause, so called, where Sikkim can be absorbed at any time.

  Hope, unfortunately, does not wish to return to Gangtok as life here is more mundane than aesthetic, moreover she has been openly attacked in public by the Congress. The family has not been spared in the vicious attacks on me, and the Western press seems to take up such tales as it is considered ‘readable news’. We do stay together in New York whenever I am there. I was to go in September but the situation here is such that I think the children [from his first marriage] will have to return without me.

  It was a plea for help – but he knew, deep down, that there was little Martha Hamilton could do. He was now on his own. The only thread he clung to was the existence of the 1950 treaty. His legal advisers were adamant that the treaty – which by definition was between two international parties, one of which he was still the titular head of – would prevent India changing Sikkim’s status without consulting him.