Sikkim

by Andrew Duff

  A week later she wrote that the situation had worsened: ‘the iron hand is becoming more & more evident with the velvet glove gone almost entirely’.

  She was right – the Indian administration had given up on the ‘light touch’ approach. They had realised that as long as the Chogyal was there, Sikkim would always retain the characteristic of separateness. In the paranoid world of 1975 politics, that constituted a security threat.

  The Chogyal would have to go.

  -4-

  In New York, Hope Cooke was staying in close touch with events in Sikkim. Since her return to the US she had found it hard to strike a balance between moving on to a new life and respecting the fact that she still – in theory at least – retained a duty to Sikkim as Gyalmo. As the situation worsened in early 1975, she had persuaded a friend, John Train, to form an organisation, Friends of Sikkim.† Train’s cousin, Claiborne Pell, was a US senator, a Democrat well known for his opposition to the war in Vietnam and his support for unusual causes. Meeting in the front room of Train’s New York apartment, Hope Cooke and the Friends of Sikkim readied themselves for any trouble there might be to come.17

  But the events of early March crystallised another pressing problem in her mind. On the eve of her marriage in 1963 she had given up her American citizenship for an ‘Indian Protected Person’ passport, the category that applied to people from Sikkim with a need to travel outside India. On her return to the US a decade later – with no certainty about her own future – she had postponed the thorny issue of her nationality, officially remaining in the US only as a visitor. But by the spring of 1975 she realised that if things deteriorated further in Sikkim – if Sikkim even disappeared off the face of the map – she could be left in limbo, in a state-less hinterland.

  To regain US citizenship, she now discovered, was a complex process, which would require a special bill to be passed in both the Houses on Capitol Hill. She approached two old friends, Senator Mike Mansfield and Congressman James Symington, to argue her cause. But it was not that easy – the bill was a most unusual one, and some feared the precedent that her case might set.

  Her citizenship prospects looked extremely poor, as did the prospects of resident-alien status.

  The official alternative, she realised, was deportation. But if something happened to Sikkim, where on earth would she – let alone her children – be deported to?

  After the pen-bomb fiasco, the Palace in Gangtok had gone on the offensive. Thondup challenged the political officer in writing three times for substantive evidence of the allegations that had been laid against him and his son. None was forthcoming, presumably because there was none. But the pen-bomb plot was nothing more than a sideshow – the bitter battle over control of the judicial system in Sikkim was of far greater significance.

  Tarachand Hariomal, Chief Judge of the Central Court of Sikkim in 1975, had been in Sikkim since 1968. An Indian by birth, he had become deeply enamoured with the Himalayan kingdom. As Chief Judge, Hariomal had worked with Thondup during the early 1970s to update the outmoded judicial system. The reforms, which would have been Hariomal’s crowning glory, were supposed to have been introduced in April 1973. Instead, Hariomal had watched with increasing dismay as the Chogyal had been marginalised. Some of the changes had, in fact, been belatedly introduced in 1974, but as first the Government of Sikkim Act in July and then the constitutional amendment in September were introduced, Hariomal became concerned not only for the Chogyal but also for the propriety of the judicial system itself.

  Hariomal found himself at the heart of the battle with Lal. In early January he angered Lal by being party to a decision to release a group of young men accused of plotting to blow up the Kazi; in March he tested Lal’s patience yet further when he saw no reason to pursue Yongda over the Rangpo ‘stabbing’ incident. There was a dispute at a more fundamental level, too. Lal was demanding that judicial files should be sent directly to him as chief executive. Hariomal refused to do so, arguing that the 1974 act had made no provisions for judicial authority to rest with the chief executive and that, in any case, it was the Chogyal as constitutional monarch who should be the guarantor of the independence of the judicial system.

  In late March matters came to a head. M. M. Rasaily, an administrator in Sikkim close to the Palace, dropped a bombshell by mounting a legal challenge to the validity of the constitutional amendment of 1974 that had made Sikkim an associate state of India.

  There had always been doubts over the amendment, many of them voiced at the time by MPs in the debate. But now not only was Rasaily mounting a challenge in Sikkim’s courts but another ambitious young Indian lawyer had also mounted a challenge in the Central Courts in Delhi. Both picked holes in what was without doubt a poorly drafted and ill-thought-through piece of legislation. The Delhi case challenged the amendment ‘on the grounds that admission of a foreign monarchy destroyed the unitary basis of India’s constitution’; but it was Rasaily’s Gangtok case that concerned Lal more. Rasaily’s argument rested on a defence of the 1950 treaty – India’s weak point. Since the 1950 treaty was still in existence, Rasaily said, any change in the relationship between the two parties to the treaty – India and Sikkim – required the assent of both sides. Since neither Sikkim’s people nor its Assembly had formally given their assent, the unilateral constitutional amendment passed in Delhi had no legal basis. Only a referendum in Sikkim would provide this assent. Furthermore, Rasaily said, the status quo ante the September constitutional amendment should be reinstated: representatives should not be sent from Sikkim to the Delhi parliament until a referendum had been held; and the Assembly should be forbidden from discussing issues regarding the Chogyal forthwith.

  Lal and the Kazi – who, as head of the Assembly, was a co-defendant in the Gangtok case – were determined that the case should be thrown out. It was nothing more than semantic rubbish, they argued, which would have the effect of stifling the Sikkimese voice in the Indian parliament. But Hariomal refused to be cowed. He would not throw the case out. Instead, he announced that the hearing should be postponed until the end of April. But he ruled that in the interim Rasaily should be considered right: since it was the 1974 act that was under discussion, the situation prior to that was the one that should exist until the hearing at the end of April: thus he effectively forbade the Assembly from sending representatives to Delhi – or from discussing the Chogyal.18

  Unsurprisingly, Lal was furious.

  On 1 April he told the Chogyal in no uncertain terms that New Delhi had made a decision: that ‘the head of the judicial department shall submit to the chief executive all cases pertaining to the judicial department which require high level orders’ because ‘the chief executive, as the head of the administration in Sikkim, had full control over this department’.19

  There was now no escaping the showdown. The chief executive had expressly contradicted the Chief Judge. Such a situation could not be allowed to continue.

  In Sikkim, 4 April had always been a special day, a holiday dedicated to celebrating the Chogyal’s birthday across the country. But on the 3rd the Sikkim government hurriedly declared it was now to be ‘Martyrs’ Day’ in memory of ‘“those who lost their lives” in the “people’s uprising against the autocratic rule of the Chogyal” in 1973,’ Ishbel Ritchie wrote home in a deeply sarcastic tone. Even the school was ordered to toe the line:

  Since nobody I’ve encountered (a) knows of anyone who was killed at that time (except one of C’s [the Chogyal’s] supporters in the district who may have been murdered for private reasons), [and] (b) really believes that the whole country rose, [so] it was rather difficult to carry out the peremptory orders that we got from the Educn. Dept. to hold a morning Assembly to mourn the ‘martyrs’. However, we managed to hold a ‘prayer meeting’ where we sang suitable hymns and had prayers for all who suffer, whether mistakenly or not, for sincerely held beliefs.

  All the Government officers had been forbidden to offer the traditional scarves to the Chogyal �
� tho’ a special request had been put in by the Chief Secretary on behalf of all of them & was turned down by the Chief Executive. It made the gathering at the Palace v. odd because there were all the representatives of the Government of India presenting their greetings as usual & no local officials.

  Kewal Singh, the Indian Foreign Secretary, was one of those at the gathering in the Palace representing the Government of India. But he was not there out of respect for the Chogyal. His real purpose was to assess the tense situation and report back to Delhi. On 6 April he returned to the Indian capital and gave a detailed briefing to the prime minister’s Political Affairs Committee.20 The situation was grave, he told them – beyond repair. Everyone agreed it was time to act: decisively.

  The first step was to remove potential pockets of resistance.

  Since his release on bail following the Rangpo ‘stabbing’ incident, Captain Yongda had been watching all these developments carefully. As a member of the Sikkim Guards, he took his duty to protect the lives of the royal family seriously, a task the Guards had been carrying out since the 1960s on behalf of the Indian government.

  On 6 April, the day that Mrs Gandhi was conferring with her Political Affairs Committee, Yongda worked late into the evening in his office in the Palace. Since the Rangpo incident, the Chogyal had given him a bedroom in the Palace so that he could stay close. At 11 p.m. that night, the Commanding Officer of the Sikkim Guards, Colonel Gurung, came to his door and updated him on what he knew. Gurung was an Indian Army officer deputed to the Sikkim Guards whom Yongda trusted. The two men had been discussing privately for some time what they would do if the situation came to the worst. With reports coming in that something was in the offing, they decided to wake Thondup for an urgent discussion.

  Yongda and Gurung sat by the Chogyal’s bed and discussed the situation with him. Over the past few days, there had been a significant increase in the army presence in Gangtok. The Indian Army had informed them that it was simply preparations for a major Eastern Division exercise in case of a Chinese attack on Sikkim. But the two men said they were not going to take any chances. Yongda outlined the options to the Chogyal. First, they advocated bringing the entire Sikkim Guard into the palace compound. Second, they said that they had already devised a plan of escape, taking him in monk’s clothing across the border to Nepal. Third, Yongda said, if India were to attack he believed they could hold the Palace for 15 minutes to half an hour. But that might just be long enough to buy them enough time to inform China and Pakistan about what was happening, which might bring diplomatic support – possibly more.

  Thondup simply smiled at his young Captain. He was convinced, he told them, that India, as a peace-loving nation, would never attack Sikkim. Even if they did attack he could never give an order for the Sikkim Guards to open fire on Indian troops. First, as a Buddhist king it would be against his every precept*; second, as an honorary Major-General in the Indian Army, he could find himself facing a court-martial; third, he would have no truck with any action that could unleash forces that might be catastrophic for Sikkim and the wider Asian region.

  He told the two men to leave and sleep – they would see what the morning brought.21

  -5-

  The following day, 7 April, the Indian government moved.

  In Gangtok, a warrant was issued for the arrest of Captain Yongda. The charge was that he had conspired to assassinate the Kazi and his government, and that he had opened the Sikkim Guards armoury and distributed weapons. When Colonel Gurung heard of the charges, he opened the armoury to demonstrate to the General of the 17th Mountain Division that all the weapons were still there. But the reports of the charge had already appeared in the newspapers that morning. There was little that could be done. That afternoon Yongda was taken into custody. He would later be taken to a jail in a town well outside Gangtok, where he was detained for 15 days. The man considered most likely to lead resistance to the forthcoming Indian action had been removed from the scene.

  Next was Hariomal, the Central Court judge. In the previous days, Hariomal had railed against the chief executive, even threatening to resign. Realising that such a resignation would have left a chaotic situation, Lal had persuaded Hariomal to retract it. Instead, he arranged for the judge to take ten days’ emergency leave of absence in New Delhi. Hariomal, worn down and feeling every one of his 70 years, accepted.22

  Although no one realised it at the time, a carefully thought-through plan was being executed. All potential troublemakers were being sidelined. Another government official, Keshab Pradhan (brother to Krishna Chandra Pradhan), recalled nearly 40 years later that he too had been summoned to Lal’s office. He was flattered to be told that he was suddenly in line for a major promotion and would be needed in Delhi. When he questioned what the job was, he was told that he would find out when he got there. He also left willingly.

  Princess Coocoola, too, was quietly and efficiently kept away from Gangtok. She was in Delhi on the 7th, where she had been staying in Sikkim House for a few days, intending to return to Gangtok that same day. She received an unexpected invitation to Kewal Singh’s home. For two hours, Singh and a colleague grilled her ‘on the Chogyal’s supposed Chinese contacts, whom she had met in Hong Kong two years previously, and about American interest in Sikkim’.23 When she returned to Sikkim House, she found Central Reserve Police guards on the lawn, nominally for her protection. Once inside, she discovered the telephone lines were dead. She was told firmly that she was to stay in Sikkim House for her own protection.

  Even Nari Rustomji, the Indian who had served so successfully as dewan in the late 1950s, forming a strong friendship with Thondup, was considered a threat. After receiving a request from Thondup to come to Gangtok, he contacted Kewal Singh. It was, Singh warned him, ‘highly inadvisable’ to visit. Rustomji took the hint and obediently stayed away.24

  The following day press reports about Sikkim started to appear in the Indian newspapers. Yongda had ‘confessed and implicated several other plotters’, they said25; a separate plot to blow up the Kazi was supposedly uncovered after a ‘bomb-like object was found hidden under the back seat of his jeep’.26 Speculation and rumour about what was happening in Sikkim was rife; but with no foreign press allowed access to the country and Indian press access severely limited, it was easy to paint the picture of a deteriorating situation that needed urgent resolution.

  Meanwhile the army continued to pour into Sikkim. ‘Indian soldiers in full battle dress manoeuvred trucks, jeeps, radio cars with tags on their aerials, and ambulances’ made their way through the steep, narrow streets.

  In the Palace, the Chogyal called the Political Officer, Gurbachan Singh, to ask what was happening. It was only a military exercise, Singh told him, adding that Mrs Gandhi had asked to see the Chogyal in Delhi on the 10th to discuss what would be happening next. Arrangements had been made, Singh added, for him to fly with two advisers the following morning.

  The meeting with Mrs Gandhi never took place. Singh cancelled it on the morning of the 9th on the basis that VIP transport out of Sikkim was fully booked. It seemed an odd reason to give, but Thondup had by now given up on trying to see reason in what was happening.

  On that same morning Colonel Gurung, the commander of the Sikkim Guards, was summoned to an urgent meeting with divisional headquarters. With Yongda also imprisoned, it left a young man, Captain Roland Chhetri, in nominal control of the Guards.

  At around 12.45 p.m., Chhetri was locking up the barracks and caught sight of Indian soldiers on the ridge just above him. The journalist Sunanda Datta-Ray talked to Chhetri about what he saw that day:

  Two rows of men in CRP uniform stood on the ridge above. Bowling down the road from India House was a steady stream of one-ton military trucks and jeeps with lowered hoods. Soldiers in battle fatigues crammed the vehicles. The convoy stopped at the pavilion where men poured out to begin the advance. One file doubled towards the triple gateway. The other branched off to clamber down the ravine into the Guards ar
ea from where Chhetri watched in horrified disbelief.27

  And then he heard the orders for covering fire from the prayer ground above the palace.

  The curtain was about to fall on over three centuries of Namgyal rule in Sikkim.

  It took no more than a few bursts of gunfire to overpower the palace compound. Right up till the last moments, no one had really believed there would be a military confrontation. When it came, it was short and sharp. The Sikkim Guards were not in any sort of positions to resist attack; the only real defence of the palace was at the two sentry boxes by the gates.

  One of the sentries, Basant Kumar Chhetri, ‘levelled his rifle at the attackers’ and was shot dead. The other was hit in the right arm. The arm would later be amputated.28

  Thondup, hearing the gunfire, ran out of the palace to a cottage nearby on the grounds. Panicking, he grabbed the phone and called the Political Officer, Gurbachan Singh. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he shouted down the phone line. Singh put General Kullar of the Mountain Division on the line. Kullar advised Thondup to order his men to lay down arms and surrender.

  As soon as Thondup put the phone down, it rang again. This time it was Roland Chhetri, but before they could agree a plan the line went dead. The whole operation had been conducted quickly and efficiently. The remainder of the Guards, most of whom had been resting, had by now been ‘lined up in the football field with their hands above their heads like criminals’.

  It had taken about 20 minutes, with one fatality and one serious injury, to disarm the Sikkim Guards.