by Andrew Duff
The conversation moved on. There were other pressing matters to worry about.
A few days later, two British news publications wrote opinion pieces about what had taken place in Sikkim. The Observer’s editorial, entitled ‘Imperial India’, ended with a sharp jab at Indira Gandhi’s troubled government: ‘The high democratic principles used to defend the takeover of Sikkim sound no more convincing in Indian mouths than they did in an earlier age when used by the British Raj.’46
But it was The Economist’s that produced a dry, and accurate, analysis of the future:
Whether swallowing Sikkim will be a good thing for India is a question which several opposition parties have raised in parliament. Whether it will be a good thing for Sikkim is something only China, Nepal and Pakistan raised, for their own obvious purposes, the last time round.
Soon there may be no one asking that question.47
They were right.
The fight for an independent Sikkim was, to all intents and purposes, well and truly over.
* Translation from Scots: ‘They’ve all gone completely crazy.’
* The monk I met at Pemayangtse in 2009 (see Introduction).
* The same K. C. Pradhan who had been arrested in April 1973 by Thondup for ‘fomenting communal strife’.
* Saxbe wrote extensively about Mrs Gandhi’s attitude to the USA and the CIA. ‘She was often to repeat . . . that “they” wanted to do her in. She took care never specifically to identify who “they” were. But by innuendo and insinuation, she left little doubt that the accusing finger pointed to the CIA, if not to the Government of the United States.’ (Saxbe, I’ve Seen the Elephant, p. 223)
* Inner Line permits were required to access most areas of Sikkim; Residence permits were required for foreigners to live in India.
* ‘Big Brother’, ‘b.b.’ and ‘B.B.Lal’ had by now become interchangeable terms.
† John Train had an unusual career – he was one of the founders of the Paris Review and would go on to have great success as an investment banker, as well as serving as a part-time adviser to three presidents.
* Yongda recalled being deeply impressed by the Buddhist logic of Thondup’s reasoning: most Indian soldiers had joined the army out of necessity rather than a desire to fight; and any injury to an Indian soldier would not just harm the soldier – it would also have a knock-on effect on the welfare of the soldier’s family and community.
* See prologue.
* Translation: ‘They’ve all gone completely crazy.’
† Translation: ‘Oh yes, pull the other one.’
‡ Translation: ‘skellums’ and ‘banshees’ = hoodlums and mad people.
** Translation: ‘loyal’.
CHAPTER TEN
Death Must Follow Birth
1975–82
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Mrs Gandhi and her government moved quickly to legitimise their actions in Sikkim. Armed with the 97 per cent result of the rigged referendum, they announced on 18 April that a constitutional amendment bill would be introduced in the Indian parliament. This time there were to be no halfway houses. On 21 April, the Indian parliament would be asked to make Sikkim a ‘constituent unit of India’, thus making it a fully fledged Indian state, the 22nd in the union.
The speed with which these events took place left little doubt that the whole process had been a long time in planning. Less than two weeks after the referendum, the bill was passed by the Lok Sabha on 23 April and the Raja Sabha three days later.
The Indian government was conscious, too, of the need to ensure that coverage of the events in Sikkim in the media was strictly controlled. Their answer was to ban foreign journalists and to ensure that Indian journalists in Sikkim were always chaperoned. To a large extent, it worked. Many in the domestic press argued that the internal pressure for change, combined with the threat of Chinese infiltration in Sikkim, was severe enough to justify the actions that had been taken, however egregious. One brave dissenting voice was the Hindustan Times, which argued strongly against the rationale for – and the execution of – what had taken place:
If anything has discredited Sikkim’s demand for merger with India, it is the so-called referendum which demonstrably could not have been held and completed in a fair or reasonable manner within 72 hours . . . The fact that the referendum was conducted with such incredible speed must produce scepticism . . . The procedures followed were of questionable constitutional validity. The only justification for this can be the argument of revolutionary legality. But if the will of the people had to find expression outside and beyond the assembly, there was no need to diminish its sanctity by staging a mock referendum. And this is in the India of Gandhi and Nehru.1
The Indian Express, too, questioned the legitimacy of the referendum, though on a different basis: ‘One wonders how many of the state’s largely illiterate population had time to understand the significance of the issue.’2
Controlling coverage in overseas media outlets was more of a challenge. The government tried to combat the damage done by the Chogyal’s dramatic ham radio message with a New Delhi wire service report; ‘SIKKIM DUMPS MONARCHY’ was the headline. In New York, Hope Cooke was frustrated to see the piece run without alteration in most of the newspapers across the States.*
The Indian government was also aware of the need to try and influence the diplomatic channels. In Delhi they were quick to respond to a request for information from the Acting British High Commissioner, Oliver Forster, sending External Affairs Minister N. B. Menon to meet him. Menon treated Forster to ‘a historical exposition designed to show that India’s only interest was peace and order’, making further unsubstantiated claims that Thondup had been communicating with the Chinese via his sister Princess Coocoola. He also hinted at involvement from other foreign governments, saying he was ‘suspicious of the very quick reaction from Pakistan’. But when Forster asked him how a referendum could be organised so quickly, Menon was ‘clearly embarrassed’. It was, he sheepishly admitted, perhaps more of an ‘opinion poll’ than a referendum.3
Menon also used the meeting to probe Forster as to whether there was likely to be ‘a United Kingdom reaction to all this’. Forster replied that he doubted there would be any official line but pointed out ‘the Chogyal had friends in London and might be able to stimulate an MP to ask a question but no more than that’. Forster was right. A few days later the MP and leader of the Liberal Party, Jeremy Thorpe, scribbled a handwritten note to the Foreign Secretary, Jim Callaghan, saying, ‘I believe the annexation of Sikkim has been quite outrageous,’4 But, as Forster had predicted, with every politician in the United Kingdom knee deep in campaigning on one side or the other of their own referendum – on membership of the European Common Market – the small matter of the disappearance of Sikkim hardly registered.
In the US, too, the minds of the political class were far away – watching the ignominious final retreat from Vietnam, as the last Americans were evacuated from Saigon on 28 April. In New York, the Friends of Sikkim, the organisation set up by John Train and other friends of Hope Cooke, did try and raise the issue. Having failed to get the US representative in the United Nations to take notice of Sikkim’s plight, they turned to Ivor Richard, the British Ambassador to the UN, instead.5 Their plea – for intervention from an international team of UN observers – fell on deaf ears. The New York Times was one US publication that did try to bring the matter to public attention. Their editorial began with a quote from Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the respected Indian philosopher-politician: ‘What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul?’ – which he had once asked Stalin, quoting the Bible. The editorial ended with a sombre critique of what had happened:
India’s cynical absorption last week of the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim is a betrayal of values that gained India worldwide respect through the teachings of such men as Dr. Radhakrishnan and the late Mahatma Gandhi, leader of India’s own long struggle against imperial rule. Imperial India
is a diminished India.6
But US press interest in Sikkim had only ever really been linked to the story of Hope Cooke herself. In early May, Time magazine penned a piece entitled ‘Fairy Tale’s End’:
Ten years ago, when Prince Palden Thondup Namgyal was crowned Chogyal (King) of Sikkim, his young wife, Sarah Lawrence Graduate Hope Cooke, became ‘Queen of the Happy Valley’ and ‘Consort of the Deities.’ Together they pledged to make the tiny storybook kingdom ‘a paradise on earth.’ They also hoped to make Sikkim, an Indian protectorate since 1950, more economically and politically independent. That was a fairy tale not to be.
It was a different matter in the US embassy in New Delhi. The new Ambassador, Bill Saxbe, was a man of quite different character from the liberal intellectual Pat Moynihan. Saxbe’s first experience of India had been a journey under cover of darkness to the embassy to try and avoid the possibility of anti-American riots. He was a plain-talking Cold War warrior, a man who would spend much of his time in India seeking out rare opportunities for hunting and trout fishing in Kashmir. He revelled in the fact that his new posting ‘was a communications center for much of Asia, clear up into the Mediterranean – top secret operations’.7 Saxbe’s concern about the events in Sikkim was simple: he was well aware of the Soviet Union’s deep penetration of the Indian government and wanted to know how far the action in Sikkim had been prompted by Soviet pressure.* His suspicions were increased by a piece in The Patriot, a newspaper allied to the Communist Party of India which had ‘strong links with Moscow’.8 Saxbe reported that The Patriot had written a ‘lengthy commentary’ (on the day of the referendum itself) in which it painted Thondup as ‘an American gadfly out to besmirch India’s name’, accusing him of ‘following his masters in Washington backed by Peking’ in order to ‘create destabilisation in one of the strategically sensitive spots’. Thondup’s removal, they added, had ‘assumed urgency because of Chinese intrigues in neighboring Bhutan in which the US is conniving’.9 A few days later the newspaper continued to play up Thondup’s alleged foreign contacts: his radio had been fitted by ‘two Americans’, The Patriot alleged, darkly hinting at the involvement of Peter Burleigh, the US consular official in Calcutta who had two years earlier been accused of similar ‘crimes’. Saxbe also noted that the Communist Party of India weekly, New Age, had ‘chimed in by alleging that the Chogyal’s palace had become “a rendezvous of plotters and would-be assassins” after the Chogyal’s trip to the Kathmandu coronation and that he was intending to internationalise the issue “with the help of the Chinese and others.”’10
In fact, Chinese reaction to the events in Sikkim had been muted at first. But days after the constitution had been amended to incorporate Sikkim as the 22nd state of India, they held back no longer. Their press statement was unequivocal:
Statement of the Government of the People’s Republic of China
29th April 1975
Recently the Indian Government, in disregard of the strong opposition of the people and Chogyal of Sikkim, brazenly sent its troops to forcibly disband the palace guards of the Chogyal of Sikkim and directed the Sikkimese traitors it long nurtured to come forward and stage at the point of Indian bayonets a farce of so-called ‘referendum’ requesting the deposition of the Chogyal and turning Sikkim into a state of India. Now the Indian Parliament has passed a resolution ‘legalising’ the annexation of Sikkim. It is indeed presumptuous to the extreme for the Indian Government to swallow up a neighbouring country in so flagrant a fashion today, in the 70s of the 20th century. The Chinese Government and people express their utmost indignation and strong condemnation against this expansionist action on the part of the Indian Government.
The Indian Government long harboured an ambition to annex Sikkim. It brutally trampled on Sikkim’s sovereignty all along. It used force to impose on the Sikkimese people the status of a ‘protectorate’. Taking one step further, it used its puppets to forge ‘popular will’ and turned Sikkim into a so-called ‘associate state’ of India. Now, it has resorted outright to complete annexation. It has outdone old-line colonialism in arrogance and in the vileness of tactics. This has fully exposed the ugly features of Indian expansionism which attempts to play the supreme lord in South Asia. The Chinese Government solemnly states once again that it absolutely does not accept India’s illegal annexation of Sikkim and firmly supports the people of Sikkim in their just struggle for national independence and in defence of state sovereignty against Indian expansionism.
Inheriting the mantle of colonialism, Indian expansionism has, over the past 20 and more years, indulged in the fond dream of a great Indian empire and been subjecting neighbouring countries to its control, interference, subversion and bullying . . . Throughout the process of the Indian Government’s annexation of Sikkim, Soviet revisionist social-imperialism has set its propaganda machine in motion to give constant cheers. This is ample proof that Soviet revisionist social-imperialism is the behind-the-scenes boss of Indian expansionism and that it is the main threat to the independence and sovereignty of the South Asian countries and the most dangerous enemy of the people in South Asia.
The fact that India has annexed Sikkim so hastily with Soviet support sounds an alarm for India’s other neighbouring countries. Sikkim today, whose turn tomorrow? [. . .]
The Chinese Government and people will, as always, firmly stand on the side of the Sikkimese people, and we are convinced that victory will surely belong to the Sikkimese people, no matter how many hardships and setbacks they may have to encounter. In the end, Indian expansionism and its backer will be severely punished by history.11
Despite its strong tone, the statement was considered relatively measured by Western diplomats used to these periodic Chinese outbursts. US Ambassador Bill Saxbe knew the Chinese were blustering and would not act, but the question of the extent of Soviet involvement remained a pressing matter. He quietly probed his contacts in the Soviet embassy for more information. His cable to Washington on the subject is a classic of the Cold War era, betraying the extent to which the Soviet–US relationship infused decision-making around the world in the 1970s:
With respect to Chinese concern about the Soviets deriving advantage from Sikkim’s absorption into India two points are worth noting. Since the Government of India has traditionally exercised strict control over its inner line and borderland areas, we do not expect that the Soviets will have any greater access to Sikkim or sensitive areas within Sikkim . . . With respect to Soviet interest in Sikkim, we would only note that Soviet officials here had not to our knowledge traveled or even sought to travel to or around Sikkim in recent years. (This is what the Ministry of External Affairs as well as individual Soviet and East European diplomats have told us in various conversations in past months.) Our exchanges with Soviets here suggest that in fact conditions in Sikkim have attracted no more attention on their part than conditions in other Indian borderlands, for example, in the North-West Frontier area where the Chinese have contacts with dissident elements. All the above is not to say that the Soviets may not maintain covert contacts there although we have no evidence that this is so. Or that they are not pleased that the Government of India has prevented a possible political gain by the PRC in Sikkim by now moving to clarify its status once and for all. But on the basis of information now available here, we do not think the Soviets have a notably active interest in Sikkim or for that matter, Bhutan, at this time.12
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While the Chinese, Soviets and Americans investigated what had happened in Sikkim, the country itself limped into the next phase of its existence. In his palace, Thondup remained under effective house arrest; outside, it slowly dawned on the people of Gangtok that Sikkim’s independence was gone forever. ‘Folk here are feeling a bit battered and sorrowfully resigned to their fate,’ Ishbel Ritchie wrote to her mother five days after the poll.
The only thing Thondup could do was to try to galvanise international opinion. David Astor, editor of The Observer and the man who Hope Cooke and C
oocoola had consulted in 1965 at the time of the border crisis, was keen to help, publishing the article ‘Sikkim’s Prisoner King’ by Indian journalist Sunanda Datta-Ray, who had access to Sikkim in this period on 20 April. Datta-Ray did not hold back. He called events in Sikkim ‘the most phony revolution that history has ever recorded’. The Kazini, far from being the leading light in the movement, Datta-Ray reported, was struggling to comprehend what she had done, with a strong feeling that she had been duped. ‘This is not what I fought for,’ she told him. Her husband had been manipulated and was now ‘in a daze. He is a tortured man . . . the leadership of the party has passed to a Marxist Nepali chauvinist group who will be far more dangerous than the Chogyal ever was.’ In fact, her husband remained Chief Minister, but the danger she was referring to came from the Young Pretender, Nar Bahadur Khatiawara, once her adopted son, now her arch-enemy. One thing was for sure: she knew now that with Sikkim’s incorporation into India, her hope of being a big fish in a small pond was over – forever. She and the Kazi would be answerable only to Delhi in the coming years.
Thondup’s 22-year-old second son Wongchuk, studying in London University at the time, also tried to publicise Sikkim’s plight. Both he and David Astor called separately on the US embassy, but were stonewalled. Wongchuk had more success getting a series of letters into the pages of The Times in London.13 Given most of the letter writers had connections with Sikkim, it is highly likely they were carefully coordinated.
The first letter appeared on 25 April. The author was Brian Crozier, a London-based journalist and historian with unashamedly hard-line anti-communist views, who had been an acquaintance of Thondup in the early 1950s. The letter dramatically denounced the Indian action as an ‘Anschluss’.* Days later an Indian PhD student at Wolfson College, Cambridge, backed up Crozier, charging that India’s actions smacked of the worst sort of imperial expansionism. Major General Alec Bishop, one of Britain’s foremost soldiers, lent his support to Crozier the very next day.
