Sikkim

by Andrew Duff

  Nevertheless, Mr Desai said: ‘It is wrong for a big country to do that. Many of the neighbouring states were bothered about it because they are smaller, and they thought it could be done to others. But I cannot undo it now.’

  The rider on Desai’s faux-sympathetic move left Sikkim with nowhere to go. One Asian journal, the Economic and Political Weekly, criticised the ‘hypocritical rationalisation’ of Desai’s statement as a prime example of ‘pharasaism . . . the ability to sound virtuous while rationalising every form of weakness’. Desai came in for heavy criticism in parliament too, where opposition ‘joined in a blistering attack on Mr Desai for what they called “treasonable” statements that “questioned the integrity and sovereignty” of the country’.38

  Once more Sikkim had become a political football – but in Gangtok, Thondup’s spirits soared at the possibilities. Within three days of Desai’s admission, however, Thondup’s euphoria was replaced with tragic grief.

  On the morning of 11 March 1978, Crown Prince Tenzing played football on the academy football ground before getting into the Palace Mercedes to drive to a petrol station on the road leading out of Gangtok. Halfway down the road, he encountered a truck driving too fast, swerved to avoid it and plunged off the road into the valley below. He was killed instantly. Ishbel Ritchie, who happened to be driving on the same road an hour later, was stopped by the police. ‘One could see the skid mark on the road,’ she wrote. ‘There was the merest dent on the truck bumper where the car had glanced off it. The car went straight – and I mean straight, it is perpendicular there – 300 feet down the hillside, & I understand Tenzing was thrown through the windscreen, or that the windscreen was dislodged & he went on down on to the hillside.’

  Thondup was heartbroken. Some called it the curse of the Namgyals – for the third generation, an elder son had been killed. But Tenzing had been special – headstrong as a boy, increasingly intelligent as a young man, looking as if he might mature into a leader that transcended the political mess in Sikkim.

  As Thondup wearily made preparations for the funeral, he could sense that the event was turning into a symbolic opportunity to highlight all that had happened in Sikkim over the past decade. Some in Sikkim worried when he optimistically ‘made arrangements to feed 10,000 mourners’.

  Not even Thondup expected the nearly 20,000 who turned out on the streets to pay their last respects.39

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  For the people of Sikkim, Tenzing’s death was a catalyst. It allowed them to articulate a number of pressing problems. There was deep resentment at the volume of immigration of ‘outsiders’ – most from Bengal – since 1975, an issue that united the Sikkimese Nepalis and Bhutia-Lepchas alike. Moreover the Governor, B. B. Lal (who had been chief executive at the time of the annexation), was overbearing and difficult. Many shared Khatiawara’s scathing description from the previous August: that Lal’s ‘callous attitude towards the Sikkimese recalls the humiliating, snobbish and brutal attitudes of the civil servants of the British Raj’. Lal’s reputation sank further when he refused to allow a proposed vote of sympathy and two minutes’ silence in the Sikkim Assembly following Tenzing’s death. He also forbade discussion of Morarji Desai’s admission about the events of 1975 in the same forum.

  For Thondup, his eldest son’s death was just the latest blow in a life of tragedy. In a note to Nari Rutsomji, he tried to be philosophical: ‘Death must follow birth, but it is so cruel a fate to lose Tenzing who was in the prime of life shouldering his responsibilities and was a source of strength and our hope for the future.’

  His eldest daughter Yangchen, too, was seriously ill in New York. Now under severe financial pressure, Thondup asked Nari Rustomji to accompany him to Delhi to finalise a settlement. Rustomji agreed, despite anticipating that Thondup would be reluctant to compromise. ‘The Delhi visit taxed my nerves to the utmost,’ Rustomji later recalled, ‘and it was only after a demonstration of temper that I could prevail upon, or rather bully the Prince into giving an assurance on the strength of which the Government of India would release funds and foreign exchange for his children’s medical and educational expenses.’ Even then, the assurance that Thondup gave in writing to Morarji Desai was mealy-mouthed:

  I can assure you that, in the changed circumstances of the day, I would not act in any way contrary to the existing constitutional position, but would give my co-operation to the Government of India in the interests of promoting the welfare of the people of Sikkim.40

  With that, Thondup accepted that the fight was no longer his.

  But there were others emerging in Sikkim who would show, in the election the following year, that they were willing to take up the cudgels.

  While Tenzing’s death had reminded many in Sikkim of what they had lost in April 1975, there were plenty who had gained since the country had become an Indian state.

  The change of government did not stop the money pouring into Sikkim in the form of aid. The sheer volume of funds – far more than any other state – was bound to lead to corruption. As one commentator noted in early 1979, ‘the cost of each project is generously inflated and palms are generously greased all down the line’.41 This only served to increase the disparity between the booming Sikkim economy and the declining hill towns to the south – Darjeeling, Kalimpong and others – which had for so long relied on itinerant British migrants.

  The result was that Sikkim became increasingly attractive, in particular to those of Nepali origin in the hill-town area, ‘drawn by the tales of Central Largesse circulating in Sikkimese hands’. But it also meant that those already living in Sikkim became protective of their newfound position as recipient of Delhi’s funds. Even more noticeable was the significant increase in ‘plainspeople’, i.e. Bengalis and other Indians, who started to make their presence known in Gangtok and some of the other towns around Sikkim. A whole new set of tensions crept into the political make-up of the state.

  The reality was, however, that Sikkim was now an Indian state. As such there was a process of Indianisation that was bound to occur. Although Sikkim had been granted a certain degree of ‘special dispensation’ in the Constitutional Amendment of 1975, there was an inevitable move towards normalising the state and making it fit better with the whole tenor of the Indian Republic.

  A very significant change came with the decision in late 1978 to declare the Bhutia-Lepchas – perhaps as a sop from Morarji Desai after his faux-apology – as a ‘Scheduled Tribe’. Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes are denominations that hark back to the days of the Raj (when the British government called them ‘Depressed classes’); they had been used since Indian independence, along with another term created in 1953, ‘Other Backward Classes’, to enable positive discrimination for disadvantaged groups. But the decision had one bizarre consequence: the ex-ruling group in Sikkim – including the Namgyal family – was now classified as coming from a ‘tribe’ that deserved the central Indian government’s assistance, financial and otherwise.

  If the Nepali population in Sikkim thought this was bad enough, far worse was to come the following year, when the Indian government proposed a bill reforming the seat reservation within Sikkim. In April 1974, B. S. Das had created a system that allowed for 50 per cent Bhutia-Lepcha seats and 50 per cent Nepali seats – 15 each – albeit elected on a one man, one vote basis. Now, in early 1979, the Indian government proposed that the Bhutia-Lepchas – as a Scheduled Tribe – should be given 12 out of the 30 seats. Rather than reserve any other seats, all others should be ‘general’, i.e. available for anyone to stand in.

  Immediately, the Nepali community smelt a rat. Two, in fact: first, the proportion of seats being given to the Bhutia-Lepchas (40 per cent) was still far beyond their numerical representation in Sikkim (nearer 20 per cent); second, the Sikkimese Nepali population had not only lost its seat reservation but also realised that, with increased immigration of plainspeople, they could end up being marginalised even further. Some suspected that the Indian government knew all o
f this only too well and had devised the bill as a way to counteract the possibility of a strong, difficult Nepali grouping in the Sikkim parliament which might even look to link with the nascent ‘Gorkhaland’ movement in Darjeeling district. R. C. Poudyal, the man who had confronted Captain Yongda and the Chogyal in 1975 on their way back from King Birendra’s coronation, broke from the Kazi government in which he was serving to form a party campaigning on this issue. There were also serious complaints over the voters roll.

  By the middle of 1979, the Kazi was not only losing support – but he had also lost all credibility in Sikkim. ‘The Chief Minister travels with even greater panoply than the Chogyal ever did,’ wrote a columnist in India’s Economic and Political Weekly, noting that he had even bought a Mercedes saloon – the car that Thondup had used – and taken over the ‘SIKKIM’ number plate that the Namgyals had used. Not only was he considered to be one of the ‘desh bechoa’ (sellers of the nation), but he was also seen as overseeing increasing corruption and as being unable to stand up to the ‘deputationists’ of the Delhi government, which was now in Sikkim in large numbers. The criticism from the columnist extended to the entire assembly, who had all become known for their ‘extravagant forays into the fleshpots of Calcutta’s best hotels . . . Where Sikkim had only one Chogyal there are now 32,’ he wrote, adding acidly that the Kazi’s ‘most important asset in wooing voters’ was ‘to be able to dangle before the populace the hope of attaining similar grandeur at the Indian taxpayers’ expense’.

  In August 1979, Governor B. B. Lal, alarmed at the growing potential for unrest in Sikkim, declared President’s rule. Within weeks, the Scheduled Tribe Bill became law and elections were declared. The Kazi’s electoral support completely evaporated – he was left without a single seat. But the winner was not the Nepali Poudyal or the inconsistent Khatiawara, who had also lost credibility. Instead, Nar Bahadur Bhandari, the schoolteacher who had led a protest delegation to Delhi in 1974 after the Government of Sikkim Act passed that year, was returned in 16 out of 30 seats. All candidates had campaigned on an anti-Kazi, anti-merger, anti-plainsmen platform, but only Bhandari was able to claim distance from the murky events of 1975 and appeal across community boundaries.

  Many in Sikkim, including Sonam Yongda, who had vigorously supported Bhandari, thought they had a new saviour. But the following year would see the return of the woman who many still associated directly with the country’s annexation.

  Mrs Gandhi was about to rise from the ashes of the Janata government.

  Morarji Desai’s Janata Government in Delhi had been doomed from the start – a coalition of interests, it had only really been held together by the desire to oust Mrs Gandhi and to experience what it felt like to exercise power.

  Mrs Gandhi, on the other hand, was able to play the victim in the run-up to the general election in India in January 1980. She pulled off a remarkable victory by reminding the electorate what they had been missing – strong, positive leadership. On 14 January, less than three years after the Emergency had ended, she resumed her position at the helm of India as prime minister.

  Her second period in office – from 1980 until her assassination in 1984 – was to be characterised, like the first, by major challenges. But this time most of them were domestic rather than international. ‘At the beginning of the 1980s,’ her biographer Katherine Frank wrote, ‘India was threatening to deconstruct.’ Tensions were emerging that seemed to be ripping the whole idea of India asunder. In Kashmir, Punjab, the north-east, and the southern Tamil states, she faced separatist movement led by men with varying degrees of attachment to violence.

  In that context, Sikkim – ironically – became a minor issue, easy to manage. Unlike the sprawling masses of some of India’s larger states, Sikkim was small and self-contained, with a disproportionate military presence, thanks to its geopolitical situation. The precedent for a massive flow of funds from Delhi to Sikkim had already been set during the previous five years and, given the tiny size of the state, the actual amount of financial support was rarely questioned – even though it was, per capita, far in excess of any other state in India. New Chief Minister Bhandari found himself inheriting a situation where kickbacks and bribes dominated both the economics and the politics of the state. Even with the best of intentions it was virtually impossible for him to do anything but continue with the same. The economy of the state continued to grow, but there were soon rumours that Bhandari was becoming an integral part of a system designed to ensure that the Sikkimese remained quiescent. He quickly pulled back from his earlier call for a rethink on the merger with India.

  In New Delhi, Mrs Gandhi soon reinstituted her idiosyncratic and highly personal style of rule. The people might have voted her out in 1977, but they had voted her back in.* Her son Sanjay, now an elected MP but still deeply unpopular for his role in the worst excesses of the Emergency, was soon made General Secretary of the All India Congress Committee. But on 23 June 1980, Indira Gandhi suffered the same fate as Thondup two years earlier. Her beloved son Sanjay was killed while performing acrobatic stunts in a newly acquired two-seater aeroplane. Although a great personal tragedy for Indira, ‘a wave of indefinable relief blew right across the country’42 Politically, Sanjay had been something of a liability.

  Sanjay’s death left her once again isolated, and more conspicuous than ever as the towering figure of Indian politics. The immediate problem facing her was serious unrest in Assam, only a few hundred miles from Sikkim. As soon as the trouble flared, she returned to the familiar trope of implicating the Chinese, blaming it on a ‘foreign hand’.43 But the truth was that China had moved on significantly in five years. Deng Xiaoping, once vilified by Mao, had succeeded him, intent on opening up China at a slow and steady pace and determined to engage with the world. In February 1979, he had acknowledged that China had, in the past, supported rebels in the north-east but assured the Indian foreign minister that it was no longer the case.

  In fact, despite the vague accusations she had made, Mrs Gandhi too was keen to rebuild the broken Indo-Chinese relationship. In May 1980, she met with Chinese Premier Hua Guofeng to open up discussions, in particular with reference to the border areas disputed between the two countries since the war of 1962. The following year Deng, in a meeting with an Indian MP, revived the 20-year-old offer of a package deal to solve the dispute, making minor changes in the border alignment in both the Tawang (in the east) and the Aksai Chin (in the west) to satisfy both parties.

  It would take eight years (and eight rounds of talks) for any progress to be made, but one area that Deng immediately asserted was not on the table was Sikkim. The Chinese government still vigorously disputed that Sikkim was Indian territory and while Deng agreed that he would ‘not make an issue’ of Sikkim in the talks, he made a point of saying that he was still ‘thoroughly disappointed’ with Indian actions in 1975.*

  While China and India appeared to be edging towards a rapprochement, Mrs Gandhi’s tortuous relationship with the Americans continued. There had been a brief flowering after the straight-talking Saxbe left (when Gerald Ford lost the American presidency to Jimmy Carter) and was replaced by the Indian-born academic Robert Goheen. Carter’s visit to India in 1978 had helped to rebuild relations further. But with the United States backing Pakistan strongly after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Mrs Gandhi once again conjured up images of a Washington–Islamabad–Beijing axis ranged against her. Matters were not helped by ex-Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan’s victory in November 1980; Reagan was a man who Mrs Gandhi saw as intellectually vacuous.

  Indo-US relations would flounder for another decade.

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  In New York, Hope Cooke had finally found some peace. By the late 1970s, separation from Thondup had become inevitable. But she could not resist the urge to reflect on her experiences in Sikkim through writing about them.

  When her autobiography Time Change was published in 1980, Thondup wrote to Rustomji asking if he might consider helping him to wr
ite his own version of what had happened. But time was catching up with Thondup. Although not yet 60, he was starting to fade. He found it hard to be in Gangtok. So many people said they regretted what had happened. But everyone knew that nothing was going to change. He found it difficult, too, to witness the gradual encroachment of the Indian way of life into Gangtok, such as the pointedly over-enthusiastic celebrations of Independence Day each 15 August. Even visits to Calcutta, where private dinners were still sometimes interrupted by the police, were painful.44

  In the summer of 1981 Thondup approached Hope to arrange for the children to visit. He already knew he was ill. After a messy battle (Hope had ‘obtained a court injunction against such a visit on the grounds that their lives would be in danger’45), Thondup finally got Palden and Hope Leezum to Sikkim in August. Hoping to show them something of the country he loved – and that they had left as young children – he went through the ignominy of applying to Delhi for permits to take them to a restricted area on a trek. The Indian government turned him down. ‘I think,’ he wrote to Rustomji, ‘it was to put pressure on me to show the Govt can be uncooperative if they chose. Foolish, as don’t I know it!’ Instead he joined the increasing number of Indian tourists and took them on a bus tour. Despite the obstructions placed in his way, he wrote happily to Rustomji that the Palace – for the first time in a long time –was once again ‘full of life’.

  In September doctors in Calcutta confirmed that he had epidermoid carcinoma of the esophagus. He was immediately flown to New York for treatment to start chemotherapy. Against advice from the Dalai Lama, he went ahead with an operation, after which it became clear he would not recover.

  On the morning of 29 January 1982, Chogyal Palden Thondup Namgyal was finally released from the wheel of life ‘to the accompaniment of prayers recited by his personal lama’.