by Andrew Duff
There had been rumours in Gangtok for a few days that the Chogyal had died when the news was finally confirmed. When Ishbel Ritchie heard, she spotted the potential for trouble even in death:
It would appear he will be accorded full honours and a state funeral – folk here wouldn’t stand for anything else probably, but, of course, as far as the Central Govnt. is concerned he has become officially an ordinary person. I was told this morning that the Govnt of Bhutan will take on some of the responsibility and expense.
In the event, the Bhutanese had no need to foot the bill. Indira Gandhi was well aware of the challenging circumstances and immediately agreed to pay for a ceremonial funeral, also making arrangements for the body to be transported from New York to Gangtok.*
With 19 February fixed as the date for the funeral, the coffin lay in state at the Tsuklakhang monastery next to the palace for days, guarded by four Sikkim Armed Police on each corner with reversed rifles. ‘The weather seems to be in mourning for the Chogyal too,’ Ishbel Ritchie wrote. A constant stream of people made their way through the rain and hail, laying khadas (silk scarves) over the small, carved table that in life Thondup had always used to receive them. Chief Minister Bhandari had no hesitation in announcing that the funeral would be a ‘national occasion’. Even the Kazi laid a khada, telling the press: ‘I may have battled against him, but Sikkim is the poorer by his death.’ But in Delhi, Mrs Gandhi could not help but claim Thondup as one of India’s, referring to him by the Indian honorific ‘Shri Palden Thondup Namgyal’, adding that he was ‘a sensitive man with concern for his state’.46
At 5 a.m. on 19 February 1982, Thondup’s coffin was brought out of the chapel, where it lay for four hours, draped with a growing mountain of khadas. At 9 a.m. red-robed monks began the slow procession from the chapel to the royal burial ground six miles further up towards the Tibetan border. The Chogyal’s family walked by the coffin, which was carried by bearers taken from various sections of Sikkim’s community. In the vast shuffling column that followed there were government officials, clerks, schoolchildren, teachers, visitors from overseas, groups from every part of Sikkim. In a sign of just how far things had come, even Khatiawara was in the procession.
Ishbel Ritchie estimated the crowd at 20,000, probably more: ‘one would have had to be in a helicopter to see it properly’. At the cremation ground itself the last post, lama’s prayers and the sounds of volleys from the Sikkim Armed Police mixed as the pyre was lit. In a typewritten account, which she sent back to her predecessor Martha Hamilton, Ishbel Ritchie somehow found solace in the sight:
It all seemed right and not mixed up. And when the clouds of smoke billowed on and on through the pyre they really seemed to be taking the last of a friend as well as a king on and up and beyond in just the right way. And all around crowds of his subjects and friends.
* ‘Only the Boston Globe made any point that Sikkim had been taken over, erased.’ (Cooke, Time Change, p. 279)
* In his autobiography, Saxbe talked of the open and frank espionage that took place in Delhi, prompted mainly by the desire of both the USSR and the USA to supply arms to India: ‘We had a very close relationship with our neighbors the Russians. They entertained us and we entertained them. At the same time, we listened to them and they listened to us. That was one way to get information and to establish relationships, to know what their potential was, to know what their military situation was, to know what equipment they were selling to countries on the subcontinent. We were competing with Russia, of course, to supply American equipment.’
* The Guardian’s obituary painted Crozier as ‘a political vigilante who unashamedly cultivated a close, mutually beneficial, relationship with MI6, MI5 and the CIA’. The Telegraph wrote of his proud claim that he was the KGB’s ‘public enemy number one’.
* The accessions of Hyderabad (1948) and Goa (1961) to the Indian Union had both required a level of military force that had earned considerable condemnation.
* Technically, the declaration came from the Indian President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed after a request from Prime Minister Gandhi.
* The governor was B. B. Lal, who had been asked after Sikkim became a state of India to switch from chief executive to this role.
† In his autobiography, Saxbe proudly related that he got his first hole-in-one at the Delhi Golf Club on 17 August 1975 on a 140-yard par-3, celebrating by singing ‘Ace in the Hole!’
* Widely despised, Sanjay had a simple ‘five-point plan’ for India; one of the points was forced sterilisation to ensure that India’s population was brought under control.
* ‘Immediately after the election, when a Scandinavian journalist asked Indira how it felt to be India’s leader again, she replied angrily, “I have always been India’s leader.”’ (Frank, Indira, p. 441)
* While this sounded like a concession, it was in reality a tactic to hold recognition of Sikkim as a bargaining chip, as John Garver pointed out in his book Protracted Contest: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Twentieth Century (p. 175)
* It was a complex operation, as Sunanda Datta-Ray recalled: ‘Mrs Indira Gandhi’s government had arranged to have his body flown back from New York, laid on an airforce Avro to transport the coffin to Bagdogra, and an MI-8 helicopter for the last lap to Gangtok.’
Epilogue
In early February 1982, a few days after Thondup’s funeral, his old friend Nari Rustomji penned a short obituary in the Indian Express, ending with this sad – but accurate – summary:
It was his misfortune that, try as he might, he could not get people to understand that small can be beautiful. Nor could he allow himself to be convinced that others did not see Sikkim as he saw her, that Sikkim’s existence was, for the rest of the world, a non-event. His principles might have been unrealistic and all wrong, but he was not prepared, to the very last, to compromise with them. He was intoxicated by his passion for his land and his people.1
In the days following the Chogyal’s funeral, the journalist Sunanda Datta-Ray made a similar observation in his obituary in the Observer newspaper, writing that ‘the torments of [Thondup’s] kingship were matched by his personal unhappiness’.2
Thondup certainly had more than his fair share of personal challenges – he had only become heir to Sikkim’s kingdom after the death of his elder brother in an aeroplane crash; then he lost his first wife, his best friend Jigme Dorji and his own son to early deaths. But he was also unable to disentangle his personal commitment to Sikkim from the political realities that he had to face as a ruler. It was this stubbornness that gave his life the arc of Greek tragedy.
In Sikkim, over 30 years after his death, Thondup remains a talking point. Sikkim’s politics has moved on since the 1980s, but when the Chogyal arises in conversation those who remember freely offer opinions on the merits of his actions. Everyone portrays him as a good man caught up in a difficult, some would say impossible, situation. That does not stop people pointing out the mistakes they feel he made – many of which, they add, may not have helped Sikkim’s cause. Some note that it might have been easier if the Namgyals had been more realistic about Sikkim’s future in 1947 and had brokered entry to the union at that stage, perhaps in the agreement of 1950. Others bemoan the effect of the ‘play-acting’ during the 1960s and early 1970s, when the court at Sikkim attracted more than its fair share of international press coverage, sometimes for the wrong reasons. Many say that if he had ceded more power to the politicians of Sikkim, even as late as the early 1970s, things might have been different. But, ultimately, everyone agrees that Sikkim’s sensitive geopolitical position dealt Thondup an almost unplayable hand.
As Rustomji would later write, ‘By a kind of inescapable necessity, he annihilated himself.’
Thondup was not the only one, of course, who had invested emotionally in the future of Sikkim. Hope Cooke, too, had embraced the tiny kingdom, risking her nationality in the process.
As I researched her story, I constantly had to remind myself that she had first
arrived in Sikkim at the age of 18; that a month before her 23rd birthday she married a widower 17 years her senior; that by the age of 33 she had left Sikkim for the last time. It is hardly surprising that some of her actions appear naive. In India the legacy of the press coverage during the mid-1970s means that there are still those who are convinced that she was in the employ of the CIA, an accusation that K. S. Bajpai dismisses today as ‘utter bilge’. It is undeniable, however, that her marriage to Thondup greatly influenced events in Sikkim. As one former courtier candidly admitted over dinner in Gangtok, ‘the marriage brought western attention, and we lapped it up’. In his book, A Himalayan Tragedy, Rustomji went further, suggesting that Hope Cooke, as the main driving force behind Sikkim’s appeal for greater international recognition, had been a significant contributory factor in the rift with Indira Gandhi’s government. It was a view that Rustomji gave Hope a chance to refute, which she did in a reply which he published in the same book:
What I really wanted to rebut, if I still may, is the suggestion that I got Thondup in over his head with regard to sovereignty. I had a big mouth, Nari, and was indiscreet, but I don’t think I gave Thondup his ideas. They were an obsession with him both at a deep, substantial level and trivial. What I enjoyed doing was the fleshing out of the myth (cause I do think that nationalism is somewhat a myth, more positive than negative) . . .3
K. S. Bajpai, too, had some sympathy for her when I met him in Delhi in 2012. Hope had not been ‘the driving force’, he told me, but had merely been ‘able to articulate what [Thondup] wanted, and give it a philosophical, one might say historical, context’. Thondup had recognised that her ‘American connections’ might be invaluable in achieving his goal of ensuring Sikkim remained an independent entity. There can be little doubt, however, that the press coverage that the couple courted, particularly in the USA, had the unintended – and devastating – consequence of aggravating public opinion in India, not least that of the Indian prime minister herself.
After Thondup’s death in 1982, Hope Cooke remained in New York. In 1989 she made a brief appearance on Oprah, billed as ‘the intellectual’s Grace Kelly’. She retains a strong affinity for Sikkim but has never returned. She still lives in New York today.
Thondup’s children, too, have chosen their own paths. In the immediate aftermath of the funeral, Wangchuk, Thondup’s second son, was recognised by some in Sikkim as the next Chogyal. Realising the impossibility of the situation, Wangchuk has always resisted becoming actively involved in Sikkim’s politics. He has spent much of the last 30 years ‘in meditation and spiritual activities in Bhutan and Nepal’. On his 60th birthday in 2013, he reconfirmed that he would be unlikely to return to Sikkim.4
Yangchen, Wangchuk’s younger sister, settled in London with her husband. Palden, Hope and Thondup’s son, lives in New York. Only Thondup’s youngest daughter, Hope Leezum, who has married a Sikkimese man, now lives in Gangtok, where she helps to operate the Tsuklakhang Trust, set up after Thondup’s death to manage the palace and the accompanying monastery in Gangtok. The trust has recently completed a superb renovation of the monastery.
As the decades passed, some of the Chogyal’s adversaries had the chance to reflect on events.
After the Kazi’s ignominious defeat in 1979, he retreated, with the Kazini, to Kalimpong, the West Bengali town just to the south of Sikkim that had once been called a ‘nest of spies’. Ishbel Ritchie remained in touch with both during the 1980s, visiting her fellow Scot, the Kazini, frequently as she went into a sad decline. While she never lost her acid humour and sharp tongue, the Kazini was clearly troubled by what had taken place in Sikkim and perhaps her own role in it, and considered a return to Scotland. But her age made such a trip impossible; by the mid-1980s she was suffering from dementia, and accusing people of trying to poison her. On one of Ishbel Ritchie’s last visits, the Kazini grabbed her arm, held her eye and pleaded once more to be taken back to her country of birth. The Kazini died, in Kalimpong, in 1989. She was 85.
Six years later, in 1995, the Kazi made an astonishing volte-face by expressing regret for his own role in the Indian annexation of 1975. Saddened by the continuing corruption resulting from state aid and false incentives, he called for ‘de-merger’ at a ceremony arranged by the state government to mark 20 years of Sikkim’s Indian statehood. Instead of celebrating Sikkim’s status, he put out a statement to journalists:
At the very old age of 91, in the capacity of a signatory of the May 8, 1973 Agreement and the first Chief Minister of Sikkim, I am compelled to demand and call upon the Union Government to immediately restore to us – the people of Sikkim – the status of ‘Protectorate State’ guaranteed to the Sikkimese people by the Indo-Sikkim treaty of 1950, thereby abrogating all the instruments of merger like the 35th Constitutional Agreement Act, 1975 that reduced us to a part of India. This is because we have waited long enough and eventually lost our patience. We, therefore, feel confident that we are competent to govern ourselves better according to our political genius and outside the framework of the Constitution of India.5
In 2002, he went even further, admitting openly for the first time the role that the Indian Intelligence Bureau had played in Sikkim. ‘The people from IB used to visit me twice or thrice a year,’ he told the journalist, even naming an agent who ‘used to hand over money to me personally’.6
The Kazi eventually died in July 2009. He was 103.
In January 2011, I tracked down Nar Bahadur Khatiawara, the young firebrand fostered by the Kazi and Kazini in the early 1970s who played such a crucial role in organising the demonstrations against the Chogyal in the period between 1973 and 1975. Today, Khatiawara is a lawyer. He continues to strongly defend the rights of Nepalis in Sikkim and across the hills in West Bengal.
It was clear he had moved on: the walls of his house, a few miles down the main road into Gangtok, are adorned with pictures of the graduation ceremonies and marriages of his five successful children. But he was still willing to talk about the events of the 1970s. I asked him about his relationship with the Kazi and Kazini, and how far he was responsible for the troubles.
‘Oh, Kazini was much more than my foster mother – she was my teacher, my philosopher, my guide,’ he said with a hint of wistfulness. ‘I would read anything – the French Revolution, Russian Revolution, anything. I was certainly a little troublemaker. I would fight with Kazi, I would fight with Kazini, my foster mother. But Kazi needed a lieutenant, and I became that man; while the Kazini protected my courage and inspired me. All I wanted was freedom of thought and expression. Whatever I thought, I said. Of course, I fought with the Chogyal too – I told him his system would ruin him.’
I could sense that part of him still believed that what he had done was right, even if the consequences were not what he had expected. As our metaphor-laden conversation continued, I saw a hint of his old oratorical skill.
‘India made hay while the sun shines!’ he told me. ‘They were beating about the bush – so yes, I did suggest they should annex. But today we have just exchanged Chogyalocracy for Indian democracy! Nevertheless, I’m proud of what we have today.’ He shrugged, and added with a weak smile, ‘Maybe a little hurt that we are not separate.’
Something flashed in his eyes. ‘If you shut the door on a cat and chase it around the room, it will eventually turn on you,’ he said with a flourish.
It was not hard to see how this man’s rhetoric and hyperbole might have inspired others.
Thondup’s greatest misfortune, of course, had been to find himself dealing with Indira Gandhi, one of India’s most ruthless strategic thinkers, at a time when her concerns about her country’s security were at their height. Her assassination in late 1984 came in the midst of a traumatic and turbulent decade for the country. The fact that her ashes were scattered over the Himalayas gives some indication of the importance she attached to the country’s northern borderlands. After her son Rajiv succeeded her as prime minister, he and his Chinese counterpart, Deng Xiaopi
ng, finally found the space in which to rebuild relations between their countries without interference.
The first step was to resolve the long-standing territorial disputes in the Himalayas, bequeathed by British India’s 1914 negotiation of the McMahon Line, which had brought India and China to war nearly 50 years later. By the late 1980s, both countries were ‘interested in groping towards a solution’.7 In 1988, Rajiv Gandhi made the important formal concession that Tibet was an ‘internal matter for China’. The following year he was studiously quiet at the time of the Tiananmen Square uprising. After Rajiv Gandhi was also assassinated, in 1991, repairing the Sino-India relationship again dropped down the priority list. But from around the millennium, as both countries started to experience unprecedented levels of economic growth, relations continued to steadily improve to the level of cautious cordiality that exists today.
Until only a decade ago, however, one issue remained resolutely off the table. Each year the Chinese Foreign Ministry published their almanac with a single line entry under the heading ‘China’s Relations with Sikkim’. It read: ‘The Chinese Government does not recognise India’s illegal annexation of Sikkim.’8 Chinese maps, too, persisted in showing the line between Sikkim and India as an international boundary. It wasn’t until 2003, as relations with India improved, that China signalled its intention to change policy by announcing that the position on Sikkim was ‘an inheritance of history’.9
Finally, in 2005, the Chinese government recognised Sikkim as part of India.
Slowly, piece by piece, the hangovers of British imperial policy in this part of the Himalayas were disappearing. There was one final act required of the British to wash their hands completely of the Sikkim–Tibet saga. In 2008 the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, slipped out an announcement that the UK government accepted that China had ‘sovereign’ rights in Tibet, blithely referring to Britain’s previous position on Tibet as an ‘anachronism’.10
