Book Excerpts

Unraveling the Enigma that is Sikkim | EXCERPT

Sikkim is an enigma for most, its history and its 1975 merger with India shrouded in mystery. This book fills the lacunae on both fronts, combining insights into the erstwhile royal kingdom’s unique history with the intriguing story of how it became India’s twenty-second state.

 

The geographical location of Sikkim makes it significant to the security of India, especially in the aftermath of the occupation of Tibet by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1950.

Historically, Tibet had proffered no threat to the subcontinent and during the British Raj, it had effectively been cast in the role of a buffer state that ensured that neither the Chinese kingdom nor the Russian occupation of Central Asia posed a direct threat to India. The modelling of both Tibet and Afghanistan in the role of buffer states by Britain had helped in securing the western, northern and eastern frontiers of India.

This template was threatened in 1950 when a newly independent India was flanked on its northern frontiers by a Chinese-occupied Tibet that by implication threatened India’s relations with the three Himalayan kingdoms of Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim from a security perspective.

Of these three kingdoms, Sikkim was unique because it had, for all practical purposes been treated by the British as an Indian state—it was a member of the Chamber of Princes since 1922. In 1947, when India became independent and the process of merging the princely states with the Indian Union had been set in motion, the country was approached by a popularly led Sikkimese political leadership with the proposal that the kingdom of Sikkim also be merged with the Union of India. Prime Minister Nehru, who had taken over the responsibility for India’s relations with the Himalayan states of Bhutan, Nepal and Sikkim, persuaded the delegation from Sikkim to not press the issue, promising that the popular demands for participative democracy would be accommodated within the functioning of the state. This promise remained largely unfulfilled till India acceded to the referendum for abolition of monarchy and for merger with India in 1975.

The British, first making inroads into India with the East India Company (EIC) and later, after the sepoy uprising of 1857, with the administration of India moving to the British Crown, had made several attempts to establish relations with Tibet. Their interest was primarily driven by colonial commercial gains, arising from the expectation that Tibet would provide a land bridge to trading with China from Calcutta, and by extension, London. It was here that Sikkim came to occupy a special place as it offered a direct and geographically secure route to Tibet’s main cities, Shigatse and Lhasa. Sikkim’s importance had surfaced when the Gorkha conquest of Nepal in 1768 resulted in the denial of the traditional trade routes that connected India’s Benares to Tibet.

At first, a route through Bhutan had been adopted as an alternative to Nepal during the time of the governorship of Warren Hastings. This was the route that was used by the delegation that Hastings sent in 1774 under the leadership of George Bogle to Tashilhunpo. Eventually, the route through Sikkim via Chumbi Valley came to be preferred as it granted greater ease of connectivity and it was this route that was used by the Younghusband incursion into Tibet ending in Lhasa and the signing of the Anglo-Tibetan Treaty of 1904.

Relations with Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim (a protectorate of India till its merger in 1975) were significantly tested, especially regarding security, with India needing to keep a close watch on Chinese actions after the 1962 Sino-Indian War and subsequently due to the threats issued by China on the Sikkim border during the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars.

The geographical location of the Chumbi Valley at the Sikkim border came to assume additional significance as it granted India’s military with a major advantage—its posts overlooked the valley and the location of Chinese camps within it. This factor endowed our presence in Sikkim with added strategic and security significance. The Chinese tried to neutralize this advantage by adopting measures to drive India away from these heights resulting in the military clashes of 1967.

One of the consequences of Nehru taking over the responsibility of managing the relations with the Himalayan states was that Sikkim, despite having been part of the Chamber of Princes since 1922, was kept out of merger negotiations. It was only as China’s aggressive intentions in Tibet became an established fact that Nehru finally decided that Sikkim would be retained as an Indian protectorate to meet India’s strategic and security interests.

The underlying purpose of this book is to explore the strategic importance of Sikkim to the security of India and how this has been connected to Tibet’s relations with India from the time of the East India Company. Examining the historical links that bound Tibet and India together leads to the geostrategic importance of Tibet to India with the overhang of these factors on the presence of China in Tibet. The value of the inherited extraterritorial rights for India and Nehru’s failure to leverage this advantage to ensure that the Chinese occupation did not affect India’s border ties with Tibet also needs to be considered.

The book looks at the realities of India’s relations with Tibet and China, from British times, in some detail to establish that Nehru’s approach to the issue of Tibet and its occupation by China failed to understand the import of the strategic and security impact that the appearance of China, as a neighbour, would have on India and its interests.The irony is that once the Chinese occupation of Tibet came to be an accomplished fact, it was Nehru who came up with the analogy of the Chumbi Valley being like ‘a dagger pointed at the heart of India’ threatening the ‘chicken’s neck’.

Coverage on Sikkim and its merger with India has been outlined in three works of some seminal importance. The first is Sunanda K. Datta-Ray’s book, Smash and Grab: Annexation of Sikkim, which draws heavily on records made available to the author by the twelfth and last ruler of independent Sikkim, Palden Thondup Namgyal. As a consequence, the book ends up projecting his views on the merger. Datta-Ray was Palden Thondup’s friend and is understandably sympathetic to his views. While Datta-Ray does describe the political events leading up to the merger, he does not grant sufficient weightage to the internal movement that arose against feudal rule from 1947 onwards. The movement was initiated by the Sikkim State Congress, reflecting the people’s demands for a three-point agenda that included merger with India, popular representation and land reforms directed at ending the dominance of landlords. This political movement continued to raise its head from time to time. Palden Thondup’s lack of experience and maturity, first as the Maharaja Kumar and subsequently as the Maharaja, failed to subdue this disquiet.The political differences between the people and the ruler, over time, resulted in several phases of unrest that eventually ended in the removal of the Chogyal,‘the righteous ruler’ and the merger of Sikkim with India.

To read more, order your copy of Sikkim by Preet Mohan Singh Malik today!

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