Smash and Grab- Annexation of Sikkim Read online

  TRANQUEBAR PRESS

  An imprint of westland ltd

  61 Silverline Building, Alapakkam Main Road, Maduravoyal, Chennai 600095 No. 38/10 (New No.5), Raghava Nagar, New Timber Yard Layout, Bangalore 560 026

  93, First Floor, Sham Lal Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110002

  First published by Vikas Publications 1984

  This revised edition published in TRANQUBEAR by westland ltd 2013

  First e-book edition: 2013

  Copyright © Sunanda K. Datta-Ray 2013

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-93-83260-38-6

  Typeset by FourWords Inc.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, circulated, and no reproduction in any form, in whole or in part (except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews) may be made without written permission of the publishers.

  In memory of

  J UNGKHYANG

  Who believed to the end

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  I NTRODUCTION

  P REFACE TO F IRST E DITION

  P ROLOGUE

  Chapter 1 : S MASH AND G RAB

  Chapter 2 : B ELGIUM OF A SIA

  Chapter 3 : S EPARATE BUT T OGETHER

  Chapter 4 : B URRA K OTHI

  Chapter 5 : W AR OF N ERVES

  Chapter 6 : E IGHTFOLD W AY

  Chapter 7 : S PIDER ’ S W EB

  Chapter 8 : P OISED IN T IME

  Chapter 9 : S HORTER L EASH

  Chapter 10 : V OTE FOR F REEDOM

  Chapter 11 : T HE B IRTHDAY P ARTY

  Chapter 12 : F OOT IN THE D OOR

  Chapter 13 : D EATH W ARRANT

  Chapter 14 : A GAINST THE L AW

  Chapter 15 : W INNER T AKES A LL

  Chapter 16 : L AST -D ITCH S TAND

  Chapter 17 : T HUMB I MPRESSION

  A PPENDICES

  I NDEX

  I NTRODUCTION

  Many readers assumed this book was banned as soon as it appeared in 1984. Even NDTV’s anchor said so when introducing me in The Big Fight programme. Given the title, which quotes the twelfth Chogyal of Sikkim, Palden Thondup Namgyal, the conclusion was not unexpected. It was strengthened when Smash and Grab: Annexation of Sikkim disappeared from view just as its revelations were beginning to attract attention.

  A ban would have been clumsy. As it happened, Gurbachan Singh, the last political officer in Gangtok and Sikkim’s de facto overlord, filed a defamation suit against me demanding enormous damages. Normally, defamation has to be proved before the courts take any action. Proving can take months, even years. In my case, the Delhi High Court issued an order at the first hearing, forbidding sale of the book until the case had been settled. A contempt charge was piled on that when Gurbachan Singh produced a cash memo from a shop in some small town which had sold a copy. The matter was resolved only when the eminent jurist, Soli Sorabjee, representing me in a generous act of friendship, persuaded the prosecuting lawyers to accept an out-of-court settlement entailing an apology (Appendix A) but no money. The sales ban was lifted but the publisher claimed he had no copies left to sell. He wasn’t interested in reprinting either.

  Neat, you might say. What J.N. (Mani) Dixit, the former head of India’s foreign office who died suddenly in 2005 soon after Manmohan Singh appointed him national security adviser, told me much later made it seem neater still. ‘South Block was very worried about what you might come out with,’ he said one day over lunch in his bungalow in Gurgaon. ‘The defamation suit was a godsend!’ Apparently, Gurbachan Singh’s colleagues in the external affairs ministry and the prime minister’s office, both housed in South Block, had made a point of playing on his wounded vanity. Whether they did or not, the suit was as effective as a ban without laying the government open to the charge of censorship. South Block was even more relieved when the matter was settled out of court. That averted an embarrassing public discussion of actions that were legally and morally questionable.

  Dixit was one of the few in the know. Among those to be taken in by official propaganda was Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the American ambassador who cultivated a viceregal presence. His Wikileaks Cable1973NEWDE04127_b exonerated New Delhi of stirring up trouble or contemplating annexation. ‘Indians will probably prefer to preserve the existing treaty relationship’, he wrote on 10 April 1973, in response to State Department inquiries. Two days later, Moynihan approvingly cited (Cable 1973NEWDE04291_b) the report of ‘an experienced American official now posted in Europe who was vacationing in Sikkim during the current unrest’.

  The official believes that the demonstrations by the Nepalese-Sikkimese majority against the Chogyal’s regime, which favoured the indigenous minority, were spontaneous, appeared to be non-violent, (and) were not induced by the Indian government… India does not plan to incorporate Sikkim within India.

  Indian officials who took pride in planning and executing the operation would have split their sides laughing. They can’t be ignored because just as my last book, Looking East to Look West: Lee Kuan Yew’s Mission India , highlighted the most constructive aspect of Indian diplomacy, Smash and Grab is the only account of the militarism, deceit and betrayal that policymakers are also capable of. Happily, that dark side of India’s Asian strategy has not been repeated. But the reminder may still be necessary.

  Despite the courtroom drama, writing the book was relatively uncomplicated compared to the reporting that preceded it. Since I had some knowledge of the Himalayan region, N.J. Nanporia, my editor at The Statesman , asked me to go up to Gangtok when the disturbances broke out in April 1973. He also advised caution. ‘That Chogyal fellow has money here, you know!’ Nanporia added, tapping his desk. He was never into social niceties unlike the paper’s managing director, C.R. Irani, with whom he had an uneasy relationship. Irani had asked the Chogyal for a loan. Canny in small things, the Chogyal examined the paper’s accounts and decided against risking his own money. Instead, he instructed the State Bank of Sikkim to provide the funds. The bank advanced 300,000 but refused when Irani wanted more.

  The tension between Irani and Nanporia was a much greater nuisance than any expectations the Chogyal might have entertained for bailing The Statesman out of its perennial financial crises. With his strong Swatantra Party loyalties, Irani projected himself as the lone crusader battling Indira Gandhi’s pro-Soviet dictatorship. Sikkim was another stick with which to beat her. He was also gratified to hob-nob with royalty, especially the Chogyal’s grander relatives in Bhutan. Queen Kesang Wangchuck, wife of the third Druk gyalpo, King Jigme Dorje Wangchuck, was the Chogyal’s first cousin. The connection gave Irani a social edge over his cousin, Nani A. Palkhivala, who had plucked him out of an obscure insurance company and made him managing director of The Statesman even without any experience of newspapers.

  Irani badgered me to ‘expose’ Indira Gandhi. Nanporia urged prudence. My reports in The Statesman and The Observer in London (I was the paper’s South Asia correspondent) must have reflected these conflicting directives, for The Observer placed no constraints on what I wrote. Readers who noticed inconsistencies blamed Indian censorship. At that stage the pressures emanated mainly from the tussle in Statesman House.

  That doesn’t mean there was no official obstruction. As described in the book, the Indian military once blocked a tunnel so that I couldn’t reach Gangtok in time to see the Sikkim legislature’s Indian presiding officer coerce timid Sikkimese legislators into signing their country’s death warrant. There was a sequel. A buzz in the newspaper world soon afterwar
ds gloated that the external affairs ministry had given the lie to a story in The Observer claiming I ‘was prevented from leaving the country and from filing’ my report on Sikkim. Katyayani Shankar Bajpai, Gurbachan Singh’s predecessor as PO, from whom I sought an explanation, said, ‘Ask your friend Karma!’ He meant Karma Topden, the Chogyal’s former deputy secretary (also intelligence chief and chief of protocol), who then represented Sikkim in Calcutta. He later became a member of the Rajya Sabha and India’s ambassador to Mongolia.

  Karma was a close friend and didn’t need any persuasion to tell me all. The Gyalmo, the Chogyal’s American second wife, the former Hope Cooke, had called to tell him of the legislative coup and how I was prevented from reporting it. Karma dutifully telephoned the news to the Chogyal’s son, Crown Prince Tenzing, a Cambridge undergraduate. He had passed it on to The Observer . Unfamiliar with Himalayan geography, the paper thought the blocked tunnel had prevented me from leaving India for Sikkim. It was an innocent mistake in this Gangtok-Calcutta-Cambridge-London game of Chinese whispers. The interesting discovery for me was that telephone lines—of the palace in Gangtok, Karma’s in Calcutta, and possibly mine too—were tapped. Sitting in Gangtok’s India House, built as Britain’s first China-watching post, the PO could listen in on all our conversations.

  Bajpai advised me to insist on a retraction in The Observer . I wrote a stronger letter than called for so that South Block didn’t have any excuse to accuse me of misrepresentation. The Observer published my rebuttal in full. The Indian high commission’s propaganda sheet in London gleefully reproduced both it and the offending report under the heading ‘Observer ’s Fiction and Fact’ (Appendix B). That didn’t deter the Hon. David Astor, editor of The Observer , from sending me his ‘personal congratulations and thanks for the really magnificent reporting ...’ My report ‘had every virtue—it was factual, detailed, enterprising, fair-minded and, I am sure, extremely courageous’ he wrote, adding, ‘You deserve high praise for your devotion to the duty of reporting what happens.’ Astor predicted my reports would ‘appear in the history books’ because I was ‘more-or-less alone in witnessing and communicating the essential story’. He didn’t know the power of official patronage in India. Nor that Indian historians, being also candidates for preferment, weren’t going to risk their prospects for inconvenient truth.

  Paradoxically, most senior Indian functionaries, including the last two POs and the coercive presiding officer, were never anything but charming to me personally. When a transport strike paralysed traffic between Bagdogra airport and Gangtok, Bajpai invited me to hitch a ride for the six-hour journey in the jeep he sent down for the diplomatic bag. His juniors were not so affable. A Sikh first secretary in particular never failed to get in a snide remark about my Sikkimese contacts, contriving to make them sound subversive. One afternoon, when the Chogyal had agreed to receive me for a private briefing, I found the palace surrounded by Indian troops whose commanding officer refused to let me through. I went to India House where Bajpai was in a huddle with high-ranking military men. Murmuring something about Nepalese terrorists sneaking into the palace to assassinate the Chogyal, he said ‘We can’t take any chances with the old man’s life’ as if I was likely to bump him off! But he ordered the first secretary to give me a military vehicle to get past the Indian cordon. It was an opportunity for the man to get in another jibe. ‘Why don’t you take that!’ he sneered, pointing to the PO’s Mercedes as soon as Bajpai’s back was turned. He later told journalists I had appealed to him for military protection. Worse than the untruth was the implication that he had saved me from attack by Sikkimese democrats who were incensed by my reports!

  I shall never know what was noted in the official files. Since I enjoyed no government favours, the usual pattern of withdrawing them as punishment was not possible. But authority made its displeasure known. The Federal German embassy was forced to withdraw an invitation for me to visit Germany. Then, Irani’s nominee as editor after the independent-minded Nanporia had been eased out, refused, at South Block’s bidding, to let me cover the 1976 non-aligned nations summit conference in Colombo. Much to everyone’s chagrin, I went all the same for The Observer after Astor made it clear to India’s high commissioner in London that petty harassment over passport and visa would have to stop. The next editor was obliged to be present when I interviewed Rajiv Gandhi for a new Statesman supplement. Gandhi had already agreed to the interview, but his powerful media adviser, H.Y. Sharada Prasad, telephoned the editor to warn the interview would not otherwise be allowed as I ‘had a record’.

  None of this matches up to the imprisonment Dipankar Chakrabarti, editor of a small provincial Bengali monthly, Aneek , and his colleague, Sukanta Raha, suffered for publishing an editorial titled ‘India’s annexation of Sikkim’ in a special issue of April–May 1975. They were arrested under the Defence of India Rules, and an additional sessions judge refused them bail on the grounds that the article ‘seems to be calculated to prejudice the minds of the people against the territorial integrity of the Union of India.’ A Marxist might have attributed the difference in the government’s responses to Aneek and me to ‘class justice’... or injustice. Sachin Chaudhuri, the distinguished lawyer and parliamentarian who became India’s finance minister (1965–’67), anticipated my problems. ‘You’ve been a good friend to the Chogyal,’ he commented after reading the book. ‘But in the process you may not have been a good friend to yourself!’ There’s consolation in the comment by Nari Rustomji of the Indian Civil Service that Smash and Grab shows the author is ‘as true a friend of Sikkim as he is a good patriot of his own country’.

  There being no conflict between the two positions, a new edition twenty-eight years later should not make me an even worse friend to myself. With Smash and Grab long out of print, people with an interest in Himalayan affairs cannot be denied an honest alternative to the ‘manufactured consent’ of the official version. They must also be saved from a pirated edition that closely resembles the original. Pirated is not perhaps the right word since this clandestine product is also the handiwork of the publisher who formally returned the copyright to me on 16 February 2000. He said he was not interested in another edition (Appendix C). I was all the more surprised suddenly to discover he had surreptitiously flooded the market with a new paperback.

  Telling the story again does not mean a u-turn is possible, or even desirable, in history’s one-way street. My Sikkimese friends have made their peace with destiny. On the whole, they have profited from it. Today’s Sikkim is far more vibrant than the sleepy kingdom I knew. Everything is bigger, if not always better. Sikkim’s first economic plan, spanning the seven years from 1954 to 1961 had an outlay of only 32.4 million. The 2011–’12 plan boasted a 14,000-million budget. This is in addition to the money New Delhi pours into the state for roads and power plants, special development under the Seven Sisters (as the north-eastern states are called) budget, and for disaster relief. The military invests massively in border defence. Expenditure on this scale is bound to yield results. Rajiv Gandhi’s calculation that only 15 per cent of development funds reach the target also means Sikkim’s 607,688 people are making money hand over fist. They enjoy the additional benefit of subsidised essential commodities like fuel. Those with ‘Sikkim Subject’ cards (meaning they or their ancestors were bona fide residents of the kingdom) pay no income tax.

  It’s boom time in this little corner of the Himalayas. Many development projects that the Chogyal mooted but New Delhi shot down then are in full swing now. But it’s progress without the stabilising ballast that tradition provides. Land prices have shot up. Peasants who made a killing selling their holdings are setting new records in ostentatious consumerism. A young farmer who traded in his field for the most flamboyant motorbike also hired a driver to support the prestige of affluence. Easy come, easy go. Some become bankrupt. Others are reduced to nervous wrecks. One feckless youth now tills the land his fathers owned. A gift racket to launder black money followed the exc
ise scam that created many millionaires. The innocent Sikkimese did not think of exploiting the absence of any excise duty in the Chogyal’s time. But the shrewd Indian businessmen who flooded Gangtok after the annexation were quick to grasp they could make a killing from duty-free goods. All they needed was an address in Sikkim, a front man and a dummy company. Soon, greed overcame prudence. Factories elsewhere in India began rolling out manufactures stamped ‘Made in Sikkim’. The exchequer is believed to have lost 3,500 million on account of evaded tobacco duty alone.

  Old distinctions of birth and rank as well as traditional cultural supports are dissolving in this upsurge of new wealth. Christian evangelists have never had it so good. Construction is booming. Travel restrictions that kept foreigners out have been relaxed. Indian Airlines’ ancient Dakotas no longer monopolise the air route to Bagdogra. Helicopters ferry passengers to the Burtuk helipad in Sikkim. A ropeway whirls visitors above Gangtok. An aerotropolis is coming up at Pakyong. Trekking tours compete with orchid and rhododendron displays, exhibitions, talks and seminars. The once moribund Namgyal Institute of Tibetology hums with activity. Even the agitation against hydroelectricity projects (no fewer than twenty-nine in north Sikkim alone) speaks of social dynamism. The one dump of a hostelry of the 1960s long ago gave way to a galaxy of hotels, spas and resorts.

  Gangtok has become a throbbing business and tourist centre with packed cafés, a busy walkway and one of India’s few casinos. The Chogyal’s youngest son and daughter by Gyalmo Hope have made a major contribution to the modernist image. Prince Palden, a successful investment banker in New York, has married into the Sikkimese aristocracy and built a magnificent mansion in Gangtok that he visits regularly. Princess Hope Leezum and her husband, a Sikkimese nobleman in the police force, live in Gangtok where she runs a thriving tourist business. Few look back with nostalgia. But no one can afford to ignore the interlinked historical processes that converted a kingdom under India’s protection into the twenty-second state of the Indian republic. The disappearance of the old Sikkim was not the end of the Himalayan story. It was the beginning.