Smash and Grab- Annexation of Sikkim Page 5

  Tashiding and Pemayangtse are obvious expressions of Sikkim’s connection with Tibet. The Nyingma-pa sect reveres the Mindolling monastery, which had reared Lhatsun Chempo. The Kargyu-pa faith is rooted in Tolung, north-west of Lhasa. These tokens of the past dominated the day as the Chogyal made his last journey with far greater pomp and pageantry than he had ever done in life.

  Indira Gandhi’s government had his body flown back from New York to New Delhi. It laid on an air force Avro to transport the coffin to Bagdogra, and an MI-8 helicopter for the last lap to Gangtok. With the generosity of which she was personally capable, she promised that India would pay the cost of the funeral and agreed to full ceremonial honours and official mourning. Gangtok had already spontaneously responded with a 500-member citizens’ committee under Sonam Tshering, the veteran Speaker. Bhandari had made it clear that his government looked on the cremation as a national occasion. ‘He had suffered a great deal and was quite ill. He was a sensitive man with concern for his state,’ Mrs Gandhi announced with unconscious mockery, though still doggedly talking of ‘Shri Palden Thondup Namgyal’. New Delhi’s governor of Sikkim, Homi Taleyarkhan, echoed his prime minister to praise ‘Namgyal-ji’ as a ‘highly polished and refined gentleman’. India’s President, home minister and army chief sent condolences. Nihar Ranjan Laskar, a junior minister in Mrs Gandhi’s cabinet, flew into Gangtok to represent her government at the funeral.

  With so many pious protestations to mark the death of the man they had robbed and ruined, Kazi too managed dutifully to produce a khada and tell the press: ‘I may have battled against him, but Sikkim is the poorer by his death.’

  The irony of these attentions was not lost on the Chogyal’s friends and family. ‘I shall never forget the time when they took Jungkhyang’ (the customary honorific by which he was known) ‘aside at Bagdogra and subjected him to a thorough body search,’ recalled son-in-law Simon Abraham. It was not the Chogyal’s only taste of petty persecution. They took away his distinctive car number plates, removed the Namgyal name from institutions he had founded and fostered, and turned away friends who wanted to call on him. They forbade him the use of airport VIP lounges so that he had to queue with his suitcases like other passengers, refused to let him go abroad, and seized most of his property. Taleyarkhan would not even let him accompany Palden, Hope Leezum and an American school friend holidaying in Sikkim on a trekking expedition in the West just a few months before his death.

  Surveillance was most harsh during the 1975–’77 Emergency. Very few people could see him then; a formidable circle of intelligence officials always surrounded him on visits to Calcutta or New Delhi. They kept constant watch at the door of his Wood Street flat, drove dinner guests away from his table in the Grand Hotel, and set up a watching post when he ate in the Calcutta Club. The Chogyal was a prisoner even during that tormented crisis when, goaded beyond endurance, he took an overdose of sleeping pills.

  My mother was allowed to ask him to dinner just after that nightmare ordeal in 1976. But the police descended on us in frightening force half an hour earlier to search the house and question the servants. Livid with fury when told that a young West German diplomat and his wife, who were leaving Calcutta and whom the Chogyal had met before, had also been invited, they threatened not to allow him to get out of the car if the Germans did not leave at once. Rather than compound difficulties, the Germans left voluntarily without dinner, and the Chogyal was allowed to come in. It was a dismal evening. The principal jailer, a special branch inspector, demanded that the Chogyal should not be out of his sight for a moment, not even to use the lavatory. He refused to eat with us but sat at a distance muttering dark imprecations and glowering at the despondent ruler, clearly taking a venomous delight in being as obtrusive and unpleasant as possible. Such torment was a feature of the Chogyal’s daily existence.

  This harrowing vigilance was relaxed when Morarji Desai’s Janata party came to power. ‘I had maintained that the merger was undesirable and I maintain that,’ announced the new prime minister. But Desai’s morality never rose above political convenience, and he bluntly told the Chogyal that he would not undo what had already been done. Such courage as Desai had ebbed away when his mild disapproval of the annexation, confided to the New York Times , provoked a furore in India’s press and parliament. But Desai offered generous compensation, and Charan Singh, then his home minister, promised to make the Chogyal governor of an important state if only he would endorse Sikkim’s absorption into India. The Chogyal thanked them politely and declined the offer, not caring to explain that his conscience would not allow him to swear to uphold India’s constitution. The solemn bond of his own coronation oath sustained him in his impecunious isolation. ‘He lived always for Sikkim,’ says Wangchuck.

  There was a resurgence of hope in October 1979 when Kazi and his men, by then sailing under the Janata flag of convenience—for their politics changed with every shift in New Delhi—were roundly trounced in all thirty-two Sikkimese constituencies. The election was a spectacular victory for Bhandari’s Janata Parishad. Denied recognition as a formal party, deprived of its familiar voting symbol, and handicapped by all manner of other crippling restrictions imposed by Bipin Bihari Lal, as governor, and India’s election commission, the Janata Parishad nevertheless swept the polls. ‘We have always said and we still say that the manner of Sikkim’s merger with India was not legal and constitutional,’ said Lal Bahadur Basnet, the winner from Gangtok and deputy speaker in the new assembly. But the chief minister prudently rationalised that open defiance would mean dismissal and strengthen New Delhi’s stranglehold through the constitutional device of President’s Rule. The limited autonomy he was able to secure for the Sikkimese was preferable to that.

  Even this muted freedom did not long survive Mrs Gandhi’s return to power in 1980. The new Indian government again picked up Kazi, ready to lend himself to any stratagem to regain office. Rather than be outmanoeuvred, a panicky Bhandari merged his party with Mrs Gandhi’s Congress.

  Some of the old restrictions were reimposed, at least during the Chogyal’s trips to India. My wife and I again received a police visit when he dined at our flat in the summer of 1981, and a leading but acquiescent newspaper published a planted story about the Chogyal’s ominous meetings in Calcutta. He was able to shrug off persecution with resignation, and even wit. When security men invaded his taxi in New Delhi, he gently suggested that if they were inviting themselves to share the journey, they might also consider sharing the fare.

  Bhandari couldn’t influence events in Calcutta or Delhi but he made life in Gangtok easier. Princess Yangchen’s wedding in 1979 was almost a state occasion, government departments and employees helping out with the arrangements. He attended the ceremony in the palace and presented a khada to the dethroned and dispossessed Chogyal whom he called ‘the first gentleman of Sikkim’. All the officials who had once basked in royal favour flocked back to court then. The Chogyal welcomed them back without a trace of recrimination; indeed, with something of his former wistful charm.

  He had few illusions left and had ceased to expect anyone to place patriotism above prospects. For himself, short of money, obliged to beg favours of people whom he looked on as usurpers, forced to travel on an ordinary Indian passport, still hemmed in by all kinds of niggling little restraints, and frequently having to suffer Lal’s rude outbursts, the knowledge that he could be a free and rich man if only he acquiesced in the annexation must have been a source of considerable private solace.

  The Chogyal had very little interest left in what was happening, or even in himself. Often, he would be sunk in gloom for hours on end. He could hardly eat because of a painful throat when we stayed with him in Gangtok in July 1981. It was probably pharyngitis he said, possibly something worse, not seeming to care much. It was too late by September when he was finally persuaded to go to New York and able to coax some foreign exchange out of the Indian government. The Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center doctors were hopeful to start with. He wrote to me in October to say that though the tumour had shrunk under chemotherapy, an operation would cost him his voice. ‘So I will be dumb until I learn to speak anew which takes about six months, but I cannot stay here that long. Hence you are likely to meet a dumb man when you see me next!’

  They brought his body back instead, embalmed in the lotus position as befits an incarnate lama, the dorjee (thunderbolt) in his right hand and the bell in his left. He was sealed in an upright coffin wrapped in the kingdom’s forgotten flag that had for years flown only in the palace and the terrace of his Calcutta flat. Rain, sleet, and snow had scourged the land ever since the cortége arrived; the unusually inclement weather betokened Sikkim’s pain, they said. It also signified the restlessness of an anguished soul that found peace as elusive after death as it had in life.

  The coffin was placed in the Tsuk-la-khang where a policeman with a black armband stood at each corner, head bowed over his rifle. The rapidly mounting piles of khadas had to be cleared away every so often. Dozens of butter lamps twinkled under the ornately embellished ceiling as lamas chanted the liturgy, cymbals clashed, and bells tinkled. The deep notes of a thigh-bone trumpet and the resounding throb of leather drums—beaten by Tsongs ever since the reign of Chador Namgyal, the third chogyal—rose above the incantations.

  They served his dinner on a tray exactly as he had always had it in the palace, replete with wine glass and a poignantly familiar little stone sauce jar. Prince Wangchuk stood erect on the high seat where his father had sat in frosted brocade and fur hat during Yanchen’s glittering wedding, as the congregation burst into the lost strains of the national anthem. If anything was more moving, it was the beseeching plaint of Om Mane Padma Hum , the powerful resonance of hundreds of voices pleading for compassion. Many broke down and wept as they paid their last respects. Gentle and dignified, Ashi Kesang, Queen-Mother of Bhutan, his first cousin and a devout Buddhist, bent her head on the polished wooden floor before the altar. Sikkim’s now moderately loyal assembly, which in Kazi’s time had churlishly refused to acknowledge Tenzing’s death, mourned the man who had ‘lost his kingdom but gained a martyr’s halo’.

  The heavens cleared two days before the funeral. It was in the cold, dry sharpness of dawn that the coffin was brought out and placed in an appliqué tent. The soul had found its haven, all proclaimed. Some gave praise to monks credited with miraculous control of the weather. More khadas, more full-length prostrations, a sadly rousing farewell by the Sikkim police, and then, after they had circled the chapel royal three times with the coffin, Wangchuck and the other pall-bearers set out for the hills—a vast, slowly surging sea of humanity. Old women festooned in turquoise jewellery whirled their prayer-wheels in endless rotation, lamas counted their beads in silent prayer, young children clutched the red and white national flags that policemen tried to snatch away. Bhandari and Khatiawara, yesterday’s bitter enemies, walked side by side in the union of bereavement. Nepalese peasants, BhutiyaLepcha patriarchs, civil servants and traders, politicians and shopkeepers, everyone grasped that an era in history was over.

  The fire was kindled in the chorten on Lukshyama some five hours later under clear azure skies. The faithful counted seven vultures—the Chogyal’s guardian bird—circling protectively above.

  In the solemn magnificence, the like of which Sikkim will never see again, intruded pathetic gestures of honour emulated from the West. The Chogyal had all his life craved the contemporary trappings of sovereignty, not for personal grandeur, for he was an utterly simple man, but in recognition of his country’s status. They were there in his death in profligate abundance: flags at half-mast, mourning bands of black, the Dead March in Handel’s Saul , bugles blowing the Last Post through the hills, guards of honour with drawn swords, and three crackling salvos. But the Eighth Gurkhas, of which he was colonel-in-chief, and the army in which he held the rank of major-general, were conspicuously absent. If Laskar was present in a Congress minister’s regulation black coat and trousers, Taleyarkhan, who had begrudged foreign exchange during the Chogyal’s last fatal illness in New York, was resplendent in a flamboyant scarlet-lined cape and hood of vivid blue, thickly covered in braided embroidery. He scampered round like an excited child at a party, gaily taking photographs like any casual tourist at a fun fair.

  Marks of official favour prompted more surprise than gratification. Not because these same agencies had hounded the Chogyal to the day of his death, but because alien formality means less in the Himalayas than their own timeless ceremonial. There can be no improvement on the eloquent language of the khada. It can be used to brutal purpose as when Pende Ongmu, the third chogyal’s scheming sister, was murdered with a scarf stuffed down her throat. It can also be the instrument of devastating reproof. When, under New Delhi’s stern command, some of the frightened signatories asked Wangchuck to return the document recognising his accession, the prince said he would also return their khadas. The request wasn’t repeated.

  A khada is spread out for felicitations, such as Wangchuck received in acknowledgement of his kingship. It is tightly bunched for condolence and often wound round a wad of notes to help with funerary expenses, its fringed edges neatly tucked in. It is presented then with butter, rice and chhang. Sometimes it is pleated into a fan, then flung out to stream away, and caught deftly from below before the floating silk flutters down. Traditionally, chogyals do not return the scarves of inferiors. They do not even touch them. A subject’s khada is placed on a table as an offering to the throne, though a genial ruler may drape it round the giver’s neck—never put it into his hands—in blessing. A person of equal rank, or someone who stands a shade higher, receives another scarf in return, the exchange symbolising trust and goodwill. Even then, the level at which hands are held can convey all kinds of meaning.

  A seemingly simple gesture is in fact governed by elaborate protocol that often baffles the outsider. In public, the Dalai Lama would produce a scarf in exchange for the Chogyal’s, deferring to the latter’s spiritual and temporal position. In private, he might return the Sikkimese ruler’s khada with his blessings and place it round his neck. Usage is not always synonymous with etiquette; compulsions of custom and courtesy add to complexity.

  The Sikkimese were charmed in the 1960s by the grace and meticulousness with which Mrs Gandhi appeared to have mastered the nuances of this ritual. But times change, and tact and politeness vanished after 1975. ‘She strides down the receiving line snatching away our khadas without even looking at the giver,’ grumbled the old Densapa chieftain whose Lepcha ancestors held Denzong long before Khye-Bumsa, the first Bhutiya king, came out of Kham in the thirteenth century. Himself the soul of politeness, Barmiok Kazi could think of no offence more grave than ungraciousness.

  Khye-Bumsa’s descendant was even more punctilious in treating all comers as equals. Sikkimese peasants, Indian officials and their wives, visitors from abroad, stood at the Kagyet or Phanglabsol dances in the palace grounds, nervously clutching their little bundles of white cloth. For each there was a smile, a greeting, some word of personal inquiry. Each scarf was accepted with murmured thanks, held for a moment, then gently placed back in the giver’s hands, no matter how lowly his station. So much was this egalitarian reciprocity a constant feature of the Chogyal’s personal style that even senior Sikkimese officials, well versed in court rites, did not always realise that he was breaking with custom to bridge the gap in status. Protocol impinged on his innate kindness only when high-born Tibetans, with their insistence on Lhasa’s rigid etiquette, were present in the palace.

  In all the years that I knew the Chogyal, I never got round to presenting him with a khada. Our first encounter in 1960, when I had taken a taxi up from Kalimpong as a tourist and wandered curiously into the palace to find him sipping tea and poring over files on a carpet in the garden, was far too casual for ceremony even if I had known the drill. Later, ceremony would have grated on friendship. An opportunity arose, or so I thought, when the Chogyal came down to Calcutta for our wedding reception. But he explained that bride and bridegroom take precedence on that one day and that he could accept no scarf from us. It was his privilege to give. First, a khada for my mother as hostess; then two round our necks; finally, two more over our outstretched palms. A rich haul of five lengths of silk, and none to give back.

  The omission of twenty-two years was repaired on 19 February 1982. As the shadows closed in on Lukshyama hill, and clouds of black smoke billowed out of the whitewashed chorten within which smouldered the funeral pyre, I offered my first—and last—khada to the Chogyal.

  CHAPTER

  1

  S MASH AND G RAB

  ‘If we bring a small country like Sikkim within our fold by using force, it would be like killing a fly with a bullet.’

  JAWAHARLAL NEHRU ,

  The Statesman , 3 June 1960.

  ‘I have no words when (the) Indian army was sent today in a surprise attack on Sikkim Guards who are less than 300-strong and were trained, equipped and officered by (the) Indian army who looked upon each other as comrades... This is a most treacherous and black day in the history of democratic India in solving the survival of our little country by use of arms.’

  The CHOGYAL to INDIRA GANDHI ,

  9 April 1975.

  Gangtok was buzzing with rumour. Many Sikkimese feared that Chinese troops, guarding the Nathu-la exit into Tibet about forty-five miles to the north-east, were about to attack. Others whispered that Mrs Indira Gandhi’s India, commanding the plains to the south and bound by treaty to protect Sikkim, was determined to teach the Himalayan kingdom a lesson. Relations between protector and protectorate had been strained for two years. The quarrel was avidly discussed in the bazaar, where they stripped it down to its bare bones over cups of butter tea and long draughts of chhang. Nothing remains secret in Gangtok. Everyone knew that fifty-two-year-old Palden Thondup Namgyal, the twelfth consecrated Chogyal of Sikkim, had incurred the hostility of India’s all-powerful prime minister and that her agencies were using disgruntled elements among Sikkim’s Nepalese majority to achieve India’s purpose.