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265 pages

English

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Sikkim: Requiem for a Himalayan Kingdom tells the remarkable story of Thondup, the handsome last king of Sikkim, and his young and beautiful American queen, Hope Cooke, as they seek support for Sikkim’s independence after their wedding in 1963. Soon, rumours circulate that Hope was a CIA spy. Meanwhile, a shadowy Scottish adventuress, the Kazini of Chakung, married to Sikkim’s leading political figure, coordinates opposition to the Palace. As the geopolitical tectonic plates of the Himalayas grind together, Sikkim doesn’t stand a chance. Thondup dies a broken man in 1982; Hope returns to New York; Sikkim begins a new phase as India’s twenty-second state.Based on exclusive interviews and new archival research, this is a thrilling, romantic and informative glimpse of life in a lost paradise.

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Publié par	Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd.
Date de parution	24 mai 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184007060
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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ANDREW DUFF

SIKKIM
Requiem for a Himalayan Kingdom
RANDOM HOUSE INDIA
Contents
List of Illustrations
A Note on Romanisation
Maps
Prologue
Introduction
Chapter One: A British Legacy
Chapter Two: Under the Shadow of Tibet
Chapter Three: Where There s Hope
Chapter Four: A Fragile State
Chapter Five: The Bigger Picture
Chapter Six: A Raw Deal
Chapter Seven: We Also Want Our Place in the Sun
Chapter Eight: How Can We Fight With India?
Chapter Nine: They ve A Gane Clean Gyte
Chapter Ten: Death Must Follow Birth
Epilogue
Bibliography
Endnotes
Timeline
Footnotes
Introduction
Chapter One: A British Legacy
Chapter Two: Under the Shadow of Tibet
Chapter Three: Where There s Hope
Chapter Four: A Fragile State
Chapter Five: The Bigger Picture
Chapter Six: A Raw Deal
Chapter Seven: We Also Want Our Place in the Sun
Chapter Eight: How Can We Fight With India?
Chapter Nine: They ve A Gane Clean Gyte
Chapter Ten: Death Must Follow Birth
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Follow Random House
Copyright
For my parents
Ronald and Jane Duff
And in memory
Martha Steedman
List of Illustrations
Black-and-white plates
1 The author s grandfather in the Himalayas, c. 1928
2 Crown Prince Thondup as a young man with his family, c. late 1940s
3 Princess Coocoola on her wedding day, 1941
4 The Dalai Lama riding through Sikkim (travelling from Tibet to India), 1956
5 Crown Prince Thondup with Nari Rustomji (Dewan of Sikkim), c . late 1950s
6 Martha Hamilton with Crown Prince Thondup and Hope Cooke, c. 1963
7 PNG schoolchildren digging trenches against the Chinese threat, 1965
8 Chinese and Indian soldiers facing off on the Sikkim-Tibet border, 1967
9 Chogyal Thondup Namgyal and Hope Cooke (Gyalmo), late 1960s
10 Hope Cooke (Gyalmo) dancing, late 1960s
11 Nehru and his daughter, Indira Gandhi, with the Kennedys, 1961
12 Hindustan Times cartoon mocking Indira Gandhi, 1974
13 Letter (extract) from Chogyal Thondup Namgyal to Martha Hamilton, 1974
14 The Kazi and Kazini with B.B. Lal, late 1970s
15 The Kazi and Kazini, mid 1970s
16 Beleaguered monarch - Thondup Namgyal, c. 1981
Colour plates
1 Crown Prince Thondup with his father, Sir Tashi Namgyal, and Apa Pant (Sikkim s political officer), early 1960s
2 Crown Prince Thondup and his first wife, Sangey Deki, c . 1956
3 Crown Prince Thondup and Hope Cooke, 1963
4 Hope Cooke and her step-children, 1963
5 Coronation of Chogyal Thondup and Hope Cooke (Gyalmo), 1965
6 Chogyal Thondup Namgyal at his coronation, 1965
7 Chogyal Thondup Namgyal, late 1960s
8 Chinese and Indian border emplacements at the Nathu La, late 1960s
9 Looking into Chinese-occupied Tibet from Nathu La Pass, late 1960s
10 Chogyal Thondup Namgyal and Hope Cooke (Gyalmo) with their children, 1971
11 Chogyal Thondup Namgyal and Hope Cooke (Gyalmo) with their daughter, Hope Leezum, c. 1971
12 Sikkim Guards in Gangtok, c. 1960s
13 Princess Coocoola and Martha Hamilton, 1964
14 Chogyal Thondup Namgyal and Hope Cooke (Gyalmo) with court, 1971
15 Indira Gandhi in Sikkim, early 1980s
16 Children at the funeral of Thondup Namgyal, 1982
A Note on Romanisation
For non-English words in the main text, I have used what I consider to be the most usual up-to-date romanised forms and focused on consistency rather than following one particular system. Where different spellings are included in quoted text, I have left these as they stand.
Sikkim: at the heart of Asia

Sikkim s complex geopolitical position

Sikkim
Prologue
On 15 May 1975 a curious letter appeared in the pages of The Times . The title was Chogyal of Sikkim and it was signed by JOHN CLARKE, G8KA, Tanyard, Frittenden, Kent . Clarke s letter was in response to a flurry of correspondence about Sikkim that had appeared in The Times over the past month, which had caused him to recall a bizarre conversation he had overhead a month earlier in April.
Clarke was a 56-year-old local solicitor and county coroner, looking forward to an early retirement. It was common knowledge that he would slip away for odd afternoons in the local garden centre to catalogue the rhododendrons, 1 but his other hobby, amateur radio communications, was less well known to his colleagues and friends. The G8KA in his signature on the letter was his callsign.
At 15:18 hrs GMT on 11 April he had just finished chatting with a fellow enthusiast in Australia, callsign VK2DA, when another station broke in saying there was an AC3 station on 14151 kilocycles making a distress call. Clarke could not resist returning to his radio set.
As he honed in on the right frequency he could hear a conversation fading in and out. He could only just make out the callsign of one side of the conversation: AC3PT. He immediately looked it up in his amateur radio callbook. Establishing that AC3 was the country code for Sikkim, he saw that only one name was listed, PT Namgyal. The address: The Palace, Gangtok, Sikkim .
Intrigued, Clarke refocused on the signal. Through the static, he strained to hear the high-pitched voice speaking accented but very good English at considerable speed. It was a weak signal, but the message was unmistakeable.
AC3PT was saying that his country was being invaded and urgently requested that someone tell the International League for the Rights of Man .
Then suddenly the signal faded to nothing. Wondering if AC3PT had moved to another frequency, Clarke called his Australian friend VK2DA back on the line. Both tried to re-establish contact with the signal, but to no avail.
It was very strange. At 15:54 GMT it was just as if callsign AC3PT had vanished into thin air.
Four and a half months later on 26 August, Oliver Forster, Acting British High Commissioner in New Delhi, put the finishing touches to a report on the events in Sikkim. The report had been urgently requested by the Foreign Secretary, Jim Callaghan, in London. With a state of Emergency still in place across India, it wasn t exactly priority number one, but it did present an opportunity for Forster to demonstrate his ability to see through the confusing mire of politics on the subcontinent. He titled it The Indian Takeover of Sikkim .
His closing paragraph read:
All in all, the world may be a little worse off for the loss of a Shangrila, ruled benignly but in the interests of a small minority by a Buddhist prince with an American wife and a liking for alcohol. The Indian action may seem a little crude and Indian self-justification somewhat nauseating, but no British interests were involved, no deep moral issues were at stake and only one life was lost, probably accidentally. In the days of British India we would have done just the same, and frequently did with recal-citrant Maharajahs, though one may hope a little earlier and with fewer exclamations at our own virtues. In the event, we successfully kept out of the whole business and such support as the Chogyal has received in the correspondence columns of The Times has not been sufficient to offend Indian sensitivities. 2
Sikkim, he reflected, was history.
Introduction
April 2009, Pemayangtse Monastery, Sikkim
How much do you know about Sikkim?
The monk looked at me through the fading light, across the low table in his home on the grounds of Pemayangtse Monastery. A single bulb flickered as the electricity struggled up from the valley thousands of feet below. His maroon robes, trimmed with blue and gold brocade around the cuffs and buttoned front, contrasted with the peeling paint on the window behind him. He left the question hanging in the air as he picked up his soup bowl and slurped its contents. Through the window I could hear Buddhist chants floating out over the sounds of cymbals, horns and drums.
The words, spoken in an accented English unlike any I d heard elsewhere in India, were the first he had spoken for some minutes. I shifted uncomfortably in my bench-seat as I thought of my sparse knowledge. On the table between us I had placed a blue plastic folder from which spilled my grandfather s notes and photographs of the trek he made through Sikkim to this monastery in 1922. I supposed, wrongly, that my inheritance gave me permission to discuss Sikkim with the monk. Now it was clear I had miscalculated.
Not much, I admitted. But I would like to learn . . .
His hooded eyes rested on me impassively. The chanting had stopped and I could hear the steady sound of his breathing above the hum of electric current trying to feed the bulb. He picked up a book from beside him. I could just see its title: Smash and Grab: Annexation of Sikkim .
He tossed the book to me. Read this. It is banned in India. We speak tomorrow. *
Looking back now, it seems a bit odd that I didn t know more about Sikkim. By the time I met the monk, the place had been in my consciousness for over two decades.
My journey to the beautiful hilltop monastery of Pemayangtse started in the 1980s. I was a teenager, living in Edinburgh. As my paternal grandparents minds began to fade, my parents moved them from St Andrews to live five doors down the road from us. I was happy: as their youngest grandchild, I had become close to them. Besides, they had around them the glow of something other, something different: they had spent most of their lives in India.
The move prompted a house clearance in St Andrews. Among the belongings that found their way into our house were a number of albums of photographs from India. I was captivated by all of them, but there was one album in particular that I would spend hours poring over. There was something physically pleasing about the weight and feel of this album. It was large and sturdy, about 18 inches wide by 12 inches tall. Inside the stout mid-brown leather cover, marked with over half a century of scratches, were two and a half inches of bound grey linen pages. It was, as my grandfather explained in a short note inside the front cover, strong r