Sikkim and the Geostrategic Lessons from Himalayan History

In this edition of Sambandh Scholars Speak, Constantino Xavier interviews Preet Mohan Singh Malik, former diplomat, on his book, Sikkim: A History of Intrigue and Alliance, published by HarperCollins in 2021.

In his book, Malik reviews the history of the former kingdom of Sikkim leading up to its integration into the Indian Union, in 1975. This book makes a timely contribution to understanding the evolving geopolitical context in the Himalayas especially as the India-China border dispute flared up again in 2020-21, including incidents in Naku La, Sikkim, with implications for Nepal and Bhutan.

Based in part on archival records that Malik consulted at the former Indian Political Office in Gangtok, during his posting there between 1967 and 1970, the book reviews the pivotal role Sikkim played in the geo-strategic ambitions of different actors since the 19^th century, including the British Raj, India, Tibet and China.

Malik’s book makes two central arguments. First, he posits that both imperial Britain and post-independent India failed to recognize the importance of an independent Tibet as a buffer state against China’s expansionist objectives. Malik contends that Prime Minister Nehru’s “romantic view of China” prevailed in the following decades and still gives “untrustworthy” China an advantage over India today (p. 248-51). The 1975 Sikkim merger is thus seen as a strategic exception to the rule that Malik presents as India’s tactical China policy.

Second, Malik argues against the view that “the [1975] merger was an engineered event by India” led by its newly formed external intelligence organization, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). His last chapter offers valuable insights into the strategy developed at the Prime Minister’s office to deal with the “overriding issue” in Sikkim, which he defines as “the need to accept the popular will and to bring immediate peace to the state that was of primary strategic and security importance to India” (p. xii). This is in line also with recent empirical findings on this episode by Zorawar Daulat Singh and Deep Pal.

“Sikkim: A History of Intrigue and Alliance” makes an important contribution to the resurgent literature on the history of Sikkim, and is part of a new Indian wave of scholarly and policy interest in the Himalayan region beyond just the narrow India-China geostrategic lens. If there is one thing that stands out in Malik’s exhaustive historical survey, it is that one cannot understand Sikkim and its future connectivity potential without the complex historical, religious, economic and political ties that it shares with its surrounding regions and countries.

Constantino Xavier: You argue that Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s “emotional attachment to his Asia Vision” failed to recognize Tibet as an independent state and buffer against China in the Himalayas (p. 191). With the benefit of hindsight, do you think that the 1975 annexation of Sikkim was a belated Indian attempt to compensate for the strategic “loss” of Tibet?

Preet Malik: Olaf Caroe’s [Foreign Secretary to the Government of India between 1939 and 1945] note focused on the strategic importance of Tibet to India’s security, reinforced by the [United Kingdom] War Department’s review of Indian interests in Tibet and their importance in India’s defence. Nehru was aware of the contents of Caroe’s note, including the suggestion that the British Government extend diplomatic recognition to Tibet, driving home its relevance to India’s security.

Sikkim’s geostrategic location grants ease of access to Tibet through Nathu La and Jelep La, both passes that overlook the Chumbi Valley. The Chinese occupation of Tibet eventually established the strategic importance of Sikkim to India’s security. Particularly, the locational advantage that this presents to India of commanding the heights overlooking the Chumbi Valley. Actions the Chinese indulged in during the Indo-Pak wars of 1965 and 1971, and the attempt to dislodge India from the passes overlooking the Valley in 1967 were strong pointers to the aggressive intent towards compromising India’s security, therefore confirming the importance of Sikkim to India’s security.

The Chinese have no respect for, or commitment to the treaties they have signed, resiling from them whenever it suited them. They clearly violated the 1890 Convention that had settled the borders between Sikkim and Tibet. More recently, they have tried to push India away from Naku La, which is an important security factor on North Sikkim’s border with Tibet. The Chinese will continue their attempt to dislodge India from the Himalayan heights that India occupies in Sikkim, to raise the threat to the Siliguri Corridor.

The merger, not the annexation of Sikkim with India, was largely the consequence of Indira Gandhi reversing the original policy of granting precedence to the interests of the ruler of Sikkim over the desire of most of its people to merge the state with India. The demand finally being accepted in 1975 had first been made in 1947 but Nehru had persuaded the Sikkim delegation to not press the issue. The people’s demand for representative democracy was repeated on several occasions. Finally, New Delhi relented and acceded to the demand for a merger.

The Indo-Sikkim Treaty of 1950 was a recognition of the fact that Tibet’s occupation by China had compromised India’s strategic interests and Sikkim had become of particular relevance to the future security of India.

The Indo-Sikkim Treaty of 1950 was a recognition of the fact that Tibet’s occupation by China had compromised India’s strategic interests and Sikkim had become of particular relevance to the future security of India.

CX: Arriving in Gangtok in 1967, you recall India’s concern at the time that China could “leverage Tibet to gain an advantage over India” including by “disrupting” India’s relations with Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan (p. xiv). Fifty years later, does this assessment hold? Has China really used Tibet to undermine Indian interests in Nepal and Bhutan?

PM: The short answer is yes but with some essential qualifications. Nepal is a complex case. During the Qinq period [1644-1911], Nepal finally came to be treated as a tributary state of China. This encouraged Nepal’s attempts to bring China into its disputes with British India and to side with it. This trend of playing China against India to contain Indian influence in Nepal has continued, while Nepal has taken every advantage of the open borders policy that governs Indo-Nepal relations.

With Bhutan, it has been a different proposition. China has, in the past, viewed Bhutan from two angles: as space that its territory offers to settle for the Han Chinese migrants, and as a strategic asset describing it as ‘the southern gate of the Chinese Empire.’ This would bring them in contact with the plains of India. At the same time, the Chinese have tried to fish in the waters of the Assam tribal areas (today’s Arunachal Pradesh) attempting to take control over the area. It was to counter their attempts that the colonial administration established outposts right up to the Himalayan watershed eventually re-endorsed by the McMahon Line.

China has throughout had in mind the desire to exploit the geostrategic advantage that gaining influence over Bhutan could grant it further leverage in its relations with India. The main motivation is raising the profile of the security threat that the occupation by China of the Chumbi Valley provides it by pressuring Bhutan to give up its claims to the Doklam plateau. This would compromise India’s strategic interests in preserving the neutrality of that region in the context of containing the threat to the Siliguri corridor.

The other objective is part of China’s effort to reduce India’s influence in its backyard of South Asia. In Nepal, to an extent, they have succeeded. The effort is on in Bhutan to secure a similar competitive edge.

CX: In Sikkim, during the late 1960s, you witnessed how the Nepali-origin population began to mobilize against the absolutist rule of Palden Thondup Namgyal. Your book notes that these democratic demands played an important role in India’s decision to support regime change, ending the Chogyal monarchy in 1975. Why did India support the democratization of Sikkim, even while it continued to engage the conservative monarchies in neighbouring Nepal and Bhutan?

PM: The political developments in Sikkim were very different in nature and scope from what transpired in Bhutan and Nepal. When the colonial rule was coming to an end in Sikkim, political parties had already taken root and had evolved an agenda that covered two fundamental demands: a merger with India on par with the other Indian princely states, and control over agricultural land. The motivation was to be part of the constitutionally determined democratic governance that India was headed towards. There were several occasions in the post-1947 period where the people of Sikkim revolted against the arbitrary rule of the Chogyal with New Delhi having to intervene and restore order, including sheltering the ruler and his family.

This was certainly not an issue where Bhutan was concerned. The [Bhutan] ruler brought about political reforms in keeping with the changing times and established a democratic process that has suited the Bhutanese temperament. In the case of Nepal, New Delhi has had to deal with a far more complex political situation and has exercised influence largely through the political parties who eventually succeeded in throwing off the yoke of its monarchy.

But in all three cases, the China factor has certainly influenced India’s relationships. Developments in Sikkim over several decades eventually forced Delhi’s hands to bow before the demand of the people to the merger of Sikkim with India. The geostrategic importance of Sikkim within the India-Tibet complex of relations had been established during the British period itself. It logically followed through by strengthening India’s defence presence in direct consequence to China’s occupation of Tibet, as reflected in the India-Sikkim Treaty of 1950. With Bhutan, India had largely followed the course of action that effectively lay behind the signing of the Treaty of Punakha (1910) keeping China at bay while keeping away from interfering in its internal affairs, ensuring financial aid and an open relationship that would help Bhutan’s development.

CX: Chapter 18 of your book offers a fascinating account of how Prime Minister Indira Gandhi dealt with an increasingly unstable Sikkim in the early 1970s. You review her attempts to engage with the Chogyal, including by offering a revised treaty and appealing to political reforms, and you argue that merger was thus only the last option in India’s strategy. In what ways does this differ from other accounts that portray the 1973-75 process as “an engineered event by India,” driven by its intelligence service (p. xxi)?

PM: The suggestion that the merger of Sikkim with India was ‘an engineered event’ brought about by an intelligence service is a distortion of events. From 1947 onwards, there was a demand made by most of Sikkim’s demography to merge with India. It was Delhi’s decision and actions that were responsible for the ruler retaining his hold over the state and its people. Palden Thondup failed to understand that he had to share power in a realistic manner to gain the trust of the people to remain in power. He also failed to understand that if he persisted in a partisan approach that offended the majority, a time would come when India may no longer be able to defend him against the wishes of the people.

New Delhi’s Sikkim policy had obviously also factored in the Tibet equation and the threat to India’s security, including to the Siliguri Corridor, that China’s presence in Tibet had created. There was the additional factor that China was fishing in Sikkim’s dark waters with statements that would support the design of the Chogyal, and his limited group of supporters led by the Study Group, to reduce India’s footprint. In that respect, the Chinese attempt to directly threaten India’s presence in Sikkim, both during the Indo-Pak wars of 1965 and 1971 and directly in the autumn of 1967 along the Nathu La and Jelep La sectors of Sikkim, only reinforced the strategic significance of Sikkim to India’s security.

The events of 1973-75 that led to the merger in 1975 of Sikkim with India were a culmination of the struggle that the people of Sikkim had waged against the Sikkim durbar since 1947, it was not a singular development.

The events of 1973-75 that led to the merger in 1975 of Sikkim with India were a culmination of the struggle that the people of Sikkim had waged against the Sikkim durbar since 1947, it was not a singular development. The intelligence agencies for obvious reasons played a supportive role in providing the essential intelligence that helped confirm the events as they developed in Sikkim, but the decision to reverse the policy of shoring up the Chogyal was a purely political decision taken by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

She incidentally expressed a degree of reservation over her father, Prime Minister Nehru’s policy towards the Himalayan States. In fact, the first shot that was fired by her projecting a change in policy was when she endorsed the suggestion made to her by her Principal Secretary, P. N. Haksar that: “‘Sanction behind any political framework has to be the people if the framework is to prove durable.’ And till ‘such time that the PM had made up her mind, she should not see the Chogyal.’”

This was in 1972 and it makes clear that the wishes of the [Sikkim] people were to be granted a priority towards any settlement that was worked out. This was not an intelligence operation, but a political decision where the intelligence agencies were involved to serve its aim. The aim was not what India had encouraged but was one that circumstance had created. What Prime Minister Indira Gandhi did was to change course and accept the desire of the people. If this had been a forced act engineered by an intelligence operation the peace that followed the merger and the security of governance that has been the norm since the merger would have been unsustainable. The act would have been questioned by the Sikkim people, leading to non-cooperation with Delhi. Instead, today we see a democratically elected government in place in Gangtok that is meeting the socio-economic developmental aspirations of the people of Sikkim.

CX: The recent meeting of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat with the Dalai Lama has attracted much attention and speculation. Do you see any advantages for India to revise its stance on Tibet today, or would this just add to the complications and tensions with China?

The prevailing reality is that China is today in a position of total dominance in Tibet having changed both the demographic structure and the way of life that defined Tibet till 1950.

PM: This is a basic foreign policy issue. The ideal situation would of course have been one with Tibet as an independent state with a dynamic treaty relationship with India and with settled frontiers with both India and China. History, unfortunately, took a different turn when China established its presence in Tibet by the force of conquest based on a false narrative that Tibet was an integral part of China since the Yuan dynasty period, distorting the Priest-Disciple relationship by granting it a colonial interpretation. The prevailing reality is that China is today in a position of total dominance in Tibet having changed both the demographic structure and the way of life that defined Tibet till 1950. Delhi has, for all practical purposes, kept the relations with the Dalai Lama within a kind of religious-cultural bubble where China’s sensitivities have been kept in mind. In the process, even the most visible violations of the human rights of the Tibetans including the attempt to Sinicise Tibetan Buddhism have been ignored on the altar of improved relations with China.

The policy followed by Prime Minister Modi has shown a clear lack of consistency. He had invited the Tibetan Prime Minister in exile, the Honourable Lobsang Sangay, to his swearing-in ceremony in 2014, putting out the fig leaf that the invite was by the BJP. Then, as he felt that his relations with Xi Jinping were warming up, he issued a governmental diktat shunning official contact as the Dalai Lama celebrated his 60^th anniversary in exile in India. Subsequently, as the relations with China nose-dived when it aggressed against the LAC in the Ladakh region, Prime Minister Modi officially wished the Dalai Lama on his birthday, which may suggest a possible fresh look upon the One China policy that India has so far followed.

The policy on Tibet is obviously tied into the prevailing situation that defines Sino-Indian relations. The dilemma remains how far can India go towards challenging the Chinese attitude of pressurizing India? One clear way would be to take a position on China violating human rights and the Tibetan way of life, going along with a multilaterally driven condemnation. Next, it can join the global movement that is pushing against any role for China in the determination of the next Dalai Lama insisting that the time-honoured system of locating the incarnation should follow Tibetan Lamaist forms and traditions. This would of course raise Chinese hackles but it could bring greater purpose to the dialogue on border issues, forcing China to accept that settling the Tibet-India border would be a meaningful way to improve relations between the two Asian neighbours.

About the author:

Preet Mohan Singh Malik has been a member of the Indian Foreign Service since 1962. He was posted in Gangtok from October 1967 to April 1970 at the political office for India to Sikkim and Bhutan. He has also served as India’s ambassador to Bahrain, Cuba, and Myanmar, and as high commissioner to Tanzania with concurrent accreditation to the Seychelles and Malaysia, with concurrent accreditation to Brunei. He has worked at the permanent missions of India to the European office of the United Nations (UN) in Geneva where he was also a delegate to the Disarmament Conference and on the governing body of the International Labour Organization. He was a deputy permanent representative at the UN Mission in New York. He specialized in economic diplomacy, covering both bilateral and multilateral areas. He was a member representing the Ministry of External Affairs, of both the Foreign Investment Promotion Board and the steering committee on economic reforms chaired by the principal secretary to the prime minister (1992–95).