Between history and propaganda

Book review of SIKKIM: A History of Intrigue and Alliance

According to A P Venkateswaran, the foreign secretary whom Rajiv Gandhi treated so shabbily, Sumal Sinha, India’s consul-general in Lhasa and a gifted Chinese scholar, messaged New Delhi in 1950, “The Chinese have entered Tibet. The Himalayas have ceased to exist.”

That is also the burden of Preet Mohan Singh Malik’s passionate testament. Although he doesn’t mention Venkateswaran, he holds, like him, that the deceitful Chinese took a trusting Jawaharlal Nehru for a ride. Nehru readily closed down consulates and trade offices in Tibet and surrendered a host of extraterritorial privileges without seeking anything in return. Mr Malik believes that Vallabhbhai Patel would have been a more effective guardian of our borders.

He is a distinguished South Block mandarin and has served in Singapore, Malaysia and Myanmar. Early in his career he was posted to the Political Office (the Residency of colonial times) in Gangtok, capital of the India-protected kingdom of Sikkim. This last outpost of the British Raj was also the world’s first China-watching station. Looming above the Chogyal of Sikkim’s palace, it was locally called “Burra Kothi”, the Big House. Burra Kothi’s jurisdiction included Sikkim, Bhutan and Tibet.

However, Mr Malik’s point that British concessions to China over Tibet were at India’s expense is not quite accurate. True, pre-1947 treaties and agreements did not secure Indian rights as he would have liked them to with the benefit of hindsight, but they were not meant to. We cannot be deluded today into imagining that the “Empire of India” that signed the Peace of Versailles, declared war on Nazi Germany, and was a founder member of both the League of Nations and the United Nations was an independent entity acting on its own. India was in no position then to have a position, and Britain’s interest lay in ensuring that Indian territory furthered the imperial purpose.

Given Mr Malik’s focus on China and Tibet, the “Sikkim” of his title is also somewhat misleading. The book should have been called “China: The Great Betrayal”. Sikkim comes in because — and this is glossed over — when India became independent, inheriting Britain’s imperial rights, Tibet laid claim to a slice of Himalayan territory, including Sikkim. There was also the question of the Chumbi Valley between Sikkim and Bhutan through which the Jelep La and Nathu La routes lead to Tibet and which Sir Charles Bell, the second British Resident, called “a dagger aimed at the heart of India”.

SIKKIM: A History of Intrigue and Alliance

Author: Preet Mohan Singh Malik

Publisher: HarperCollins

Pages: 288; Price: Rs 699

Mr Malik approvingly quotes a memorandum by Harishwar Dayal, the first Indian Political Officer, recommending the takeover of this strategic territory. Dayal must have known that nothing would have given the Chogyal greater pleasure. He regarded Chumbi with its royal palace and the Bhakcham and Kirungtsal monasteries, administrated by a Gangtok-appointed headman designated Chumbi Adow, as Sikkimese territory. Dayal’s derisive reference elsewhere to “visionaries” in charge of foreign policy obviously targeted Nehru. 

Mr Malik, too, blames Nehru’s “China Vision” for failures.

It’s a pity that with all his access, Mr Malik does not tell us more about behind-the-scenes policy-making and the advice Nehru received. Even Dayal’s “top secret” memorandum appeared in one of Avtar Singh Bhasin’s compendiums. Sumal Sinha’s papers are apparently still not available for study. The world should know how a foreign office official confused Chinese “suzerainty” over Tibet with “sovereignty”; also why the Chinese were allowed to get away with changing India’s “special” relations with Sikkim and Bhutan to “proper” relations. Perhaps the Delhi Durbar has always been like Philip Mason’s picture of the last days of Hyderabad State when every cabinet minister privately supported a particular proposal, but voted against it at cabinet because that was what His Exalted Highness wanted.

If Sikkim has to be dragged into this portrayal of Chinese duplicity and Indian incompetence, the presentation should at least be fair. But despite his long diplomatic experience, the author misses the fact that there was no contradiction between India’s defence needs and Sikkim’s status as a sovereign kingdom protected by India. The latter was attested by, among others, William Lee Warner’s The Protected Princes of India, V P Menon, and Mohammad Hidayatullah, India’s chief justice and later vice-president.

Even if it is assumed that the Chogyal was unfriendly (an assumption that flies in the face of evidence of ready cooperation despite constant pinpricks by some of Mr Malik’s colleagues) India always remained the ultimate power in Sikkim. He does not mention that the 1950 India-Sikkim treaty was backed by a supposedly secret three-page Letter of Exchange that gave India total overriding authority over all aspects of Sikkim’s governance. The leash was much tighter than under British viceroys. Even a tourist pass that the Chogyal issued to a guest whom he provided with a vehicle and driver to visit Lachen and Lachung had to be referred first to Burra Kothi which cleared it only after obtaining the Indian Army’s approval.

Mr Malik cites my Smash and Grab: Annexation of Sikkim on the political surge of the late 1940s with Tashi Tsering,  state Congress leader, demanding abolition of landlordism, an interim parliamentary government and — crucially — accession to India. He omits to mention that I also pointed out that Tsering was “for many years a clerk in the Residency … (and) loyal to the authority he had served all his life, ready to oblige” when India needed a catspaw. Such selectivity blurs the line between history and propaganda.