HUMAN RIGHTS Under the Shadow of Guns

SIKKIM OBSERVER   Vol 20 No 13 Page 1 May 14 2011

Editorial

HUMAN RIGHTS

Under the Shadow of Guns

The Northeast of India has always existed on the periphery of the nation’s consciousness, and in the footnotes of the narrative of growth, progress and development. In a region where lawlessness, rape, murder, army excesses, arbitrary detention, torture and repression are the order of the day, the man in uniform is a formidable and fearsome figure. The Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958 (AFSPA) that is in force in the Northeast is one of the most draconian laws that Parliament has enacted in its legislative history. The law has fostered a climate in which the agents of law enforcement use excessive force at their command and set a pattern of apparently unlawful killings of “suspected” civilians. The Act give security forces unlimited powers to carry out operations with impunity once an area is declared “disturbed.”

The State of Manipur has been groaning under the heels of this repressive law for far too long now, where the dreaded legislation has brought with it tales of untold sufferings. “Manipur reflects the true repressive character of the Indian State as it continues to reel under the shadow of guns with its people reduced to a day-to-day struggle for a minimum existence with dignity,” states the Independent People’s Tribunal’s latest Report on Human Rights Violations in Manipur. More than anyone Manipur’s Irom Sharmila Chanu’s ten-year fast demanding repeal of this dreaded Act symbolizes the struggle for “justice and peace” in the Northeast. As long as New Delhi remains a silent spectator to the struggles of the people in India’s vulnerable Northeast region there cannot be enduring peace and lasting development there no matter how much money is pumped to silence the hopes and aspirations of the people.

Get serious on accountability, CM tells officials

“Curb the menace of corruption in administration”

Observer News Service

Gangtok, May 13: Chief Minister Pawan Chamling has urged ministers and heads of departments to get serious about their work and be more accountable to the people.

Announcing that he would begin his month-long village tour in the State from May 17, the Chief Minister, while addressing the coordination meeting of ministers and heads of departments here on Tuesday, directed department heads to accompany him during the tour.

The Chief Minister urged the head of the departments to be “very serious about the outcome of the meeting as we as public representatives and government servants are answerable and responsible to the people,” an IPR release said.

The proposed tour is aimed at assessing and reviewing the works undertaken by the government, the release said.

“We will see where our weakness lies and even take decisions on the spot,” Chamling said.

While taking a review of some of the government’s schemes, the Chief Minister said work at the new township in Pakyong in east Sikkim was going on a slow pace and asked the officials to speed up the delivery system.

“When the government is giving the best facility to the government servant why not the government servants give best service to the people,” Chamling asked.

The Chief Minister also asked the Forest department to expedite the process of forest clearance for the ambitious Sky Walk Project at Bhaley Dhunga in Yangang in south Sikkim.

With regard to the list of BPL the Chief Minister directed to the officials of the DESME, RMDD and Food & Civil Supplies to coordinate with each other and take out a solution for it. “There should be no any confusion in the BPL list”, he said and added that the benefits of the government should be given to the actual BPL beneficiary.

Referring to the resentment of the recent hike on trade license fee from the public, the Chief Minister instructed the UD & HD to put up the proposal to review the hike in the interest of the people.

In order to curb corrupt practices in the administration, the Chief Minister asked the officials to be “very strict” and “leave no stone unturned to curb the menace of corruption from the entire administrative machinery of the state.”

Chamling asked the officers “to search ways and means to take strict action to those government servants who resort to unfair activities,” the release said.

Solidarity Forum for Sikkimese unity, identity, against Sikkim-Darj merger: Basnet

Observer News Service

Gangtok, May 13: Sikkim Solidarity Forum for Gorkhaland has reacted strongly to former minister KN Upreti’s allegation that the Forum was supporting the demand for Sikkim-Darjeeling merger.

Briefing the media here, Forum Chief Convenor Bharat Basnet said his organization was formed in February this year to give moral support to neighbouring Darjeeling people for their demand for creation of Gorkhaland state and not for Darjeeling’s merger with Sikkim.

While condemning Upreti for having mischievously twisted the Forum’s stand on Gorkhaland, Basnet said his organization does not want Sikkim-Darjeeling merger but want  restoration of the political rights of Sikkimese Nepalese and preservation of their distinct identity of Sikkimese Nepalese through declaration of all ethnic Sikkimese Nepalese, who possess ‘Sikkim Subjects Certificate’,  as ‘Scheduled Tribes’ in the State.

“Sikkim's merger was necessary for Indian national interest”

Sudheer Sharma

     King Palden Thondup Namgyal, the Chogyal of Sikkim was in his palace on the morning of 6 April, 1975 when the roar of army trucks climbing the steep streets of Gangtok brought him running to the window. There were Indian soldiers everywhere, they had surrounded the palace, and short rapid bursts of machine gun fire could be heard. Basanta Kumar Chhetri, a 19-year-old guard at the palace's main gate, was struck by a bullet and killed-the first casualty of the takeover. The 5,000-strong Indian force didn't take more than 30 minutes to subdue the palace guards who numbered only 243. By 12.45 it was all over, Sikkim ceased to exist as an independent kingdom.

     Captured palace guards, hands raised high were packed into trucks and taken away, singing: "Dela sil, li gi, gang changka chibso" (may my country keep blooming like a flower). But by the, the Indian tri-colour had replaced the Sikkimese flag at the palace where the 12th king of the Namgyal dynasty was held prisoner. "The Chogyal was a great believer in India. He had huge respect for Mahatma Gnadhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Not in his wildest dreams did he think India would ever swallow up his kingdom," recalls Captain Sonam Yongda, the Chogyal's aide-de-camp. Nehru himself had told journalist Kuldip Nayar in 1960: "Taking a small country like Sikkim by force would be like shooting a fly with a rifle." Ironically it was Nehru's daughter Indira Gandhi who cited "national interest" to make Sikkim the 22nd state in the Indian union.

Pro-India

     In the years leading up to the 1975 annexation, there was enough evidence that all was not well in relations between New Delhi and Gangtok. The seeds were sown as far back as 1947 after India gained independence, when the Sikkim State Congress started an anti-monarchist movement to introduce democracy, end feudalism and merge with India. "We went to Delhi to talk to Nehru about these demands," recalls CD Rai, a rebel leader. "He told us, we'll help you with democracy and getting rid of feudalism, but don't talk about merger now." Relenting to pressure from pro-democracy supporters, the 11th Chogyal was forced to include Rai in a five-member council of ministers, to sign a one-sided treaty with India which would effectively turn Sikkim into an Indian "protectorate", and allow the stationing of an Indian "political officer" in Gangtok.

    As a leader of international stature with an anti-imperialist role on the world stage, Nehru did not want to be seen to be bullying small neighbours in his own backyard. But by 1964 Nehru had died and so had the 11th Chogyal, Sir Tashi Namgyal. There was a new breed of young and impatient political people emerging in Sikkim and things were in ferment. The plot thickened when Kaji Lendup Dorji (also known as LD Kaji) of the Sikkim National Congress, who had an ancestral feud with the Chogyal's family, entered the fray. By 1973, New Delhi was openly supporting the Kaji's Sikkim National Congress.

Tripartite agreement

    Pushed into a corner, the new Chogyal signed a tripatrite agreement with political parties and India under which there was further erosion of his powers. LD Kaji's Sikkim National Congress won an overwhelming majority in the 1974 elections, and within a year the cabinet passed a bill asking for the Chogyal's removal. The house sought a referendum, during which the decision was endorsed. "That was a charade," says KC Pradhan, who was then minister of agriculture. "The voting was directed by the Indian military."

India's "Chief Executive" in Gangtok wrote: "Sikkim's merger was necessary for Indian national interest. And we worked to that end. Maybe if the Chogyal had been smarter, and played his cards better, it wouldn't have turned out the way it did."

    It is also said that the real battle was not between the Chogyal and Kaji Lendup Dorji, but between their wives. On one side was Queen Hope Cook, the American wife of the Chogyal and on the other was the Belgian wife of the Kaji, Elisa-Maria Standford. "This was a proxy war between the American and the Belgian," says former chief minister, BB Gurung. But there was a third woman involved: Indira Gandhi in New Delhi.

     Chogyal Palden met the 24-year-old New Yorker, Hope Cook, in Darjeeling in 1963 and married her. For Cook, this was a dream come true: to become the queen of an independent kingdom in Shangrila. She started taking the message of Sikkimese independence to the youth, and the allegations started flying thick and fast that she was a CIA agent. These were the coldest years of the Cold War, and there was a tendency in India to see a "foreign hand" behind everything so it was not unusual for the American queen to be labelled a CIA agent. However, as Hope Cook's relations with Delhi deteriorated, so did her marriage with the Chogyal. In 1973, she took her two children and went back to New York. She hasn't returned to Sikkim since.

     Then there was Elisa-Maria, daughter of a Belgian father and German mother who left her Scottish husband in Burma and married LD Kaji in Delhi in 1957. The two couldn't have been more different. Elisa-Maria wanted to be Sikkim's First Lady, but Hope Cook stood in the way. "She didn't just want to be the wife of an Indian chief minister, she wanted to be the wife of the prime minister of an independent Sikkim." With that kind of an ambition, it was not surprising that with annexation, neither Hope Cook nor Elisa-Maria got what they wanted.

Indira Gandhi

     Meanwhile in New Delhi, Indira Gandhi was going from strength to strength, and India was flexing its muscles. The 1971 Bangladesh war and the atomic test in 1974 gave Delhi the confidence to take care of Sikkim once and for all. Indira Gandhi was concerned that Sikkim may show independent tendencies and become a UN member like Bhutan did in 1971, and she also didn't take kindly to the three Himalayan kingdoms, Bhutan, Sikkim and Nepal, getting too cosy with each other. The Chogyal attended King Birendra's coronation in Kathmandu in 1975 and hobnobbed with the Pakistanis and the Chinese, and there was a lobby in Delhi that felt Sikkim may get Chinese help to become independent.

     In his book on the Indian intelligence agency, Inside RAW, The story of India's secret service, Ashok Raina writes that New Delhi had taken the decision to annex Sikkim in 1971, and that the RAW used the next two years to create the right conditions within Sikkim to make that happen. The key here was to use the predominantly-Hindu Sikkimese of Nepali origin who complained of discrimination from the Buddhist king and elite to rise up. "What we felt then was that the Chogyal was unjust to us," says CD Rai, editor of Gangtok Times and ex-minister. "We thought it may be better to be Indian than to be oppressed by the king."

     So, when the Indian troops moved in there was general jubilation on the streets of Gangtok. It was in fact in faraway Kathmandu that there were reverberations. Beijing expressed grave concern. But in the absence of popular protests against the Indian move, there was only muted reaction at the United Nations in New York. It was only later that there were contrary opinions within India-Morarji Desai said in 1978 that the merger was a mistake. Even Sikkimese political leaders who fought for the merger said it was a blunder and worked to roll it back. But by then it was too late.

     Today, most Sikkimese know they lost their independence in 1975, and passengers in Gangtok still say they are "going to India". The elite have benefited from New Delhi's largesse and aren't complaining. As ex-chief minister BB Gurung says: "We can't turn the clock back now."