MH Principal GA Murray: Lest We Forget

"The Hermonite (annual school magazine) was supposed to have come out by early 1979 but the printers took a long time and it was delayed by almost a year. It finally reached MH towards the end of 1979, when I was about to leave the school for college in Bombay. Murray, who was then back in New Zealand, wrote to Neville and me on December 22, 1979, expressing his appreciation for our effort: “This letter should have been written long ago, especially Jickmi as we had a letter from him sometime ago. However, the arrival of the 1978 HERMONITE today makes a letter really imperative. All of us do want to thank and congratulate you both, and your helpers, for all the work you have put in to make it such a worthwhile publication. I know that you have been very upset and annoyed over the long delay that has kept it from publication, and I guess people have been rather critical, but I hope that this hasn’t bothered you. We have been pouring over the magazine since it arrived, and are just thrilled at all that you have been able to include, the research you have done, and the general layout. I am writing today to Mr. Johnston to make sure that copies are sent to all ex-staff I know in NZ who will surely want a copy.”

   As ex-students, our association with the school continued for many years after leaving the school. In 1986, the Sikkim Hermonites Assocaition started a cricket tournament in Sikkim in Murray’s honour. The Murray Cup Cricket Tournament, perhaps the most prestigeous cricket tournament in Sikkim, was going on in its eighth year in 1991. Once we had our senior staff member from MH, Mathew Mathai, in Gangtok, prior to his final departure from MH, as the Chief Guest on the final day of the tournament, to present the trophy. Most of our team (‘Veterans’) members have been Hermonites (Sherab Namgyal, Tempo Bhutia, Thentok Lachungpa, Pema Wangyal, Lhundup Topden, Karma Bhutia, Namgyal Wangdi and myself). We’ve also had ex-students of TNA, St. Joseph’s and Goethal’s in our team.

   Murray again wrote to me from Wellington in 1986, expressing his happiness over our initiative: “Thank you so very much for your letter and for the photos and certificates enclosed. I am very, very touched by your action in naming the cricket cup after me – it is an honour which I very deeply appreciate. I just hope that one day I might be in Gangtok to preside over a final and present the trophy.” (Ref: Inside Sikkim: Against the Tide, Jigme N Kazi, 1993. The above piece is taken from the chapter - "Hail Mount Hermon!")

FROM ABRAHAM LINCOLN TO MH’S ‘HERMON KNIGHTS’

(I’m posting this in the light of the proposed ashes of our Principal, Rev. J. Johnston, to be laid to rest at Kalimpong’s Dr. Graham’s Homes next month (Sept 30, 2018). Mt. Hermon School in Darjeeling is where the Johnstons lived and served. It is a hallowed ground.  “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.” Therefore, the ashes should also be laid to rest in MH)

   “Lincoln delivered this speech during the American Civil War, on Thursday, November 19, 1863, during the afternoon, at the dedication of the Soldier's National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The address was made four and a half months after the defeat of the Confederate armies by those of the Union at the Battle of Gettysburg.

   To consecrate means to declare something holy and hallow is its synonym. Lincoln is saying that the ground cannot be declared holy, because: 

   “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.”

   Lincoln means that the extreme sacrifice the men who had fought and died on that battlefield have made was in itself a greater act than any other could now, or ever, perform in ordaining the soil on which they died. Their deed was more than enough for the ground to be consecrated. The blood that was spilt there blessed the soil. It would, he suggests, be presumptuous of him or any other to believe that they could do those who gave their lives greater honor by declaring the ground hallowed.

These words indicate the great respect Lincoln had for those who gave up their lives to fight for a noble cause. He wanted them to be honored through more than symbolic gestures such as this one—he felt they should be held in esteem in the hearts and minds of all Americans. That should be how a nation conveys its greatest gratitude.

   “But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.”

   The Gettysburg Address remains one of the more poignant examples of written and oratory skill in the history of the Republic.  Lincoln is in Gettysburg to dedicate a cemetery at the site of a key battle during the Civil War.  Since the speech was delivered a mere four months after the actual showdown, the emotions of the battle are still fresh.

   Abraham Lincoln states that the grounds of Gettysburg are sacred and no human can bless or consecrate this land.  He believes that the soldiers that have fought and died for the Union cause have already consecrated and dedicated these memorial grounds. In the next lines, Lincoln states, somewhat ironically, that history will not remember the words spoken on this day, but will forever remember the sacrifices that soldiers have made in dying for the Union.”   

BB Gurung: “The guilt of having participated in the process of the merger has left a very deep and painful scar in my heart”

   Ten years after his controversial move to declare ‘Prince’ Wangchuk the 13th Chogyal of Sikkim, Bhim Bahadur Gurung admitted that he had always felt uncomfortable and somewhat guilty at having been a party to the ‘selling of Sikkim’. Gurung saw the Chogyal’s death and his funeral on February 19, 1982, as a god-sent opportunity to expiate himself of the sins he had committed, and made attempts to ventilate his true feelings. In 1975, Gurung moved a resolution in the Assembly, abolishing “the institution of the Chogyal” and declaring Sikkim to be a “constituent unit of India”, thereby paving way for Sikkim to become the 22nd State of the Indian Union.

BB Gurung 

   “The guilt of having participated in the process of the merger has left a very deep and painful scar in my heart”, Gurung confided to me at his residence in Gangtok one afternoon in mid-1992. “By publicly acknowledging Prince Wangchuk to be the 13th Chogyal of Sikkim, I wanted to exonerate myself and get rid of this guilt,” Gurung explained. He revealed that he, then legislative leader of the Opposition, and his MLAs had made a controversial move in openly accepting Wangchuk as the 13th Chogyal of Sikkim on February 19, 1982, and thereby acknowledging the traditional process by which the Chogyals succeeded to the throne. If in 1975, Gurung was a party to the abolition of the Chogyal’s institution, in 1982, he more than made up for his past misdeeds by publicly acclaiming Wangchuk to be the 13th consecrated Chogyal of Sikkim and acknowledging the continuance of the Chogyals’ hereditary succession.

      Wangchuk’s response to his ‘crowning’ more than satisfied Gurung, who was ready to pay any price for his action, which was of great historical significance. In an interview in India Today after he was proclaimed the 13th Chogyal of Sikkim, Wangchuk stated: “It is not for me to proclaim myself the new Chogyal. It is for the people to accept and acknowledge me as the new Chogyal and you can see for yourself the support I have been shown by the people…We do have the custom of automatic succession that on the death of the Chogyal, the heir apparent becomes the new Chogyal.”

Chogyal Palden Thondup Namgyal 

    “I was all prepared to face any consequence and was even ready to get arrested and face jail sentence,” Gurung pointed out to me, and added, “Even my family members were conscious of what I was doing and were prepared to face any eventuality.” Referring to the Chogyal’s “enthronement”, Gurung said the people expected Bhandari, who was then the Chief Minister, to back him. “But his handling of the situation showed that Bhandari’s patriotism was superficial,” Gurung explained.

   Gurung boasts that unlike some MLAs, he stuck to his stand and refused to compromise and withdraw his signature from the historic document submitted to Wangchuk on February 19. Sunanda K. Datta-Ray in his book – Smash and Grab: Annexation of Sikkim, describes Gurung as a “leading architect” and “prominent” among those who bartered away the Kingdom’s independence. Referring to Gurung’s opportunistic tendencies, the book adds: “In the distant past, Gurung had enthusiastically defended his King’s demand for independence; but he had recanted his loyalty to become one of New Delhi’s most loyal adherents in Sikkimese politics.”

   Gurung’s nationalistic feelings surfaced when he was one of the three Executive Councillors of the Chogyal’s Sikkim Council way back in 1967, when the demand for revision of the Indo-Sikkim Treaty of 1950 by the Sikkimese, was worrying New Delhi. A joint statement on the Treaty revision issued by the three Executive Councillors – Netuk Tsering (Sikkim National Party), Nahakul Pradhan (Sikkim State Council), and B.B. Gurung (Sikkim National Congress) – on June 15, 1967, stated: “Since Sikkim signed the treaty with India, surely it is within her sovereign rights to demand a revision of the treaty as one of the signatories. In fact Sikkim gained her Sovereign Status on the 15th August, 1947, when India achieved her independence from the British rule. Every country has its inherent right to exist and maintain its separate identity and, therefore, to review and revise its treaty obligations in the wake of changing circumstances.”

Chogyal Wangchuk Namgyal

  Though Gurung’s political actions in the past may have been motivated by occasional nationalistic feelings, his confession about his attempt to atone himself of the political sins he had committed during the merger era, reflected the painful experience and the burden of guilt that all merger veterans have had to live with.

   (Ref: Inside Sikkim: Against The Tide, Jigme N. Kazi, 1993)

   

I have made mistakes and regret it: Kazini

Sikkim’s absorption into the Indian Union and its integration with the mainstream has always been a touchy and a very controversial subject. This chapter will not deal with every aspect of the ‘merger’, but will mainly focus on certain important issue of the ‘terms of the merger’ under which the tiny Himalayan Kingdom became a part of the Indian sub-continent almost two decades back. It will also reflect on the general mood of the people in the post-merger era, and reactions of those who played a major role in what many perceive as the annexation of Sikkim.

  Nari Rustomji, a noted author and authority on the eastern Himalayas and the Northeastern region of India, in an article in the Literary Supplement of the Sunday Statesman on July 22, 1984, wrote: “I had not met the Kazini of Chakung for several years, and recently called in at her home in Kalimpong on my way from Sikkim to Shillong. It had not been my intention to discuss with her or with her husband, the former Chief Minister of Sikkim, the politics of the country, but the options were not open to me. I barely stepped out from my car into her brightly-spangled parlour before she burst out with her dramatic confession.”

   And what was Kazini’s dramatic confession? As reported in the article, Kazini told Rustomji, “You and the Chogyal were absolutely right. It has all been a terrible mistake.”

   Surprisingly, Kazini, in a letter to the editor of the Statesman, denied having stated this to Rustomji. Unfortunately for Kazini, very few people would be convinced that Rustomji was lying and that she was telling the truth. Even her own husband, who after having lived for years under her shadow, has been making startling statements over the outcome of the merger of which he was its chief architect. If Kazini had confessed that merger was a mistake, then Kazi has stated that the Sikkimese people have not benefited from it.

   Five years after her reported confession with Rustomji, Kazini made another startling confession: “I have made mistakes and I regret many things I have done.” This confession, even more dramatic than the previous one, made in April 1989, was to be her last few words to the people before her death. Her candid admission that she made mistakes and regretted them, was made in her residence in Kalimpong in the presence of her husband, friends, relatives and two journalists from Sikkim, who had come to see her after she survived a critical liver complication.

   Upon learning that Kazini had survived another attack, Ranjit Devraj, UNI (United News of India) representative in Sikkim, and I rushed to Kalimpong to see her and to find out about her views on her long and chequered semi-political career. It was to be a historic moment for us and we didn’t want to miss this chance. After waiting in the parlour over a cup of tea for a while, we were finally ushered into Kazini’s bedroom. There were already some guests present in the room when we got in. More followed after we entered the room. Everyone was aware of the significance of the moment.

   The room was quiet and I could feel that the atmosphere was quite tense even as the 85-year-old lady, who once led a vigorous life in the hills, lay sick and helpless on her bed. I had never met personally, but Kazi, to my pleasant surprise, later told me what she was quite fond of me. I think she got to know me through my writings, which appeared in numerous local and national publications. She took a careful look at us when we entered the room and then asked us to come closer to her. And while everyone in the room waited with bated breath for her to say something of historical significance, she finally spoke up.

   “Jigme, you write well,” were her first words. She asked me to sit beside her. The compliment was quite flattering and totally unexpected. I just stood there quietly beside her without uttering a word. Although I must admit that I was quite flattered by what she said, I had not come all the way from Sikkim to hear a few kinds words from the old lady about myself. I expected more from her.

   When she saw the notebook in my hand and realized that we had come to her for more than that, she adjusted herself and finally spoke up, loud and clear for all to hear. Besides being the wife of the former chief minister, Kazini was also a journalist in her younger days. She actually took a live interest in the Himalayan Observer, an English week published from Kalimpong, which virtually became the mouthpiece of the Sikkim Congress led by Kazi. Having been a journalist and perhaps being aware of the role of the media in her life, she must have instinctively realized why we had come and the importance of what she spoke.

   “I would like all the people in Sikkim to be sustained, to live together, and to have a common destiny,” was Kazini’s first statement. The fact that the Government of India had, in the past, used her and her husband to cause divisions among the three ethnic groups in Sikkim, with the sole objective of weaning Sikkim closer towards India, was an open secret in Sikkim. Kazini knew full well that the people were suspicious of her own role and her party’s activities in Sikkim, particularly between April 1973 to April 1975, when the political upheaval, which began in early April 1973, finally led to Sikkim’s merger two years later. The division between the minority Buddhist Bhutia-Lepchas and the majority Hindu Nepalese reached its peak during this period, enabling Kazi’s Sikkim Congress to grab the seat of power with the tangible backing of the Indian Government.

   It was Kazi’s Sikkim State Congress (SSC) in 1953, which demanded ‘accession’ of Sikkim to India, and eventually it was his Sikkim Congress which put an end to the Chogyals’ 333-year rule, and made Sikkim a constituent unit of India in April 1975. Instead of maintaining its international status and framing its own Constitution for a more democratic set-up, Sikkim was made to accept the Constitution of another country. No wonder Karma Topden, till recently Sikkim’s Rajya Sabha MP and formerly the Chogyal’s ADC, reportedly commented during the merger period: “Everything comes to us ready-made from India these days, even constitutions.”

   After painfully witnessing what was taking place in Sikkim in the one and a half dacades since the kingdom’s entry into the Indian Union, and having been a party to the total disintegration, destruction and division amongst the Sikkimese, Kazini finally yielded to her long-suppressed emotions and accepted defeat. She actually acknowledged her devious role in Sikkim politics, admitted her mistakes, and expressed regret. And then, perhaps seeing a ray of hope, advised the people of Sikkim to “live together and have a common destiny”. She, however, did not specify what she really meant by a “common destiny”, and left it for posterity to interpret. Realising the state she was in, we refrained from asking further questions. That Kazini attained political maturity at this late stage after so much of damage and so many bitter experiences is regrettable. The only guidelines she left for the people was to ask them to learn from her past mistakes.

   The next solemn confession made by Kazini to all of us in the room concerned her past activities in Sikkim. “I have made mistakes and regret many things I have done,” she declared. I realized that while she was speaking to us, she was not just making a quiet confession about herself and her work, but her words came out quite spontaneously and there was an air of confidence and conviction in how she delivered her statement. She was not just talking to us, but seemed to be declaring something important to all in the room in her rather commanding and authoritative voice, so that posterity could take note of it and remember how she lived and died.

Kazi, Kazini and Prime Minister Morarji Desai in Gangtok, 1979.

   If Kazini had acted mischievously in the past and let down the Sikkimese people, she at least had the courage and the decency to actually come to terms with herself and the people, and admit her mistakes. It certainly takes a rare courage for anyone to admit, in the last hour of one’s life, that whatever was done in the past, was a mistake and, therefore, regrettable.  

   And finally, her last few words concerned her beloved husband, who was beside her when she made the statements. “Anything I have done which has upset my husband, I regret,” is how she put it.

   In the final days prior to the merger, Kazini made a last-minute bid to save the separate political entity of the kingdom. But she was unsuccessful, and the events of the day overtook those who tried to outmaneuver New Delhi’s men in Sikkim. According to some Sikkimese, what Kazi really wanted in Sikkim was a more democratic set-up and closer ties with Indian, while maintaining Sikkim’s distinct personality as separate from India. The merger was, therefore, unnecessary and a mistake. It was, to borrow Jawaharlal Nehru’s phrase, like “killing the fly with a bullet”.

   In just forty two words, Kazini summed up how she felt about her life, her husband and the people of Sikkim. “I Regret” should have been her epitaph.

(Ref: Inside Sikkim: Against The Tide, Jigme N Kazi, 1993)