Some pages of history remain hidden till some of the key-operators of the most important historic moments come out with the first hand reports of the chronology of the events. The merger of Sikkim State with India in 1975 was one such example. Unlike Kashmir affairs, hardly anyone refers the merger of Sikkim publicly. Though records suggest Pandit Nehru and Sardar Patel jointly handled the process of accession of Jammu and Kashmir State from June to December 1947, Nehru is solely blamed for the complexity of Kashmir affairs even today. Not many people may be aware that Sardar Patel was keen to merge Sikkim State with India in the initial days of freedom but Pandit Nehru was opposed to it for various reasons. His daughter Indira Gandhi fulfilled the dream of Patel in 1975 showing guts to acknowledge her father’s mistake.
G. B. S. Sidhu, a former Special Secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, was closely involved with the manoeuvres that led to the merger of Sikkim with India, explains why the move was crucial to India’s security in his newly published book, “Sikkim: Dawn of Democracy: The Truth behind the merger with India”. Sidhu has fulfilled the promise he made to his boss and head of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), Rameshwar Nath Kao to write a book on the merger of Sikkim. Sidhu went to Gangtok in 1973 and left in February 1976 after the merger in May 1975. He was a key-actor in the carefully choreographed drama directed by RAW’s legendary head, Kao, in close collaboration with Foreign Secretary Kewal Singh. It was Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s decision to start the project. Kao, who left the RAW in 1977, following Smt.
G’s defeat, asked Sidhu in 1988 to write a book on Sikkim’s merger as Sidhu had meticulously kept a diary. Sidhu was then Joint Secretary at RAW headquarters. The book gives a sound but succinct account of the relations between the Namgyal dynasty that ruled Sikkim and the British government in India. In 1947, Sardar Patel and B.N. Rao (Constitutional Adviser to the Constituent Assembly) were for including Sikkim among the Princely States to be integrated with India. But Nehru “due to his idealism, Pan-Asia vision and sensitivity to the Chinese concerns in this region wanted Sikkim to be treated as a special case”.
Sidhu, IPS (Retd.) writes: “The merger of Sikkim with India in May 1975 was a historic event in more than one way. Firstly, it undid the wrong done by India to the people of Sikkim by denying them the right to accede to, and finally merge with, the Union of India through the signing of the Instrument of Accession, as was the case with the rest of the 565 Indian princely States, which like Sikkim, were also members of the Chamber of Princes and the Constituent Assembly of India, before the country attained Independence on August 15, 1947…Secondly, to protect its strategic interests in this vulnerable and heavily defended sector along the Sino-Indian border, India no longer had to depend upon the whims and fancies, and the growing unpredictability, of the Chogyal who had long cherished the ambition to secure an independent status for Sikkim like that of neighbouring Bhutan… Thirdly, through it, India’s international borders achieved a finality, which will continue to remain the same unless minor adjustments, if any, are made based on mutual agreements with some of our neighbouring countries with whom we have festering territorial disputes.” Surprisingly, in March 1978 PM Morarji Desai declared that merger was a mistake that could not be undone!
Next Column: The Prime Ministers of Republic of India
(The writer is a Socio-political Historian. E-mail: [email protected] )
