The Cultural Heritage of Sikkim

Sarit K. Chaudhuri, Sameera Maiti, Charisma K. Lepcha

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367511142
• eBook ISBN: 9781000079227
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Sikkim has been a region of anthropological interest since the 1930s when Geoffrey Gorer and John Morris did their fieldwork among the Lepchas of Dzongu, north Sikkim. While it was mentioned in various writings of travellers and administrators during the British period, there is a dearth of literature even today on the rich heritage of Sikkim. This collection of twenty-five essays presented first at the international conference on Cultural Heritage of Sikkim, organized by the Depart­ment of Anthropology, Sikkim University, Gangtok goes a long way in breaching this gap. The book will be of immense interest to scholars and students of Anthropology, Sociology and Cultural Studies and will lead to new research on the people and the places of Sikkim and India's North-East. Please note: This title is co-published with Manohar Publishers, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

PART I

HISTORY AND HERITAGE

CHAPTER 1

The Residency, Bharat Bhawan and Raj Bhawan

A.C. SINHA

Being a trained anthropologist, by and large one keeps away from formal structures, the high and the mighty, kings and rulers, and selects a representative rustic (rural) locale to observe, watch and learn for ourselves from below the ‘improbalia of life’. What does an anthropologist such as me have to do with the Residency, the Barakothi, and the Bharat Bhawan or the Raj Bhawan? I have hardly visited the place about half a dozen on formal occasions to be herded among the ‘invited guests to the tables’ and similarly seen off. I have been face to face with only two ‘high and mighty’ occupants belonging to Bharat Bhawan era and only three of the present inhabitants very briefly. I am unacqainted with honoured occupants of the Raj Bhawan personally; neither am I an expert on the constitutional role of governors in the state; neither have I any access to any official documents there. I recall my first accidental brush with the then Chief Secretary of Denzong in 1970, who advised me to go to Lachen and Lachung to study the Bhotias, rather than wasting my time in Gangtok bazaar. So with my populist (not popular) tid-bits of disjointed views relating to the distant Barakothi and its denizens, what relevant and sensible statement shall I be making so that it fits, if not adequately, at least it should not be odd enough to disturb the sanctity of the august office?

Then I began looking back to my more than five-decades old association with Sikkim and readings on it, which provides some glimpse of the glory, gossips, events, and individuals of the Residency and its subsequent avatars. In fact, I had wished to study ‘Community Power Structures of Two Feudal Cities: Gangtok and Thimphu’ way back in 1969, which was considered academically not feasible (Sinha: 2014). Then I recollected the past tradition in the Eastern Himalayan kingdoms—how the ‘capital’ shifted with the kings, when they used to move on horses or other animals. Then came the British, who looked for everything in a formal cast: a headman, a chief, measured land, fixed boundaries, taxes in cash, kings, capitals, bureaucracy, rules and recorded files. I recall having heard that the Residency was the watch-tower in the Himalayas, whose resident Tibetologist Political Officers wrote annual reports on Sikkim and Bhutan, organized the Maharajas’ administration, got roads constructed, opened schools, established hospitals, got educated the royal progeny and even over-saw their kinship ties. So far Sikkim was concerned, the Barakothi had emerged really as the focal point of everything and anything worth in its puny kingdom. It was a haughty, arrogant, aloof, distant, and formal entity and as the mai-bap of the subjects, which is needless to say it functioned on a grand paternalistic style. And that one has to read pages after pages deliberately penned down by J.C. White, the first Political Officer in Sikkim.

THE BRITISH RESIDENCY: THE HIMALAYAN WATCH TOWER ON TIBET AND BEYOND

There is no recorded evidence of the presence of an ancient city in the eastern Himalayas. The early Namgyal rulers maintained two residential establishments: one, at Phari in Chumbi Valley, now Tibet, and another, in Sikkim. The first Namgyal king, Phuntso Namgyal, was consecrated at Yoksom in 1642 seated on a stone slab and ruled his fief from there. His son moved his seat of authority near the border of Nepal at Rabdentse in 1670. The capital was shifted from Rabdentse to Tamlong after the Nepalese incursion in late eighteenth century. John W. Edgar, Deputy Commissioner, Darjeeling, visited Tumlong in 1873, almost a hundred years after the Nepalese invasion and recorded:

Besides the Raja’s dwelling and the monasteries (three in numbers), there are scattered over Toomlong hills a number of substantial looking houses belonging to various officials. Each house was surrounded by some cultivable land, in which are generally a few clumps of bamboo or fruit trees. Many of these houses were unoccupied during my visit…. I saw two officers, who were styled Dewans, and who had been left at Toomlong in charge of the state affairs (in the absence of the king. (Edgar 1969)

A W. Paul, Deputy Commissioner of Darjeeling, was sent to Tumlong in 1880 to persuade the rival Lepcha and Bhutia factions in the royal court to come to an agreement among themselves (White 1971).

Edgar has not mentioned the existence of a market centre or commercial sector or a court complex in Sikkim. Such was the economic specialization that as soon as the capital of the king was shifted from one place to another, the site was lost in the woods, as most of the houses were made of stone, wood, bamboo and straw. He also found ‘heaps of building materials left on the Gangtok ridge for constructing another residence for the king’. In the words of White:

On reaching Gangtok (the assumed capital in November, 1887), we pitched our tent on the ridge, close to the Maharaja’s palace, then covered with jungle, now site of a flourishing bazaar, with post and telegraph offices, dak bungalow or rest house, charitable hospital and dispensary, and many large and flourishing shops, including that of the state bankers. (ibid.: 20)

Further, he described how he could select the site for building the Residency House at the highest hillock, identified the nonexistent building materials, workforce, furnishings and personnel as the household staff. In course of time, the Residency, known as the last post on way to Tibet from India, was described by one of its future residents, Sir Basil Gould, as ‘perhaps the most attractive mediumsized home in the whole of India’ (Gould 1957).

In this way, it was left to White, a civil engineer by profession and the first Political Officer in Sikkim, to build not only the Residency and other offices for administration, but also the permanent capital of the principality of Sikkim at Gangtok, which continues to be the premier city of the state since then. In course of time, it came to be known as the ‘world’s first outpost for China-watching’. The building was twice damaged by earthquakes—once in 1897, and then in 2006, when it was rendered too dangerous for its august resident for habitation. In the perceptive assessment of a raconteurs of heritage buildings:

From the demise of Tibet in 1959 to the establishment of the Kingdom of Bhutan in 1907 and eventually the accension of the Kingdom of Sikkim to India in 1975, the (residency) building was not only the theatre of unfolding history, but also the home of extraordinary men, who helped shape the future and development of the region. (Balikci-Denjongpa 2008: 179)

During the days of ‘the great game in Central Asia’, the Residency played a crucial role especially under Nathaniel Curzon’s move of ‘forward policy’ to the Himalayas, when the Tibet Expedition was launched under Colonel Francis Younghusband in 1903–4. Even prior to that, the Residency and its main functionary devoted a major part of his time in advancing the British imperial and commercial interests across the Himalayan heights. Political Officer J.C. White was roped in the expedition and so was the local resources in terms of men and material and the Residency was turned out to be the launching pad of the expedition. An offshoot of the exercise was the successful incorporation of Bhutan within the British imperial frame through the good office of J.C. White, Ugyen Wangchuk and Kazi Ugyen Dorji. It is pertinent to note that gains of the Tibet Expedition were lost soon, because of the change in British imperial emphasis in the region, but a lasting achievement was that of the goodwill of the Wangchuks and Dorjis of Bhutan for the future. It is said that White and Wangchuk, who came closer as intimate friends for two different reasons: first for the British imperial interest to secure Bhutan as a faithful ally in the Himalayas, and the second, for the newly-created Bhutanese throne for his descendants. Once Bhutan was secured, successive political officers made efforts to cultivate the Dalai Lama in favour of the British Empire.

Among the various Resident British Political Officers in Gangtok besides J.C. White, who shaped the British imperial policy to Tibet through their diplomacy and expertise in Tibetology, were Charles A. Bell, F.M. Bailey and Basil J. Gould. The last PO, Arthur J. Hopkinson, as the Residents were known, even wrote a significant Note for the forthcoming Indian Union on his charge:

In practice, it may well prove difficult to secure a tidy solution of the future of Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan, and even the eastern marches of Kashmir. This will largely depend on the future policy and fate of China and hence of Tibet. The Government of the (Indian) Union must be prepared for complications on Northeast Frontier and evolve a policy to meet them. This may well have to be that of maintaining all the principalities in virtual independence of India, but as buffer, as far as possible, (as) client states. There may be greater advantages in according Sikkim a more independent status than seeking to absorb Bhutan as well as Sikkim in the Indian Union, adding communal problem of Buddhism…. The Government will be well advised to avoid entering into fresh commitments with any one of these frontier states or seeking to redefining their status. Their importance is strategic in direct relation to Tibet and China and, indirectly to Russia. Such adjustment of relations with the (Indian) Union can fully be affected by those political and strategic considerations … account of which, it is hoped, the treaty will take rather than the political niceties, which do not help defense policy. (Sinha 2008: 63)

And needless to say that the ‘Note’ shaped the regional political scenario for decades to come.

POLITICAL OFFICERS OF BHARAT BHAWAN

With the exit of the British from India, there was anti-feudal democratic struggle waged by the Sikkim State Congress, which was led by one of the superannuated Bhutia employees of the Political Office, Tashi Tshering. The first Indian Political Officer, Harishwar Dayal, played the crucial role first, in diffusing the volatile political situation after nudging the ruler to install a popular government, and then dismissing the dispensation, when the new cabinet could not manage the deteriorating law and order situation. All through the anti-feudal movements in the second part of the 1940s, it was the Political Officer who emerged as the impartial appellate authority among conflicting interests in Sikkim on behalf of the Govern-ment of India. The king was equated with other princely states in India and the political parties saw themselves as the extensions of the Indian political parties. And accordingly they were associated with the like-minded political fora in the plains. Sikkim and Indian Union signed a new treaty through which Sikkim turned out to be the protectorate of India and a new office of the Dewan, manned by a senior Indian officer, was created to run the administration of the state. In the words of journalist, Sunanda K. Datta-Ray, both the Sikkimese protectorate and the office of the Piolitical Officer in Gangtok, were ‘anachronism’, making everybody, the Sikkimese and the Indians, equally uncomfortable (Dutta-Ray 1985: 66). Perhaps, nobody gave a serious thought to it, and thus, the British office and its occupant, both, the Residency and the Politica Officer, continued with the same nomenclature even in democratic India. In all, there were eight such functionaries’ beginning with Harishwar Dayal, who was followed by Apa B. Pant, Indrajit Bahadur Singh, Avtar Singh, Vincent H. Coelho, N.B. Menon, Katyayani Shankar Bajpai and Gurbachan Singh, in that order.

The Political Officer continued in the old establishment, which was controlled by the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, though the old Residency was renamed Bharat Bhawan in the 1960s, but not its style or authority. It was in a way an anomalous situation; it was neither British, nor Sikkimese, but vaguely Indian, which could not easily shrug off its colonial heritage. Though Sikkim was officially a Protectorate, it was neither treated as part of democratic India, nor was it strictly termed as foreign. In the process, the office of the Political Officer lost its previous prestige, relevance and utility in the eyes of the local population. The Political Office lost its role in reporting on Tibet in 1949 and Bhutan was taken away from it in 1971, once i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Prologue
• Introduction
• Part I: History and Heritage
• Part II: People
• Part III: Religion and Culture
• Part IV: Tourism and Economy
• Part V: Art and Museum
• Contributors
• Index