Sikkim’s Merger with India: A Tale of Power, Intrigue, and Lost Sovereignty

On May 29, 2025, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the ‘Sikkim@50’ celebrations via videoconferencing from New Delhi, marking five decades since the northeastern state became part of the Indian Union. “Fifty years ago, Sikkim chose a democratic path for its future,” the Prime Minister said. “The people of Sikkim aspired to connect not only with Bharat’s geography but also with its very soul.”

As expected neither Modi nor his Godi media told the ugly truth that fifty years ago, Sikkim was annexed by India in what can be called a colossal display of intrigue and treachery in which India’s foreign intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), played a major role.  

Sikkim, a Himalayan kingdom nestled between Nepal, Bhutan, and Tibet, became a princely state under the British Indian Empire in 1890. Following India’s independence in 1947, while most princely states were integrated into either India or Pakistan, Sikkim and Bhutan remained exceptions. Sikkim retained its status as a protectorate—first under the Dominion of India and later under the Republic of India after 1950.

Palden Thondup Namgyal, born on May 23, 1923, served as the 12th and final Chogyal (king) of Sikkim. During the early 1970s, as Bhutan moved toward greater international recognition—joining the United Nations in September 1971—the Chogyal sought a similar path for Sikkim. He pressed India to revise the Indo-Sikkim Treaty, aiming for a status akin to Bhutan’s.

This ambition reportedly alarmed Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who, in December 1972, turned to R.N. Kao, the founding director of India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). According to accounts by authors such as Nitin Gokhale and former intelligence officials, Gandhi tasked RAW with countering the growing alignment among the Himalayan kingdoms—Sikkim, Bhutan, and Nepal.

Historical documents suggest that India’s strategic concerns about its northern frontiers were longstanding. In a 1950 letter, then Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel warned Prime Minister Nehru of vulnerabilities in the region, citing weak communication lines and limited loyalty among border populations. He emphasized the potential for foreign influence, particularly from China and the Soviet Union.

By early 1973, RAW had reportedly devised a plan to destabilize the Chogyal’s rule. The strategy involved supporting opposition leaders such as Kazi Lhendup Dorjee of the Sikkim National Congress (SNC) and younger activists like K.C. Pradhan. These leaders formed the Joint Action Committee (JAC), which launched a series of agitations against the monarchy. According to Gokhale, RAW provided logistical, strategic, and financial support to sustain the movement.

The situation escalated on April 4, 1973—Chogyal Palden Thondup Namgyal’s 50th birthday—when violent clashes erupted in Gangtok. A confrontation involving the Chogyal’s son and palace guards led to police firing and civilian deaths. The unrest was used by opposition leaders to intensify calls for Indian intervention. Within days, widespread looting and arson gripped the region.

On April 8, 1973, under mounting pressure, the Chogyal signed a draft agreement prepared by Indian authorities. It transferred administrative control to India and placed the local police under the command of the Indian Army’s 17 Mountain Division. The JAC called off its agitation shortly thereafter.

Two years later, in April 1975, the final phase of the merger unfolded. Public demonstrations were orchestrated in Gangtok demanding the disbanding of the Chogyal’s guards and full integration with India. Dorjee formally requested Indian intervention, and the Indian Army moved in. According to Gokhale, the operation was swift—within 20 minutes, the palace guards were disarmed, though one sentry was killed in the process.

A referendum was held soon after, under the presence of tens of thousands of Indian troops in a state with a population of around 200,000. The result—97.5% in favor of abolishing the monarchy—was widely criticized as a foregone conclusion. Dorjee’s SNC, which had won 31 of 32 seats in the April elections, passed a motion calling for Sikkim’s annexation. On May 16, 1975, Sikkim officially became the 22nd state of India.

China initially opposed the annexation but later tacitly accepted it after India recognized the Tibet Autonomous Region as part of the People’s Republic of China during the Vajpayee administration.

Kazi Lhendup Dorjee was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 2002 for his role in Sikkim’s integration. However, his later years were marked by isolation. According to journalist Sudeer Sharma, Dorjee expressed regret over his treatment by Indian authorities, saying, “I went out of my way to ensure the merger of Sikkim into India but after the work was done, the Indians just ignored me.”

There is little doubt that RAW played a pivotal role in Sikkim’s 1975 merger with India. One of the lesser-known dynamics it reportedly exploited was the long-standing rivalry between two of Sikkim’s most influential families: the royal Namgyals and the Kazis. This animosity, rooted in a 1933 incident at the Rumtek Monastery—where a young Lhendup Dorjee was replaced by Crown Prince Palden Thondup Namgyal—would later shape the political fate of the Himalayan kingdom.

According to Captain Sonam Yongda, who served as aide-de-camp to the Chogyal, the monarch might have avoided annexation had he heeded the advice of regional allies. In 1974, King Birendra of Nepal, Chinese Deputy Premier Chen Li Yan, and Pakistan’s envoy in Kathmandu reportedly urged the Chogyal not to return to Sikkim. “But the King didn’t accept,” Yongda recalled. “He was a great believer in India. He had huge respect for Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Not in his wildest dreams did he think India would ever gobble up his kingdom.”

Journalist Sudeer Sharma, in his essay “The Pain of Losing a Nation”, describes India’s approach as a “double game.” While RAW supported Dorjee’s political movement against the monarchy, Indian officials continued to assure the Chogyal that the institution of monarchy would be preserved. The Chogyal, an honorary Major General in the Indian Army, never imagined that the same army would one day be used to disarm his palace guards.

Critically, the Chogyal also failed to build strong ties with the ethnic Nepali majority in Sikkim—a political miscalculation that further isolated him.

Tragedy struck the royal family again on March 11, 1978, when Crown Prince Tenzing, a 26-year-old Cambridge graduate, died in a car accident near Gangtok. His death marked the symbolic end of the Namgyal dynasty, which had long been shadowed by a prophecy known as the “Curse of the Namgyals,” suggesting that the firstborn rarely succeeded to the throne. The Chogyal, heartbroken, passed away in 1982.

The Sikkim saga is also remembered as a story of three formidable women: Indira Gandhi, India’s Prime Minister; Hope Cooke, the American-born Queen of Sikkim; and Elisa Maria, the British wife of Kazi Lhendup Dorjee. Each had her own vision for Sikkim’s future—but only one prevailed. With RAW at her disposal, it was Indira Gandhi who ultimately shaped the kingdom’s destiny.

In 1978, Gandhi’s successor, Prime Minister Morarji Desai, publicly criticized the annexation. “It’s wrong for a big country to do that,” he said. “Many of the neighboring states were bothered about it… But I cannot undo it now.”

The broader implications of RAW’s role in Sikkim have raised questions about its operations elsewhere, e.g., in the neighboring Bangladesh.

In his book Inside RAW: The Story of India’s Secret Service, author Ashok Raina writes that RAW was granted sweeping authority to conduct covert operations in neighboring countries deemed strategically sensitive—Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Pakistan, and the Maldives. “RAW was given a virtual carte blanche to conduct destabilization operations in neighboring countries, seen by New Delhi as inimical to India. RAW was given a list of seven countries (Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Pakistan and Maldives) for its operations,” Raina notes, “and it systematically and brilliantly crafted covert operations… to coerce, destabilize and subvert them in consonance with the foreign policy objectives of the Indian Government.” He concludes: “RAW over the years has admirably fulfilled its tasks of destabilizing target states… The India Doctrine spelled out a difficult and onerous role for RAW. It goes to its credit that it has accomplished its assigned objectives.”

What New Delhi hails as strategic foresight and brilliance, and as India’s intelligence footprint grows fifty years after Sikkim’s annexation, her smaller neighbors quietly ask: could history repeat itself—not with tanks, but through influence, infiltration, and quiet persuasion? Could the next annexation come not by force, but by proxy, in a ‘double game’ reminiscent of Sikkim?

Habib Siddiqui is a rights activist who has authored more than 20 books. His latest book – ‘Modi-fied’ India: the transformation of a nation – is due to be published this year by Peter Lang.