58 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
the Government of India. On May 11,1974, the Assembly passes a resolution on new forms of association with India—a resolution sprung on the Assembly in cloak-and-dagger fashion. The resolution, drafted by an Indian 'legal expert' and in hardly comprehensible legal terminology is read out once, in a raging hurry, in English—which is, incidentally, not understood by 80 per cent of the Assemblymen. It is passed by a show of hands.2
Wrangle over 35th Amendment
Six of the 32 Assemblymen refuse to sign the resolution, and two Sikkim Congress members even resort to a hunger strike outside the Assembly gates to register their Gandhian protest.8 Popular opinion in Sikkim is outraged. Former loyal supporters of the Sikkim Congress turn against their party, unable to take in so suddenly the enormity of the act of their leaders. Newspaper reports filtering through the heavy censorship show that prominent persons opposing the new association are harassed, roughed up, and kept virtually under house arrest; and that demonstrations against absorption are being broken up by the CRP and by goons engaged by the Government of India. The Government of India, of course, characterizes the demonstrations opposing absorption as 'pro-35th Amendment'
The 35th Constitution Amendment Bill is passed with a road-roller majority in the Indian Parliament, with the MPs of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) alone voting against it. Sikkim is thus converted into an 'associate5 of the Union of India and from now on, the Government of India is "responsible for securing the economic and social development of Sikkim and for ensuring good administration and for the maintenance of communal harmony therein!"
Sikkim's western neighbour, Nepal, protests strongly through its National Assembly; angry students and youth voice their rage on the streets and at the Indian Embassy in Katmandu. Ignoring the fact that nearly 75 per cent of Sikkim's population is Nepali in origin, the Government of India maintains, at first, that the developments in Sikkim are none ofNepaKs business, then, in a delayed gesture of conciliation, that Nepal's fears have been allayed. Bhutan, Sikkim's eastern neighbour and newly admitted member of the United Nations, lets its displeasure be known, and makes it clear that the many Indian 'advisers' including the senior police official planted in the Bhutan administration by the Government of India need not come back once their terms are over, and are to be replaced by Bhutanese as soon as possible.4 Reports extremely adverse to the Government of India's action appear in newspapers in the neighbouring Bangia Desh, Pakistan and GeUon, and in most of the world's press.
Gan any objective and honest-minded person disagree with China's Peopled Daily's characterization of this wretched and sordid affair as "a monologue produced and performed by the Indian government"?5