Word: sikkim
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...years ago, when Prince Palden Thondup Namygal was crowned Chogyal (King) of Sikkim, his young wife, Sarah Lawrence Graduate Hope Cooke, became "Queen of the Happy Valley" and "Consort of Deities." Together they pledged to make the tiny storybook kingdom "a paradise on earth." They also hoped to make Sikkim, an Indian protectorate since 1950, more economically and politically independent. That was a fairy tale not to be. Last week India's Parliament voted to make Sikkim India's 22nd state. It was the last act of a sequence that saw Sikkim's 300-year-old monarchy...
...April 1973, when the Chogyal asked Indian troops to help control demonstrators who were threatening to storm his palace in Gangtok. The riots stemmed from a controversy over the nation's electoral procedures-a system that inadequately represented the settlers from neighboring Nepal, who make up 75% of Sikkim's population of 210,000. India subdued the demonstrators -whom they may have instigated in the first place-and then pressured the Chogyal into accepting a constitutional agreement that virtually stripped him of all power...
...correspondent arrived for that occasion aboard a rickety DC-3 that "slithered low over the Himalayan foothills, searching for the gap in the mountains through which we slipped into the Katmandu Valley." He has since reported on coronations of two other Himalayan monarchs, the Kings of Bhutan and Sikkim. Over the years, the Shangri-la quality of the mountain kingdoms has been diminished by the encroachment of Western civilization. "The one-room thatch shack that was the airport building at Katmandu's Gauchar Airport is long gone," Shepherd reports, "and the red brick complex that replaced it even...
...million subjects are literate). He emphasized that Nepal would continue to pursue a nonaligned foreign policy and remain scrupulously neutral in matters affecting its giant neighbors, India and China. By tradition the Nepalese have feared domination by India, and were greatly concerned when New Delhi absorbed their Himalayan neighbor, Sikkim, last year...
Peking's local offers of autonomy to these states culminated in a policy to establish a Confederation of Himalayan Border States, which would include Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, and the Northeast Frontier of India. The confederation has yet to become a reality...