Since India’s independence, the Sikkim royals had been uncomfortable about the role the Indian government played in their state. Now the wa...
Since India’s independence, the Sikkim royals had been uncomfortable about the role the Indian government played in their state. Now the war of 1965 and the arrival of Hope Cooke, the new queen of Sikkim, had thrown the relationship between India and Sikkim into a flux, and China was waiting to exploit the weaknesses.
In 1964, Palden Thondup, the Chogyal, had married Hope Cooke in a glamorous royal wedding in the Himalayas. The western world was enamoured by the fairy-tale romance between Hope, a young all-American girl from Brooklyn, and the royal from Sikkim. Their wedding had all the ingredients of a Hollywood romance. Hope was compared to Grace Kelly, the film actress who had married the king of Monaco.
The wedding was a high-profile event that drew ambassadors from nine nations, including the newly appointed US ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith. The list of dignitaries was long and included Indian leaders, bureaucrats and key socialites of Sikkim. Indira Gandhi was one of the attendees. Hope Cooke had put the obscure, tiny Buddhist kingdom on the world map. But Hope would also cause the unsettling of India–Sikkim relations, perhaps instigated in no small measure by China.
