From: "(Xiaowen Li)" <lix@CRSA.BU.EDU>
Subject:      Forward for Mr. Anonymous, Old post about Sikkim -- No.1
Reply-To: "(Xiaowen Li)" <lix@CRSA.BU.EDU>
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 01:09:51 GMT
Comments: To: china-nt@uga.cc.uga.edu

This is a forwarding upon the request of Mr. Anonymous.
My standard disclaimer for forwarding applies.
==================================================


   Sino-Tibetan Trivia     Section V -- Part B

Have you ever wondered why the gents who are raving about the
supposed disasters befalling Tibetan culture and the Tibetan
language in the T.A.R. hate to touch exactly the same issues in the
traditional Tibetan-speaking areas to the south, the southeast
and the southwest of the present Himalayan borders of China?

For example, they will avoid telling you about Sikkim.  They
are deafeningly silent about the Sino-Tibetan population of that
place.  Place?  Well, I would have liked to call it a country,
except that it ain't no country no more.

Sikkim was the old ZheMengXiong, a part of Tibet during much of
the Qing dynasty.  It was populated by Tibetan-speaking folks who
were followers of Red Hat Lamaism ever since the 16th century.
Sonam Gyatso's close contacts with the Ming Court and Ngawang
Lobsang Gyatso's acceptance of Qing titles from ShiZu ZhangHuangDi
led to the supremacy of the Yellow Hats.  Many measures taken by the
Qing Court made the Yellow Hats reasonably happy and secure so there
would be no more disgraceful incidents like Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso's
death being kept secret from the rest of the Chinese Realm, and
his reincarnation scandalously put on hold, for as long as 15 years.

As you can imagine, the Yellow Hats' successes in winning Imperial
favors were often at the expense of the Red Hats and Black Hats.
Areas where Red Hats were concentrated thus became natural targets of
British intrigues.  Thus in 1816 CE ZheMengXiong became the first
piece of Chinese territory under direct Western assaults.  But it held
true and refused to yield.  That was some 24 years before Lin Wen2-
Zhong1 Gong1 burnt the opium seized from the Scottish peddlers,
leading to the First Opium War.  It was during the reign of Jia-Qing.

Two Opium Wars later in 1889 CE (the 15th Year of Guang-Xu) the
British tried again.  This time they were able to take advantage
of the "generous" nature of Thupten Gyatso, the preincarnate of
Tenzin Gyatso.  They grabbed ZheMengXiong in 1890 CE, four years
before the War of Jia-Wu.  The "generosity" of Thupten Gyatso in
giving up originally Sino-Tibetan-speaking areas did not stop here.
Future items included the notorious McMahon Line.  But that would be
another long story.

The British ran ZheMengXiong, now going only by the name Sikkim, with
a puppet and had a couple of spies living near him.  When sweet talks
became a bit stale, threats carried the day, backed by the presence of
British troops nearby.  Meanwhile thousands of people who did not speak
a word of Tibetan were shipped in and dumped on the place. By the time
the British left India in 1947, Sino-Tibetan speakers native to Sikkim
were in the minority. Tibetan culture and the use of Sino-Tibetan
languages were both already in sharp decline.

        (to be continued)
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