Sikkim Votes for India: The Mountain State Joins

India formally annexed Sikkim on May 16, 1975, after a referendum in which 97.5 percent of voters chose to merge with the Indian republic. The vote ended the mountain kingdom's status as a protectorate and incorporated it as India's 22nd state. Sikkim had existed as an Indian protectorate since 1950, with India controlling its defense, foreign affairs, and communications while the Chogyal, the Sikkimese king, retained internal governance. The relationship was always unequal. India maintained a significant military presence in the kingdom, which occupied a strategically critical position between China, Nepal, and Bhutan on India's northeastern frontier. By the early 1970s, political tensions between the Chogyal and Sikkim's elected government had escalated. The Chogyal, Palden Thondup Namgyal, was an ethnic Bhutia Buddhist who ruled a population increasingly dominated by ethnic Nepalis who favored democratic governance and closer ties to India. Anti-monarchy protests in 1973 prompted Indian intervention. India brokered a new constitution that reduced the Chogyal to a figurehead, and the 1974 elections produced a government led by Kazi Lhendup Dorji, who favored full merger with India. The April 1975 referendum was organized by the new government with Indian support. The 97.5 percent vote in favor of merger was genuine in the sense that the ethnic Nepali majority overwhelmingly supported incorporation, but critics noted that the Indian Army's presence and the suppression of royalist opposition made the vote's outcome a foregone conclusion. The Chogyal was stripped of his title and his palace, and he died in New York in 1982. The annexation added approximately 7,000 square kilometers of strategically vital Himalayan territory to India, securing the Siliguri Corridor, the narrow strip of Indian territory connecting the northeast to the rest of the country.