Place · Himalayan Buddhist kingdom · India
Sikkim
The former Himalayan Buddhist kingdom of Sikkim (c.1642-1975) that became the 22nd state of the Indian Union on 16 May 1975 after the April 1975 referendum (97.5% vote to merge). The 1642 Chogyal dynasty founded by Phuntsog Namgyal was the ruling line until the last Chogyal Palden Thondup Namgyal (ruled 1963-1975). The 1950 Treaty of Peace between India and Sikkim made Sikkim an Indian protectorate; the 1973 anti-Chogyal uprising led by the Sikkim National Congress and the April 1975 referendum ended monarchy. Sikkim preserves the Pemayangtse Monastery (1705), the Rumtek Monastery (1960s, rebuilt by the 16th Karmapa), and Khangchendzonga as the state's tutelary mountain. The state's distinctive Buddhist-Lepcha-Nepali composite culture and India's first fully organic state status (2016) make it the most ecologically-conscious Indian state.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 27.330, 88.620
Connections (4)
- Power passed toJawaharlal Nehru
Sikkim became an Indian protectorate in 1950 with an Indian political officer in Gangtok controlling defence and external affairs, which is the arrangement Nehru's government made for a Himalayan state on the Tibet frontier — a frontier that mattered a great deal more after 1950 and again after 1962. The protectorate lasted twenty-five years and ended in 1975 with a referendum, an agitation and a constitutional amendment.
- Route adjacencyBomdila
Sikkim and the Monpa country around Bomdila and Tawang are the two Tibetan Buddhist regions inside India, at opposite ends of the eastern Himalaya, and both were monastic and trading provinces of the Tibetan world before they were parts of an Indian state. Sikkim joined by referendum in 1975; Tawang was included by the McMahon Line in 1914 and is still claimed by China.
- Site withinRumtek Monastery, Sikkim
Rumtek Monastery, Sikkim sits inside Sikkim and forms one piece of its layered sacred, royal or civic landscape. The city carries this entry as one of the sites that make its urban fabric legible — a shrine, monument, institution or craft tradition specifically anchored at this location — and the city's broader history reads better when the stop is seen in its context rather than in isolation. The surrounding streets, markets and other heritage ensembles around it belong to the same single city.
- Site withinPemayangtse Monastery, Sikkim
Pemayangtse Monastery, Sikkim sits inside Sikkim and forms one piece of its layered sacred, royal or civic landscape. The city carries this entry as one of the sites that make its urban fabric legible — a shrine, monument, institution or craft tradition specifically anchored at this location — and the city's broader history reads better when the stop is seen in its context rather than in isolation. The surrounding streets, markets and other heritage ensembles around it belong to the same single city.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Sikkim”. V.P. Menon, The Story of the Integration of the Indian States (1956); Ministry of States records.
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