DZULUK (EAST SIKKIM): With Prime Minister Narendra Modi set to broach the Doka La dispute with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the BRICS summit in Xiamin Sunday, people who remember a short skirmish with the Chinese at Nathu La and Cho La in 1967 have a simple message to the Indian PM: Don’t trust the Chinese.
It’s a little remembered engagement now but locally it revives bitter memories. Happening just five years after the 1962 war, it was short and bloody. The skirmish at Nathu La lasted just four days, September 11-15, and at Cho La, a few kilometres to the north, just one day, October 1.
While India claimed to have lost 88 soldiers and inflicted up to 340 casualties on the Chinese, Beijing admitted to 65 at Nathu La and an unknown number in the Cho La incident. Though no civilian lives were lost, there was massive loss of property due to Chinese bombardment on civilian areas in Sikkim.
At 74, Nar Bahadur Mukhia of Dzuluk has recall of it. Then 24, he supervised over 200 workers who built the motorable Silk Route from Kalimpong to Nathu La after the 1962 Sino-India war. Today, after yet another Sino-Indian stand-to on the Doka La plateau, he remembers, “At Nathu La, Chinese loudspeakers blared the ‘Hindi-Chini bhai bhai’ slogan and played Bollywood songs from 6 am till 10 am on September 11, 1967.
Then there was pin-drop silence for two hours. From 12 pm onwards, they suddenly started shelling Nathu La. Each shell landed a little farther inside Sikkim territory. Indian Army soon began to respond with counter-bombardment. Dzuluk, Gnathang and Kupup were evacuated. The Chinese shelling continued till 4 am in the morning.”
Since then, nothing the Chinese have said has ever won Mukhia’s trust. According to political analysts, the 1967 skirmish was one of the major reasons behind Sikkim’s absorption into the Indian Union in 1975. Under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi India had started building strong defences along the Sikkim frontier and revamping border road networks since her ascendance to power in 1966.
Pemba Dorje, a 1967 skirmish victim, remembers the confusion caused by the Chinese bombardment at Serathang near Nathu La: “I was sipping tea at home when suddenly I heard a shrill sound in the air and a bomb fell on the hill to the west of our village. And then, another bomb fell right on our street. I did not know what to do. My infant son was sleeping on a cot.
I grabbed my wife and what I thought was my son from the cot and fled towards Gangtok. As I reached the check-post at the 15th mile near Gangtok, I realised that I had picked up a bag of flour and that my infant son was still at home. I ran all the way back, and when I reached home, it was dark and the Chinese were still pounding the village. But then I heard a cry and found my baby son under the cot. We still celebrate September 11 as his second birthday.”
And then he added, “Since 1967, the Chinese have never uttered Hindi-Chini bhai bhai ever again.”
One stark difference pointed out by witnesses to both the 1962 war and the 1967 skirmish is that while the Chinese entered Sikkim through Nathu La in 1962, they did not cross the LAC in 1967. The reason behind this may be the establishment of strong Indian Army defence along the Sikkim frontier. It was this defence that analysts think deterred the Chinese during the 72-day Doka La standoff.