A new book studies how West Bengal’s Siliguri became an important corridor on India’s eastern border

Siliguri, on India’s eastern corridor, had humble beginnings. The settlement on the Himalayan foothills began as a small village, a part of the kingdom of Kamtapur that stretched from present-day Cooch Behar in West Bengal to the western parts of Assam. Over the centuries, the area was influenced by those of the Koch, Mughals and Ahoms. The city grew prosperous during the rule of the Bengal Sultanate and later the Mughal Empire.

It was part of the Sikkim kingdom but came under the expansive Kingdom of Nepal for a brief period before it was assimilated into the British East India Company’s North-eastern expansion in the late eighteenth century. In 1777, Nepal had appropriated a large part of Sikkim, including the Darjeeling district, but the Treaty of Sugauli in 1816 brought these areas under British rule.

Siliguri grew into its contemporary shape during the British colonial period due to its strategic location. The railway proved crucial. In 1881, the Siliguri Town Station connected Siliguri with Darjeeling. By then, Darjeeling, established in 1838, had become “a sentinel over the plains of Bengal in India” where Europeans fled from the discomfort and illness of the plains”. In 1881, the Darjeeling Hills Railway (DHR) “steamed out its first journey, and in the following decades … proved itself as a vehicle for social and economic development of the region”, first serving “as a commercial railway system carrying freight and running mail trains only, but over time its doors were open for passenger traffic”. It had a monumental impact not only on the transport of goods such as tea and timber, the so-called Two Ts, from the area, but also in encouraging the movement of the empire closer towards the Tibetan border – a Third T.

Meanwhile, Sikkim became part of India on May 15, 1975 after a majority of its population voted in favour of abolishing the monarchy and joining the Indian Union as its twenty-second state. But there’s more to its history. The story of Sikkim is a cautionary tale of what can happen when a small kingdom tugs at the tailcoats of Great Powers. The tension between its three major ethnic groups (Bhutias, Lepchas and Limbus), the discord between the ruling Tibetan Buddhist elite and the growing Hindu population and, not least, the East India Company’s interest in the region bordering Tibet led to the gradual weakening of Sikkim’s Namgyal dynasty (established in the 1640s).

The history of British India’s attempts to make inroads into Tibet, Sikkim’s key role in expanding the British footprint in Tibet and its long cultural and political connections to Tibetan rulers and Tibetan Buddhism are intriguing and complex. It remains as strategically important today as it did for over 300 years and “survived as a distinct polity from the 1640s until 1975”.

Viewed from a distance, the Himalayas appear like a wall between the Tibetan plateau and the Indian subcontinent, but on the ground, India and China have antagonistic views of where their territories end and meet. And within that geography, the Eastern Himalayan region has an intricate history and rivalries of its own in the shadows of the globally conspicuous Sino–Indian competition. The two consider themselves great powers and expect to be treated as such, but their ambitions overlap across Tibet and South Asia.

Here’s a relatively recent readout of how the big-power geopolitical tensions played out in the region, with smaller countries dragged into the frame. In 1951, after the People’s Republic of China annexed Tibet, the Central Intelligence Agency-assisted Tibetan resistance Khampa movement was strangely “headquartered” in Nepal’s remote Mustang district bordering Tibet.

By the mid-1950s the Tibetan Chushi Gangdrug army had already defined the PLA as a threat to Tibetan national security, but the intervention of the US government provided external confirmation of the threat that China posed to Tibet. The covert nature of US military assistance to the Tibetans, however, meant that this external validation was not presented to the world.

Its first batch of guerrilla trainees was recruited from Kalimpong in India, driven over by the CIA and then-Pakistani personnel via the Chicken’s Neck to the Kurmitola military air base (now Dhaka International Airport), where they boarded an unmarked plane to the western Pacific Island of Saipan. There, CIA instructors provided them with a four-month training in guerrilla warfare, intelligence gathering and transmitter operation before being “parajumped” into Tibet.

More recently, in 1971, East Pakistan became an independent Bangladesh, changing the South Asian geopolitical map once more. In the Liberation War, the world powers either sided with Pakistan or the forces that wanted independence from Pakistan. Owing to the immense influence of the US on the United Nations Security Council, its continuous rejection of the escalation of conflict entangles India with barriers to full military measures in the battle. The US interests stemmed from its alliance with Pakistan, especially during the proxy war in Afghanistan. On the other side, the USSR was not shy in supporting the Bangladeshis, particularly in defending their maritime areas. India fought in favour of the Mukti Bahini against Pakistan. China, on the other hand, supported Pakistan for numerous reasons, “including the deterioration of China–India relations due to the 1962 border clashes, and the importance of the Indian-Subcontinent for superpower politics.” Only in 1975 did Beijing finally recognise Bangladesh.

Unsurprisingly, small states in the Eastern Himalaya – Bhutan and Nepal, which once wielded significant influence in the region – live with deep small-state insecurities in the crowded corridor. That means the two states and Bangladesh need to constantly navigate geopolitical headwinds in a region where India has been a traditional hegemon while China has made significant inroads. The rise of India and China in recent decades offers both opportunities and challenges to smaller states. Nepal sees itself as the oldest continuous nation-state in South Asia and believes it has come this far because of its history of balancing big-power competition. Nepal has never been colonised by any foreign power and loathes to be seen as taking sides, which baffles some in India.

As much as the Eastern Himalaya conveniently constitutes a South Asian subregion for policymakers in distant capitals and multilateral agencies, the communities in the region are bound by a complex history of trade, conquests and nation-building, as well as migration, including that of wildlife. The region, consequently, presents an entirely different mosaic when viewed from the ground. To the geopolitical gazers, it’s a sensitive territory facing massive security challenges. To anthropologists, historians and those who live here, it’s a fluid borderland with mongrelisation of identities, both an entry point and a transit point, and a home to communities from extremely diverse backgrounds.

Therein lie its paradox and complexities. But so does its magnificence.

Excerpted with permission from In the Margins of Empires: A History of the Chicken’s Neck, Akhilesh Upadhyay, Penguin India.