The 1961 Sikkim subject regulation and ‘indirect rule’ in Sikkim: ancestrality, land property and unequal citizenship

Abstract

This paper discusses the principles behind the 1961 Sikkim Subject Regulation, the first citizenship law framed in Sikkim. It explores the historical construction of the entanglement of ‘ancestrality’ with land property and political membership, which is central to the issue of citizenship in Sikkim today. It shows how categories of citizens were formed in colonial and post-colonial time, in particular the division between ‘natives’ (Bhutia and Lepcha) and ‘settlers’ (Sikkimese Nepalis). With the revision of the Regulation in 1962, land property and ‘ancestral’ settlement became central criteria to acquire Sikkim Subject status. The paper shows how land property have become a materialisation of belonging to the place, and highlights the inequalities that the dependency created between insidedness and land property engendered. It also argues that a sole analysis of these inequalities in terms of ethnicity is insufficient by showing that other factors have taken part in forming them.