what special measure have been adopted to safeguard sikkim religion and cultural identity
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Answer:
The first legislation defining the conditions of recognition as legal members of the kingdom of Sikkim was the Sikkim Subject Regulation 1961. Its primary purpose was to ‘define clearly the status of Sikkim subject and to make provision for acquisition and loss of such aforesaid status’. 1 The law solely concerned the conditions of access to (and loss of) ‘citizenship’, whereas the subjects’ rights – voting, access to land property and scholarships – were defined in other legal documents.
The Sikkim Subject Regulation emerged in a context of political tension in the kingdom: following Independence, India had become more closely involved in Sikkim’s affairs; at this point Sikkim still retained its autonomous status, although India inherited the British control over its foreign relations as formulated in the 1950 Indo-Sikkim treaty, through which Sikkim was officially declared as a protectorate of India. This context saw the emergence of party politics inspired by India’s post-independence democratisation, and the opposition challenged both the monarchy and the ‘landlord system.’ 3 Thus the imperative to define the legal members of the kingdom became pressing, as highlighted by an exchange of questions among council members at the Sikkim Council on 15 May 1956. Sonam Wangchuk from the Sikkim National Party referred to the difference between ‘Sikkimese’ and ‘non-Sikkimese’ in relation to scholarships, suggesting that these should be reserved to ‘Sikkimese’.