Sikkim Locals Fume as India-Nepal Climbers 'Defile' Sacred Kangchenjunga

Army team breaks taboo of stepping onto peak of mountain sacred to Buddhists

- Debarshi Dasgupta

KOLKATA - It was in May 1955 that a British mountaineering team successfully climbed Kangchenjunga, the world's third-highest mountain at 8,586m, for the first time.

But members of this expedition did not step onto the peak of the mountain on the border of Nepal and India. They instead stopped about 1.5m short of the summit, in deference to the wishes of locals in the region, who venerate this Himalayan mountain and did not want the climbers to sully its sacred peak by stepping onto it.

More than 70 years later, locals in the small Indian state of Sikkim, which lies in the heart of the Himalayas between Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet, are fuming over a mountaineering team having done just that.

A team comprising representatives from the Indian and Nepalese armies scaled Kangchenjunga's peak in two waves on May 19 and 20, as part of the Indian government's Har Shikhar Tiranga (Hindi for "A Tricolour Atop Every Peak") initiative aimed at hoisting the Indian national flag on the highest point in all 28 Indian states.

The expedition, which flagged off on March 26, was organised by the National Institute of Mountaineering and Adventure Sports (Nimas), which functions under India's Ministry of Defence and is based in the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh.

As the Indian side of the mountain remains closed to climbers, the team approached it from Nepal.

Nevertheless, the ascent to the top of Kangchenjunga has angered locals in Sikkim, particularly members of the Bhutia and Lepcha communities, most of whom are Buddhists and consider the mountain as a guardian deity who has watched over them and their land for generations.

"They have defiled the sanctity of our Kangchenjunga," said Mr Tseten Tashi Bhutia, the convenor of Sikkim Bhutia Lepcha Apex Committee (Siblac) - an organisation that represents the rights and interests of these two communities - and a former minister with a previous state government in Sikkim.