Good Morning India:Good Luck, Omar Abdullah

Media Pulse

Much has changed in Bhutan since 1998 when King Jigme Singye Wangchuk curtailed his powerful monarchy by yielding to the formerly rubber-stamp legislature, giving it the right to remove him from leadership and appoint his cabinet. The move was the most significant step to date in a gradual programme to dilute the monarchy after nearly a century of absolute rule. For those familiar with Bhutan’s history, the most significant part of the process of gradual democratisation has been an end to almost 300 years of virtual isolation with the lifting of the ban on television and the introduction of Bhutan’s first ISP Druknet as well as gradual urbanisation and political restructuring aimed at eventually increasing Bhutan’s significance and role in international affairs.

For a nation that safeguarded its isolation to the point of paranoia, this significant break in tradition was ironically not a result of a gradual social awakening taking the form of a revolution but the end result of an extreme and largely unprecedented xenophobia that also put almost a third of the country’s population in exile. Bhutan is known to its inhabitants as Druk Yul, (the land of the dragon), after the Buddhist Drukpa Kagyu sect that first united it. The Buddhist peoples who inhabit its highland areas are known collectively as Drukpas. Some 19 languages are spoken throughout Bhutan, and three main ethnic groups—the Ngalong in the west, the Sharchhop in the east, and the Nepalis in the south—comprise perhaps 85 per cent of the total population. The Sharchhop and the people of central Bhutan have their origins in the east of the kingdom. They were conquered by the Ngalong, who came from Tibet, early on in Bhutan’s history. All now show a fair measure of cultural unity as Drukpas. They share the same religious faith and speak closely related languages, although the Ngalong tend to dominate the region politically, and their language, Dzongkha, is the national language.

The Nepali-speaking people of the south were settled in Bhutan from the late 1800’s onward. Most of them practise Hinduism, although some are Buddhist. In 1958, the ‘Lhotshampa’ (Nepalese) population of the southern districts of Bhutan was granted Bhutanese citizenship and tenure of its lands.

The Bhutanese government later pursued a policy of integration that met with considerable success: having allowed the south to run its own affairs for decades with minimal contact with the north; the Government began to train Nepali Bhutanese for government and for some years even offered a cash incentive for Nepali-Drukpa intermarriage. Thus, the Nepali Bhutanese began to play a more important role in national life, occupying some senior positions in the administration and sometimes even representing the kingdom overseas. Paradoxically, this policy, instead of making the Nepalese population an integral part of the Bhutanese structure led to a heightened perception of the Nepalese community as an alien entity that threatened the cultural as well as political presence and dominance of the traditional Drupka community, specially the Ngalong, or central Bhutanese which, though not a majority in numbers nonetheless were considered the elite that monopolised most positions of power and authority in the country.

As a result of this concern, the Government of Bhutan embarked upon a programme of marginalisa-tion of the Nepalese community.

Bhutan’s Sixth Five-Year Plan (1987-92) included a policy of ‘one nation, one people’ and introduced a code of traditional Drukpa dress and etiquette called Driglam Namzhag. The dress element of this code required all citizens to wear the gho and the kira, in the following contexts—inside and outside Dzong premises (fortress-monasteries now used as centres of district administration) at all government offices, at schools, monasteries, at official functions and ‘public congregations’. Another significant move by the Government was to strengthen the role and status of Dzongkha in national life and a downgrading of the role of the Nepali language generally and its removal from the syllabus of schools.

The Government introduced in 1988 a new Citizenship Act having retroactive application and fixing 1958 as the cut off date for citizenship. This Act became the basis for the so-called census exercise carried out only in the southern districts in 1988, in which every household of the southern population had to produce documentary evidence of having legal residence such as land tax receipt of 1958, or else be a non-national.

Politically, it was all an exercise in absurdity as the overall effect of Driglam Namza and series of other repressive measures and discrimination against the Nepali-speaking southern Bhutanese made them feel like second class citizens in their own country. The introduction of the new Citizenship Act of 1985 with retrospective action, and the subsequent census exercise in 1988 that converted a large segment of southern Bhutanese citizens into illegal immigrants instilled fear and political unrest amidst the southern Bhutanese for the first time. This ultimately became the basis that led the Lhotshampas to campaign for their rights and freedom.

A petition seeking a review of the 1985 Citizenship Act and the manner in which the census was carried out and other Government policies was sent to the king by Tek Nath Rizal, who then was the Royal Advisory Councillor and people’s representative from the south. But his appeal was taken by the King as an act of treason. Consequently, Rizal was imprisoned and tortured on charges of inciting the southern Bhutanese against the Government. A week later, on condition that he did not attend any public functions or speak to more than three persons at a time, Rizal was released under amnesty by the King. Distressed at the way he was treated, Rizal soon fled the country to join dissidents and mobilise support in exile.

On July 7, 1989, Rizal formed the "People’s Forum for Human Rights in Bhutan" (PFHRB) in exile (Nepal) and started campaigning against the gross violations of human rights in Bhutan. The Bhutan People’s Party (BPP) was formed by Nepali Bhutanese in India in June 1990. With the PFHR, it organised mass public demonstrations in southern Bhutan in September and October 1990 that were unprecedented in the Kingdom’s history. The demonstrators submitted a list of 13 demands for radical changes in the political system as well as basic civil rights.