Truth Commission for Bhutan
Om Pokwal
Alias: Dick Chhetri
Perfectly presented to the outside world, the Kingdom of Bhutan is known as the land of “Gross National Happiness,” a place where government policy purportedly prioritizes the emotional and spiritual well-being of its citizens above the country’s gross domestic product. Not only are individuals impressed when they hear about it, organizations and even entire countries are beginning to discuss the concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH) and how they might apply it at home, though doubts have inevitably been raised about the practicality of how a nation’s happiness might be measured.
The United Nations (UN) has discussed at length adopting a “new economic paradigm” based on GNH, and has even declared March 20 the International Day of Happiness. The West seems to have accepted the former King Jigme Singye Wangchuck’s Gross National Happiness campaign without question, even though the Bhutanese people have barely heard of it, much less experienced it.
It should come as no surprise to find that behind this government-proclaimed happiness lurks a distinctly less rose-colored reality: For the Lhotsampa, a large ethnic minority of Nepali origin who have been the victims of a surprisingly little-known (outside Bhutan) ethnic cleansing campaign, the last three decades have brought little happiness.
Beginning in the late 1980s, over 100,000 Lhotsampa—Bhutanese citizens of ethnic Nepali origin majority of whom belonged to Hindu religion—fled or were forced out of Bhutan. Forbidden from using their language, wearing their ethnic dress, and celebrating own traditions as part of the government’s edict known as driglamnamza, the Lhotsampa naturally felt that their very culture and identity were under attack.
The brutal government policy led to a backlash in which factions of Lhotsampa people—especially youths, their passions running high—burned their government-imposed Drukpa clothing and committed some acts of violence. While the overwhelming majority of Lhotsampa did not advocate violent tactics, the Royal government nevertheless, placed both guilty and innocent into one ethnic bandwagon, branded them as anti-nationals and illegal immigrants, and drove them out—a staggering one-sixth of the country’s total population— using most cruel and savage methods such as public beatings.
Most of the Lhotsampa, having nowhere else to go, ended up in UN-operated refugee camps in Nepal. Today after almost 25 years, the Lhotsampa who were somehow able to remain in Bhutan continue to be treated as second-class citizens, many remain incarcerated in the Bhutanese jails, and while most of those who fled or were forced to flee have by now found refuge in third countries such as the United States, many more still languish in the refugee camps. None have been allowed to return to their homes and villages in Bhutan. Divided by the letter F (F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7) into classes of citizens, persecuted by ethnicity, evicted by force, many families are torn apart inside and outside Bhutan with no hope of family reunion due to fear and absence of diplomatic relations between Bhutan and the host countries.
Even those who have resettled into new lives in the United States and elsewhere, and are trying to move on, are rankled by what they perceive to be the Royal government’s concerted effort to erase these facts from the collective memory of the world. Bhutan has, in fact, rewritten history in such a way as to frame the Lhotsampa as recent, illegal immigrants to the country that had in reality been their homeland for generations.
Historically, the Lhotsampa inhabited Bhutan’s southern regions going back to the era of British rule over India. Bhutan ceded its greater plains (Duar areas) inhabited by ethnic Nepalis to India in 1865 (treaty of Sinchula). After the establishment of monarchy in 1907 through 1950s, the Royal government recruited droves of people from Nepal, Sikkim and India to help clear the forest and build infrastructure by offering free land in the southern foothills. The land that was extremely rugged and malaria infested then, is now the “food bowl” of Bhutan, with cash crops like orange, cardamom and spices that became envy to rest of the nation.
Misfortune started for the Lhotsampa when Raja Sonam Tobgay Dorji (Raja ST Dorji) died in 1953, followed by the assassination in 1964 of his son, Jigme Palden Dorji, known as the first Prime Minister of Bhutan who was the architect of resettling the Lhotsampa in Southern Bhutan (which the Dorji family had been overseeing since the 1920s and advising the monarchy since its inception).
It was in the mid-1960s when the third king, Jigme Dorji Wangchuck noticed the vast progress of Lhotsampa and made policies to integrate them in the national mainstream with incentives such as rewards for intermarriages between Lhotsampas and Drukpas. But when the fourth king ascended the throne in 1972 after the untimely death of his father, he systematically pushed the agenda to reduce the Lhotsampa population by any means.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, as a part of the One Nation, One People policy, the Royal government administered national census (black census) that sought to denationalize Lhotsampa by segregating them into seven categories using various insidious methods. This crackdown stripped genuine Bhutanese, mostly innocent farmers of their citizenship and rendered them stateless virtually overnight. Their properties were confiscated or compensated (for a dime on a dollar) and forced out of the country. Then, the Bhutanese government busied itself with “resettling” Bhutanese from the North, East and West onto the land and into the homes in the South that had belonged to the refugees. Even the names of the villages, towns, and landmarks are now being changed to ethnic Buddhist names (my village, Surey is now called Jigmecholing), and prayer flags are being raised on the hills and mounds of Southern Bhutan.
What do these unfurling flags whisper in the winds? Do they speak of happiness, or of a modern-day Buddhist “Inquisition?” Is Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness true happiness or is it a Gross National Hypocrisy? It has elevated one ethnic group at the expense of another under iron hands of the government, while lies have been told to the outside world using highly orchestrated international campaign with media under control. This begs to question the Buddhist conscience of the former king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, his Royal Government and the people especially those who had been enjoy ing the properties of the Bhutanese refugees who are suffering in exile or committing suicide.
Despite being a victim of public beating (including members of family), separated from mother and siblings for years, it is a reality that that I see of late that some positive forces are working inside Bhutan. The benevolent new king, the onset of Democracy and theoretical concept of Gross National Happiness, successful third country resettlement program give us new hope. And the hope is to form a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Bhutan and begin a healing process. Reciprocal family reunion visitation permits must become a diplomatic priority as an important human rights issue so that the older generation will find some solace in the commission, the younger generation can find a way to move forward and become productive citizens.
Truth, forgiveness, healing and peace are at the heart of both Buddhist as well as Hindu religion which, in this case applies to both sides, and if it did, it would be a new dawn in the history of Bhutan and its people towards happiness, progress and prosperity for generations to come.
For and on behalf of all Bhutanese outside and inside Bhutan who support a peaceful path forward.
(Refined and reproduced with permission from the author who gives pre-approval for any media to reproduce this article without changing the content.)