Bhutanese resistance to its own mistakes
Not only in modern times, relation between Bhutan and Nepal, had been historical since Tibeto-origin lamas permanently settled in Bhutan, who, earlier to their departure to Bhutan, had maintained close relation with Nepal. The history begins with the marriage between two royal families of Nepal and Tibet long before Nepal came into existence. The historical events like construction of two Buddhist monasteries in Bhutan – Kichu Lhakhang in Paro and Jampe Lhakhang in Bumthang – and similarities in crafts and arts speaks the existence of cordial relationship between the two Himalayan kingdoms.
However, the relation grew up colder after the Druk regime began the planning to evict its Nepali origin citizens, settled in southern Bhutan for centuries. The long term strategies for clearing the southern belt had begun as early as neighbouring Sikkim collapsed its sovereignty into greater India.
Controlling the progress of this community had begun in the reign of third king Jigme Dorji when he crashed the democratic movement in early 1950s and drowned its initiator Mahasur Chhetri into Manas river. Thence, 'the two nations are rarely on good terms' as Karma Phuntsho writes in the openDemocracy.net. Whereas, Buddhism originated in Nepal, there are no enough reasons for Bhutan to avoid relation with Nepal citing differences in culture and religion. Practically, Buddhism and Hinduism are not considered to have divergent philosophy except that Hinduism have caste system while the Buddhism not. Culturally, Bhutan has closer links with Tibet in China and Nepal with its southern neighbour India.
Karma said, " To many Bhutanese, Nepal is an example to avoid" which he cited the reasons to be political strife and instability in Nepal. Ironically, if Bhutan had avoided nearness with Nepal due to political instability and endless political strife, India, with which Bhutan has the closest relation, is not the exception of political turmoil and conflict.
Bhutanese rulers always avoided changes and devolution of power. With the succession to the throne, each ruler tightened their grip over state power and centralised the state authority. The current royal lineage had come to power ending a principally democratic system in 1907, prior to which the head of the state was elected by the local rulers through voting. Peter Collister in his book 'Bhutan and the British' stated that the second king of Bhutan had advised the British viceroy in India to kill Mahatma Gandhi so that movement for liberation of India would be easily crushed. The little democratic reforms introduced by third king Jigme Dorji have been made mere royal gadget to converge the state authority within the palace.
The biggest fear with the Bhutanese power players to maintain relation with Nepal and regard the southern Bhutanese as the true citizens of the country is cause by the invisible cliché of 'greater Nepal'. When Sikkim was merged into greater India, the Nepali origin people here were blamed for the merger. Contrarily, the Chhogyal ruler of Sikkim saw its interest to surrender before India than to accept surmounts of Sikkimese.
Bhutanese rulers are not different than the Chhogyals. When I met an editor of a leading Indian daily recently, he quoted the Bhutanese king as saying that for him surrendering power to India would be better than fulfilling the demands put forward by the southern Bhutanese at the start of the democratic struggle in 1990.
Ironically, the Bhutanese rulers have felt in recent years that people power is the highest and unless they are given the right to rule, existence of monarchy and country many eventually fan out. The writing from Nepalese writers has ample examples of their critical approach to the Bhutanese king, specifically king Jigme Singye Wangchuk but until the eviction began in 1990, none of the southern Bhutanese had neither criticised the acts of the king nor had they spoken against royal authority.
Older generation of the southern Bhutanese community regard the king of the land they live in as the 'reincarnation of lord Bishnu' the top of the hierarchy of all the gods Hindus pray. King's photo was kept alongside idols or god-pictures in their prayer rooms. In most festivals, celebrations used to begin with reverence or offering to the royalties.
The story of greater Nepal gradually took stronghold after the visit of then Nepalese prince Gyanendra to Bhutan in 1985, when he is learnt to have approached the young Bhutanese king for matrimonial relation between the two royal families. Bhutanese elders recollect the government orders to stop the eating of cow meat during that time. Unwritten accounts of the old Bhutanese people say that the royal families had nearly reached an agreement of matrimonial relation if use of cow meat is avoided in Bhutanese culture. While Hindus regard cow as symbol of goddess, Bhutanese take cow as their chief source of meat.
The stand of the present Bhutanese king, who had run to Gelephu in southern Bhutan in 1975 after Sikkim was ceded to India to say that neither the people in south are from Nepal nor they belonged to Sikkim or Kalimpong in India, took a U-turn after the Bhutan visit of then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1985. In reality, India never desired the warming relation between these two Himalayan kingdoms. Since then, Bhutan's inclination to Indian authority had further grown, even allowing the Indian soldiers to set up camps in Thimphu and in northern borders, the Indian interest to resist the encroachment from north.
Nepalese writers would have portrayed King Jigme as a narcissistic potentate whom his people fear and who persecutes his adversaries ruthlessly, but never by the southern Bhutanese until they faced crash and evicted out from the country. On contrary, Bhutanese writers refer the writings afore eviction stories by Nepalese writer but never had they attempted to refer the reverence that southern Bhutanese paid to Bhutanese king before 1990. Even today, the evicted Lhotsampas have never taken the support of Nepalese criticisms to present themselves as true Bhutanese. Specifically, Lhotshampas are more critical of the political system and Bhutanisation policy through 'One Nation One People' propaganda than what Bhutanese king does personally.
After 1990, King Jigme has never visited southern Bhutan to access the situation, rarely to the eastern region. No doubt, he led Bhutan into modernisation, his faith does no exists with all of the citizens. Suppression upon eastern and southern Bhutanese still exists in the country. Voices are silenced at gunpoint and fear exists in these communities that any demonstration or speaking against the ruler may result into shooting, harassment, torture or even eviction.
The refugee issue
The criticism from Nepalese writers grew stronger as Bhutan denied accepting the evicted people are its citizens. This is not due to nearness of Nepali ethnicity but normal practice of reaction from host country where Bhutanese have been living as refugees for the last 17 years. While Bhutanese king had told that only 33 percent of the refugees are originally Bhutanese evicted forcefully, the verification by the Joint Verification Team of Nepal and Bhutan governments has proved that more than 75 percent of these people have evidence to prove their Bhutanese citizenry. The example of portraying a child, who had born in camp, as carrying criminal activities in Bhutan is ample to prove unfair verification by the team. Quoting Karma would become more reliable:
" The verification of 12,183 residents of Khudunabari camp by the JVT revealed that only 293 were forcefully evicted from Bhutan, 8,595 emigrated voluntarily and 347 fled after criminal activities. The remainder (2,948, i.e., almost a quarter of the total) had no links to Bhutan."
Bhutanese writers repeatedly state that all of the southern Bhutanese had entered Bhutan after development activities begun in 1960. Contrarily, they never state the history that Lhotsampas had entered as early as 1624 or even before. The British travellers to Bhutan and British political officers in Sikkim in late 19 th century have stated in their annual reports that population of Nepali origin people in Bhutan had reached over 100,000 by the end of that century. They also stated that normal family size of this community goes up to a score and were growing faster, posing threats to the existence of other ethnic groups. The following exemplified Karma's utopian fear of ethnic dominance:
"To effectively address the refugee crisis, the geopolitical situation in the region when the crisis began around 1990 must also be considered. Nepal was then exuberant and tumultuous with its new-found democracy, having stripped then King Birendra of power; Sikkim had Nar Bahadur Bhandari at its helm; and the Darjeeling hills were being turned into an autonomous Gorkhaland by Subhash Ghising. The fervour of Nepali dominion and nationalism was at its peak."
The horrific treatment upon the southern Bhutanese and promulgation of the 'One Nation One People' policy is instigated by the reports of the British travellers and visiting officers. On the other hand Bhutanese rulers and writers argue that most of the southern Bhutanese had arrived Bhutan in 1960s and Bhutan's low population density, fertile farmlands, free social services and sustained economic growth attracted them. But they fail to mention the cost of free labour provided by these late migrants.
Old people in the camps in Nepal and inside Bhutan recounts the days since 1960s when they freely contributed labour to the national development. Until 1990, each household in southern Bhutan had to send one strong male member of the family for wage-free labour in development activities initiated by the government. Such free labour extended up to three months a year, even during the harvesting seasons in the southern Bhutan. The government had never asked the people from northern or eastern Bhutan for such wage-free labour service. The southerners are yet to get paid for their service.
Demonstrations organised by Bhutan People's Party in 1990 were never violent but dispatch of armed forces to villages terrorised the situation. Murder of divisional administrator of Gelephu in southern Bhutan was only the single act of violence on part of the underground operating party but such murder, torture, rape, shooting, custodial deaths and immolation of southern Bhutanese by the armed forced were not brought into scene. In many cases, government posed the shot dead body by the security forces as the act by protestors. Thimphu considered the peaceful demonstration for political reform and guarantee of human rights 'an armed rebellion seeking to overthrow the ruling regime' and appeal for justice as act of treason.
The tradition of free labour was initiated by Lhendup Dorji in early 1960s when he was prime minister. Closely related to Chhogyals of Sikkim, Dorjis, given the authority of administration in southern Bhutan by the king, were based in Kalimpong in West Bengal, India. Though murdered by royal spies in 1964 in Phuentsholing in southern Bhutan, Bhutanese royals continued to draw enough economic benefits from southern Bhutanese from the projects initiated by Dorjis. Ironically, after the eviction of Nepali speakers terming, them as illegal immigrants, number of Indian migrant workers in development projects and other sectors in Bhutan, has immensely increased. Obviously, settlement by these workers is unavoidable if they continue to get job inside Bhutan.
For an Oxford man, it would be illiterate to state that half the population born in exile does not belong to Bhutan. Birth and death is natural phenomenon but the population had reached as high as 95,000 in early 1993 itself. In a latest survey by Association of Press Freedom Activists – Bhutan, it has been revealed that birth rate in camp is somewhere between 3 and 4 while the average birth rate in Nepal is around 3. Of late, population-increasing rate in the camps has slacked due to people not marrying even when they get matured or increasing death rate due to poor health facilities.
Delay in finding a solution of the refugee crisis has increase frustration among the desperate youth population. The division among the political parties and disunity among the refugee leaders add fuel to this frustration. The offer of the US government to resettle some 60,000 of the refugees has made this rift much wider.
The international offer for settling the refugees has come forth after several appeal of the Bhutanese regime of downsizing the Lhotshampa influence in Bhutanese politics by taking part, most the educated youths, to elsewhere. Certainly, blame goes to the Bhutanese government for the delay. Had Bhutan taken initiatives to solve the crisis, it would have ended before political instability reached the climax. The denial of the Bhutan government to sit for talks in Kathmandu as invited by Nepalese deputy prime minister recently vividly shows the Bhutan's lack of interest in finding a solution of the crisis. As agreed, bilateral talks between Bhutan and Nepal are held alternatively in both the countries. The 15 th round of talks was held in Thimphu and the 16th should have been in Thimphu. While giving bribes by Bhutanese royalties is a normal practice, even using Indian influence, Nepalese ministers are not the exception to accept such offer. Thus, Bhutanese in exile and their friends have no faith that this round of talks would make a breakthrough.
Bhutan's democratisation
Democracy is not given but is achieved. In Bhutan, King Jigme says he wants to give democracy to his citizens. The draft constitution has centralized most power within the monarchy and the political parties are regarded mere players of his interests. This would be democratic not more than it is practiced in Gulf countries where members of the royal families or relatives head the political parties and occupies most government positions. Thus, Bhutan's is a pretending democracy, which does not regard people as truly sovereign and powerful. Needless to say that Bhutanese king will continue to embark with giving away powers till people become aware of the real practice of democracy and questions are raised against him.
Certainly, 'Bhutan's political evolution from an absolute monarchy to parliamentary democracy is proving, so far, to be one of the most unique and smooth processes of democratisation in our times' lack of inclusion of all ethnic groups existing in Bhutan in the process of democratisation would make Bhutanese democracy a half-baked egg. This is a democracy for the king and his loyal followers but not to the people.
Solution
The refugee crisis is not a humanitarian crisis, but a political and human-rights problem. Neither India nor Nepal or the international community should share the burden created by the Bhutanese ruler. Bhutan is sole responsible for this but initiation by the UNHCR and a few western countries to give place for settling more than half the refugee population could be a most realistic solution of the protracted crisis. Still, the international community must understand that majority of the refugees should be able to repatriate to their homeland.
Source: www.peacejournalism.com