Bhutan: Gross National Happiness or Gross National Hypocrisy?

Other Face of Bhutan Uncovering the Truth By 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 cruel 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 24 years, despite the so called Democracy (2008) and Gross National Happiness, 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 seven classes of citizens, silenced by fear, evicted by force, many families are torn apart inside and outside Bhutan. Even those who have settled into new lives in the United States and elsewhere, and are trying to turn the page and move on, are rankled by what they perceive to be the Royal government’s concerted effort to erase these facts from the world’s collective memory. 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. After the establishment of monarchy in 1907 through 1950s, the Royal government recruited droves of people from Nepal and India to help clear the forest and build infrastructure by giving 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 and cardamom that gave instant economic advantages to the Lhotsampa. Misfortune started for the Lhotsampa when Raja Sonam Tobgay Dorji died in 1953, followed by the assassination in 1964 of 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 made policies to contain the rapid progress of the Lhotsampa and integrate them in the national mainstream. But when the fourth king ascended the throne in 1972 after the death of his father, he systematically pushed the agenda to reduce the Lhotsampa population. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, as a part of the One Nation, One People policy, a national census was administered that sought to denationalize Lhotsampa by segregating them into seven categories of citizens using various insidious methods. This crackdown stripped genuine Bhutanese, mostly innocent farmers who had lived in Bhutan for generations, of their citizenship and rendered them stateless virtually overnight.  After the Lhotsampa were evicted, 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 being changed to ethnic Buddhist names, and prayer flags are being raised on the hills and mounds. What do these unfurling flags whisper in the winds? Do they speak of happiness, or of a modern-day Buddhist “Inquisition?” Is Gross National Happiness true happiness if it elevates one ethnic group at the expense of another under iron hands? It begs to question the Buddhist conscience of the former king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the country and the people including those who enjoy the properties of the Bhutanese refugees suffering in exile. Trying to bring a closure to this long standing issues and allow the victims to move on, the cry for Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Bhutan is becoming louder among the Bhutanese in exile that may draw the attention of the international communities.
Submitted by Dick Chhetri,From US Press Association.