the unknown refugee crisis: expulsion of the ethnic Lhotsampa from Bhutan-Dr Dhurba Rizal

Asian Ethnicity, Volume 15, Number 2, June 2004
The Unknown Refugee Crisis: Expulsion of
the Ethnic Lhotsampa from Bhutan1
DHURBA RIZAL
(United Nations University, Tokyo)
Bhutan has been strained by ethnic conflict. The Lhotsampa, one of the three largest ethnic
groups, have sought a system of equality under which they would be allocated what they
need as an equitable share of Bhutan’s polity and economy. The ruling Drukpa elites
perceived the Lhotsampa as a threat to their dominance and initiated policies to oppress
or force out the Lhotsampa and others through ethnic cleansing. Bhutan’s ethnic conflict
and the refugee crisis it has produced are the outcome of ethnonationalism clothed in the
slogan of ‘One Nation, One People’, and the contrived mechanisation of the ruling elites.
The policies of these elites have effectively disenfranchised people who were born in Bhutan
and have lived there for generations as citizens, for no other reason than their ethnicity.
This is an issue not just for the Lhotsampa of Bhutan but also for any groups at the
receiving end of an ethnically repressive order. The Lhotsampa case illustrates some
characteristics of human-rights violations in situations of ethnic strife.
KEYWORDS: Bhutan, ethnonationalism, refugees, resettlement, militarisation, ethnic cleansing
Introduction
Early in the twenty-first century, Bhutan has an ignominious title. Bhutan is the source of
more refugees fleeing their homeland to escape persecution than almost any other country
in the world. This news is likely to surprise most people worldwide. In the 1990s, media
reportage on refugees continued to tell of refugees fleeing countries in Eastern Europe and,
today, the focus is on refugees fleeing from countries in the Middle East. But concerning
what is probably the world’s largest recent refugee exodus, from this small kingdom
perched on the Himalayas between India and China, it is the flow of refugees rather than
the flow of news about them that has poured out. Here ‘ethnic cleansing’ is alive and well.
It is pursued by a political elite of the now dominant Drukpa Kargupa sub-sect of Buddhism
to expel mostly the Lhotsampa people of Hindu tradition, who this elite fears threaten its
hold on national power and its assertion of Drukpa supremacy.
In this paper, I shed light on the virtually untold tragedy that continues for more than
100,000 Bhutanese people of Nepalese origin who today live in exile, mostly in United
Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)-administered camps in eastern Nepal.
This is the consequence of an abrasive intersection between layers of ethnicity, religion and
sect—of what happened when a socio-political elite, dominated by Ngalung Drukpa, gained
1 This paper is based on extensive research by the author, a Bhutanese refugee in exile for more than a decade.
The views expressed in this paper are the author’s alone and are not to be taken in any way as representing
the viewpoint of the United Nations University.
ISSN 1463-1369 print; 1469-2953 online/04/020000-00  2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/1463136042000221861
152 Dhurba Rizal
a firm hold on the levers of national power in the late 1980s. The still dominant Drukpa
elite has pursued a policy of stringent, self-serving, ethnosectarian nationalism to unify
the country under the catchcry, ‘One Nation, One People’. This has compelled the exodus
of ethnic Lhotsampa and people from other minorities who are aggrieved by deep
discrimination, social ostracism and political suppression. Some have had no choice but to
leave, being cast officially as illegal immigrants. This has created the crisis of Bhutanese
refugees.
I begin with a brief political and ethnodemographic overview of Bhutan, before turning
to consider the origins and nature of ethnic conflict in Bhutan and its causes. I then turn
to the position of the ruling elite towards the Lhotsampa refugees, considering resettlement,
bilateral talks and the possible militarisation of refugees. In the conclusion, I offer ideas
about a possible future path for Bhutan which retains ethnic diversity, and benefits from this
diversity, under a democratically elected government.
A Brief Overview of Bhutan
Bhutan is an independent, sovereign and indivisible kingdom ruled officially by an absolute
monarch. It is landlocked, nestled in the heart of the Himalayas and sandwiched between
two Asian giants—the People’s Republic of China (Tibet Autonomous Region) to the north,
and the Republic of India (Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and West Bengal states) to the south,
east and west, respectively. The Nepalese border is about 100 kilometres to the west. Burma
is further away in the east. Bhutan has long been part of the political disputes and border
confrontations between India and Tibet, and between India and China after establishment
of Tibet as a Chinese autonomous region. Hence, Bhutan is in a geostrategically and
ethnically volatile region.
The King of Bhutan is the head of state and of government. There is no national
election, as the monarch’s rule is hereditary. Each family has one vote in village-level
elections, although universal suffrage to elect local leaders was begun in 2002. The king
functions as the supreme court of appeal and appoints all high-court judges. There are no
legally recognised political parties in Bhutan, but many political parties and pressure groups
are operating from exile to try to democratise the state. There is no bill of rights or written
constitution, and although the King commissioned a committee to draft a constitution in
2001, the draft is yet to be approved.
Bhutan first moved toward a constitutional monarchy in 1969 when the then king (father
of the present king) surrendered the monarch’s veto power over the National Assembly. The
National Assembly was established in 1953 but, until this surrender in 1969, its operations
were completely subject to the king’s veto power, which the present king reclaimed over
the National Assembly after he ascended to the throne in 1972. The unicameral National
Assembly or Tsogdu is the legislative branch, with 150 seats: 105 elected from village
constituencies, 10 representing religious bodies, and 35 designated by the monarch to
represent government and royal interests. Members of the National Assembly serve for
three years. The Council of Ministers, the Lhengye Shungtsog, which is appointed by the
monarch and approved by the National Assembly, manages day-to-day administration.2 The
National Assembly approves the Council of Ministers and its members serve fixed,
five-year terms.
Bhutan is the least populated country in South Asia, although the precise population is
unclear, since data are discrepant. Most information sources that present a population figure
2 Even though the King has devolved executive power to the Council of Ministers (the Lhengye Shungtsog) to
function as head of government, the King is still seen as the fulcrum and locus of power.
The Unknown Refugee Crisis 153
for Bhutan—including scholars, the government’s Planning Commission, and the UN
Population Reports—offer a figure somewhere around 1.4 million. This figure may be too
high, however, since the ruling elites have manipulated population figures to serve their
own political purposes. I suggest that a more accurate figure is somewhere in the range of
800,000–900,000, recognising the full extent of the Bhutanese population now living in
exile outside Bhutan.
Bhutan is a multi-ethnic state, where ethnicity and religion have major import. Ethnic
groups of different religious faiths, and some of different religious sects coexisted under the
monarchy in relative peace, with occasional tensions, for about 97 years. Ethnic conflict—
or more accurately ethnoreligious conflict—has flared after the Drukpa sect gained strong
influence over national policy through the monarchy in the 1980s and rigidly pursued a
divisive ethnosectarian form of nationalism under the banner of ‘One Nation, One People’
to entrench Drukpa dominance. The four broad, but not necessarily exclusive, ethnic groups
are the Ngalung, the Sharchop, the Lhotsampa and several indigenous peoples. All three
main ethnic groups—Ngalung, Sharchop and Lhotsampa—have a distinct identity, shaped
by geographic origin and based on culture and religion.
The Ngalung are people of Tibetan origin who migrated to Bhutan from the ninth
century. They are often referred to in foreign literature as Bhote (people of Bhot or Tibet)
and are concentrated in western and northern districts. The Ngalung introduced Tibetan
culture and Buddhism to Bhutan and comprise the dominant political and cultural element
in modern Bhutan. They speak Dzongkha, which is now the national language.
The Sharchop, who are recognised as Bhutan’s earliest inhabitants, can be traced to the
tribes of northern Burma and northeast India and comprise most of the population of eastern
Bhutan. Although the biggest ethnic group in Bhutan, the Sharchop have been assimilated
to a certain extent into the Tibetan–Ngalung culture. They speak their own language, called
Tsangla.
The Lhotsampa, who live mostly in southern Bhutan and speak Nepali, are the Nepalese
ethnic group whose forebears came to Bhutan from Nepal through ‘step migration’ from
Darjeeling, Sikkim and adjoining areas of northeast India. The government of Bhutan
attempted to limit immigration and restrict residence and employment of Nepalese to the
southern region. However, liberalisation measures in the 1970s and early 1980s in response
to Nepalese action encouraged intermarriage, provided some opportunities for public
service, and allowed more in-country migration by Nepalese seeking better education and
business opportunities.
The indigenous tribal peoples live in villages scattered across Bhutan. They include the
Kheng, Brokpa, Lepcha, Tibetan, Adhivasi and Toktop, all of which are on a much smaller
scale than the three major ethnic groups. Some of these ethnic groups are culturally and
linguistically of Tibetan or Indian Buddhist tradition, while some are influenced by the
populations of West Bengal or Assam and embrace the Hindu social system.
Thus, as a multi-ethnic state, Bhutan is multilingual—with as many as 20 languages
spoken—and multireligious. Mahayana (Kargupa) Buddhism is pursued mostly by the
Ngalung, the Sharchop follow another sect of Buddhism, called Nyingmapa, which is quite
distinct from Kargupa, and the Lhotsampa practice a form of Sanatan Hinduism akin to the
form dominant in India and Nepal. The Drukpa who now form the dominant political elite
are a sub-sect of the Buddhist Kargupa.
The potential of such linguistic, religious and other cultural diversity to divide—or be
manipulated to divide—Bhutanese society has made ethnicity constantly a major concern in
building and maintaining nationhood in Bhutan. Until the early 1980s, the government’s
response to this concern was to try to achieve peaceful accommodation of the ethnic mix
with some reconciliation towards protest by activists who felt national policy disadvantaged
154 Dhurba Rizal
their ethnicity. But when the Drukpa elite gained powerful influence over national policy
through the monarch, it pursued a different, sectarian approach to maintaining nationhood.
It intensified an incipient programme of national unification through ‘One Nation, One
People’ to induce and compel conformity with Drukpa Kargupa culture and tradition. The
most divisive issue in Bhutan from the late 1980s with the assertion of the Drukpa elite has
been accommodation of the Lhotsampa, who the Drukpa fear on the basis of their cultural
difference from other ethnic groups in Bhutan, their religious difference from the nation’s
Buddhist ethnic groups, and what at that time appeared to be the rising proportion of
Lhotsampa within the Bhutanese population.
Officials claimed at that time that the Ngalung, Sharchop and tribal groups constituted
up to 72 per cent of the population, and the remaining 28 per cent were of Nepalese origin.
However, demographic statistics are controversial in Bhutan. As I noted above, ruling elites
have manipulated the population figures for their own political purposes, so all demographic
data need to be treated with caution. As proportions of Bhutan’s population in the late
1980s, estimates for the Ngalung vary from 10 to 25 per cent, for Sharchop and Kheng from
30 to 40 per cent, and for Lhotsampa from 25 to 53 per cent.
Whatever the ethnic composition of Bhutanese society at that time, it is important to ask
what inspired this dramatic, divisive and, for Lhotsampa and some other minority people,
dislocating shift in national policy? What policy measures has the elite used to align
citizenship with ethnicity, to force expulsion of those who it sees as a threat? What
triggered the shift in power relations between the monarchy and others holding influential
positions such that a group from the Drukpa could take the reins of national policy and seek
to ‘ethnically cleanse’ the nation? What is the perception of the Drukpa elites about their
legitimacy to assert Drukpa supremacy and enforce it as national policy? And what has
happened to the Lhotsampa and others who have been forced to leave their Bhutanese
homeland? Let us turn here to consider the deep roots and complex causes of the conflict
that has reconfigured the ethnic, cultural and religious fabric of this nation, particularly from
the late 1980s.
The Origins and Nature of Ethnic Conflict in Bhutan
Bhutan has a long history of ethnic and sectarian tension, and a short history of multi-ethnic
coexistence. After centuries of struggle between Tibetan and Indian political influences and
religious rivalry among Tibetan and Indian Buddhist sub-sects, Shabdrung Thuchhen
Nawang Namgyal united the country under a theocratic independent government in the
seventeenth century. From then until 1907, Bhutan had a dual system of shared civil and
spiritual (Buddhist) rule, and the Drukpa sub-sect emerged under the Shabdrung family as
the dominant religious force. In 1907, an absolute monarchy took control of the nation
under the powerful Wangchuck family, with Ugyen Wangchuck in the position of Druk
Gyalpo, or Dragon King.
Traditional Bhutanese society did not make distinctions between society, polity and
religion. Bhutanese were tribal in social organisation, Lamaist in faith and mediaeval in
their overall orientation. These traditions have now been eclipsed, but they have bestowed
a rich heritage upon the contemporary nation.
Strong Tibetan influence over the locus of national power and dominant Buddhist sect
presented potential for ethnic and religious tension as people from Nepal with Indianinfluenced
traditions and religion came to settle in Bhutan. Nepalese settlers can be traced
to the period of Shabdrung rule. There are frequent references in historical literature to the
migration of Nepali artisans to Bhutan during the reign of Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyel
The Unknown Refugee Crisis 155
in the seventeenth century, although today it appears that no Lhotshampa family can trace
its roots that far back in time.3
In the late-nineteenth century, the Gurung and the Dorjee families were granted
permission by the government to settle Nepali migrants in southern Bhutan. In 1887, the
then ruler of western Bhutan in Paro jointly granted Garjaman Gurung and his father
Dalchan Gurung settlement rights in perpetuity to what is present-day Samchi. In the last
decade of the nineteenth century and first decade of the twentieth century, other Nepali
settlers populated the present district of Chirang, which was administered by the Dorjee
family from Haa in western Bhutan, who were then based in India.4
In 1909, John Claude White, British India’s Political Officer for Sikkim and Bhutan,
noted that, ‘The remaining inhabitants are Paharias,5 the same as those in Sikkim, who are
creeping along the foothills and now form a considerable community extending the whole
length of Bhutan where the outer hills join the plains of India. With the exception of the
Hindu Paharias, Buddhism is the religion professed throughout Bhutan.’ In 1932, a British
officer reported 60,000 Nepali-speaking inhabitants in the southwest of Bhutan. Lhotsampa
who migrated from Nepal to Bhutan cleared forest in Samchi and Chirang and burned the
Gaylegphug and Samdrupjonkhar areas for farmland. These areas were densely forested and
had been considered unsuitable for clearing by the Drukpa because of what they saw as the
lands’ malarial condition. Since settling in southern Bhutan, the Lhotsampa have largely
retained their language, religion and other aspects of traditional culture. The lifestyles of
Lhotsampa thus differ starkly from those of the other main ethnic groups.
Under monarchical rule, the seeds of ethnic conflict have been evident in Bhutan from
the 1950s. The ethnic Lhotsampa have long sought what they believe is an equitable share
of Bhutan’s economy and polity and set up the Bhutan State Congress, Bhutan’s first
political party, in 1952. The Bhutan State Congress pushed ahead with demands for
democratisation, seeking citizenship rights and political representation for Lhotsampa
settlers. The Ngalung minority perceived this development as a threat to its control over
Bhutan, and still refers to this development as ‘the first anti-national revolt’. In a policy of
accommodation, the Bhutan National Assembly enacted the Nationality Law in 1958 and
granted Bhutanese citizenship to Nepalese immigrants.
King Jigme Dorji Wangchuck (1952–72), the third king of the Wangchuk dynasty, was
conscious of the pluralistic nature of Bhutanese society and the imposition of Drukpa
hegemony on the nation’s political, social and cultural affairs. He attempted to move the
country in a limited way towards secularisation. This was a significant step given the
complex nature of Bhutan’s socio-economic, socio-political and socio-religious frameworks,
and the position of the king in Bhutanese society.
However, the present King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who inherited this position on his
father’s death in 1972, has taken the nation in a different direction. He began his reign with
some moves that were consistent with those of his father; in the late 1970s and early 1980s,
he established Hindu temples and Sanskrit Pathsala in southern Bhutan among numerous
measures for national integration. Yet, from the late 1980s, national policy was given a
complete turn, with reassertion of Drukpa dominance and the King apparently giving the
3 Interviews and informal discussions between the author and a cross-section of Bhutanese people, including
leaders, students and refugees inside Bhutan and in exile (in Nepal and India) in 2002–2003. These interviews
were mostly through informal telephone discussions and a questionnaire survey through e-mail to collect
information from inside Bhutan. I also made several visits to border towns in southern Bhutan to conduct
interviews.
4 Michael Hutt, Unbecoming Citizens: Culture, Nationhood and the Flight of Refugees from Bhutan (Oxford
University Press, New York and New Delhi, 2003).
5 The hill people of Nepal are generally referred to as Paharias. The Lhotsampa migrated to Bhutan from various
hilly regions of Nepal.
156 Dhurba Rizal
Drukpa his support or at least his acquiescence. Aspects of the Drukpa Kargupa sect of
Buddhism were adopted in national policy as the core of the nation’s religion, symbols,
values, lore and legend, and abstract and material forms of heritage were imposed on other
ethnic groups as the Bhutanese national heritage.
In the 1980s, the Bhutanese ruling elite, believing their identity threatened by absorption
of a growing Nepalese minority promulgated a cultural policy of driglam namzha, ‘national
customs and etiquette’. This policy sought to preserve and enhance Bhutanese cultural
identity and bolster Bhutanese nationalism. The policy mandated wearing national dress for
formal occasions and required the Lhotsampa to undertake months of training in Drukpa
traditional etiquette and dress as mandatory requirements for employment. It was accompanied
by a shift in language policy, requiring use of the official language, Dzongkha,
in schools and offices. In 1989, teaching Nepali as an optional language in schools was
prohibited. Further government decrees intensified conflict with ethnic Nepalese, who
sought to maintain their own identity and viewed these edicts as oppressive. Ethnic tension
increased as the after-effects of Nepal’s pro-democracy movement spread to Bhutan, where
Nepalese communities demonstrated against the government in a bid to protect their rights
from the driglam namzha and ‘One Nation, One People’ policy. Political groups in Nepal
and expatriate Nepalese groups in India morally and culturally supported these anti-government,
repressive activities, which further alienated the Lhotsampa Bhutanese inside Bhutan.
The regime in Bhutan has exploited regional and ethnic divides between north, east and
south and has magnified differences between Buddhist traditions. This style of ‘divide and
rule’ through ethnic exploitation of the Bhutanese people has forced ethnic Lhotsampa in
Bhutan to tolerate humiliation and hardship. These circumstances very much support the
claims of Fred Riggs about monarchical rule in traditional societies:
As sovereignty was vested with king and emperor, whose supernatural powers were brought to
bring promises of health and wealth to all people under their rule, revolts were viewed as
sacrilegious provocations more likely to bring divine retribution than worldly benefits. Traditional
hierarchical nations legitimized gross inequities among different cultural communities
and castes or class.6
National integration programmes implemented in the 1980s were cast as fostering
harmony and mutual understanding between different ethnic communities. Yet, as the
slogan ‘One Nation, One People’ implies, government policies sought explicitly to compact
all ethnic groups into a single cultural strand. They were to promote national integration,
national consciousness and national identity to profoundly reshape Bhutanese society and
national identity with Drukpa values and traditions. The government embarked here on a
programme of what Smith has called ‘vernacular mobilization’, in which the ‘genuine
membership’ of the ethnic nation was to be re-educated in the ‘true culture, the pristine
culture of their ancestors, unsullied by contact with modern civilization’.7
Achieving ‘genuine membership’ in the Bhutanese case also meant taking steps to
identify and expel many people in Bhutan by denying them legal status. By 1988, the
authorities’ fear of Lhotsampa dominance inspired the conduct of an official census
exclusively in southern areas, where the Nepalese constituted a majority, precisely for this
purpose.
Given the purpose of these moves toward ‘national integration’, incorporating a form of
ethnic cleansing to achieve ‘genuine membership’ of the ethnic nation, it is no wonder that
these moves inflamed ethnic tensions between Bhutan’s ethnic groups. The moves also
6 Fred W. Riggs, ‘The Rise and Fall of Political Development’, in S.C. Long (ed.), The Handbook of Political
Behavior, vol. 4 (Plenum Press, New York, 1981), p. 25.
7 Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origin of Nations (Blackwell, Oxford, 1986), p. 151.
The Unknown Refugee Crisis 157
intensified the cultural, political, social and economic marginalisation of the Lhotsampa,
just as they were designed to do. Lhotsampa responded with peaceful democratic protest to
have the newly implemented laws repealed. But instead of giving the protestors a
sympathetic hearing and trying to alleviate their grievances, an insensitive national government
cracked down on the demonstrators. It carried out a series of arrests and atrocities
against the Lhotsampa and forcefully evicted them from their homes and land. As the
violence and atrocities escalated, the Lhotsampa began to flee Bhutan simply to save their
lives, even though they had lived in Bhutan for generations.
Issues concerning immigration, population growth, cultural hegemony and individual
freedom coalesced in the elites’ antagonism toward the Lhotsampa. As a result, contemporary
Bhutan faces problems generated by ethnonationalism which mix ethnicity with social,
political, cultural and religious factors and produce some episodes of violence. The push for
democratic reforms from outside as well as inside Bhutan has further compounded the
problems confronting the ruling elites.
We see, then, how the current refugee crisis brought on by the fleeing Lhotsampa stems
from the insecure, feudal monarchial system ruling Bhutan. The dominant Drukpa elite has
perceived cultural and religious diversity as a threat to the regime’s hegemony and has
pursued policies of ethnic expulsion and absorption to try to eliminate this perceived threat.
The objectives of those who came to dominate the monarchial system from the 1980s are
to protect the interests of the Ngalung minority and entrench the Drukpa religious sect that
the ruling elite, who are largely from this minority, upholds. The interests of this powerful
elite are cast as the interests of the nation. Importantly, they have the monarch’s official
sanction. Thus, the attempts to Drukpanise Bhutan through ‘One Nation, One People’ and
driglam namzha indicate the state of the monarchical system and the nature of government
in Bhutan today. These developments signify the emergence of a national power centre that
is not within the monarch but is in the hands of a religiously motivated regime. It is a return
to practical theocracy, but in the name of the monarchy carried out succinctly through the
slogan of ‘One Nation, One People’.
Causes of Ethnic Conflict in Bhutan
As the discussion above reveals, the causes of the current ethnic conflict in Bhutan are
multiple and complex, deeply entrenched in ethnicity, language, religion and citizenship.
This conflict is very much a product of socio-economic and political transformation in
Bhutan from the 1980s. Especially from the late 1980s, the elites have manipulated state
apparatus to embed the trappings of the Drukpa Kargupa sect in national identity. They
have used political propaganda, scapegoating and exclusivist citizenship to demonise and
drive out the Lhotsampa and cultivate support from the Ngalung. But how did a small group
of traditionalist elites gain access to the levers of national power under monarchical rule and
position itself to rebuild a theocracy? Put simply, through marriage—marriage that brought
into the current monarchy what is claimed to be a pre-monarchical theocratic ruling family,
and importantly brought the Drukpa elites whom this family serves back into a position of
extensive influence over national policy through the monarchy.
King Jigme Singye Wangchuck supposedly married privately in 1979 four sisters who
are claimed to be descendants of the Shabdrung, the rulers of the theocratic system of
government that ran Bhutan until the monarchy came to power in 1907. This family was
of the Drukpa Kargupa sect. In 1988, to legitimise the eventual succession to the throne of
his oldest son, the King married the four sister queens in a public ceremony. The dramatic
shift in national policy following the public marriage in 1988 signals how this served
officially to legitimise the new elites’ access to national decision-making and gave them the
158 Dhurba Rizal
opportunity to dominate the monarchy. The almost total marginalisation of many royals
close to the late king and the present queen mother is further testament to this power shift
within and beyond the monarchy.
The public marriage into the current monarchy of the four sisters, who were presented
to the public as lineage of pre-monarchy Shabdrung rulers, created ethnic conflict over the
locus of state power. This marriage ultimately resulted in the new elite—with its pseudo
roots in an older ruling elite—consolidating its hold on economic, political, social and
military power. The new elite’s self-interested perspective of appropriate political and
socio-cultural conditions for maintaining the peaceful coexistence of ethnic groups in a
unified Bhutanese society has instead created the ethnic cleavages with which Bhutanese
society is now riven. This is due largely to elites’ narrow pursuit of self-serving policies,
especially on crucial issues such as national integration, political stability, ethnic harmony
and communal peace. In all these areas, the elites have failed to provide the political and
social space, where multiple voices from across the country could be expressed freely and
used to inform a broadly based national policy which respects ethnic diversity rather than
imposed and enforced mono-ethnicity.
The most widely held thinking has accepted cultural friction rooted in ethnic and
religious differences as the main cause of the nation’s ethnic conflict. This view accepts that
the Bhutanese government dominated by Drukpa–Buddhist Ngalung elites has responded to
fears that its Buddhist-based culture was being swamped by the Hindu traditions and
cultural practices of the Lhotsampa. However, another perspective contends that the real
causes of this conflict are born of the elites’ fears about losing political and economic
dominance more than losing cultural dominance. Below, I offer my explanation of the
causes of ethnic conflict in Bhutan, which is a synthesis of contributions from both schools
of thought.
Political Factors
Often, the main political factors which contribute to ethnic conflict derive from the failure
of the state to create effective and fair political institutions. Conflict and violence result
from clashes of interest when institutional arrangements deny fair representation across
society and allow domination by some political actors who reject the voice of others with
different needs and priorities in distribution and redistribution of resources. Deliberate
neglect of an ethnic group within the population or deliberate action to exclude or suppress
an ethnic group by those who run the political system are powerful motivators for ethnic
conflict. In Bhutan, we see how from the late 1980s the government’s approach shifted from
years of relative neglect to proactive exclusion and suppression. Let us consider how these
approaches are manifest in Bhutanese government policies and have intensified ethnic
conflict between the Bhutanese people in a bid to sustain the dominance of the Drukpa elite.
Nationality and Citizenship
The ruling elite from the 1980s has used citizenship as a powerful mechanism to exclude
or expel Lhotsampa and others of Nepalese origin. During the early 1980s, all adult
members of the Bhutanese population from age 18 years were issued with a printed
citizenship card. Citizenship in Bhutan is based on ethnic lines. After years of peaceful
struggle, the Lhotsampa were granted citizenship and some rights as citizens in 1958
through the Royal Edict on Lhotsampa Citizenship Act.
But the 1958 act has been revised or replaced a number of times. The 1985 Citizenship
Act currently in place states that Bhutanese citizenship can be acquired only by birth,
The Unknown Refugee Crisis 159
registration or naturalisation. For citizenship by birth, both parents must be Bhutanese,
instead of at least the father as required in the 1977 act and either of the parents as required
in the 1958 act. Citizenship by registration requires evidence of permanent domicile in
Bhutan on or before 31 December 1958. Citizenship by naturalisation requires fulfilling a
number of criteria that Lhotsampa farmers cannot meet easily, such as fluency and literacy
in the national language, Dzongkha.
The census I mentioned above, which the government conducted in 1988 only in the
Lhotsampa-dominated southern districts of Bhutan, sought to identify Bhutanese nationals
strictly in accordance with the provisions of the 1985 Citizenship Act. The census identified
the population under seven categories: Fl Genuine Bhutanese citizens; F2 Returned
emigrants; F3 Dropout cases (i.e. people who were not around at the time of the census);
F4 Children of a Bhutanese father and non-Bhutanese national mother; F5 Non-Bhutanese
national father married to Bhutanese national mother and their children; F6 Adopted
children; and F7 Non-nationals.
The Lhotsampa were asked to show 30-year-old land-tax receipts as proof of their
citizenship under the 1958 Act. However, since payment of land tax was mandated across
the country only in 1964, this requirement was particularly difficult for the Lhotsampa to
fulfil.8 The Home Ministry, which conducted the census and demanded the 30-year-old
receipts from the Lhotsampa farmers, was itself established only in 1968. Some observers
claim that that the requirements of the 1985 Citizenship Act would not have posed a major
problem if implemented fairly during the census, since most Lhotsampa have retained their
tax receipts.9 Yet after the census, even the Lhotsampa who had their 1958 receipts have
been evicted from Bhutan and with nowhere to go, most have been relocated in refugee
camps in Nepal. The intention of the census was clearly to weed out those who the
authorities saw as their unwanted demographic opponents. As testament to the ethniccleansing
purpose of the census, one can find in these refugee camps in Nepal some
Lhotsampa who still have their land tax receipts dated even before the establishment of the
Wangchuk Dynasty as Bhutan’s hereditary monarchy in 1907.
This episode of denial of rights to citizenship corroborates Brown’s claim that denial of
citizenship and the implicit equal rights that come with that status is a common source of
friction within multiethnic communities and often leads to demonstrations and even calls for
secession.10 Moreover, the 1985 Citizenship Act and subsequent government policies
directly contravene Article 15 of the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human
Rights which states: ‘Every one has the right to nationality. No one shall be arbitrarily
deprived of his [sic] nationality or denied the right to change his [sic] nationality.’11
Bhutan’s ruling elite has made citizenship a tool to exclude the ethnic groups that it fears,
rather than, as the UN decrees, a basic human right.
Marriage Laws
In conjunction with citizenship requirements, the government introduced strict marriage
laws in 1980 to have retroactive application from 1977. These laws involved punitive
measures against any Bhutanese married to a non-Bhutanese national, or such a Bhutanese
person who chooses to take this step. In these circumstances, the Bhutanese citizen is, from
8 ‘Resolutions of the Twentieth Session of the National Assembly’, Bhutan, Autumn 1964.
9 D.N.S. Dhakal and Christopher Strawn, Bhutan: A Movement in Exile (Nirala Publications, Jaipur, India,
1994), pp. 179–82.
10 Michael Brown, ‘Causes and Implications of Ethnic Conflict’, in Michael Brown (ed.), Ethnic Conflict and
International Security (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993).
11 See United Nations Universal Declaration, 1948, Article 15.
160 Dhurba Rizal
the day of marriage, denied promotion in government services, not promoted beyond the
rank of sub-divisional officer, ineligible for employment in national defence or the Foreign
Ministry, and ineligible to seek candidacy to contest election for the National Assembly or
any local government bodies. They are deprived privileges provided by the state such as
distribution of land, loans, medical treatment abroad and grant of investment capital. They
also forfeit their right to government assistance for education and training. These punitive
marriage laws provide a type of long-term reinforcement to the citizenship laws, particularly
since marriage is the site of reproduction of future Bhutanese citizens.
Mandatory Clearance Certificate
In September and October 1990, many Lhotsampa took part in a peaceful demonstration in
support of human rights and democracy in Bhutan. The government responded by clamping
down even more heavy-handedly on the Lhotsampa, introducing draconian new rules
requiring them to verify their status. It required all Lhotshampa to produce a No Objection
Certificate (NOC) or Police Clearance Certificate to obtain access to what is, for other
Bhutanese, their automatic rights as citizens. These include their children’s admission into
schools, promotion in the civil service, a passport, a state scholarship, eligibility to take
civil-service examinations and even to apply for jobs in the government service.
The NOC rule is still in force and eligibility for this certificate is tightly controlled. The
Bhutanese government declared as racist and anti-national not just the participants in the
1990 pro-democracy and human rights movement, but also all who sympathised with the
movement and those who opposed government policies. The government holds all these
people ineligible for the NOC. Even family members who did not participate in the
movement were also declared anti-national and were forced to leave Bhutan. Through this
draconian rule, the government effectively deprived several thousand Lhotshampa children
their right to education by denying them admission to schools.
The primary intention of the Bhutanese government in using these severe punitive
measures was to force out of the country an ethnic group which the ruling elites feared was
a threat not just to the Ngalung’s cultural fabric but also to the elites’ own hold on power.
The NOC is the most oppressive policy tool that the Bhutanese government has wielded and
is still in force.12 As the government intended, this tool has deprived the rights of
Lhotsampa Bhutanese as citizens.
The ‘One Nation, One People’ Policy
In the name of national integration and promoting Bhutanese nationalism, the government
has used the rhetoric of ‘One Nation One People’ to justify its policies of ethnic cleansing.
These policies seek to erode the culture, religion and language of the Lhotsampa, the
Sharchop and other minority ethnic, religious and linguistic groups to bolster the dominance
of the Ngalung people and the Drukpa sect of which the elites are part. The ‘One Nation
One People’ platform focuses on what the government claims is the need for a distinct
‘national identity’—an ethnically exclusive Kargupa Buddhist identity. This policy seeks
explicitly to purge Bhutanese society of its diversity by forcefully imposing Drukpa values,
customs, lore, symbols and traditions on a multi-ethnic and multicultural society. This
12 Human Rights Watch in May 2003 noted that still ‘citizenship status and government documents including a
“No Objection Certificate” are required for access to higher education, government jobs, movements through
the country, registration of land and trade licenses’. See ‘We Do Not Want to be Refugees Again’, a Human
Rights Watch Briefing Paper for the 14th Joint Ministerial Committee of Bhutan and Nepal, 19 May 2003,
p. 16.
The Unknown Refugee Crisis 161
Table 1. Representation of ethnic groups in key government positions (%)
Estimated
Director Share Royal Council Deputy
of National of National Ministers/ Advisory General/
Council Secretaries Ministers Director Population Assembly
Ngalung 10–25 51 80 89 67 100*
Sharchop 30–40 * 20 38 33 *
11 Lhotsampa 11 30–45 0 0 0
Total 100 100 100 100 100
*The combined figure for Sharchop and Ngalung.
Sources: Dhurba Rizal, Administrative System in Bhutan: Retrospect and Prospect (Adroit
Publishers, Delhi, 2002), pp. 120–9; UNDP List of Senior Royal Government of Bhutan
Officials, UNDP, Bhutan, July 2002; various issues of Kuensel (Bhutan’s national newspaper)
at http://www.kuenselonline.com.
policy attempts to make a nation not just of ‘One People’ but more diacritically of ‘One
Drukpa People’.
The Green-belt Policy
This policy initiative, put forward in late 1988, could not be implemented. It sought to
create a kilometre-wide green belt along Bhutan’s border with India, where human
habitation would be prohibited. The targets of this policy were in particular the people in
southern Bhutan, such as in the Chittagong Hill Tract of Bangladesh where the border with
India is longest. If this programme had been implemented, it would have resulted in
uprooting one-third of Lhotsampa people from their land and homes. The programme could
not proceed, however, since the intending donors refused to fund the project. While
environmentally sound, it was motivated by the ethnic overtones of the government’s
political strategy manifest in the ‘One Nation, One People’ posture.
The Structure of Political Institutions
The structure of the political system in Bhutan sustains domination of national policy
mostly by Ngalung elites. The law and implicit mechanisms severely restrict the participation
of others in the political system. The civil service, army, police, National Assembly
and other vital organs of government are all dominated by Ngalung elites and, if present
trends of patronage and nepotism continue, this domination will continue for decades. For
instance, if we look at who occupies positions in the vital organs of government from
Minister to Director level (Table 1), we see that representation does not reflect the nation’s
ethnic composition and is unjust.
Senior positions in the government are dominated by Ngalung and, after them, by
Sharchop. The representation of both groups in these positions is less than these groups’
shares of the national population. For the Lhotsampa, however, there is one single person
at director level to represent these people who constitute 30 to 45 per cent of the national
population. These data shed some light on how Ngalung, representing about 15 per cent of
the population, have suppressed and exploited the remaining roughly 85 per cent of the
population. Bhutan’s political system lacks the basic institutions needed effectively to
162 Dhurba Rizal
accommodate the needs of people from all sections of society. The Ngalung elites have used
the structure and regulations of the political system to marginalise the Lhotsampa from the
nation’s political institutions and to fuel ethnic discontent and resentment.
Economic Factors
Economic factors are important in ethnic conflict all over the world. The understanding is
usually that economic capacity can be directed towards actions against the government, so
governments aim for the economic weakness of their perceived opposition. The ruling elites
in Bhutan appear to have followed this logic. They have used their control over economic
policy levers and bureaucratic process to weaken those who they perceive as their
opposition, mostly the Lhotsampa, with discrimination put to work through multiple
channels. The Lhotsampa must produce a security clearance certificate to obtain licenses
from the government, to obtain financial loans and to undertake any business venture. As
noted above, these certificates are issued only to the Lhotsampa whose family members are
not living in exile and have not been involved in the democratic and human rights
movements. This makes it very difficult for Lhotsampa and others to pursue opportunities
for their own economic gain, and even for developmental activities and projects that would
strengthen the national economy.
The government is now pursuing an economic programme of market liberalisation and
privatisation of state assets. Yet this is benefiting primarily the ruling elites and their family
members and presents further opportunities to exclude the Lhotsampa economically.
State-owned enterprises were transferred to elites at throwaway prices to consolidate the
elites’ economic power. Crony capitalism is gripping Bhutan and is creating an island of
prosperity for wealthy elites midst an ocean of deep poverty. The UNDP Poverty
Assessment and Analysis Report of 2000 states: ‘The average income per person per month
is as low as [US] $1. There are widespread disparities between urban and rural poor
households…Regionally, the income of most blocks in the districts of Gasa, Trongsa,
Zhemgang, Trashiyangtse, Pema Gatshel and Samdrupzonkhar (primarily in eastern and
southern Bhutan), appears to be below the national average.’13 Economic marginalisation by
the ruling elites has contributed greatly to the creation of ethnic cleavages in Bhutanese
society.
Socio-cultural Factors
The cultural differences between ethnic groups in Bhutan have been abraded since the
1980s by government policies deliberately seeking to re-engineer culturally a society of
diverse ethnicity, culture, language and religion. Some apparently punitive moves, such as
the 1988 census, the citizenship and marriage laws, and the clearance certificates have
sought to fragment the polity on ethnic lines and expel those of ‘undesirable’ Nepalese
ethnicity. Other policies, especially under the ‘One Nation, One People’ slogan, have aimed
to drive away those who resist Drukpa Ngalung re-enculturation and to re-enculturate with
Drukpa Ngalung culture those who remain. The ruling elites believe that their Drukpa
traditions, culture and religious practices are superior to those of the Lhotsampa and other
non-Buddhist ethnic groups. They therefore do not recognise Bhutan’s ethnic diversity as
a potential source of strength, and they pursue ‘One Nation, One People’ to replace this
13 UNDP, ‘Poverty Reduction and Economic Development: Monitoring Poverty in Bhutan’, UNDP Discussion
Paper, October 2002, p. 2.
The Unknown Refugee Crisis 163
diversity with a monocultural society free of foreign intrusion and sources of resistance to
the regime’s policies.
Driglam Namzha and Dzongkha Language
Above, I noted how the government took up the strategy of enforcing driglam namzha for
all Bhutanese. This policy targeted Lhotsampa for ‘overnight’ assimilation into the Drukpa
fold, compelling them to adopt Bhutanese culture, tradition and social etiquette, with a
heavy monetary fine for non-compliance. This policy has sought to absorb culturally the
Lhotsampa within Bhutanese society and erode their identity as a distinct ethnic group.
Language policy that is also aimed to this end expanded the use of the Dzongkha national
language and banned Nepali from the school syllabus and other sites of crucial human
engagement such as offices and any site of government business including the parliament.
These cultural policies have far-reaching consequences for other ethnic groups as well as
for the Lhotsampa. The results of these policies have had onerous consequences for almost
all in Bhutanese society through contributing to the breakdown of ethnic harmony that for
decades underscored relative peace inside Bhutan. However, preparing the way for eventual
assimilation of non-Drukpa groups in south and east Bhutan was only part of the ruling
elites’ motivation for pursuing this feudal cultural policy of Drukpanisation. The elites had
another key reason for pursuing this policy: to undermine the unity of various groups and
interests opposing the regime.
Religion
In Bhutan, as elsewhere, religion is a crucial part of the identity of some individuals and
ethnic groups. As Querol has observed, religion can be a key source of individual or group
understandings of the appropriate relationship between authorities and individuals.14 Religion
and sect have long histories as sites of contestation in Bhutan, particularly between
Tibetan and Indian sources of influence. They have become contested sites again from the
1980s, while one of the main concerns that have troubled the influential Drukpa Buddhist
elite about the Lhotsampa and some other ethnic groups is their Hindu religion. The elite
has officially committed the nation to Drukpa Kargupa Buddhist ideology to try to weaken
the social and political order that holds the Lhotsampa together. However, this move has
triggered religion-based communal conflicts, religious fanaticism and the creep of religious
fundamentalism into local-level electoral politics. Indeed, the development of politics
shaped powerfully by religion and ethnicity is one of the main reasons behind the rise of
conflict in Bhutanese society.
The Drukpa Cultural Revivalism Movement
The actions of the elites concerning language, clothing, ‘customs and etiquette’ and religion
are all aspects of a Drukpa revivalist movement cultivated by the Drukpa elite since the
1980s. The movement seeks to reawaken Drukpa Kargupa faith and revive former Drukpa
customs and traditions such as driglam namzha. Recent trends suggest a government agenda
to purge Bhutanese society of its multi-ethnic, multicultural and multireligious richness,
recognising in this diversity what the elites see as unwanted cultural elements of ‘foreign’
(non-Tibetan) origin. Ethnic cleansing of the Lhotsampa is part of this move. The extreme
expression of Drukpa revivalism and Buddhist fundamentalism is in the changing of place
14 Marta Reynal Querol, Ethnicity, Political System and Civil Wars (Bellaterra, Barcelona, 2002), p. 5.
164 Dhurba Rizal
names to eradicate cultural traces of the Lhotshampa from state and public memory. The
Nepali names of places such as Chirang, Sarbhang, Samchi and Pinjuli in southern Bhutan
have been replaced officially with Drukpa-sounding names such as ‘Tsirang’, ‘Sarpang’,
‘Samtse’ and ‘Penjoreling’.
External Factors
Speaking broadly, the ruling elites’ concern about two nations, Nepal and India, is crucial
here. We can better understand this concern when we recognise that the current Bhutanese
elites are of Tibetan origin and Bhutan has for centuries been the site of tension between
those seeking to bring influence from Tibet and others seeking to bring influence from
Nepal and India.
Fear of Nepal
In contemporary times, the elites’ fear of people with Nepalese background in Bhutan was
sparked by three developments in particular. One was the Gorkha Land Movement which
pushed for a separate land for Nepali speakers in India in the 1980s. The second was the
so-called ‘Greater Nepal’ concept, a bogey to incorporate all Nepali-speaking areas into one
fold of Greater Nepal. Third, Bhutan’s royal elites, who are closely related to the Chogyal
royal family of Sikkim which is now an Indian state, also cite the example of how Nepali
speakers helped the Indian government to merge Sikkim with India.
Yet these fears in Bhutan about people of Nepalese origin are ill founded. The
Lhotsampa have never sought, nor plan to seek, to undermine the sovereignty and integrity
of Bhutan. To the contrary, the Lhotsampa are more concerned about maintaining the
sovereignty and integrity of Bhutan as reflected in many proceedings of the National
Assembly, and the Lhotsampa have continued to raise the issue of unequal treaty
agreements with India to seek a better outcome for Bhutan. Sikkim became a part of India
owing to its intricate geo-political location in relation to what at the time were frayed
Sino-Indian relations rather than due to the actions or support of Nepali speakers in Sikkim.
And while it is true that Nepali language provides an obvious connection between Nepali
speakers, the thread is weak. Notions of a Nepali Diaspora are culturally charged, but they
are not politically motivated as the ruling elites suggest. Thus, the elites’ strategy to play
the ethnic card by pitting ethnicity against ethnicity is a response partly to their own
misperception. The elites have inflated and manipulated this fear as a strategy which enables
them to dominate the monarch in national decision-making.
In the interests of its own survival, the ruling elite deliberately peddles this ill-founded
propaganda to the international community as well. One target are international aid donors,
from whom the Bhutan government seeks favour and material support. But the propaganda
is also to inform—or misinform—international audiences generally. It is to shut out the
voice of the Lhotsampa and others who are on the receiving end of the regime’s oppression,
and could expose to the world this regime’s ethnic cleansing and other actions that violate
human rights and international law. In helping to prevent these versions of the story of this
regime from reaching international audiences, the already severely limited knowledge of
Bhutan in the international community is further limited and distorted. And those outside
who would ethically oppose this regime as oppressor and would support Lhotsampa and
others as the oppressed are kept literally out of earshot. We could describe this as epistemic
oppression. It has contributed directly and indirectly to the current crisis in Bhutan.
The Unknown Refugee Crisis 165
Relations with India
Around two-thirds of Bhutan is bordered by India and, for reasons that are historical and
political as well as geo-strategic, Bhutan is highly dependent on India. India has played a
major role in shaping the public policy of Bhutan under an unequal bilateral treaty of 1949.
There are various perspectives on India’s role in Bhutan’s refugee crisis. A popular school
of thought holds that India has an explicit hand in creating and fuelling this crisis.
Numerous actions of the Indian government support this view, including:
• dumping inside the Nepalese border the Lhotsampa refugees who took shelter in the
Indian states of Assam and West Bengal after fleeing persecution in Bhutan, effectively
denying these refugees passage back to Bhutan through Indian territory;
• a hands-off attitude in bilateral talks with the Bhutanese government about the refugee
crisis;
• allowing an influx of more Indian people into Bhutan;
• extensive exploitation of Bhutan’s natural resources, particularly water resources, since
1990;
• arresting Bhutanese democratic leaders and activists against the spirit of the 1949 treaty;
and
• providing tacit support to Bhutan’s ruling elites at the cost of innocent citizens and
refugees.
The Indian government has turned a blind eye to the unfolding crisis and has been
off-hand in negotiating a workable solution and repatriation of refugees. This response
suggests that the Indian government may have a hand-in-glove relationship with the
Bhutanese government on this issue. The Indian government’s attitude of ‘hear no evil, see
no evil, speak no evil’ certainly may have inclined the ruling elites in Bhutan to believe
they could act with impunity in pursuing ethnically exclusive policies which, even today,
marginalise the Lhotsampa politically, economically and socially. Indeed, as unrest intensified
in Bhutan in the early 1990s, the Indian government pledged as much assistance
as it could to help the Bhutanese government deal with the problem and assured Bhutan that
it would protect India’s borders against groups seeking illegal entry to Bhutan.
India has its own compulsions in the region. The refugee problem presented a challenge
to India, which needed to balance its interests in maintaining Bhutan’s stability with two
other important needs. One was not to inflame nationalist fervour among India’s ethnic
Nepalese population and the other was not to upset India’s relations with Nepal or Bhutan.
These considerations were at least partly why the Indian government prohibited the use of
Indian territory as a staging ground for protests by Lhotsampa and others from Bhutan.
India appears unlikely to take serious action towards the crisis. However, a number of
scenarios could change this stance: if the crisis becomes militant with the help of insurgents
from northeast India; if Indian interests in the region are jeopardised; and if the Bhutan
government refuses in future to meet the Indian government’s request that it flush out
Indian insurgents from hideouts in Bhutan. If the Bhutan government refuses to serve the
Indian government’s interests, the latter is likely to weigh into the crisis, promote a
movement of Bhutanese exiles, and may move to establish a democratic government of its
choice in Bhutan, all of which provide a degree of compulsion for the Bhutan government
to comply with Indian government requests. In recent years, India has been under
international pressure to use its influence to achieve a satisfactory solution to the problem,
but what that influence will be and what it will produce remain unclear.
166 Dhurba Rizal
An Overall Assessment
What light does the above discussion of political, economic, social and external factors cast
upon the present circumstances of Bhutan and the crisis confronting the refugees who have
fled from there? We can see both as the outgrowth of a long-running struggle for fair
representation in the political, social and economic life of the nation that members of a
relatively large ethnic group consider as their legitimate homeland. These people, mostly
Lhotsampa but others as well, have been oppressed and marginalised on the basis of their
ethnicity, by the highest powers in their land. The struggle intensified in the 1980s—especially
the late 1980s—when a shift in power relations enabled by the sovereign king’s
marriage returned to the national helm people who were said to be descendants of the
Drukpa pre-monarchy rulers, strengthening the political hand of the Drukpa elite over
national decision-making. The Tibetan-origin, Kargupa Buddhist Drukpa were alarmed at
the growth of the population of Nepalese-origin Hindu Lhotsampa inside Bhutan. The now
Drukpa-dominated government feared that the Lhotsampa threatened to overwhelm the
ethnic, political, economic and socio-cultural balance in Bhutan’s society, particularly if the
Lhotsampa were allowed fair representation in the political life of the nation.
This government has chosen a far-reaching strategy of mono-ethnic sectarianism that
unequivocally rejects ethnic diversity. It has pursued policies of political exclusion,
exclusive citizenship and cultural conversion in an attempt to cleanse Bhutanese society
ethnically. It has manipulated fear to create deep socio-cultural cleavages among those who
remain in Bhutan. It has used populist tactics to gain support among the ethnic groups close
to these ruling elites’ own ethnicity. And it has attempted in many ways to mute dissent,
particularly through driglam namzha and language policy which truncate cultural and
political expression by those who are not of Ngalung ethnicity, by censoring the media and
by expelling perceived opponents. These actions are to assert and safeguard Drukpa
interests and consolidate the present regime’s hold over the nation.
Policies implemented under the ‘One Nation, One People’ slogan have sown seeds of
resentment, disharmony and confrontation. These policies have further institutionalised
discrimination and inequality, assigning explicit priority to Drukpa interests in every area
of political, economic and socio-cultural life. Thus, while these policies target ethnic
Lhotsampa, they also deliver severe blows to the aspirations for equality and justice on the
part of the Sharchop and some ethnic minorities. Consistently, the constitution proposed by
the current regime can serve only to institutionalise the inequalities perpetrated by the new
elite. Drafting of the constitution has never taken into account the needs or aspirations of
the Lhotsampa, despite their significant share of the national population. The ‘One Nation,
One People’ slogan has thus been used to license the regime to further the system of
oppression which entrenches the privileges of the Bhutanese elites.
Those who are part of the ruling Drukpa oligarchy project their self-serving actions as
legitimate. These oligarchs conveniently rationalise to the public that they are personally
entitled to national dominance on the basis of their lineage and superior rank, which they
claim is prescribed traditionally in Bhutanese culture. Their privileges are thus based on
ascription, but they are serviced by mythologised history and cultivated discrimination.
They may also be founded on outright deception. No compelling evidence has been
presented to the public to verify the claim that the kings’ four wives are truly of the
pre-monarchy Drukpa heritage, as the power-hungry Drukpa elites suddenly claimed with
the advent of the public marriage in 1988. Nor has there been evidence to verify the claim
about the king’s earlier ‘private’ marriage to the four sisters in 1979, which was not
announced to the public until the supposed ‘second’ marriage in public.
The peaceful resistance practised by the oppressed since the late 1980s suggests that
The Unknown Refugee Crisis 167
institutionalised inequality under this repressive order will invite continued attempts from
within and outside Bhutan to destabilise the regime. The ‘One Nation, One People’ platform
and the Drukpa-dominated proposed constitution exclude two-thirds of Bhutan’s population
from political participation and leave this large segment of society alienated. Relationships
between different ethnic groups are strained by mistrust and discrimination. Even today, the
oppression and persecution continue unabated in Bhutan, marginalising the Lhotsampa and
some others economically, politically and socially.
Such repression of many Bhutanese may have slid a ticking bomb under the social and
political privileges of the ruling Drukpa elites, who rule by force and live in fear that at any
time the potent instability that marks Bhutanese society today will ignite into revolutionary
fire. Meantime, there is another unresolved ‘problem’. The actions of the Drukpa regime
have not only left the nation an ethnopolitical tinderbox, they have left as stateless refugees
more than 130,000 Lhotsampa and others who have been forced to flee Bhutan.
Ruling Elites and Ethnic Lhotsampa Refugees
The present Bhutanese crisis is explained well by Smith, who has observed how the rise of
nationalism can force the flight of an excluded minority. According to Smith:
Whereas territorial nationalisms are content to endow their nation with a common history and
mass culture, such that people of different origin can join and participate in both, ethnic
nationalisms predicate shared history and culture on a myth of common ancestry, i.e. on
ethnicity in the narrowest sense… Here lie the seeds of a collective exclusiveness that so
frequently begets persecution and homelessness. Ethnic nationalism does not involve a
specifically racist component, but manages to exclude non-members and deny their rights,
while preserving their essential humanity. Instead of being exterminated, they are rendered
homeless… They are felt to constitute a threat to the continued existence and purity of the
emergent ethnic nation. They must therefore be denied citizenship in their own land, rendered
defenceless and homeless, and ultimately driven out.15
The case of Bhutan is practical testament to this general observation. From the late 1980s
in Bhutan, the rise of a regime pursuing stridently ethnonationalistic policies has forced the
flight from Bhutan of Lhotsampa and others of excluded minorities. It has rendered them
persecuted, defenceless, homeless, and has ultimately driven them out—while the authorities
pursue creation of the emergent Drukpa-dominated ethnic nation of Bhutan. A UNHCR
report claimed that in 2002, refugees from Bhutan numbered around 134,000.16 Another
report located these refugees with 110,800 housed in UNHCR-administered camps in
eastern Nepal, 21,200 taking shelter in northeastern India and West Bengal, and the
remaining 2,000 outside the camps.17 A Human Rights Watch briefing paper noted that the
refugees have experienced growing frustration, anxiety and a feeling of deprivation about
their lack of nationality, their uncertain future, their inability to pursue higher education and
their unemployment.18
Refugees and Resettlement in Bhutan
Former UNHCR Chief Sadako Ogata has spoken out about how the vast majority of
refugees are driven from their homes by human rights abuses. As she explains, ‘Persecution,
15 Smith, The Ethnic Origin of Nations, p. 153.
16 UNHCR, ‘Refugee Population 2002’, an annual report published by the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees (UNHCR, Geneva and New York, 2003).
17 These unpublished data were collected and compiled by the Bhutan National Democratic Party for internal use.
18 ‘We Do not Want to be Refugees Again’, p. 7.
168 Dhurba Rizal
torture, killings and the reprehensible practice of “ethnic cleansing” generate a huge flow
of refugees’. Her comment well describes the Lhotsampa and other Bhutanese refugees,
who from 1990 were driven from their homes by the oppression and persecution of the
Bhutanese government. Between one-fifth and one-seventh of Bhutan’s population now live
as exiles in the northeast of India, West Bengal and in refugee camps in Nepal.
Inside Bhutan, the government has undertaken a programme known as ‘resettlement’,
which brings people from other parts of the country to settle permanently on the lands
formerly owned and occupied by those who have been forced to flee. In June 1997, the
National Assembly rubber-stamped authority to ‘transfer’ population from the northern and
eastern parts of Bhutan to ‘resettle’ in southern Bhutan on the land of the Lhotsampa who
are now refugees mostly in Nepal. A high-level National Resettlement Committee was
formed to implement the resettlement programmes. The resettlement programme is deliberately
to prevent the return of the refugees and makes resolution of the refugee crisis more
complex and much more difficult.
In the first phase, as a pilot project the government announced resettlement in the south
of 370 landless Sharchop families from Trashigang in the east. The government selected
these Sharchop families for three reasons in particular. One was to win domestic support
for its ‘resettlement’ programme. Another was an attempt to legitimise its expulsion of
Lhotsampa through ethnic cleansing. The third was a bid to pacify the grievances of the
Sharchop, after many had staged mass protest meetings in the mid-1990s, and some
prominent Sharchop dissidents in exile had formed a political party to lobby against the
Bhutan regime from outside Bhutan.19
The government had already begun to distribute land left behind by the Lhotshampa in
Chirang, Sarbhang, Samchi, Dagana and other parts of southern Bhutan from the last week
of December 1997. In 2003, more than 70 per cent of the land belonging to those now in
exile had been resettled, covering most of five districts in southern Bhutan. Recently, an
additional 150 families have been brought into Samdrupjonkar, and about 600 families have
been promised resettlement in Samchi.20 People from the highlands were reluctant to settle
in the more tropical south, and the government paid cash to each selected household as
incentive to resettle. The government makes out that it conducts the resettlement programme
at the request of Nepali-speaking villagers. However, this is a wily fabrication. The
real objective is not to ‘settle the landless’, who have been landless since long before 1997.
This programme is permanently to prevent the repatriation of refugees and force them to
assimilate in Nepal. It is to form what is, for the ruling elites, a ‘demographic balance’
which enables them to consolidate the political, economic, social and cultural power of the
Drukpa sect.
The government’s actions therefore present a paradox. On the one hand, government
officers interview refugees and participate in bilateral talks for the refugees’ eventual
repatriation. But on the other hand, the government continues its resettlement programme
in southern Bhutan onto the lands of the refugees in exile. Another part of this picture that
reveals the government’s true intentions is the camps that it is establishing in Bhutan, where
it intends to keep the repatriated refugees. This situation is similar to the concentration
19 The president of the Druk National Congress, Rongthong Kinley Dorjee, is a prominent Sharchop dissident
from east Bhutan who helped to form the Congress as a political party in exile in 2000. In 2001, at the request
of the Bhutan government, the Indian government arrested him on charges of contravening the Foreigner
Registration Act, against the Indo-Bhutan Treaty of 1949, and he was placed under virtual house arrest. For
further discussion see my book: Dhurba Rizal, Administrative System in Bhutan: Retrospect and Prospect,
Adroit Publishers, Delhi, 2002, especially Chapters 3, 4 and 5.
20 Internal documentation of the Bhutan National Democratic Party (BNDP), Kathmandu, Nepal, produced for
Party use.
The Unknown Refugee Crisis 169
Table 2. Results of the JVT Verification of Khudunabari Camp
Declared jointly
by JVT and Number
endorsed of refugees
by Nepal Bhutan in each
Original Status Ministerial Committee category %
293 2.4 Bhutanese Bhutanese
70.55 8,595 Bhutanese Re-applicant Bhutanese (voluntary
migrants)
Bhutanese 2.85 Bhutanese with a criminal record 347
Bhutanese 2,948 Non-Bhutanese 24.2
12,183 100 Total
Source: Various Joint Press Releases issued by His Majesty’s Government of Nepal and the
Royal Government of Bhutan from 1993 to 2003; unpublished documents of the Bhutan
National Democratic Party (BNDP); various issues of Kuensel and Kathmandu Post.
camps that the Bangladesh government established for the tribal Jumma people. R.B.
Basnet, president of the Bhutan National Democratic Party (BNDP) noted of these camps
that it is ‘like moving from the frying pan into the fire. It is nothing but moving from one
camp to another. We are still refugees in our own country.’21
Bilateral Talks
By the end of February 2004, there had been 15 rounds of ministerial-level talks between
the governments of Bhutan and Nepal, and four at foreign-secretary level. These produced
little in the way of resolution. In October 1993, the talks led to a system for classifying
refugees under four categories,22 and the Joint Verification Team (JVT) assessment
(completed in mid-2003) of refugees in one camp, Khudunabari in Nepal, according to
these four categories. These categories are: (1) bona fide Bhutanese; (2) Bhutanese who
have migrated; (3) non-Bhutanese; and (4) Bhutanese who have committed criminal acts.
The Fourteenth Joint Ministerial Committee (JMC) meeting in Kathmandu in May 2003
agreed to a ‘settlement’ of the problem. But as the South Asia Analysis Group opined of
this meeting, ‘There could be no greater betrayal than what has transpired’.23 Here the JMC
agreed that the bulk of the refugees should be treated as citizenship applicants, not as
citizens. This has created tangled legal problems with domestic, regional and international
dimensions, problems that compound the issue of returning some refugees to what is now
‘resettled’ land but was previously theirs. If we take as an example the Khudunabari camp
chosen for the official refugee verification, almost all of the refugees (95 per cent in
Khudunabari) will be made stateless, even if they are repatriated, as we see in Table 2.
Only 2.4 per cent (293 people) of the 12,183 refugees in this camp were recognised as
21 ‘Refugees Aghast at Repatriation’, Kathmandu Post, 17 April 2003, p. 1.
22 See press releases of His Majesty’s Government Nepal, the Ministry of Home and Foreign Affairs, and the
Royal Government of Bhutan on bilateral talks from 1993 to 2003. Also check through http://www.rcss.org.
23 ‘14th JMC between Bhutan and Nepal at Kathmandu: A Raw Deal for the Refugees’, South Asia Analysis
Group, Note 186, 4 June 2003.
170 Dhurba Rizal
bona fide Bhutanese citizens, while 24.2 per cent (2,948) were classified as non-Bhutanese
citizens.
For those in Category 4, who are classified as ‘criminals’, the Bhutanese government
applies the draconian National Security Law (1992) and the Law of Thrimsung (penal code)
recognising any act of conversation and correspondence ‘criticising the King and the
government’ as a treasonable offence. Thus, people in this category who are called
‘criminals’ in autocratic Bhutan, we can also recognise as the forerunners of human rights
and democracy for Bhutan. All Bhutan’s pro-democracy activists are classified under this
category and will not get justice under the current regime. As dissidents, they will be treated
as ‘disloyal’ and purged, ostracised or marginalised in Bhutan.
Those in Category 2 will be able to reapply for citizenship, but their application will be
treated like that of any other foreigner seeking naturalisation under the 1985 Citizenship
Act. This act requires that a person applying for Bhutanese citizenship must have resided
in Bhutan for at least 20 years, must be able to speak, read and write Dzongkha proficiently,
and must not have acted against the king, country and people of Bhutan in any manner
whatsoever.
This means that the refugees will have to wait for 20 years as stateless persons to even
apply for citizenship. Naturalisation is not simply a matter of law but is the prerogative of
the government, so even after waiting 20 years, the refugees are not guaranteed citizenship
status. The government will apply its harsh, discriminatory laws against the refugees once
they are back inside Bhutan, and no one can protect the citizenship and human rights of
refugees. Thus, the bulk of the refugees could become stateless, perhaps indefinitely.
However, under intense international pressure, in the fifteenth round of the bilateral
talks in October 2003, the government of Bhutan accepted the classification of 76 per cent
of refugees in Khudunabari camp as Bhutanese citizens. It agreed to review the appeals
made by refugees classified under Category 3 as non-Bhutanese, and to repatriate refugees
under Categories 1, 2 and 4 by mid-February 2004. Yet as discussion in this paper has made
clear, the real intention of the Bhutan government is not to accept and reintegrate the
refugees back into Bhutanese society, but to maintain the new demographic balance
post-ethnic cleansing for as long as possible to consolidate this regime’s power. For
example, government officials created obstacles while reviewing the appeals of refugees
under Category 3 in January 2004 and simply returned to Bhutan. Today, they remain
evasive about their commitment to repatriate the refugees of the verified camp in
Khudunabari, and they have not even started verification in the six other camps.
The JVT is seen as a farce. The German Ambassador in Nepal claimed that the
agreement between the governments of Nepal and Bhutan on refugee repatriation involved
face-saving measures for the Nepalese government.24 As one who watches the Bhutanese
side, I believe the same can be said for the Bhutanese government. I recognise a number
of inherent weaknesses in the JVT report.
• The Report has huge inconsistencies. For example, it classifies more than 150 minors
who were not even born in Bhutan under the category of ‘criminal’ with their parents,
and for parents who have been categorised as non-Bhutanese and ineligible to return to
Bhutan, their children have been categorised as Bhutanese and are eligible to return and
reapply for citizenship.
• There can be no fair treatment of appeal. All refugee appeals are to be made to the same
body that denied the refugees their right to return to Bhutan.
• The procedure of verification and reporting of results was not transparent.
24 ‘Nepal Presented Face-Saving Way: Lemp’, Kathmandu Post, 17 July 2003.
The Unknown Refugee Crisis 171
• There is no guarantee that refugees who return to Bhutan will be treated fairly.
• Returnee refugees will be housed in places other than their own homes and lands.
• The UNHCR will not be involved in verification, repatriation and rehabilitation of
refugees.
• There is no indication of procedures for reintegrating refugees in Bhutan under prevailing
autocratic conditions.
The Bhutan government’s weak response and hands-off attitude intensify the problems
here. The past actions of this regime indicate that it had no genuine intention of reversing
its oppressive policies towards the Lhotsampa and others who it sought to expel or weaken,
such as the Sharchop. For instance, the Bhutan government rejects third-party involvement
in monitoring the refugee repatriation processes, so resettlement continues without monitoring.
The backdrop to repatriation of these refugees is, inside Bhutan, one of perpetual
repression: statelessness, proposed stay at concentration camps and eventual resettlement
somewhere in the country where, like all Lhotsampa, the returnees will be permanently
marginalised politically, economically and socially. This must raise fundamental questions
about the basic principle of refugee repatriation. Today, there are vivid examples of a
dreadful backlash against refugee repatriation, in the repressive feudal environment of
Myanmar (the Rohinya refugees from Bangladesh), Kosovo (the return of ethnic Serbs) and
Rawanda (return of the Hutu refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo). Even if the
refugees are repatriated, the present authoritarian regime will marginalise and deny basic
rights to those of Lhotsampa ethnic identity. It is therefore highly unlikely that the cosmetic
solution that the two governments have agreed to implement can bring a durable and
satisfactory resolve, let alone justice for the Lhotsampa refugees.
A solution satisfactory for all can be achieved only with the active involvement of the
UNHCR in verification, harmonisation, repatriation and rehabilitation of these refugees.
Exclusion of the UNHCR and any other non-political organisation in the verification
process will weaken the legitimacy of the process. One of the major challenges that the
refugees from Bhutan face today is that the UNHCR has a non-political mandate, while the
imperatives for verification and repatriation are not exclusively humanitarian, they are also
political.
I strongly urge that the UNHCR recognises the increasingly politicised nature of the
Bhutanese refugee crisis and becomes involved in the complete process of verification,
repatriation and rehabilitation of these refugees. This body should also become involved in
actively galvanising solid political support for the creation of an environment inside Bhutan
which is suitable for the returning refugees. The rationale of repatriating refugees and
maintaining at least their safety hangs under a heavy cloud until the influences of the ruling
elites are neutralised, those involved in ethnic cleansing are brought to justice, and
institutions are introduced to deliver a democratically elected government. The need of the
hour is to mobilise broader support internationally by calling on democratic countries such
as Japan, the US, India and countries of the European Union to make a firm commitment
to pressure Bhutan to introduce a fairly representative polity, as some governments have
done towards Afghanistan. The current bilateralism of this refugee crisis—marginalising the
UNHCR and repatriating refugees under less than satisfactory circumstances—is set to
diminish the hard-earned power accorded to refugees internationally, after years of human
struggle and suffering. It could also serve to circumvent the now internationally recognised
ethics of refugee repatriation, and to prevail over these people already subjugated by 14
years of oppression and expulsion from the homes by the same repressive regime to which
they will be subjected again.
172 Dhurba Rizal
Possible Militarisation of the Refugees
Militarisation is the accumulation of a capacity for organised violence and a will to deploy
it. Ethnonational militarisation has increased throughout the world in the last two decades,
particularly in South Asia, despite the expectations of some that economic development,
modernisation and continued globalisation would reduce both the practice of ethnonationalism
and the ethnic conflict it can produce. The passions awakened by ethnic nationalism
lead to militarisation as testified by the Palestinian Intifadas.
Ethnic wars have characteristics that distinguish them from other types of conflict. First,
ethnic wars usually last longer than other conflicts, as reasonable solutions are difficult to
achieve. Secondly, a main feature of ethnic war is the geographical distribution of ethnic
groups. When major ethnic groups of a nation belong to regions where they are the
dominant, geographic proximity helps to foster development of ethnic identity. For
example, the comparatively late evolution of the nationalistic surge of Tamil identity in Sri
Lanka can be attributed to the pre-independence (before 1948) isolation of the Jaffna
peninsula, where the population is 97.5 per cent Tamil.25 If an ethnic group has been
isolated historically and perceives it has little or no bargaining power, insularity may
strengthen the group’s demand for greater autonomy or self-determination.
The distinctly separate geographical isolation and cluster living in southern Bhutan has
contributed to strengthening Lhotshampa ethnoconsciousness, which by and large began to
emerge in the late 1980s in response to the regime’s actions directly against the Lhotsampa.
Fear about calls for a Gorkhaland for Nepali-speakers as a separate state across the border
in India may have triggered the Drukpa repression of the Lhotsampa population. However,
the expulsion of around one-seventh of Bhutan’s Lhotshampa population in the early 1990s
has only strengthened the Lhotsampa’s association with their ethnic identity. Deprivation
and the need to fight a common persecutor, as we see now with the Lotsampa, can trigger
collectivising around a shared identity that in turn can trigger militarisation. For instance,
when Palestinian refugee youth plunged into both of the Intifadas, this gave the Palestinian
refugees a sense of national cohesion that they had never experienced, which in turn
reinforced their desire to support the refugee youth who had taken up arms.
In the Lhotshampa context, we can see parallels with cases such as Kampuchea in 1978
for reclamation of land and home, the first and second Intifada in the West Bank and Gaza
protesting against occupying Israeli forces, Palestinian refugee warriors taking action
against protracted official inaction after waiting more than 50 years for a solution to their
dislocation, Hmong Hill tribes of Laos and Jumma tribes and Bangladesh protesting against
their forced integration, and the Sri Lanka Tamil Diaspora. All of these struggles have
pushed or pulled refugees to engage in conflict.
In the case of the Lhotsampa refugees, a key factor that could push towards formation
of a refugee movement would be protracted official inaction and unjust or unfair results of
the JVT in determining the refugees’ repatriation to Bhutan. Negotiations between the
governments of Nepal and Bhutan have so far produced little of substance, and refugees’
patience is wearing thin. The regional proliferation of national liberation movements
surrounding them may push Lhotsampa refugee youths towards forming an active refugee
movement. Lhotsampa have faced the prospect of forced cultural assimilation and resettlement.
Their desire to reclaim their homes and land is coherent and strong. Moreover, some
refugees have re-settled in foreign countries, and this may act as external support which can
be supplemented by regional ethnic Diaspora for weapons and training to refugee youths
forming militant groups.
25 For population data refer to the census documents published by the government of Sri Lanka.
The Unknown Refugee Crisis 173
My extensive interviews with refugee youths, adult refugees and refugee leaders, as well
as my observations and experiences for the last 14 years, reveal a latent militancy which,
at present, sits dormant and smouldering within the Lhotsampa people. They are naturally
frustrated at what they see as the unjust Joint Verification Team Report and endorsement
of it by the Fourteenth Joint Ministerial Committee meeting. My interviews with these
people have also revealed a clear divide between what the elder leadership expects of the
youth and how the youth see the future themselves. The elder refugee leadership has
advocated a process of peaceful dialogue for the past decade, but the refugee youth feel that
this has been fruitless. They believe the movement should adopt new strategies to achieve
a tangible political resolution to the problem. Many of the youth with whom I spoke felt
that their ethnic group had been severely discriminated against in Bhutan and expressed a
strong desire that ‘justice be done’. They expressed intense anger about their present
situation and indicated that they would not ‘sit around and wait forever for a fac¸ade of a
political solution’ to the present crisis.
My overall assessment of this situation based on conceptual and empirical work is that
there is some possibility the Lhotsampa youth will take up arms to become a militant group.
There seems to be very slim chance of the refugees assimilating with the host population.
The main considerations shaping my assessment include the following:
• The absence of strong leadership among the refugees may leave a vacuum that refugee
youth could attempt to fill by taking up arms.
• Many of the refugees are not well educated, which could delay both the further
politicisation and international exposure of their plight, which are crucial components of
effective militant activism. However, the Lhotsampa youth are relatively better educated
than their elders. And education may anyway not be such an important factor. Even
literacy levels do not necessarily play a major role in grassroots rebel movements, as
reflected by Maoists in Nepal and the Jumma of Bangladesh.
• The regions surrounding the camps are hotbeds of Communist and Maoist activities.
• Funding for higher education of refugee youths has been stopped from 2003. This may
make youths more susceptible to violence and extremist activities.
• Refugees are not allowed to work outside the camps, even though the standard of their
education and skills is higher than that of people in nearby communities.
• It is alleged that many Lhotsampa youths have joined the rank and file of the Maoists of
Nepal and are being trained by them. The Times of India reported in May 2003 that a
section of the refugee youths has developed close links with the Maoists. Members of this
group are frustrated with the failure of the decade-long movement by the Bhutanese
parties to achieve their repatriation. A new political party has been formed with the help
of the Maoists, after consolidating in Nepal. Despite a ban on all political activity in
Bhutan, the underground Maoists launched the Bhutan Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist
Maoist) and distributed pamphlets across Bhutan.26
• When viewed in the context of other refugee movements, we see that the Lhotsampa may
be just coming out of a stage of denial and deprivation and moving towards the next
stage—of anger and frustration at their situation, which they may choose to express
through militant action.
• We cannot know in advance what is the threshold of Lhotsampa anger, beyond which
they perceive militancy as legitimate because it is their only option. Certainly, the
refugees see as unjust and unfair the outcome of the JVT Report and endorsement of this
report in May 2003 by the Fourteenth Joint Ministerial Committee. This, or some other
26 The Times of India, Kolkata, 19 May 2003.
174 Dhurba Rizal
focal point of anger, may accentuate their grievances and push them towards militancy
to achieve justice for their people.
• Even if the refugees are repatriated as Full Citizens or Applicant Citizens, if they are
housed in concentration camps for two years, without fair political, economic and
socio-cultural rights, militancy is likely to erupt inside Bhutan due to the suppression and
exploitation of this large segment of the population.
• More youths may become available who will want to join the present group and will be
prepared to resort to militancy. These youths could be encouraged by the regional
proliferation of national liberation movements, external support, a Nepalese Diaspora,
refugees left out after being classified as non-nationals and refugees who have settled
abroad.
The Lhotsampa youths see they have little to lose and much to gain by drawing
international attention to their plight.27 The experiences of the Palestinian Intifada and the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka provide textbook examples of
militant refugee communities developing several years after initial grievances first drew
them together. Usually, it is the second generation of politically aware youth who takes up
arms after becoming frustrated at their own situation and at their elders’ inability to bring
about a political solution. My interviews with Lhotsampa refugee youths indicate that, if a
timely solution cannot be reached, the dire situation may force them to join a militant outfit
at any time.
Popular perception of the Lhotsampa refugee problem is that there have been neither
activism nor marked progress on the issue for last 14 years. The roots of militancy are now
in their infancy and might develop into full-scale militancy if a just and equitable solution
is not reached in the near future. Unless significant progress is made towards a just and fair
resolution of the refugee issue, the governments of Bhutan, Nepal and India may face
considerable problems in the near future on this issue. I agree fully with Julia Traft who,
as Director of the Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery in the United Nations
Development Programme, opined this about desperate and vulnerable refugees: ‘When they
are unable to provide their children with security and roots in culture, they become
susceptible to political influences like Mao’s insurgency in Nepal. This should be a concern
not only to Nepal but also to Bhutan.’28 In 2003, two new groups supported by insurgent
groups in the region were formed to translate the rhetoric of possible militarism into
political reality.
The Bhutan Gorka Liberation Front
The Bhutan government had at various times pressured two political groups, the United
Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland
(NDFB), to wind up their operations in Bhutan. However, in July 2003, these groups set
up another operation in Bhutan called the Bhutan Gorka Liberation Front. The Indo-Asian
Service remarked: ‘By propping up the Nepalese group, ULFA and NDFB are obviously
planning to cash in on the unrest among Bhutan’s ethnic Nepalese population.’29 This move
was in keeping with the tactics usually adopted by ULFA. It may add more fuel to the
already burning issues of refugees and ethnosectarian conflict in Bhutan.
27 ‘Bhutanese Refugees Taking to Crimes’, Times of India, 20 January 2003, p. 1.
28 Julia Traft, Director, Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery, UNDP, ‘Discussion Paper’, May 2003, p. 3.
29 Rezaul H. Laskar, ‘Anti-India Group Prop Up Terror Outfit in Bhutan’, Indo-Asian News Service, 16 July
2003.
The Unknown Refugee Crisis 175
Bhutan Communist Party
This party was formed in April 2003 in Siliguri in India, with a mission to wage a people’s
war similar to the one under way in Nepal seeking to overthrow the monarchy and establish
a People’s Republic.30 In July 2003, it was reported that members of this party participated
in a meeting of the South Asian Revolutionary Movement (RIM) in India.31 Like the Bhutan
Gorka Liberation Front, this party was set up in 2003 in response to the Bhutan
government’s almost total neglect of refugee issues and frustration with the failure of the
Bhutanese parties to address refugee repatriation effectively, even after 14 years. The
establishment of these two bodies may be a manifestation of latent militancy evolving
among the Bhutanese refugees today.
Conclusion
The phases of the Lhotsampa’s experiences in, and exodus from, Bhutan since the late
1980s present almost a paradigmatic model which generally describes the pattern of ethnic
conflict. Ethnic diversity within a nation can lead to struggle for fair representation and
resources if some groups are excluded structurally from opportunity for full participation in
the political, economic and socio-cultural life of the nation. Tensions cultivated particularly
through fear of ethnic difference deepen cleavages within the society along ethnic lines.
With intensifying ethnic conflict, one group will use whatever means it can to seize control
of the state and implement policies that deliver ethnic repression, discrimination and
systematic human rights violations upon their perceived opponents, to bolster the group’s
own hold on power.32
This process has been under way in Bhutan particularly from the late 1980s. The
Drukpa elite firmed its access to power over the nation and has since carried out systematic
human-rights violations. In this paper, I have explained how the self-serving, ethnosectarian
Drukpa elite has tried to deracinate the Lhotsampa and confine this group as a peripheral
community despite the Lhotsampa’s considerable share of the national population—now
considerably less inside Bhutan as a result of these deracination attempts.
Ethnic conflict is deepening in Bhutan. National Assembly debates since 1990 have
brought the issue of race to the forefront in various policy discussions. The debate over a
pseudo constitution is flavoured heavily with racial connotations. Bhutan is still a relatively
peaceful country compared with some others that are wracked with ethnic conflict. But we
must beware of complacency, especially in the current climate of worsening ethnic tension.
Deep and active discrimination against the Lhotsampa has served to strengthen ethnic
identification among the people of Lhotsampa origin. An ever deeper ethnic divide is now
pitting the major ethnic communities, particularly around the Ngalung, against the Lhotsampa
and Sharchop. We have witnessed in Bhutan the rise and consolidation of an
ethnocracy which dominates the institutions of government, economy and society and fuels
ethnic tension by promoting its own ethnic group at the expense of others.33
The Drukpa are a majority in Bhutan with a minority complex and a short political
vision. The short-term benefits that the Drukpa elite’s ethnically divisive policies may
achieve for some cannot compensate for the long-term social, economic and political costs
30 The Times of India, 18 May 2003.
31 www.Nepalnews.com, 15 July 2003.
32 J. Macgary and B.O. Leary (eds), The Political Regulation of Ethnic Conflict (Oxford, London, 1993),
pp. 12–16.
33 Francis Stewart, ‘Working Paper on Democracy and Development: Three Cases’, unpublished paper, University
of Oxford, 2002, p. 18.
176 Dhurba Rizal
for the nation at large. These are not just the costs of discrimination and denial of
opportunity for the Lhotsampa and others, who could have contributed much to the nation.
It is also the immeasurable cost that comes from a society now riven along ethnic and other
lines by the fear, mistrust, resentment, frustration and anger that the regime has deliberately
fuelled. And as I have considered towards the end of this paper, there is now the dangerous
possibility that smouldering grievances on the part of those who are oppressed and expelled
may be pushed into militancy in a desperate attempt by some to achieve a just and equitable
solution, to what now appears an intractable problem.
But there are other ways to achieve a just and equitable solution that beg to be explored
first. Pragmatism informed by broad-minded understanding of national and regional history
dictates that Bhutan cannot be a homogenous state, despite government attempts to make
it so through the ‘One Nation, One People’ ethos. Bhutan has always been multi-ethnic;
what is today the nation of Bhutan is a construct several centuries ago of various ethnic
groupings with a rich diversity of racial, religious, cultural and linguistic attributes. The
only workable option for Bhutan is that of a pluralistic society that harnesses its diversity
as a source of opportunity, richness and strength. This prefigures a nation that achieves
unity in diversity rather than, as at present, being pulled apart by those who seek to subvert
the potential virtue of this diversity to serve their own narrow interests.
The sectarian nature of the ruling elite must also be considered. Religion and state have
a long history of entanglement in Bhutan. The marriage to Bhutan’s sovereign King, of
members of a family supposedly dominant in theocratic, pre-monarchy days before 1907,
greased the wheels for religious influence to return to the state apparatus, inspiring the
ethnosectarian nationalism that is the flagship of the current Drukpa regime. I argue for a
secular state for Bhutan, where religion has nothing to do with the affairs of state and is,
instead, the personal faith of an individual. The secular state of Bhutan needs to be
governed through a broadly based democratic political system which is fairly representative
of the Bhutanese people. This of course requires relocating sovereignty from the monarch
to all the people of Bhutan, once they have been fairly resettled after their years of exile
outside Bhutan. Lhotsampa people have struggled for years to try to achieve movement
towards democratic government, a move that many consider as an essential perquisite for
national integration.
Mine is therefore a call for a radical restructuring of Bhutan’s political, economic and
socio-cultural systems in pursuit of equitable development of all Bhutanese communities.
Ethnocracy has certainly not achieved this aspiration. To the contrary, the nation is poor,
underdeveloped and deeply divided. The King serves the interests of a small, sheltered
ethnonationalistic elite. And between a fifth and a seventh of the population have lived in
exile—and in deep desperation and anger—since the 1990s.
Yet the victims of ethnic oppression can be any ethnic community subordinated to the
power of another. The latter fears the people of the former group on the basis of their
ethnicity and capacity to challenge, or unseat, the latter’s oppressive domination. Ethnic
strife in Fiji, Bosnia, Rwanda and South Africa also illustrates ethnic oppression and its
consequences. The crucial concern here is thus much larger than the Lhotsampa of Bhutan;
it is the treatment of any peoples who are pushed to the receiving end of an ethnically
repressive order. I therefore hold that our attention must respond not just to the special
claims of particular groups in Bhutan. At stake is the ethical issue of a just order, politically,
economically and socio-culturally, in any national context.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge the generous support provided by the Japan Society
The Unknown Refugee Crisis 177
for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) to carry out this research project. The author is highly
indebted to Professor Yozo Yokota, Special Adviser to the Rector of the United Nations
University and Dr Jean Marc Coicaud of United Nations University, for their intellectual
guidance and support.
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