Journal of Refugee Studies 1996 HUTT 397 420

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Journal of Refugee Studies Vol. 9. No. 4 1996

Ethnic Nationalism, Refugees and BhutanMICHAEL HUTTDepartment of Languages and Cultures of South Asia,School of Oriental and African Studies, London

This article focuses in large part on the specificities of a comparatively obscurerefugee situationthat of the approximately 100,000 people who have arrived inNepal since 1990, claiming Bhutanese refugee status. It outlines the socio-historical background to the problem, describes the way in which it has unfolded,and evaluates the refugees' claims through a survey of documentary evidence andfield visits to Nepal and Bhutan. By measuring the realities of the situationagainst a theoretical model proposed by Anthony D. Smith in 1994, it thenconsiders the extent to which the problem has arisen as the result of a conflictbetween two differing modes of ethnic nationalism: the new style of nationalismpromoted by the Bhutanese state since the late 1980s, and the demoticnationalism of the cross-border Nepali population of the broader region.Although the paper addresses this particular case in some detail, its discussionis relevant to other instances where refugee flows have been caused by theformulation of new, more exclusive models of the nation state.

IntroductionThis account of the Bhutanese refugee crisis is informed primarily by visitsmade to Nepal and Bhutan in 1992, by a conference on Bhutan in London in1993 (see Aris and Hutt 1994; Hutt 1994), and by a further visit to Nepal in1995. Refugee camps in Southeast Nepal at the time of writing (March 1996)accommodate a total of 88,000 Nepali-speaking people, many of whom possessdocumentary evidence of long-term residence in southern districts of Bhutan.An estimated 15,000 other refugees from Bhutan are said by UNHCR tosubsist elsewhere in Nepal, plus an unspecified num ber in Northeast India. Toput these figures into perspective, it should be borne in mind that the officialtota l population of Bhutan is very small. In 1988 it was estimated at 1,451,000;in July 1992 at 1,660,167 (Savada 1993:46); a revised figure of 600,000 wasannounced by the king of Bhutan in October 1990.

This account will attempt to assess the extent to which the Bhutanese crisisresembles the situation described by Smith (1994), in which the rise of ethnicnationalism forces the flight of an excluded minority. Smith defines ethnicnationalism in the following terms:Oxford University Press 1996

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398 Michael Hutt... whereas territorial nationalisms are content to endow their nation with acommon history and mass culture, such that people of different origin can joinand participate in both, ethnic nationalisms predicate shared history and cultureon a myth of common ancestry, i.e. on ethnicity in the narrowest sense . . . Here liethe seeds of a collective exclusiveness that so frequently begets persecution andhomelessness (Smith 1994:190).... ethnic nationalism does not involve a specifically racist component, butmanages to exclude non-members within and deny their rights, while preservingtheir essential humanity. Instead of being exterminated, they are renderedhomeless. As indigestible minorities in their own homes, they suddenly findthemselves deprived of a homeland. They are felt to constitute a threat to thecontinued existence, and purity, of the emergent ethnic nation. They musttherefore be denied citizenship in their own land, rendered defenceless andhomeless and ultimately driven out (ibid.: 195).

Smith compares two kinds of pre-modern ethnic community: the ' lateral 'which is confined to the upper strata of a society: 'the monarch and his court,the nobles, priests and officials, sometimes the richer merchants', who 'evinceno interest in disseminating their ethnic culture to outlying groups or lowerstrata'; and the 'vertical ' in which 'the ethnic culture is more widely diffusedthrough the social scale: we find artisans and urban traders, and even somepeasants, drawn into a more sharply denned ethnic community ' . Smith statesthat the ethnic com m unity in this lat ter case consists of 'the peo ple ' who can bemobilized by religious and political leaders and he characterizes this ethniccommunity or ethnie as 'demotic ' or popular.Has the problem described in the pages that follow arisen from conflictingnationalisms: the nationalism of a ' lateral ' ethnic community and thenationalism of a 'vertical ' one? This question will be considered in theconclusion.

Bhutan: Ethnic GroupsBhutan is an independent Buddhist kingdom situated in the Himalayamountains between Northeast India and China (Tibet) (see Figure 1). Over60 per ce nt of the cou ntry is forested an d there are no large cities: Th im ph u, thecapital , has a population of around 25,000. The Bhutanese can be divided intothree bro ad ethno-linguistic groups: the Ngalon gs (or Ngalop s) of the west; theSharchhops of the east; and the Lhotshampas (or 'Nepali Bhutanese') of theextreme south. There are also many other smaller groups. The Ngalongs are ina minority overall , but they and the central Bhutanese occupy most seniorgovernment posit ions, and the Ngalongs' language, the Tibetan-derivedDzongkha, is promoted as the nat ional language. The Ngalongs, the centra lBhutanese and the Sharchhops practise a Tibetan style of Buddhism, which issupported by the state: they and the other Buddhist communities of northernBhutan are therefore usually known collectively as 'Drukpas' , and inter-marriage is com m on between them. The Lho tsham pas ( 'people of the sou thern



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400 Michael Huttborder') who inhabit the southern foothills are mostly Hindus who speak theNepali language. In 1980, when the total population of Bhutan was stated to be1,142,200, the six southern districts (each of which probably had a Nepalimajority) were said to have a total population of 552,800 (Savada 1993:361).Because of the somewhat bewildering change in the official figure for Bhutan'stotal population, it is now impossible to state with any certainty the prop ortionof the total population that is or was Nepali-speaking.The terms 'Lhotshampa', 'Nepali', 'Nepali Bhutanese', 'Bhutanese Nepali'and so on should perhaps not be used interchangeably. These terms can havepolitical undertones: for instance, 'Lhotshampa' is sometimes used by theBhutanese government to denote the 'legal' or 'loyal' Nepali-speakingcommunity that remains within the kingdom, to distinguish its membersfrom those who have departed, while 'Bhutanese Nepali' denotes a Bhutanesesub-set of a larger Nepali entity. There are arguments for and against adoptingany one of these terms, but for the sake of consistency this paper uses the term'Nepali Bhutanese'.The Nepali Communities of India and BhutanThe borders of the kingdom of Nepal do not delimit exactly the region whosedominant population is identified as 'Nepali'. The Nepalis of Northeast Indiaand Bhutan come originally from a variety of castes and ethno-linguisticgroups that have traditionally inhabited specific sections of the easternNepalese hills, but post-migration generations are unified by their use of theNepali language as a common tongue. Nepalis are in a majority in Sikkim (anautonomous Indian protectorate until 1975 but now a state within the IndianUnion), in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal, and in the foothills ofsouthern Bhutan. There are also Nepali communities in Assam and scatteredacross the hill states of Northeast India.The present positions of N epa l's international borders werefinalized n 1816,bar a few minor changes in the mid-nineteenth century. The kingdom ofGorkha, a small principality in central N epal, had embarked on a cam paign ofconquest and expansion during the 1740s. Having taken the strategicKathmandu valley in 1768-9, the Gorkhalis were briefly rulers of territorythat extended beyond the present western and eastern borders of Nepal.Eventually, the Gorkhalis ran up against the British and were defeated in 1816.A treaty whose terms w ere largely d ictated by the British drove them o ut of thewest and east, and the Mechi and Mahakali rivers have remained as Nepal'seastern and western borders up to the present day.In Sikkim and eastern Nepal the Gorkhali conquerors had encountered anumber of different tribes, each with its own language, culture and land tenuresystem. To provide revenue for the maintenance of the newly-acquired empire,taxes were converted to a cash medium and the peasant farmers of easternNepal were sorely pressed. The new governors of some districts used thepeasants' indebtedness as a pretext for wresting ancestral lands from their



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Ethnic Nationalism, Refugees and Bhutan 401control. Many people responded by migrating eastward into British India,where the grass was somewhat greener.The British established the hill station of Darjeeling on land gifted to themby the ruler of Sikkim in 1835. Very soon, Darjeeling became the centre of arapidly-growing tea industry. As the Darjeeling hills were very sparselypopulated, p lantation owners needed to im port w orkers into what was a highlylabour-intensive industry. Thus, the hills of east Nepal supplied tens ofthousands of tea garden labourers, as well as Gurkha recruits for the BritishIndian Army. The British also promoted the migration of Nepalis into Sikkimand northern Assam (Pradhan 1991; see also English 1983; Sagant 1980).

Although Sikkim had a Nepali majority by the time of its firs t census in 1891(Sinha 1975: 10), it appears that Nepali farmers did not begin to settle insouthern Bhutan in significant numbers until after about 1880. The south of thecountry had until then remained a hinterland, where the kingdom's rulerspreferred not to settle permanently. At some point toward the end of the 19thcentury it was decided to follow the example of the British in Darjeeling andbring Nepali peasant farmers into southern Bhutan to bring the land undercultivation (see Sinha 1993:154).The first Nepali settlement took place in the far southwestern district ofSamchi and further east in Chirang. During the 1960s, Nepali Bhutanese wereresettled in the far southeastern district of Samdrup Jongkhar, possibly becauseof a shortage of cultivable land in the districts of first settlement. Until 1958,when they became Bhutanese citizens, these settlers and their descendants hadthe status of tenan ts, and until abou t 1961 they paid their rents and taxes to theBhutan Agent at Kalimpong. After that, the south was administered directlyfrom the new permanent capital at Thimphu.Although Bhutan has been the subject of a handful of historical studies(notably Aris 1979; Rose 1977; Sinha 1991), the history of its southern districtsremains unresearched. Thus, the only sources on the actual size of the Nepalipopulation in Bhutan during the early decades of the twentieth century (acrucial figure in view of the Bhutanese government's allegation of massiveillegal immigration after 1958) are the somewhat random reports left by Britishcolonial officials who passed through the region on their missions to thecapital. By 1932, according to one such source, about 60,000 had settled in thesouth-west of the country (Sinha 1991:39, quoting Captain C. J. Morris).The Indian Nepali community, which probably numbers between three andsix million, has a history of political activism which has not endeared it tosuccessive Indian governments. Indian Nepalis are still liable to be consideredforeigners within India despite family histories of residence in India that goback several generations, and they have often fallen foul of the various anti-foreigner m ovements that have swept the Indian Northeast since the 1970s. Inwhat is essentially a defensive strategy, their leaders have sought to establish anidentity for Indian Nepalis that establishes them as a distinct group withinIndia and also distinguishes them from the Nepalis of Nepal. The primeexample of such activism was the Gorkhaland movement, a campaign of

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402 Michael Huttstrikes and civil disobedience backing a dem and for an au tonom ous state in theDarjeeling hills. This degenerated into violence and claimed some 200 livesbetween 1986 and 1988 before a compromise solution was reached (see Subba1992).It seems very likely that the Gorkhaland movement inspired a fear of Nepali-led activism among the Bhutanese ruling class. These fears added to thelongheld apprehension of a tiny Buddhist monarchical state that had watchedneighbouring Sikkim, whose ruling family was related through marriage toBhutan's, being absorbed into India, and had seen the original population ofAssam become a minority after massive Bengali immigration. In 1990, humanrights and democracy were the key slogans of a movement within Nepal itselfthat reduced the king of Nepal to a constitutional monarch. The fact that agroup of Nepali Bhutanese exiles began to mouth the same slogans in 1989 canonly have confirmed the rulers' perception of the large Nepali Bhutanesepopulation as a threat, and of their own position as an increasingly exposedminority in an unstable corner of the Indian subcontinent.Political Developments in BhutanCitizenshipIn 1958, the 'Lhotshampa' population of the southern districts of Bhutan wasgranted Bhutanese citizenship and tenure of its lands. The Bhutanesegovernment later pursued a policy of integration that met with considerablesuccess: having allowed the south to run its own affairs for decades withminimal contact with the north, the government began to train NepaliBhutanese for government service and for some years even offered a cashincentive for Nepali-Drukpa intermarriage. Thus, the Nepali Bhutanese beganto play a m ore important role in national life, occupying some senior positionsin the administration and sometimes even representing the kingdom overseas.During the 1980s every adult member of the Bhutanese population wasissued w ith a printed citizenship card bearing a photograph of its holder. But in1985 a new Citizenship Act made a number of far-reaching changes: itamended the legislation on citizenship by birth so that citizenship could only beacquired automatically from both parents instead of through the father alone;it required evidence of permanent dom icile on or before 31st December 1958 asthe basis for citizenship by registration; and for citizenship by naturalization itrequired a number of criteria that could not be met by most Nepali Bhutanese,such as fluency and literacy in the national language, the Tibetan-derivedDzongkha.

In 1988, a census began to 'identify Bhutanese nationals' in the southerndistricts. The term 'census' has always been used by the Bhutan government forthese operations, but they do not produce the statistical profile of thepopulation of Bhutan that one might expect from a national census. Instead,their main purpose is to guard against illegal immigration, a constant threat in


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Ethnic Nationalism, Refugees and Bhutan 403the south where the border with India is porous. Accordingly, 'censuses'appear to have been conducted annually in most southern districts since 1988but have not taken place regularly in the northern districts, except perhaps inThim phu. The 1988 census led to unease because, according to those w ho havesince become refugees, excessively strict standards were set for documentation.According to the government, a survey of the south had detected the presenceof over 100,000 illegal immigrants, and the population was to be placed intoseven categories, from 'FT to 'F7' as follows:F l Genuine Bhutanese citizensF2 Returned emigrantsF3 Drop-out cases (i.e. people who were not a round at the time of the census)F4 Children of Bhutanese father and non-national mothe rF5 Non-national father m arried to Bhutanese mother, and their childrenF6 Adopted childrenF7 Non-nationalsIt has been argued that the 1985 Citizenship Act would not have posedmajor problems for most Nepali Bhutanese, who were accustomed toretaining documents such as land tax receipts, if it had been implementedfairly during the census (Dhakal and Strawn 1994:179-82; Strawn 1994:105-6). But in the event many who could not provide documents that provedthey resided in Bhutan in the specific year of 1958 itself were apparentlycategorized as returned emigrants or non-nationals, regardless of whether ornot they held citizenship cards, land tax receipts etc. Amnesty Internationalconcluded that the

current situation in the south of Bhutan had been exacerbated due to thegovernment's failure to specify and make known in advance what would happento people in southern Bhutan once they had been categorized under F7 (1992:6).

Driglam NamzhagBhutan's sixth Five-Year Plan (1987-92) included a policy of 'one nation, onepeople ' and introduced a code of tradit ional Drukpa dress and etiquette calledDriglam Namzhag. The dress element of this code required all citizens to wearthe gho (a knee-length robe for men) and the kira (an ankle-length dress forwomen) in the following contexts:

inside and outside Dzong premises [fortress-monasteries now used as centres ofdistrict administration]; [at] all Government Offices; at the Schools; [at] theMonasteries; at the official functions and 'Public Congregations' (RGB 1992b:appendix. The appendix also stated that Pandits, Pujaris [Hindu priests] and non-nationals would be exempt from the requirement).

This rule, it is now admitted by the Bhutanese authorities, was applied farbeyond the letter of the decree, to the extent that many Bhutanese could not


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404 Michael Huttventure out of their homes in their everyday attire without facing the prospectof an on-the-spot fine or imprisonment (Hutt 1992:7). Thus, in the author's1995 visit to the camps, two informants who had been in charge of a Pathshala(a non-government school that teaches a traditional Sanskrit/Hindu curricu-lum) in southern Bhutan explained that when the dress code was introducedthe children had to wear gho and kira in the government school first, but soonthe rule was extended to the Pathshala too. Soon everyone had to wearnational dress everywhere, they said, and an initial fine of RslOO (approxi-mately US$3) quickly rose to Rsl50. (Per capita GNP in Bhutan is said to beUS$440 (Savada 1993:247).)A half-blind woman who now lives in the Sanishchare camp claimed that inmidsummer 1991 she was insulted and beaten by a soldier because she waswearing a blouse and had turned her kira down at the waist, due to the heat.She said tha t she was made to stand beside the road in the sun for three hoursbefore he let her go home. Incidents such as these (and they appear to havebeen widespread) go a long way towards explaining the resentment the policycaused in southern Bhutan.

Language

A central plank of the Bhutanese government's policy since the late 1980s hasbeen to strengthen the role and status of Dzongkha in national life. One effectof this has been a downgrading of the role of Nepali generally (the claim thatNepali is 'banned' in Bhutan is an overstatement) and its removal from thesyllabus of schools. Greater stress began to be laid on a knowledge ofDzongkha, and local officials and school staff in southern Bhutan had to attendcompulsory Dzongkha classes from 1990 onward.Many camp residents were proud to show off a knowledge of Dzongkha,which is surprisingly widespread among the educated young. One ex-Mandalsaid tha t he had been issued with a Dzongkha-Nepali dictionary (published inThimphu in 1984) jus t before the 'movem ent' began in September 1990 andwas told to learn Dzongkha within three years.At the beginning of the school year in March 1990 the teaching of Nepaliwas discontinued and all Nepali curricular materials disappeared fromBhutanese schools. The Bhutanese government's case now is that becauseEnglish had been the medium of education in Bhutan since 1961, the need forschoolchildren to study a third language in the south put them at adisadvantage; that Nepali was only one of many languages spoken in Bhutanand was, moreover, the national language of a foreign country; and that newcurricular materials could not be produced in Nepali in line with the NewApproach to Primary Education programme, for reasons of cost (Thinley1994:60-61). However reasonable these arguments might be, the move came ontop of the census and the dress code and could only add to a growing sense ofcultural marginalization among the Nepali Bhutanese.


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Ethnic N ationalism, Refugees and Bhutan 405The Growth of DissentIn 1989, concerns about the census were brought to the attention of the twoRoyal Advisory Councillors elected to represent the south and the C ouncillorsconveyed them to the king in a lengthy appeal that requested that the 'cut-offdate' for citizenship be altered from 1958 to 1985, the year the new CitizenshipAct came into force. The government's response was to imprison one of theCouncillors, Tek Nath Rizal, for three days on a charge of sedition. Rizalsubsequently fled to Nepal where he joined six other dissidents who hadestablished the 'People's Forum for Human Rights' and printed a pamphletentitled Bhutan: We W ant Justice. This 5,000-word document played a crucialrole in influencing the manner in which the Bhutanese government respondedto dissent in the years that followed. Some of the document's wilder passageshave been quoted by those who wish to argue that the aim of Rizal and hiscolleagues was to overthrow the legitimate government of Bhutan (Shaw1994:162, n.16), for instance:

The hour has struck for the historic conflict. We the Bhutanese Nepalese have aculture we cherish, a language we speak, a dress we wear, a religion we follow.They are all ours. They are part of our identity. We shall not allow any power totake them away from us. We shall resist, we shall fight to the last man of our raceall repressive laws intended to wipe out our racial identity. THIS DOCUMENTIS A PROTEST AN D A PRO PHE CY . A protest to the powers that intend to putshackles on us. A prophecy that a whirlwind of rebellion will shake the hills ofThimphu and bring down the rising towers of terrorist power.A second, more temperate passage was quoted by Amnesty International in a1994 appeal for the release of Tek Nath Rizal:

The great crime of the government at the moment is that it does not respectindividual identity. A government is for the people. It is bound to respectindividuals. The dress, the language, the religion are the part of every man'sidentity. Bakhu [gho/kira] does not make a Bhutanese. The cowl does not makethe monk. A Bhutanese does not become a lesser Bhutanese when he/she does notwear them ... Identity is primarily the core, the soul of a person or nation. It issheer ignorance to identify it with dress or language. Is it too difficult tounderstand that a Nepalese will not lose or gain his Bhutanese identity bywearing or not wearing Bakhu. Identity is something deeper than a piece of clothyou put on.In November 1989, five months before the collapse of Nepal's discreditedPanchayat administration, Rizal was arrested by Nepalese police, handed overto the Bhutanese authorities, and taken back to jail in Bhutan. He hasremained there ever since, and was sentenced to life imprisonment inNovember 1993 by Bhutan's High Court, under a National Security Actenacted in 1992. The king granted him a pardon three days later in which hisrelease was made conditional upon the governments of Bhutan and Nepalfinding a solution to 'the problem of the people in the refugee camps'.


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406 Michael HuttSerious unrest began to spread across southern Bhutan from early 1990onward, and during the early stages persons unknown, who were possiblyallied to the B hutan People's Party (BPP) formed in June 1990, seemed to have

adopted the violent tactics espoused by an extremist element of the Gorkha-land National Liberation Front. On 2 June 1990 the severed heads of twogovernment officials were found at a border checkpost in Samchi district: ayear later the Royal Government began to publish photographs of dead andmaimed southern Bhutanese who, it claimed, had become the victims of aconcerted movement launched by 'anti-national terrorists' (RGB 1991). Thegovernment accused terrorists of destroying schools, health facilities, bridges,police posts, electricity pylons etc.The People's Forum for Human Rights, the Bhutan People's Party and the

Students' Union of Bhutan organized mass public demonstrations insouthern Bhutan in September and October 1990 that were unprecedentedin the kingdom's history. The demonstrators submitted a list of demands thatwas clearly influenced by the wave of democracy movements and humanrights activism that had swept across eastern Europe, and had very recentlyreinstated a multi-party democracy in N epal. There are allegations of ou tsideinvolvement and that both demonstrators and security forces committed actsof violence (Muni 1991). After the demonstrations, the Bhutanese army andpolice began the task of identifying participants and supporters. These werearrested and questioned, and often beaten, tortured and held for monthswithout trial. Batches of such prisoners were released in amnestiesannounced by the king: several hundred in September 1990, 727 in August1991, 74 in October 1991, and so on. Almost without exception, thosereleased left Bhutan and joined relatives in the refugee camps in Nepal. Asthe annual censuses progressed , people who had been classified as full citizensin an earlier census began to find themselves being evicted from Bhutanbecause they had a relative in jail or in the refugee camps. According to theCitizenship Act of 1985:

Any person who has acquired citizenhip by naturalization may be deprived ofcitizenship at any time if that person has shown by act or speech to be disloyal inany manner whatsoever to the King, Country and People of Bhutan (Article 6c;RGB 1993:57).This provision seems in practice to have been extended to all those whoopposed, or were related to others who opposed, the government's newpolicies: Thronson quo tes from a government circular issued by the B hutaneseHome Minister on 17 August 1990:

any Bhutanese citizen leaving the country to assist and help the anti-nationalsshall no longer be considered a Bhutanese citizen. It must also be made very clearthat such people's family members living under the same household will also beheld fully responsible and forfeit their citizenship (Thronson 1993:18).



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Ethnic Nationalism, Refugees and Bhutan 407'Voluntary Emigrants'The Bhutanese government is anxious to depict many of the refugees as'voluntary emigrants' who have been enticed or intimidated into leavingfor the camps by the dissident political parties operating in exile in Nepal.In April 1994, one such group of some 34 families left for the camps fromthe Dorokha sub-division of Samchi district in southwest Bhutan, havingsigned 'voluntary emigration' forms. The eviction/emigration was carefullychoreographed and the emigres were even videotaped as they declaredthat they were departing of their own free will. The New Delhicorrespondent of the London Times, who was visiting Bhutan at thetime, was taken to meet the emigres and filed a report that reflected whathe had been told:

A farmer of Nepalese descent, Ganeshyam Pockeral [sic], in a few days will signaway his citizenship of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, where he was born,and move to a United N ations camp in Jhapa , east Nepal. He will not say so, buthe is part of a campaign of ethnic expansion. He is not being expelled. His landhas not been confiscated. He has not been threatened or coerced. Thegovernment, dominated by indigenous Drukpas, wants him to stay: indeed, ithas tempted him with money . . . What he does not say is that he is convinced hewill return and reclaim his land, and more besides, when southern Bhutan iscontrolled by ethnic Nepalese (Times 2 April 1994).A very different picture of this episode emerges from a joint statement signedby 27 family heads (including Ghanashyam Pokhrel) who were among a groupof 284 people from Dorokha who arrived in the refugee camps on 9 April 1994.One claimed tha t he had been served with a notice to leave Bhutan because hisolder brother had already left, others said they had been told to leave becausethey were unable to produce certificates of origin (because their relatives hadleft Bhutan and taken such documents with them ), one because his brother wasan 'anti-national', and so on . They said tha t they were told collectively to leavetheir houses on 25 March and gather in Samchi town, where, presumably, theymet the Times correspondent. On 7 or 8 April each was videoed individually,and made to state that he or she was leaving vo luntarily. The video recordingshave since been shown to foreign visitors to Bhutan (Amnesty International1994:15-16).Bhutan's national newspaper, Kuensel, reported that a decree from the kingof Bhutan which urged the people not to leave had been read out to thegroup. This decree was said to have been dated 26 March, but the peopleclaimed that it was not read out to them until 7 April, by which time several oftheir houses had been demolished. None the less, it did result in five familiesand two individuals staying on.The lengthy Kuensel report, published on 9 April 1994, depicted the families''decision' to leave Bhutan as something incomprehensible, and began:


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408 Michael Hutt39 families and seven individuals from Samtse have relinquished their citizenshipand opted to leave the country despite efforts by the government to persuadethem to stay back.

T h e gup (headman) of the Denchukha block was quoted as saying,all the reasons given by them are excuses. They have no reason to leave thecountry as they have not been mistreated by the local authorities, the governmentor the security personnel. The real reason is tha t they have no love or loyalty forthe country.

The art icle ends with a quote from the distr ict administrator of Samtse(Samchi):I wonder how people who have refused to stay back in Bhutan despite all ourefforts to persuade them to withdraw their applications to emigrate can beaccepted as refugees in Nepal.

During a brief visi t to Damphu in the Chirang distr ict of southern Bhutan inSeptember 1992, this wri ter was told by the distr ict administrator (Dzongdag)of the lengths to which he and his staff had gone to dissuade local villagersfrom moving to the refugee camps: but, he said, even if his officers deliberatelyheld up the processing of their volun tary emigrat ion p ape rs, the vi llagers wo uldsimply 'abscond' without going through the formali t ies . They would evendismantle their houses, it was claimed, in order to re-use the timber in therefugee camps in Jhapa. In private, this writer was allowed to meet seven'applicants for emigrat ion' ; these were men of between about 25 and about 50years of age whose nam es I was un ab le to record. All assured me tha t they werein the process of withdrawing their applicat ions. I wondered who they thoughtI was and asked them what the distr ict administrator had told them before hehad brought them to see me: 'he didn' t say anything' I was told, and evidentlymy subjects thought that I suspected some measure of tutoring. Despite myrephrasing the quest ion several t imes, the same reply was given: 'nothing, hedidn' t say anything' . General ly, my quest ions drew only monosyllabicreplies. Later , an elderly man approached me in a shop on the main streetand launched straight into an emotional appeal in Nepali , claiming that his sonhad already left for the camps in Nepal and that the local police were trying toforce him out, but that he refused to leave. Of course, it was impossible in thecircumstances to corroborate these claims.

The Origins of the Camp PopulationThe Bhutanese government has always argued that the people in the campsshould not al l be regarded as refugees from Bhutan. An important exposit ionof this argument came from the king of Bhutan in an interview with RameshChandran publ ished in the Sunday Times of India on December 18 1994:


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410 Michael HuttThis statement begs many questions, since it does not take into account thepolitically conservative nature of Nepali agriculturalists and their totaldependence on land. It is unlikely that such people would give up their fields,orchards, homes and citizenship simply to express their support 'in principle'for a political movement: this is surely a weak pull factor, and stronger pushfactors must have been involved. Here it is relevant to po int out tha t in everyinstance of Nepali-led political activism in recent years, whether it be thevarious political agitations that occurred in Nepal under the Panchayat regime(1962-90) or the Gorkhaland movement in Darjeeling (1986-8), the leadershave come from the educated urban class and have experienced severedifficulties in mobilizing mass support in rural areas.

The argument about whether the people in the cam ps in Nepal are or are notgenuine Bhutanese citizens has raged for five years. The fact that manymembers of the camp population hold either citizenship cards or otherdocumentary evidence of residence in Bhutan that stretches back beyond thecrucial date of 1958 is dismissed by the Bhutanese government, which arguesthat many of the cards are forgeries and that the 'anti-national terrorists' haveoften raided census offices and destroyed or made off with documents. It haspublished documents which it claims prove that people registered in the campsare not bonafide Bhutanese: for instance, the Nepalese citizenship card of oneIndra Bahadur Chettri alongside a letter from the UNHCR representative inKathmandu, dated 24 October 1991, declaring that he is a Bhutanese nationalwho is of concern to the UN HCR (RGB 1992a: 11-12). On the other hand , thegovernment of Nepal conducted a survey at the end of 1993with the assistanceof UNHCR and is said to have concluded that there were

10,073 families with citizenship documents; 1762 families with records pertainingto land ownership; 251 families with health documents; 40 families with educationcertificates; 2494 families with documents such as to [sic] service in thegovernment, marriage certificates and court documents; and only 368 familieswithout any documents (Dhakal and Strawn 1994:540).Tahir A li, who was the U NH CR 's representative in Kathm andu until the endof 1995, advises that these figures should be treated with some caution, andstresses that UNHCR has not adopted a position on the matter of whether thepeople in the camps are genuine citizens of Bhutan:

It is most certainly not the case that the overwhelming majority of the people inthe refugee camps in Nepal have been definitively determined by UNHCR to becitizens or long-term residents of Bhutan. They claim to be so, and m any presentdocuments in this connection. However, UNHCR explicitly recognizes that it isfor the governments of Nepal and Bhutan ... to assess and verify these claims(Letter to the Washington Post, 22 April 1994).

The Home Ministry of the Nepalese government also conducted a samplesurvey in the camps between 14-22 February 1995. A tota l of 883 householdswas surveyed, and the sample drawn from each of the camps was in


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Ethnic Nationalism, Refugees and Bhutan 411proportion to that particular camp's share of the total refugee population.The survey results show 794 households (89.92 per cent of the sample) holdingBhutanese citizenship cards, and 81 households (9.18 per cent of the sample)holding land tax receipts or proof of land ownership. Nearly half of thesample reported having signed 'voluntary migration' forms, which in manycases involved surrendering documents to the Bhutanese authorities. Of thetotal of 1563 individual asylum-seekers screened at the Kakarvitta screeningpost on the Nepal-India border between June 1993 and March 1994, 43.7 percent held Bhutanese citizenship cards and 20.2 per cent held land documents(UN HC R M arch 1995). The occupan ts of every hut this writer entered duringfour days in the camps were able to produce old land tax receipts, citizenshipcards, or both.

Rose notes thatit should not be a major problem to ascertain which of the 'refugees' in the Jhapacamps actually qualify as citizens of Bhutan by using the very detailed pre-1988village records in Southern Bhutan (Rose 1994:115).But with the two governments at such odds over the very identities of the88,000 it is not surprising that a move toward joint verification still remains aremote possibility.

The CampsThe first 234 prima facie refugees arrived in Nepal at the end of 1990, and werefollowed by several hundred per month, reaching a total of about 5,000 bySeptember 1991. At this point the government of Nepal formally requestedUNHCR (which had been providing some ad hoc assistance since February1991) to coordinate all emergency relief assistance. A feature of the early inflowwas that many families had already been out of Bhutan for months, but hadnot been permitted to set up camps in Assam or West Bengal and claimed tohave been subjected to harrassment by both Indian and Bhutanese police. Thelargest inflow occurred during 1992 with an average of 300-600 arrivals per dayduring the period March-July, bringing the total to nearly 50,000. Theflowofnew arrivals gradually decreased through 1993 and 1994 to a trickle during1995 of one or two per day. The Bhutanese government has made much of thefact that the Nepalese government did not begin to screen arrivals until a verylate stage (June 1993), and has also adopted a hostile attitude to UNHCRoperations in Nepal. The Bhutanese Foreign Minister has on several occasionsargued that, because the number of asylum-seekers increased greatly afterUNHCR stepped in, UNHCR's recognition of the refugees and its subsequentinvolvement in the camps exacerbated the problem:

Has there been a sincere effort by any of the politicians, members of the media,and the intelligentsia in Nepal, to reflect andfindout whether the establishment ofthe refugee camps itself could have been the real cause of the refugee problem?(Lyonpo Dawa Tsering, interview in Himal 7.4 (July/August 1994):26).



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412 Michael HuttAlthough UNHCR explicitly acknowledges a distinction between theprocedures used to afford prima facie recognition to groups of asylum-seekersin the first instance, and the screening procedures for individuals that weresubsequently introduced, it insists with some force that there can be noquestion that the people in the camps are bonafide refugees. Tahir Ali arguesthat if the UNHCR were to afford assistance only to persons who had beenscreened and assessed on an individual basis, and not to the large number ofpeople in the world who have been given blanket recognition as prima facierefugees, it would not be fulfilling its role (personal communication, March1996). However, a recognition of refugee status does not in itself imply anacceptance that each individual is of a certain origin or nationality.

The first arrivals set up three camps inside Nepal: first at Maidhar, then atTimai and Sanishchare. The first bamboo huts at Maidhar were erected on thebanks of the river Mai, but as the numbers grew the camp spread into theriverbed itself, which was then dry. Mortality rates were very high andmalnutrition was rife because many of the first arrivals had already spentmonths struggling to survive near the Bhutan border in India. Before thesummer rains struck, the Maidhar camp was dismantled and its residents weredispersed to other cam ps. There are now eight camps on five different sites. Allof these are in the Jhapa district of Nepal, except Sanishchare, which is inMorang district. The Beldangi site, with a total population of over 43,000, isthe largest human settlement in Jhapa district, which in 1991 had a totalpopulation of 593,737. The cam ps' population figures as of 30 September 1995were as follows:

TimaiGoldhapBeldangi IBeldangi IIBeldangi II Ext.SanishchareKhudunabari (N)Khudunabari (S)

8,3898,06915,20119,1089,53917,3607,3203,894Total 88,880

At the end of September 1995 UNHCR reported the presence of a further 264registered refugees living outside the camps, and an estimated 15,000 non-registered refugees, also living outside the camps (all figures from UNHCROctober 1995). Timai and Sanishchare are the oldest existing camps, whileKhudunabari, the newest, was established in February 1993.All the camps are situated under trees on 222 hectares of marginal forestland. Conditions are basic but decent, although life is very uncomfortableduring the summer rains and the population consists mainly of hillspeople whoare not accustomed to the high temperatures of Nepal's Tarai lowlands. Thehuts are made of bamboo and plastic sheeting, and last for about three years.Thus, the oldest are becoming dilapidated. Most of the people have few clothes


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Ethnic N ationalism, Refugees and Bhutan 413or other possessions. Registered refugees receive rations of rice, pulses, oil,sugar, salt , and blended food from the World Food Programme. The NepalRed Cross also supplies some vegetable rations and basic household items,including kerosene stoves and kerosene to reduce the use of firewood. Refugeesdo not receive cash payments unless they are employed by the implementingagencies; in such cases the wages they receive are lower than the local rate forequivalent jobs. The refugees in the camps cannot keep animals, and have noland to work. Unless they work as teachers in the camp schools or have someminor administrative role, there is very little for them to do. The contrastbetween camp life and life in Bhutan was emphasized in most conversationsthis writer had with camp residents in February-March 1995. Most refugees(77 per cent at the end of 1993 (UNHCR March 1995)) were agriculturalists inBhutan, and many had left behind land and property of considerable value, ofwhich they often had photographs.The Search for a Political SolutionThe governments of Bhutan and Nepal agreed to establish a MinisterialJoint Comm ittee to work tow ards a resolution of the refugee problem in July1993. At its first meeting in Kathmandu in October 1993, the Committeeagreed to verify the status of the people in the camps and agreed on fourcategories:1. bonafide Bhutanese if they have been evicted forcibly;2. Bhutanese who emigrated;3. non-Bhutanese people;4. Bhutanese who have committed criminal acts.(Joint Press Release, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kathmandu, 7 October 1993).Since then, six rounds of talks have not produced further tangible results andthe Nepalese media have criticized their government for agreeing to these fourcategories. The negotiations have not been helped by two changes ofgovernment in Nepal since they began. Whenever the delegations met in1994 and 1995, it seems that the Nepalese team usually pressed to move on tothe verification process, and that the Bhutanese team insisted that the two sidesshould 'harmonize their positions' on each category first. This delayedprogress, because the latter objective was very difficult to achieve withoutone side or the other making concessions. If the Bhutanese were allowed toapply their national laws, the Nepalese feared that huge numbers of peoplewould fall into category 2 (unless it could be proved that emigration formswere signed under duress), category 4 (for having demonstrated againstgovernment policies), or category 3 (simply for leaving the country and therebyforfeiting their citizenship). As Thronson argues,

under these [Bhutanese citizenship] laws, dissidents accused of anti-nationalactivity can be stripped of citizenship, but that certainly does not obligate otherstates to grant citizenship. Similarly, if the 1958 clause stripping citizenship from


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414 Michael Huttall those who abandon agricultural land is literally applied, without considerationof the myriad reasons the southern Bhutanese had toflee,every resident of thecamps can be 'legally' declared a non-national (Thronson 1993:8).

The sample survey of 883 camp households conducted by the Nepalesegovernment in February 1995 placed 879 of the households in category 1, butalso stated that 406 households (45.98 per cent of the sample) had signedvoluntary migration forms, and all but 34 had received compensation. TheNepalese argued that 'international principles' should be applied to thisprocess, and some urged that a third party should be involved in thenegotiations. The Bhutanese government made it clear that it would not agreeto UNHCR playing such a role (a stance criticized by Thronson, who arguesthat 'to even attempt such a process without active assistance from UNHCRwould be evidence of the lack of any intention to succeed' (1993:29)).

In Nepal the belief was widespread th at the government of India held the keyto the problem, since it has a guiding hand on Bhutan's foreign relations andwas moreover the country of first refuge for those who fled from southernBhutan. However, India insisted, and despite the changed circumstances ofearly 1996 (see below), continues to insist, that the matter is a purely bilateralissue and that it has no role to play in solving it. The various exile associationshave also argued, though to little avail, that the camp residents themselvesshould be represented at the negotiating table, because they fear that the twogovernments might arrive at a solution based on mutual political expediency.At the time of writing, no talks had taken place since the sixth round inThimphu between April 17-20 1995. This achieved little more than theexchange of the names of the people who would form the joint verificationteam, which would at some stage go into the camps and begin to classify thepeople there into the various categories. The Nepalese delegation is said tohave urged the Bhutanese to accept the basic principle that Bhutan should takeback 'all the people from Bhutan', i.e. both citizens and longterm residents,leaving behind only those persons who were citizens of other countries. TheBhutanese blamed the failure of the talks on the Nepalese, who, they said, hadthereby introduced new conditions. No date was set for any subsequentmeeting and it was widely rumoured that the Nepalese team believed thebilateral process to have been exhausted and was preparing to consideralternative strategies. The Bhutanese, on the other hand, claimed that asolution was still near and urged that the talks should continue.

In June 1995 the minority government in Nepal collapsed and it wasannounced that general elections would be held in November. However, theseelections were cancelled by Nepal's Supreme Court in August, and a newgovernment was installed. For the rest of 1995 there were no furtherdevelopments, but rumours gathered force that hope of a political settlementwas waning and that the camps would be disbanded. In fact, it is unlikely thatthe government of Nepal would permit this. What is more likely is that thequantity of bilateral and multilateral aid will diminish as hope of a settlement



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Ethnic Nationalism, Refugees and Bhutan 415of the problem recedes, and th at living conditions in the camps will deteriorateas a consequence.The differences that had always existed between camp-based activists andthe former officials and bureaucrats who tended to operate from Kathm and ucrystallized in the creation of two new umbrella organizations: the BhutanCoalition for Democratic Movement (BCDM) and the Appeal MovementCoordinating Council (AMCC). In September 1995 the AMCC submitted alengthy written appeal to the king of Bhutan asking for: the release of TekNath Rizal and the initiation of a process of national reconciliation; thesuspension and review of the 1985 Citizenship Act; the cancellation of the'One Nation One People' policy; the restoration and protection by law ofhuman rights in Bhutan; the establishment of a new electoral system withequal representation of the various regions of Bhutan; and the return ofBhutanese refugees who left after April 9, 1988. It announced that if noresponse came from the king by January 1996 a peaceful march would belaunched from the camps to Bhutan, in order to present the appeal to theking in person. The BCDM criticized these tactics on various grounds. Nonethe less, the first 150 marchers set out on 14 January and were arrested byIndian police as soon as they crossed the Nepalese border on 17 January. Asecond group of 300 marchers attempted to enter India on 23 January, butwas obliged to stage a sit-in demonstration at the border until 14 February,at which point 273 were allowed to cross but were also arrested. Furthergroups of marchers were arriving at the India-Nepal border, entering Indiaand courting arrest at the time of writing, and over one thousand were onIndian soil.

The first marchers were arrested by police of the state of West Bengal, afterthe imposition by the central government in New Delhi of an emergencyregulation, entitled Indian Penal Code 144, that prohibits gatherings in certainplaces for specified periods. Having remained theoretically neutral on the issuefor six years, India had to adopt a stance when the marchers entered itsterritory, and clearly its reaction was supportive of the Royal Government ofBhutan. However, the marchers received widespread and very active supportfrom the predominantly Nepali-speaking population of northern West Bengal.There were signs that the West Bengal government, a Left Front administra-tion that is customarily at odds with New Delhi, was uncomfortable abouthaving to implement the policy of the centre on this issue, and on 28 February1996 the first batch of 150 marchers was released, the magistrates' court atSiliguri in West Bengal having judged their detention to be illegal. The secondgroup was released shortly afterward and a camp was established on Indiansoil. There were strong concerns that by entering the Indian political arena themarchers would gain friends from the Indian Nepali community, who wouldnot be the most persuasive advocates of their case if it emerged that Indiangovernment policy was the deciding factor. The Bhutan government fears pan-Nepali nationalism, and New Delhi also views the communist government ofWest Bengal and the Indian Nepali political parties with caution. At the time



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416 Michael Huttof writing it remained unclear how events would unfold, though it seemedlikely that the two governments would meet again in the spring of 1996 and itwas clear that the crisis had entered a new phase.

ConclusionIf one accepts that the claims of all of the 88-103,000 people claimingBhutanese refugee status in Nepal are valid, and that the revised totalpopulation figure for Bhutan corresponds with reality (and it is important toremember tha t both figures are d isputed), then a flow of refugees fromsouthern Bhutan has removed one sixth of the country's population, andprobably about one half of the Nepali Bhutanese. Has this been caused by aresurgence of ethnic nationalism, and if so, whose?It must be admitted that significant differences exist between Smith'smodels and the realities of the Drukpa and Nepali Bhutanese ethnicidentities. Also, this uncomfortably real situation differs from Smith'stheoretical scenario, in that Bhutan's particular geo-political location obligesits governing elite to conceive of itself as threatened by demographic forces.The Drukpa Bhutanese are a majority within their own country, but think ofthemselves as a threatened minority in the broader regional context. Nonethe less, it can be argued that both kinds of ethnic community (the loose,'lateral' ethnic community of the Ngalong and central Bhutanese elites in thenorth and the more sharply-defined 'vertical' ethnic community of the NepaliBhutanese in the south) co-existed more or less peacefully in Bhutan until the1980s, although almost all of the political power was vested in the formercommunity and contact between them was limited. But the bureaucraticmodernization and economic development that took place in Bhutan after1961 began to disturb and challenge the definition of Bhutanese ethnicityamong the elite, and after the 1970s it also brought Bhutan's several ethniccommunities, which had hitherto interacted to a very minimal extent, intomore regular contact. There are signs that elements within the easternSharchhop community had become restive because of the Ngalong/centralBhutanese monopolization of positions of authority and privilege: theformation of a Sharchhop political party opposed to the governmenttheDruk National Congresswas announced in Kathmandu in June 1994. Theelites in the north realized that the 'vertical' or 'demotic' ethnicity of theNepali Bhutanese community in the south was very different from that of thenorth in that it pervaded all levels of southern Bhutanese society, and alsothat in neighbouring areas this ethnicity had already been mobilized to bringabout political change. It seemed axiomatic to the Bhutanese leadership thatthe populist ethnic nationalism of the Nepali Bhutanese in the south would intime be mobilized and that such a mobilization would sweep away the moreexclusive 'lateral' ethnic nationalism of the Drukpa in the north. Thronsonmakes much the same point:



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Ethnic Nationalism, Refugees a nd Bhutan 417the picture is not one of a sudden realization, thirty years after the fact, thatBhutan was inhabited by a large number of illegal ethnic Nepalis, but rather ascenario of escalating concern over the failure to integrate this portion of thepopulation into the politically dominant Drukpa culture (Thronson 1993:5).

As a result of this concern, the government of Bhutan embarked upon aprogram me of what Smith calls 'vernacular m obilization' in which the 'genuinemem bership' of the ethnic nation was to be re-educated in the 'true culture, thepristine culture of their ancestors, unsullied by contact with moderncivilization' (Smith 1994:192). Hence the extension of the Driglam Namzhagcode of social etiquette and dress from elite and monastic circles to the generalpopulace; the banning of TV antennae and satellite dishes; the promotion ofthe national language, Dzongkha; the downgrading of the status of Nepali innational life; the tightening of citizenship and marriage laws; and so on. Smithwarns us that this process 'can so easily end in the exclusion of other, non-national values and ultimately their bearers, lest they defile the rediscoveredand regenerated original culture' and that 'citizenship becomes coextensivewith the membership of the dominant ethnic commu nity' (1994:193). He pointsto the 'tendency of ethnic nationalisms to single out and categorize minoritieswithin as "alien "' (1994:191). Here one is reminded of some very extreme anti-'Lhotshampa' statements made in Bhutan's National Assembly and of theproposal in the same body in 1991 that all Bhutanese (including the'Lhotshampas') should be obligated to remake the formal pledge of loyalty(genja) to the king and the Drukpa political system that had originally beenmade when the monarchy was established in 1907.

To quote Smith once more, 'vernacular mobilization' (termed 'Bhutaniza-tion', first by its proponents and later by its critics) provoked resistance fromthe Nepali Bhutanese, who had until then remained a 'quiescent andaccommodated demotic ethnie' (ibid.: 191). This resistance took on all thecharacteristics the northern elites most feared: an attempt at mass politicalmobilization and a search for support from Nepali-led political groups outsideBhutan. The Bhutanese government justified its reponse to this resistance byclassifying a large port ion of the southern population as non-nationals, playingup the violent aspects of its resistance and presenting it to the outside world asterrorism. Villagers in southern Bhutan continue to suffer sporadic attacks androbberies: the perpetrators of these crimes have certainly included residents ofthe refugee camps (as admitted in the Bhutan Review, published by the HumanRights Organization of Bhutan in exile in Kathmandu, in its first issue(January 1993)), and probably also criminal elements from across the border inIndia who take advantage of a situation in which villages stand empty.Inevitably, the two sides in this argumentthe exiled Nepali Bhutaneseleaders thrown up by the crisis and the Drukpa elite in Thimphu have widelydiffering perceptions of the problem. The exiles argue tha t their return must beaccompanied by political reforms in Bhutan that guarantee the NepaliBhutanese a greater say in the administration and ensure their civil and


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418 Michael Huttcultural rights. The government of Bhutan lays stress on the robberies in thesouth and the threat of 'demographic invasion'. It describes the issue as its'southern problem' and presents it to the world as a 'threat to a nation'ssurvival'. The situation is not adequately described by journalistic cliches suchas 'clash of cultures' or 'ethnic cleansing'. It is the result of a politicallydominant ethnic community seeking to defuse the potential threat of apreviously marginal and subservient but very different ethnic community thatexists within its own territory, but is also part of a larger cross-bordergrouping. This it did, in effect if not by intention , by presenting it with a choicebetween subscribing visibly and actively to the Drukpa ethnic and politicalethos or surrendering its right to a continued presence in Bhutan.

As a result of the outflow of southern Bhutanese, the characteristics ofeach ethnic community have been heightened, the distance between them hasbecome much greater, and the search for an accommodation has becomemuch more difficult. Whenever a member of the government of Nepal statesthat all Bhutanese refugees should go home 'with honour and dignity', whatthe Drukpa Bhutanese elite hears is something very different. There appearsto be a will within Bhutan to develop more participative processes andinstitutions, but in practice the rhetoric and the reality often do not match.For instance, in 1971 the National Assembly ordained that ministers shouldbe elected every five years, but this requirement was abolished by the samebody seven years later. The fact that the demand for democracy emanatesfrom exiled opponents of the government who are almost all NepaliBhutanese means that the word 'democracy' has become anathema. Nomeeting of the National Assembly, Bhutan's main forum for political debatewhich has met at least once a year since it was founded in 1953, was calledbetween July 1993 and August 1995.

It is impossible now for the Bhutanese elite to accept the return of anysignificant proportion of the refugees unless it can be sure that its hold onpower will not be fatally weakened as a consequence. It is unlikely that theBhutanese government does not know how many of the refugees would beentitled to repatriation if an agreement was reached on the basis ofinternational law, and this may explain its apparent reluctance to proceed tojoint verification in the camps. However, Bhutan recognizes that it is in itsinterests for the problem to be resolved, and one has a sense that it wouldprobably prefer a settlement in which it took back what it considered apolitically acceptable number of refugees, with the remainder being resettledelsewhere. This is a solution that would be strongly resisted by the refugeeleadership, and heavily criticized in public fora in Nepal.If all of the genuinely dispossessed are ever to return to their homes andfields nsouthern Bhutan, the Bhutanese government will have to adopt a more inclusivestyle of territorial nationalism that includes the returnees in the national fold,while respecting their ethnic distinctiveness. In cultural terms, Bhutan is fullyjustified in its concern to preserve the distinctive Buddhist heritage that defines itas a national entity. Bhutan is tiny and vulnerable and has the misfortune of being



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Ethnic N ationalism, Refugees and Bhutan 419located in one of the most turbulent comers of the Indian sub-continent; itrequires a distinctive identity and the Drukpa culture provides this. Many of theexiles recognize the fact, including a senior ex-bureaucrat:

It is for us to realize that they have as much right to protect their interests as we havea right to demand ours . . . We are as concerned about people with vested interestslurking within the southern Bhutanese community as they are, but that does notmean that everyone must suffer. Our position is that if Bhutan is going to survive asa sovereign nation with its current identity and international status there has to be asystem which will take into account the views of the southern Bhutanese community,because unless and until they kick out the entire southern population, which is notfeasible, this problem will persist (Bhim Subba, in Hutt and Sharkey 1995).

The exclusive style of ethnic nationalism adopted by the Bhutanese governm enthas put the future of its unique Buddhist polity in jeopardy. A recognition bythe Nepali Bhutanese of Bhutan's right to cultural distinctiveness does notexcuse the government from providing social, political and economic justice tothe non-Drukpa elements of multi-ethnic Bhutan: 'Bhutan denies the allegationof inequity. But it has not discussed the problem with its own subjects' (Das1995:123). If this problem is to be resolved some re-evaluation is necessary ofthe meaning of Bhutanese nationhood and citizenship. Until such a re-evaluation occurs there will be no justice for those Bhutanese who languish inthe refugee camps in Morang and Jhapa.AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL (1992) Bhutan: Human Rights Violations against the Nepali-speaking Population in the South [ASA 14/04/92] (D ec.)(1994) Bhutan: Forcible Exile [ASA 14/04/94] (August).ARIS, M. (1979) Bhutan: the Early History of a Himalayan Kingdom. Warminster : Aris andPhillips.ARIS, M. and H U T T , M. (eds.) (1994) Bhutan: Aspects of Culture and Development. G a r t m o r e :Kiscadale Publications.D A S , B . S. (1995) Mission to Bhutan: a Nation in Transition. New D elhi: Vikas Publishing Ho use.DHAKAL, D. N. S. and STRA WN , C. (1994) Bhutan: a Movement in Exile. New Delhi and Ja ipur :

Nirala Publishers.E N G L I S H , R. (1983) Gorkhali and Kiranti: Political Economy in the Eastern Hills of Nepal (Ph .Dthesis 1982). Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International.HUROB (Human Rights Organizat ion of Bhutan) (1993) Annual Report 1993. K a t h m a n d u .HUTT, M. (1992) 'His Majesty King Jigme'; letter in Himal Sept.-Oct. 1992, pp. 5-7.HUTT, M. (ed.) (1994) Bhutan: Perspectives on Conflict and Dissent. Gar tmore : Kiscada lePublications.HUTT, M. and SHARKEY, G. (1995) 'Nepalese in Origin but Bhutanese First . A conversat ionwith Bhim Subba and Om Dhungel (Human Rights Organizat ion of Bhutan) ' , European Bulletinof Himalayan Research 9:32-42.M U N I , S. D. (1991) 'Bhuta n in the Throes of Ethnic Conflict' , India International Centre QuarterlySpring, pp. 14554.PRADHAN, K. (1991) The Gorkha Conquests. NewDelhi: Oxford University Press.RGB (1991) Royal Government of Bhutan , Depar tment of Information, Anti-national Activities inSouthern Bhutan: a Terrorist Movement. Thimphu, Sept .(1992a) Royal Government of Bhutan , Depar tment of Information, Anti-national Activities

in Southern Bhutan: an Update on the Terrorist Movement. Thimphu , Aug.(1992b) 'Driglam Nam sha Tradi t ional Et iquet te ' (mimeo supplied by Roya l Governmentof Bhutan, September 1992).


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Journal of Refugee Studies 1996 HUTT 397 420

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