Abstract
Today, more than 80,000 Americans are Bhutan-born. It took about three decades and billions of dollars in the process to move them from Bhutan to America (the USA and Canada). The Bhutanese people (now Bhutan-born Americans) of Gorkha extraction and Buddhism accommodative Hindus were adherent royalists. These people were politically marginalised in Bhutan by Drukpa rulers for more than a century. They were deprived of a global outlook of the world perspective and were kept away from political institutionalisation. They needed education on global economics, politics, diplomacy, and market. They needed wider exposure to global political orientation and behaviour. Before they could claim their political rights, they were segmented, categorised, antagonised, and evicted from Bhutan. The situation turned beyond their control. They were perceived political opponents. Based on racial, ethnic, linguistic, and religious differences, the Royal Government of Bhutan revoked their citizenship and expelled them from the country. More than 200,000 of their brethren who could survive the expulsion are still in Bhutan living with limited rights to total deprivation. Thousands of those evicted people are in hideouts in India. Others who took refuge in Nepal were invited to resettle in the USA and for diplomatic correctness in its friend countries, namely the UK, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Australia, and New Zealand. The Bhutanese people have walked an adventurous journey from Bhutanese nationals to Bhutan-born Americans. The saga seems to have a happy ending here. However, the exercise to educate these people with global socio-economic-political conundrum has come to an unfortunate doldrum. Unless external catalysts educate them on their purposes, the Bhutan-born Americans are destined to remain a part and parcel of the American workforce then look back to complete the unfinished agenda or balm their brethren left behind. In this article, an attempt is made to recall in chronological order, how and when the people born in Bhutan were made American.
Keywords: Bhutanese, Bhutanese refugees, Drukpa, migration, third country resettlement,
Background
In this article the phrase ‘Bhutan-born American’ is meant to designate thousands of Bhutanese people who have reached America on different grounds and most of who survived as refugees for decades. These people have a long history in Asia and are extending their history and generation as new citizens of America. The word ‘America’ is used as a general term for the USA, Canada and a few other countries that are friends of the USA and have shouldered burden sharing by resettling fraction of the population.
Historically, before the political boundaries shaped the present day Bhutan and Nepal, there were people who used to travel freely and settle in the places of their choices and suits. Most people in the region were of Kirat extracts who are believed to the earliest known and extant tribes (Chemjong, 1948). Their existence can be traced back to the days when the earliest scriptures from the Vedas to the Mahabharata were written (Chemjong, 1948). However, the political stories appeared in writing much later.
In seventh century, a magician turned Buddhism preacher, Guru Padmasambhava took flock of people from Halesi area (present day Khotang of Nepal) to Bumthang, Mongar and Paro areas of present day Bhutan (Ngagyur Nyingma Institute, 1999 ). The descendants of those people still believe that once in their lifetime they must visit Halesi, the land of their ancestors. Those who can afford still visit their ancestral land.
Wars and feuds between seventh and eighteenth centuries displaced people from Nepaul (present day Kathmandu valley). They took shelter elsewhere including Wangdiphodrang and Punakha of today’s Bhutan. Those Jyapu of Newar tribes still retain their identities as Jyaps or Zabs in Bhutan (Dargye, 2009). Their language carries the reminiscence of ancient Newari (Kansakar, 1980). These are mostly undocumented and little researched cases.
In 1624 AD and 1639 AD Dharmaraja Nawang Namgyel, the unifier of Druk Yul (modern Bhutan) visited Gorkha and Nepaul and took with him workers and artisans who assisted him to introduce weighing and measuring systems, use of currency, minting of coins, reading, writing and construction of temples and monasteries in Druk Yul.
Those Gorkhali people lived in Bhutan following two kings: Drukpa Dharmaraja for protection and Gorkha king as their cultural and ancestral head. In 1768, there was unification in Nepal with a consensual agreement that the country carried the name Nepal and the king of Gorkha as its head. Gradually Gorkha entities were rechristened Nepali things.
There were Anglo-Bhutan war, where Drukpa rulers faced British-India led forces in Bhutan. It was followed by and Anglo-Bhutan treaty and several mission exchanges (IPA, 2012). Many Nepalese people were attracted to Duar region of Bhutan. Drukpas who ruled with the name of Dharmaraja, although he was dead centuries back, wanted the Nepalese people in the buffer region between the Drukpa Land (Druk Yul) ad British India. The Buffer land was Bhutan that included all Duars and southern part of Druk Yul. A demarcation was made with flags along the mountain peaks (Jhande Danda) setting limitations for Drukpas in the north and Bhutanese in the south. The Duars were lost to British-India and apart of Bhutan remained attached to Druk.
In 1907, a Drukpa leader, Sir Ugyen Wangchuck, used his wit, bravery, diplomacy, and brutality neutralised several local leaders and assumed the role of hereditary monarch of the Drukpas. Nepal’s system was copied. The country’s Name was retained as Bhutan with a Drukpa as its monarch. No representative from Bhutan, except one commissioner cum tax collector Sonam Tobgay Dorji, the cousin of Wangchuck was said to have represented the Bhutanese people of Gorkha or Nepali lineage.
The Bhutanese were burdened with taxes in labour, kind, and cash since then. In 1920s the taxes were too high that the people revolted and many villagers including Pashupathi Adhikari, the Mandal of Chirang fled to exile in Assam (Mathew, 2008). In the 1940s the Bhutanese revolved in the name of Jai Gorkha calling for equal status in Bhutan (Mishra, 2011).
In 1950s, they revolted under a banner of Bhutan State Congress, seeking justice, equality and political reforms (Sinha, 1991). Many people were shot dead and several villagers were evicted from the country (Sinha, 1991).
In 1958, on the advice of PM Jawaharlal Nehru of India, the Drukpa rulers agreed to include the Bhutanese people of Gorkhali/Nepali lineage as equal citizens through a nationality act of 1958. All residents who submitted a written allegiance to the Drukpa king and with an assurance that they would truncate relationship with Gorkha kings would be registered as Bona-fide Bhutanese national (National Assembly of Bhutan, 1958). The Drukpa rulers wanted to secure themselves as the only legitimate ruler of the country and would consider any call for political reform as a threat to their rule (Thinley, 1994).
In 1977 and 1985, stricter citizenship acts were enacted and based on those acts, hundreds and thousands of Bhutanese citizens were evicted from the country and their land and properties distributed among the officers and soldiers who helped the Drukpa rulers in eviction (National Assembly of Bhutan, 1992).
By the end of 1992, more than 80,000 Bhutanese citizens were in exile in India and Nepal. In Nepal they managed to build and live-in temporary huts for more than two decades.
The plan and implementation of eviction of Bhutanese citizens coincided with the end of cold war and the governments of America and Bhutan came in direct contacts (Rizal, Bhutan Built Berlin Wall is Yet to Fall Down, 2008).
A chronology of America-Bhutan nexus
| Year | Events (Rizal, A Pardesi in Paradise, 2018) |
| 1956 | The RGOB send a secret message to the President Dwight D. Eisenhower of the USA and rulers in Japan requesting them to sponsor Bhutan to the UNO membership. The USA replied to come through India |
| 1959 | China took over Tibet, thousands of Tibetans fled to Bhutan seeking shelter and refuge. The USA asked RGoB to hold them in Bhutan. |
| 1969 | The GOI agreed to sponsor Bhutan to the UNO membership on the condition that it stood with Indian interest in international issues. |
| 1979 | The King of Bhutan visited America, Cuba |
| 1993 | [March] Robin Raphel, United States Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, visited Bhutanese refugee camps in Nepal[July] Lantos’s team of Congressional human rights caucus of the USHouse of Representatives wrote to the Bhutan King to stop further eviction. The direct eviction ended. |
| 1993 | [October] Robin Raphel visited Bhutan India, and Nepal. She suggested the GON to accept the categorisation of refugees into 4 categories. The GON and RGOB agreed to categorize the refugees. |
| 1993-2003 | There were fifteen rounds of Bhutan-Nepal bilateral talks on Bhutanese refugees with several deadlocks in between. |
| 2002 | [November 26] In a meeting with donor representatives, the director of UNHCR’s bureau for Asia and the Pacific Jean-Marie Fakhouri declared that the Bhutan Nepal bilateral efforts to resolve the refugee problem had exhausted, and the UNHCR was exploring the possibility of a multilateral solution by 2003. He said the ambassadors from countries friendly to Bhutan had started discussion in search of an expeditious multilateral solution. He further declared that it was unrealistic to expect all 100,000 refugees to return to Bhutan or to assimilate in Nepal and a burden-sharing package between the two countries, added with a “token resettlement to a third country“was an attractive option. |
| 2003 | [April 11] Luke Sookocheff, human rights officer in DFAIT’s human rights, humanitarian affairs, and international women’s equality division reported Canada’s urge to the RGoB to finalise its negotiations with Nepal, work with UNHCR and begin repatriation and integration immediately. Sookocheff also said that Canada was interested in participating in third country resettlement efforts. Canada was working to establish its diplomatic ties with Bhutan. [November 28] UNHCR informed the home ministry in Nepal in writing about its decision to stop financial assistance to the JVT. UNHCR provided one last payment of USD 40,000 to allow the Nepali team to find alternative sources.[December 1-3] Swiss Ambassador Walter Gyger and Austrian Ambassador Jutta Stefan-Bastl, both resident in New Delhi, also responsible for Nepal and Bhutan, on behalf of the “five-nation friends of Bhutan” visited Thimphu to urge the RGoB to make the repatriation process transparent, complete verification of the remaining camps faster, and accommodate third-party monitoring. The RGoB agreed to complete verification process quickly and informed that the Bhutanese verification team then already in the Khudunabari Camp would provide information to the refugees about repatriation. The two ambassadors were critical of UNHCR that withdrew financial support for the Nepali verification team. The office of the UNHCR had been providing financial support to the Nepalese JVT members.[December] The Bhutanese delegation at joint verification team took up a scuffle at Khudunabari refugee camp and left the verification and repatriation process and never returned. |
| 2004 | [April 15] In a voting of the United Nations (UN) human rights commission in Geneva, Switzerland to approve Honduras’ resolution that denounced Cuba’s communist government for its human rights violations on the Cuban people and the visit of a UN investigator to Cuba, twenty-two countries approved the resolution, ten including RGoB remained neutral and twenty-one voted against the resolution. Before the vote, delegates from Washington had approached the Bhutanese foreign minister and forced the RGoB delegates to abstain from voting.[October 19] United States assistant secretary of state for the bureau of population, refugees, and migration (2002-2005) Arthur E. “Gene” Dewey visited Beldangi refugee camp. The following week Gene Dewey visited Bhutan, made a historical agreement with the King Jigme Singye Wangchuk called “Dewey-Wangchuk agreement.” They agreed to quickly resolve the Bhutanese refugee problem. “Bhutan would take back some, as a matter of principle”, they agreed. Dewey requested the King Jigme Singye Wangchuk to take back category 1 refugees from Khudunabari Camp. The King accepted the proposal and explained the need to work out the protocol on repatriation between the governments of Bhutan and Nepal. The monarch wanted the initiative to appear bilateral between Bhutan and Nepal, not as a US proposal, although he wanted to inform India. Dewey’s delegation visited India to garner support in favor of the agreement (Reference APIP). |
| 2005 | [March] US sent a demarche to Bhutan to side with the US against Cuba like in 2004. The RGoB asked for a gentleman’s agreement. As per the agreement RGoB would support the US on the Cuba resolution and other areas where US needs Bhutan support on the understanding that the US will support the RGoB on the issue of the people in camps in Nepal by specifically indicating its support for Bhutan to accept category 1 refugees only and to push for dismantling the camps with the balance of refugees going elsewhere. [May 2] A meeting between the delegates from the US led by Terry Rusch and India led by Ranjit Rae discussed on the Bhutanese refugee issues, RGoB’s position on the refugees, their repatriation, and resettlement. It was discussed that US government may undertake resettlement of a modest number of the most vulnerable Bhutanese refugees identified by UNHCR. The GOI reviewed the positions of Nepal and Bhutan. Concerns of Nepal government were answered and UNHCR had started the counting of the refugees. Rae told that for the repatriation of category 1 refugees, the Dewey- Wangchuk agreement provided the best framework. Although about 130,000 Bhutanese people had originally left Bhutan, there were less than 125,000 refugees in the camp. Others had remained in India, Rae claimed. For resettlement India suggested the US to consider family set up, to ensure parents, children and grandparents remain united. The refugees included of estimated 14,000-15,000 families. India requested to delay third-country resettlement option. First, the people to return to Bhutan should be determined. If not, many will request a third country option instead of repatriation. [November 12-13] The Then King Gyanendra Shah of Nepal and Foreign Minister Khandu Wangchuck of Bhutan met on the sidelines of SAARC summit in Bangladesh. They agreed on the repatriation of category 1 and 4 refugees from the Khudunabari camp and continuation of the joint verification process. [November 22, Delhi] In a meeting between outgoing MEA joint secretary Ranjit Rae and incoming joint secretary Prakaj Saran, the latter informed that GON accepted the proposal for the third country resettlement; Indian interest in Bhutan included keeping United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) out of Bhutan; and the GOI had raised a new special security bureau (SSB) force to patrol Indian’s Northeast borders with Bhutan, Nepal, and Bangladesh. |
| 2007 | [May 16] the US embassy in Kathmandu issued an eight-point communique on behalf of the core working group on Bhutanese refugees in Nepal [ (Communique, 2007)](Appendix 6????). The core group members included the governments of Australia, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand, NorwNorway, the United States (Communique 1) and later joined by the UK. It committed to working with the UNHCR, governments of Nepal and Bhutan to find a sustainable and comprehensive solution that best meets the individual needs of the refugees (Communique 3). It acknowledged that there were one hundred and eight thousand Bhutanese refugees in the refugee camps (Communique 4). The GON agreed to third country resettlement and to provide exit permit (Communique 5). The core group welcomed the stated commitment of the RGoB to find a just and durable solution to the situation of the refugees in the camps. It encouraged the RGoB to work with the UNHCR and the Government of Nepal to provide written terms and conditions of return, including on property rights, and a clear time-line for implementation of agreed commitments for those who have already been identified for return and for those who may wish to return in the future. It also called on the RGoB to ensure conditions within Bhutan to prevent further refugee outflows in the future (Communique 6). As international solidarity and burden sharing, the core group member countries agreed to resettle interested refugees and to support their integration into new countries and societies; some core group countries (not specified in the communique) stood ready to provide assistance for repatriation efforts to Bhutan (Communique 7) |
| 2006-2008 | The resettlement agencies got into action. The refugee leaders were asked to commit to resettlement in writing. Nepalese officers were brought into confidence. Despite resistance from a section of refugees including the members of Bhutan Communist Party the resettlement started and continued successfully. |
| 2008 | [March] The first batch of one hundred Bhutanese left the refugee camp and Nepal for Arizona in the USA, under the new resettlement program.Sir John McCain visited Bhutan, immediately after he lost the presidential election in America. |
| 2018 | Mr Bhuvan Pyakurel, a Bhutan-born America won an election and a seat in Reynoldsburg City Council setting the first example of a Bhutanese entering the active American politics. |
Why America?
A few things are clear, and many things are still obscure on why the USA accepted 17 % population of a Himalayan country. There are several salient hypotheses to test with time: Neo-slavery, cheap labour, ethnic harmonisation, genetic mix-up, humanitarian assistance, political game, bargain with Bhutan, US embassy in Bhutan, a really altruistic work, etc. (Rizal, A Pardesi in Paradise, 2018). Given the immense opportunity for the self, community and national development, Bhutanese back Bhutan, India and Nepal expect the resettled Bhutanese to use the opportunities in their hands to work for the welfare and justice for their extended community.
Conclusion
The Bhutanese people have received far more privileges and opportunities than they have expected. The life and living standard are much higher than in refugee camps or Bhutan. There is no regret on this. The worst of all, the activists who struggled for democracy, people’s rights and dignity are still in prison in Bhutan. There is no justice to them. The people who were tortured in jails and barricades in Bhutan are neither compensated, nor acknowledged. The people have lost their jobs, land, and properties. The evictors openly use the land and properties of the evicted people. They continue to threaten other citizens in the same way as they used to do decades back. There is ‘democracy’ in Bhutan with ban on political parties lifted and periodic election in place, there is no change in the government mechanism and system. The justice is long delayed. There is a high hope from Bhutan-born Americans who have passed through the crisis, that they would learn the American way and expectation, rise to the global socio-economic-political standard and work towards peace and justice of the people back in Bhutan.
These groups of people are in the lowest rung of American society. They have several difficulties to overcome. At this, it’s only the external catalysts who can help them solve their problems, their counterparts are living within Bhutan, India, and Nepal.
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