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The Indian Connection
Bhutan's monarchy is unlike those of most other monarchical states. The Druk
Gyalpo (the Ruler of Druk) possesses neither absolute power nor divine
authority,. The first king was elected in 1907 by the topmost civil and
religious classes of Bhutan's society who swore a legally binding oath of
allegiance to the ruler and his heirs. But until the coronation of the third
king in 1952, powerful families continued to govern the districts, with little
interference from the centre.
This flexible arrangement could not ensure Bhutan's survival after India's
independence and China's invasion of Tibet, and the third king began a process
of modernization that has continued to this day. In 1953, a Tshogdu (national
assembly) was created and has met once or twice a year since then. (Its 72nd
session lasted for three weeks, from July 8 to 30, 1993.) Local governors drawn
from Bhutan's topmost social groupings began to be replaced by centrally
appointed officers, many of whom had been drawn from humble backgrounds and sent
for education to India. In 1958, the Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru
visited Bhutan for the first time. He offered Indian development aid and urged
Bhutan to come out of its isolation. In 1959 the Chinese crackdown in
Tibet pushed Bhutan further toward India.
In a treaty signed in 1910, Bhutan had agreed to accept British guidance in
its external relations, and the British had promised not to interfere in
Bhutan's internal affairs. In 1949, a similar agreement was formalized with
independent India, and the relationship has been an intimate one ever since.
Indian engineers built and still maintain most of Bhutan's roads; India finances
40 per cent of the Bhutan government's expenditure and receives at least 80 per
cent of Bhutan's exports.
Bhutan's emergence into the wider world has been marked by pragmatism and
caution, but since the 1970s there have been signs of a desire to move out a
little from under India's wing. Bhutan joined the United Nations in 1971, the
Non-Aligned Movement in 1973 and the South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation (SAARC) when it was formed in 1985. By March 1993, Bhutan had joined
over 150 international organizations, and 54 international agencies were
participating in its development programmes. But Bhutan maintains only five
embassies abroad (in Bangladesh, India, Kuwait, and at the United Nations in
Geneva and New York) and only Bangladesh and India have embassies in Bhutan.
Caution is also evident in Bhutan's efforts to earn the maximum amount of
foreign currency from the minimum number of tourists.
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