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Seeds of Conflict
All of this paints a picture of a kingdom that is moving cautiously and
pragmatically out of its medieval isolation into the modern world, while
maintaining its unique culture and way of life intact. However, since
1990 Bhutan has been engulfed in a growing political crisis. This has led to the
presence in December 1993 of over 84,000 refugees in camps in Nepal administered
by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, to insecurity and violence
in southern Bhutan, and to the growth of a dissident movement led by southern
Bhutanese in exile who are demanding radical changes in the kingdom's political
system. How has this come about?
In 1985, a new Citizenship Act stipulated that any one born in Bhutan after
1958 who had only one Bhutanese parent had to apply for citizenship, demonstrate
fluency in Dzongkha, and produce documentary evidence of 15 or 20 years'
residence. According to the government, a survey of the south had detected large
numbers of illegal immigrants. A census began to "identify Bhutanese
nationals" in the southern districts in 1988, and led to unease because,
according to refugees and exiles, the authorities set excessively strict
standards for documentation. Many who could not provide documents that
proved they resided in Bhutan in 1958 were apparently classed as noncitizens,
regardless of whether or not they held citizenship cards.
It is very difficult to discover whether or not massive illegal immigration
did take place after 1958, but after 1980 the government seemed to revise its
confident, inclusive attitude to the Southerners and apparently decided that
they were a political threat. Perhaps this was partly because Sikkim had lost
its independence and become a Nepali-dominated state of India in 1974, and
India's Darjeeling district, right next to Bhutan's border, erupted in a
Nepali-led struggle for autonomy between 1986 and 1988. Nepal's democracy
movement, which reduced the status of the king of Nepal to that of a
constitutional monarch in 1990, must have heightened the Drukpas' fears.
Bhutan's Sixth Five Year Plan (1987-1992) included a policy of 'one
nation, one people' and introduced a code of traditional Drukpa dress and
etiquette called Driglam Namza. This required all citizens to wear the gho
( a one-piece tunic for men) and the kira (an ankle- length dress for
women) in ceremonial and official contexts. The rule was applied over-zealously
at first; so much so that many Lhotshampas could not venture out of their homes
in their everyday attire without facing the prospect of a fine or imprisonment.
Then in 1989 the teaching of Nepali was stopped in Bhutanese schools. According
to the Government, this became necessary because of the introduction of a new
primary curriculum, but it added to the Lhotshampas' feeling that their culture
was being pushed to one side.
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