25 What they Say about Bhutan

The Bhutanese sometimes complain that the outside world is unfair to them. True, but the outside world is also sometimes too fair. And the Bhutanese are smart enough to know that. In both cases, people see what they want to see.

As might be expected, the British colonial authorities in India had mixed feelings about Bhutan. To some of those colonial officers it was a land of mountain savages, and to make the matter worse those savages avoided the authority of Her Majesty’s Raj and succeeded in humiliating them quite often. Thus in 1839, Boileau Pemberton wrote after his mission: ”Every element of deterioration is comprised in their government, both secular and spiritual. Their energies are paralysed ... their morals are degraded ...”.

Some 20 years later Sir Ashley Eden led another official mission that was a predictable disaster in view of his arrogant behaviour. He filled his report with insults one has to admire for their poetic skill, describing one of the Bhutanese lords or penlops, for example, as having ”an absence of modesty and an amount of indecency that would have disgraced the most uncivilised barbarian in the world”.

Wow!

Quite contrary to that, some of the British officers who grew to know Bhutan better, developed a genuine affection for the country and its people. For example George Bogle, writing in 1774, expressed the opposite of Pemberton: ”The more I see of the Bhutanese the more I am pleased with them. The common people are good humoured, downright, and I think, thoroughly trusty ...”

Many of these old documents are hard to find now, a pity for they are well worth reading. Few more so than those of John Claude White who was the Political Officer in the first years of the 20th century and became a firm friend of Bhutan.

Much of what one finds published on Bhutan now is coffee table literature, consisting of great pictures accompanied by texts that are full of clichés. On the other side of the fence, if you go to political development publications you know you will get human rights and other problems stuffed down your throat to the exclusion of anything else. In anoth-

Crafts – zorig chu sum

er chapter I have been sarcastic about one of the many Shangri-la type books about Bhutan, the one by Katie Hickman. To be fair it was quite well written, however unreal. One expatriate in Thimphu told me that she had read this book shortly after arriving and had liked it; it was only after a while that she started to see why all of us who had lived in Bhutan somewhat longer tended to groan loudly whenever it was mentioned.

In a book I authored together with Bhutanese scholars, The Treasure Revealer of Bhutan, I wrote a critical chapter about a work by the respected academic and scholar, the late Michael Aris. He had expressed views about the Bhutanese saint Pemalingpa which seemed to be both unwarranted and a little scornful (in short, he said that Pemalingpa was a fake).

The book seemed regrettable because Aris was a fine scholar of Bhutanese history. At that time few in the West knew more about Bhutan than he did. When we were due to go to Bhutan, the Norwegians had nobody who could tell us about it so we were sent to an international briefing centre at Farnham Castle in England. They too had little about Bhutan, but they had managed to invite Michael Aris - just for us. So the briefing we received was excellent. Since we expressed interest in the religion and language he introduced us to those too. With his neat precise strokes he wrote out the dzongkha alphabet for us, and showed us the pronunciation of the subscribed and superscribed letters and other mysteries of the script.

Aris, whose widow is Aung San Suu Kyi, leader in Myanmar, had spent many years in Bhutan, both as tutor to the royal family and as scholar. Being an historian not a scholar of Buddhism, however, he seemed to have made a big mistake when he wrote about Pemalingpa - which is what my own later book, written together with Bhutanese monk scholars, sought to rectify.

Scholars work in curious ways. Some years ago, a Norwegian anthropologist made people in Bhutan quite angry. She visited Bhutan several times, including field research amongst groups of women in particular. Material she collected ended up as an exhibition in Oslo. A Bhutanese musician studying in Norway at that time, Jigme, was asked to play Bhutanese music at the opening of the exhibition. He arrived late and did not have time to look around until afterwards. He said he would not have played had he seen the exhibition first. Quite a few Norwegians objected, too. In particular, the Buddhist Association protested strongly against the

exhibition’s portrayal of Buddhism in Bhutan.

It so happened that UNICEF in Thimphu had, a few years previously, given me the task of editing her reports so I had come to know their contents quite well. I had been surprised by some of her statements and conclusions, in particular as they related to Buddhism. I told her of my objections, though of course I did nothing to change what she wrote. Her findings were based on investigation into beliefs that are common enough at the village level and can seem like superstitions as well as discrimination. But to my mind, there were three errors in her exhibition.

The first was to present the results of her research, which was on a few specific issues, in what appeared as an exhibition about Bhutan in general. Since most people in Norway knew little about Bhutan they saw those as being typical of the country.

The second was to select negative images. The exhibition catalogue gave some unpleasant impressions; for example there was a picture of a fat monk holding some money. This is a question of how one presents one’s research. It seemed rather like a Bhutanese anthropologist coming to Europe and suggesting that Christianity is barbaric by showing pictures of a casino, a supermarket and a brothel.

The third mistake, I think, was to interpret village beliefs in a moralising way - a typical Norwegian trait, I’m afraid - implying that they have bad effects on the lives of the women. What significance do folk beliefs have? Do they lead to exploitation, to female infanticide, or to a repressive gender and caste complex as in some other countries? Not necessarily.

As in our own societies men still predominate in high positions in the Bhutanese world, and of course there are points to criticise. In the Himalayas there have never been more than a handful of female reincarnate lamas either. Buddhism, however, states explicitly that there is no difference between men and women on the road to liberation. It is even written that women’s minds are sharper than those of men. So there are two sides to this. In addition, women in Bhutan have a lot of power. Most visitors notice how strong and cheerful the women are; they also regularly see men feeding children, weaving, or carrying babies. Our anthropologist could have taken note of Bogle’s comments (as far back as 1774), that there was no suttee as in India, wives could outlive their husbands and were free to marry again, they were free of the many taboos which char-

acterised Muslim as well as largely Hindu India, and had no caste system.

Women in Bhutan are often the ones who look after the money, and their husbands’ careers too. And inheritance follows a matrilineal system in parts of the country.

Curiously, at about the same time another anthropologist, the Swiss Martin Brauen, was making a film in central Bhutan about a village where the women seem to have more power than the men. This again was selective research; the difference being that Brauen had a positive impression of Bhutan. His film had the merit of being sympathetic, and kind, whereas the Oslo exhibition was filled with images which I can only describe as degrading.

Similarly, there were two articles about Bhutan which the Norwegian development magazine Utvikling was humorous enough to print side by side. One of them was by their Asia correspondent, who came to the kingdom for a brief visit and asked as many nasty questions as possible about democracy and human rights, but very little about the rest of life in this country. He portrayed Bhutan as a tough feudal dictatorship. (He also interviewed us, but seemed to hear little of what we said about all the good things in Bhutan). The other article was by a philosopher acquaintance of ours who had been to Bhutan on two short visits, and for whom it is the ultimate, romantic Shangri-la. To him Bhutan was perfect and without any problems at all. Seeing these two articles side by side made a comic contrast.

Bhutan experienced ethnic problems whilst we were there; much of the outside world pounced on the occasion. Those who know the history of Bhutan, Nepal, and Sikkim understood why the authorities were very worried by uncontrolled immigration. The independent kingdom of Sikkim had eventually been absorbed into India. The Bhutanese, who until that point had no statistics about their actual population, were worried about being swamped by immigrant settlers, mainly of Nepalese stock. In addition the amiable but unsophisticated police force had no prior experience of handling tough situations; and there were a few hardliners, just a few, who I think made the issue worse. People did suffer and it was not a happy time. Many people had to leave as refugees. But the world’s reactions from far away were far too simplistic.

From an outsider point of view we will always find negative things.

Although political science students hate to hear this, words like ”feudal”, ”dictatorship”, and even “freedom”, mean different things at different points in space and history.

Bhutan made mistakes. It was a difficult and confused situation. But one quite prominent Bhutanese said to us: “This has something positive at least in the sense that we can’t go around pretending we are Shangri-la any more”.

Much of the Buddhist world has had a tradition of absolute rulers, dharma rajas, where authority is invested in a religious king. Those who have read the histories of Bhutan – the story of Lhasetsangma which I translated to English is one such – will know that districts without leaders even used to go and search for princes of respected families and invite them to come to their district to be their leaders. Naturally this also tended to provide them with protection and allies, but the spiritual foundation of the practice is significant too.

Bhutan was an isolated country until recently, on the other hand it is the only country I know where such a genuine process of decentralisation of power has been initiated from the centre – by the kings and leaders themselves. The Bhutanese were amongst the first to point out in international circles that the goal is not democracy as such, with its often flawed or money-dependent voting systems, but good governance.

Academics may have their own hidden agendas too. I was on the point of obtaining a considerable sum of donor money for the National Library of Bhutan, when the organisation in question sent me an angry letter asking why we were requesting aid for a library which was already so well equipped. Attached was a copy of a conference speech delivered by a western librarian based in Hong Kong - describing the wonderful state of affairs at the National Library of Bhutan. This woman had been on a short visit to Thimphu, collected a few dozen facts along with a few hundred false impressions, and was now making a nice income on the international lecture circuit as an ”expert” on Bhutan’s National Library - talking rubbish!

According to her we had ”a full range of reader services” and many other things none of us who worked at the Library had noticed. I was doing research there myself in a freezing office, queuing up to use the one and only computer; there was one phone, not a single photocopier,

no fax, and seldom even writing paper to be had. And anyone who wanted to borrow something from the Library, either just walked in and took it (there were piles of very valuable manuscripts lying around without a shred of security), or else found the place locked, and the caretaker (not librarian, there wasn’t one) gone to lunch.

Oh, we had a full range of reader services and equipment, did we? Needless to say the library didn’t get the grant. So that woman cost Bhutan fifty thousand dollars.

Indian writing about Bhutan tends to be patchy and indecisive. Perhaps this partly reflects India’s own journey, something many Indian authors have mused on. To my mind some of the most thoughtful Indian writing on the history of Bhutan and the Himalayan borderlands is still to be found in the books of Nari Rustomji. He was the Indian Political officer in Sikkim for many years as well as a kind of special adviser to the government of Bhutan during the 1950’s. He describes the difficult period of the early 1960s in a way that is not always appreciated in Bhutan, but even if some of his conclusions may not be right, he gives a fascinating picture of the country at that time. His writings are erudite and sympathetic.

A book by an American journalist, Barbara Crossette, also took a sympathetic yet critical approach, as its title So Close to Heaven indicates. But in the end she also tends to relapse slightly into the Hollywood-Bollywood syndrome of simplifications: right and wrong, good guys and bad guys. Reality in the Orient is not like that, is not lived like that, and cannot be understood through those western spectacles.

To what extent is it possible, or constructive, for outsiders to give criticism? When it comes from a journalist or a researcher who has only been for a short visit, then of course the local people react strongly. Such criticism has little credibility. Cultural differences take time to understand; language is a barrier too, one may receive quite misleading impressions even when using interpreters.

It took us a long time to understand how the Bhutanese, though they speak English well, may use certain English words in a way which has a different meaning. Sometimes this is because they haven’t understood our English quite right; at other times it is because we ourselves have, if unwittingly, prompted them in the way we put our questions, so that we invite certain words in the answers. Research as such can never fully

overcome this; it can only be reduced through long experience and contact.

Like many expatriates we learned this slowly. We would hear about some new government decision and react critically. As time went by we often started to see that we were missing the mark in either of two ways. Usually the Bhutanese decisions did turned out to be smart; occasionally it transpired that they were poor decisions, but not for the reasons we outsiders had thought of. But it was only by still being in the same country some years later that we would be able to learn that.

The journalist had gone home, never to return, would never see the outcome. The lady who lost Bhutan a grant for the library probably never heard any more about it.

Criticising from an outside position builds barriers, not bridges. Criticism in public is especially unwelcome in Asian cultures. Only after several years could we start to have really open, critical conversations with people in Bhutan – simply because we were closer to them. Those Bhutanese usually know what they’re doing. We don’t discard our critical faculties, and we still think they are wrong sometimes. But if the Bhutanese sometimes seem a bit too proud of themselves and not very good at listening? Then they are just like we Norwegians!

The romantic impulse to write about Bhutan as a Shangri-la is understandable. We might admit that it stems from our wish to see a better place, somewhere on this planet, since we’ve made quite a mess of our own part of it. An example of a country where “development” is a success story, rather than the dependency or failures to which development often contributes. But the Shangri-la image can only have a negative effect on Bhutan itself, reinforcing a certain complacency at a time when there is a need to listen more carefully to this outside world which, like it or not, is sweeping in over Bhutan’s borders.

Much of what is written about Bhutan is shallow; a lot of the praise is rubbish, and a lot of the criticism is rubbish too. Either way, in my view Bhutan often gets an easy ride. Maybe the old British colonials were not that bad. They were critical and rather pompous, yet observant and informative, and seldom suffered from missionary intolerance or from the romantic fluff which clouds much later writing about Bhutan.