Bhutan is one of the few countries which has been independent throughout its history, never conquered, occupied, or governed by an outside power (notwithstanding occasional nominal tributary status). From the time historical records are clear, Bhutan has continuously and successfully defended its sovereignty.[3]
Buddhism replaced but did not eliminate the Bon religious practices that had also been prevalent in Tibet until the late 6th century. Instead, Buddhism absorbed Bon and its believers. As the country developed in its many fertile valleys, Buddhism matured and became a unifying element. It was Buddhist literature and chronicles that began the recorded history of Bhutan.[6]
Much of early Bhutanese history is unclear because most of the records were destroyed when fire ravaged the ancient capital, Punakha, in 1827. By the 10th century, Bhutan's political development was heavily influenced by its religious history. Various subsects of Buddhism emerged that were patronised by the various Mongol warlords.
We learn how the constant feuds as well as reconciliations between different clans and different schools of Buddhism have shaped the history of Bhutan. Another interesting topic dealt with is the country's shared history with its neighbors like India, Nepal, China and particularly Tibet which seems to have played the role of both the warmest ally and the coldest foe, the admired and the despised.
5 In order to become a citizen by naturalization the 1985 Bhutan Citizenship Act requires: twenty years of residency in Bhutan; the ability to speak, read and write Dzongkha proficiently; good knowledge of the culture and history of Bhutan; a good moral character; no “record of imprisonment for criminal offenses in Bhutan or elsewhere”; and “no record of having spoken or acted against the King, country and people of Bhutan in any manner whatsoever.” Furthermore, section 3 in the 1985 act retroactively makes 1958 the cut-off date for citizenship by registration. In these cases, the person must provide land tax receipts or other proof of residency from on or before December 31, 1958.
There is nothing unusual about the brevity and blandness of this analysis. The tone was almost replicated in the multi-authored, widely celebrated official history titled Smallpox and its Eradication published by the WHO HQ in 1988. Numbering all of 1460 pages, it devoted about four paragraphs and a few stray sentences to Bhutan, largely placed in a concise section that also discussed the situation prevalent within the kingdom of Nepal and the Indian protectorate of Sikkim (the latter became a formal part of the Republic of India in 1975). The potted history of the Bhutanese programme provided by the following paragraph gives us an effective appreciation of the limited scope of this retrospective official analysis:
The four works included in this collection have enjoyed a rather chequered career. They originally formed the second volume of the doctoral thesis Michael Aris submitted in 1978 to the University of London. They have been included because of their value as crucial source material on the formative era of Bhutanese history, as they cover the entire period leading to the full emergence of the Bhutanese theocracy. Their relative brevity as compared with the other major works relevant to this period further suggested the convenience of including them as a group of inter-related 'minor' texts.
(Dr) Lopen Karma Phuntsho is a leading on Butan and teaches Buddhism and Butan Studies in the country and abroad. He finished his full monastic training before he joined Oxford University to pursue a D.Phil. in Oriential Studies. Since 2003, he has worked as a research fellow at Cambridge University and CNRS, Paris. The author of several books and numerous articles, he speaks and writes extensively on Bhutan's history, religion and culture.
While it cannot be denied that Bhutan is closely linked to Tibet in its religious culture and is now often called the last bastion of the Tibetan Buddhist civilization, the general cultural affinity between Bhutan and Tibet outside of the religious influence is far more tenuous than most experts on Tibet would have us believe. Thus, against the general tendency of Tibetologists to treat Bhutan as an extension of Tibet, we must distinguish one from the other, at least to the extent Japan is distinct from China or Nepal is from India. It will become clear from the following discussion of history that for nearly half a millennium Bhutan and Tibet had separate political and socio cultural existences, which have led to stark differences even in the religious cultures. Such differences have only become further entrenched and distinct after Bhutan's northward link to Tibet was severed in 1959, following the occupation of Tibet by China.
Inaccurate projections by foreign writers, however, are not the only factors that influenced perceptions of Bhutan. If the accounts of Bhutan by outsiders smack of the Orient list romanticization, naive Tibetanization or other traces of pro- or anti-Bhutan sentiments, many local Bhutanese have appropriated and internalized these external perceptions and projections. Thus, we find many Bhutanese painting the same rosy picture of Bhutan, which an enchanted Western visitor may paint, and promoting it with a patriotic zest as if it were an official dogma although they are fully aware of the problems and challenges that beset the country. They regurgitate the same sentimental and hyperbolic descriptions of Bhutan produced by a nostalgic visitor. This was also true to some extent with the traditional Bhutanese authors writing in classical Tibetan or Dzongkha. They wrote under a strong Tibetan influence and reproduced the perceptions which the Tibetan religious visitors through the ages had of Bhutan. Their discourses on Bhutan are set in the Tibetan cosmological and religious context and embedded in the Tibetan literary culture despite their best efforts to extricate Bhutan from the Tibetan cultural and political domain. These tendencies of internalizing external perceptions are nonetheless tolerable when compared to awry opinions such as Ashley Eden's claim that Bhutan had no tradition or history or the mistaken view still held among some quarters that Bhutan is a political vassal of India. Such viewpoints are too parochial to be considered even worthy of any rebuttal.
Against these tendencies and misconceptions, a new voice of independent Bhutanese writers who draw on Bhutan's rich cultural heritage and history, is now rising. Many Bhutanese today write in English for a global audience and bring the local Bhutanese stories, wisdom and cultures directly to their readers around the world without an intermediary. Not only do they present the original Bhutanese voice but they also help develop the much needed self- representation in scholarly discourses on Bhutan. Through them, Bhutan is beginning to emerge on the international intellectual arena with its own voice.
Like a shy bride gradually removing her veil, Bhutan is today shedding its historical obscurity and isolation and beginning to attract a lot of attention, especially through its policy of Gross National Happiness. It is my hope that this book will aid this emergence of Bhutan by giving some substance to the growing popularity. The book aims to tell the story of Bhutan's past in an unbiased narration and analysis and is the first ever attempt to cover the entire history of Bhutan in detail in English, combining both traditional perspectives and modem historio graphical analyses.
While every effort is made to steer away from the undue influence of external perceptions or internal prejudices, I make no claim of cultural or political neutrality. Ideas and opinions arise from socio cultural contexts, and the narratives and analyses in this book are also results of my own exposureto traditional Bhutanese cultural upbringing and education as well as modem Western academic training. Although I am intimately aware of both the blessings of Bhutan and the challenges it is facing, this book is intended neither as praise for Bhutan's successes nor as a critique of its failures. My main concern here is to present an objective story (or a plausible one when evidences are lacking) by weaving the facts or available data together into a readable narrative as no such complete history of Bhutan exists so far.
This book is a byproduct of the project entitled 'The Historical Study and Documentation of the Padma Gling pa Tradition in Bhutan', funded by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council at Cambridge University. Through this project and other digitization projects funded by the Endangered Archives Programmed of the British Library, I have carried out an extensive digitization of the textual corpus associated with the Padma Lingpa tradition in order to both preserve Bhutan's textual heritage and to compile a historical account of Pema Lingpa's tradition, which is the only religious tradition of local Bhutanese origin. It was in the course of my collection of notes for the history of Pema Lingpa's tradition that I was tempted to undertake a comprehensive study of Bhutan's history; this book is an outcome of such curiosity and intellectual diversion.
From a Buddhist perspective, the foremost project of human existence is self-development and edification. In order to improve the world, a country or community, one must start by improving oneself, something that can be effectively pursued only by first understanding oneself. We are products of a complex historical process and history tells us who we are and why we are who we are. It reveals the roots of our perceptions, prejudices, outlooks and parochialisms and helps us improve ourselves by learning from past mistakes and emulating past achievements. Our past explains our present and informs and guides our future; it is my modest hope that The History of Bhutan will help readers better understand the Bhutanese character and contribute towards a process of social edification by fostering the Bhutanese tradition of self-reflection and mindfulness, especially as it pursues its goal of Gross National Happiness.
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