Abstract
Reading this book, I was ashamed of myself, an Indian-born British person, for not knowing a community that was once my neighbour. The Lhotsampa faced coerced eviction from Bhutan, the land of the Drukpas, home to less than 800,000 people embracing four key ethnic groups, the Bhutanese, Ngalong, Sarchop and Lhotsampa. The country is indeed famous for King Jigme Singye Wangchuck’s policy of Gross National Happiness (Chapter 1) adopted in the 1970s. Inspired by this policy, the UN declared 20 March as the International Day of Happiness. This policy of happiness is arguably dichotomous, as it segregated citizens into two distinct groups, Bhutanese and Nepalese.
This book bears witness to the violations of human rights of Lhotsampa, largely unknown to the rest of the world. The editor and authors deserve appreciation for their passion in researching a community on which there is an absolute lack of previous literature. The book documents the horrifying brutalities the Lhotsampa went through, victimised for being devout Hindus in a primarily Buddhist country. The multiple forms of assaults unleashed on them ranged from attacks on rituals, dress code, language and freezing of bank accounts to the most heinous forms of sexual harassment, torture, murder and setting their houses on fire, so that the Lhotsampa had to leave Bhutan.
Divided into 10 chapters and based on primary research undertaken mainly in Australia and Nepal, the book foregrounds the quandaries of the Lhotsampa through detailed critical evaluations of nuanced historical, political and cultural issues associated with survival, resilience and coping mechanisms (Chapter 1). In the 1890s, the Bhutanese government recruited the hard-working Lhotsampa, originally from Nepal, to clear jungles and cultivate arable lands in southern parts of Bhutan. The conscientious Lhotsampa efforts began to show signs of progress in terms of not only education and economics but also political organisations, which inculcated fear amongst the Bhutanese. The Bhutanese Citizenship Act of 1958 had granted the Lhotsampa full citizenship (p. 4). They were, however, intimidated to comply with the rules and standards of Drukpa cultural hegemony, which disallowed their women from keeping long hair, prevented them from wearing a vermilion dot on the forehead (tika or sindhoor) and displaying the auspicious Hindu wedding necklace (mangalsutra or potey). Such restrictions sharply contrasted to the Hindu way of life, where married women remove these identity markers only after the husband’s demise. Then, through the Citizenship Act 1985, implemented in 1988 to invalidate the 1958 Act, the Lhotsampa community became victims of deliberate cultural and ethnic cleansing. The 1988 census, based on the new Act, declared Lhotsampa as illegal immigrants, largely because of their inability to produce documentary evidence of their residence, especially land-tax receipts. Evicted from the land of Shangri-La by force, appalled by the pathetic situation and the absence of international response, approximately 108,000 Lhotsampa sought refuge in camps in Nepal.
There were long-term trepidations amongst the women in these refugee camps. Some avoided sharing their traumatic experiences of rape because traditional Hindu society, sustained by patriarchy, subscribes to notions of a woman’s chastity and ‘honour’ in the family context. Rape victims feared social rejection as being ‘tainted and defiled’ (p. 22). While married women were dismayed by fears of husbands deserting them, unmarried women apprehended difficulties to find suitable grooms (Chapters 2 and 4).
In 2007, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) embarked upon a process of resettlement of Lhotsampa, mainly in Australia, the USA, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and the UK (Table 6.1). Chapters 3 and 5 present personal narratives, mainly of experiences in the resettlement and refugee camps of Nepal and Australia. Chapter 3 sketches 18 years of life in the camps of Nepal, where children born in these camps grew into teenagers, while many others died due to poor access to nutrition, health care, clean drinking water and electricity. Access to education remained extremely limited, but some Lhotsampa adults as ‘self-empowering agents’ educated and empowered their youngsters with varied skills, trying to make them ‘self-reliant and a resourceful community…ready to contribute to economic development within their host countries’ (p. 37). Chapter 5 illustrates cross-cultural intergenerational dilemmas. While the older generation fear losing their identity in terms of language, cultural values and heritage in addition to dreaming of being repatriated to Bhutan, the young generation craves for better opportunities in life and wants to settle in a developed country (Chapter 6).
Building further on oral histories, Chapter 7 unveils how older Lhotsampas have been using ‘spirituality’ as a mediator to rebuild their lives in Australia. Markings of spirituality are visible in their faces, attires and embellishments. Everyday coping mechanisms and resilience are ingrained in spirituality as a rule for living, as a form of superpower intrinsic to oneself and also as social capital (Chapters 7 and 10). Using the cultural competence model based on three key realms of attitude, namely, interpersonal skills and organisational practice, knowledge of one’s own culture, other culture/s and intercultural dynamics and skills of learning, openness and celebration, Figure 8.2 paints a rich picture of the cross-cultural practices deployed to help the Lhotsampa in reconstructing their lives in Australia. The penultimate chapter depicts resettlement planning through a comparative review of US and Australian policies in line with the UNHCR framework. It sketches the resettlement process using the parameters of ‘policy directions, rural versus urban resettlement, secondary migration, and psychosocial well-being’ (p. 146).
Speaking strongly from within the genre of social work, this book is successful in communicating the painstaking details of the now global Lhotsampa community. An essential read, it deserves to be at the top of the table of human rights policy makers, sociologists, anthropologists, development studies experts and of course, those pursuing research on Gross National Happiness.