Day 22: Bhutan

[politicus]

If Lithuania is an apartheid state, then Bhutan definitely is.

No one in their right mind would call Lithuania an apartheid state.

[politicus]

Truly fascinating place.

[politicus]

As has been said, it sounds like a very fascinating (though also critically flawed) country. The OP and Simfan's post have been interesting reads, I'd definitely like to learn more about it.

However, in response to Simfan, I've got to ask, what would be so terrible about being absorbed into India? I mean, I perfectly understand why the ruling class would be against that (having power over a territory is obviously quite pleasant, after all), but why should it be such a tragedy for the population itself? Are the Sikkimese right now oppressed or discriminated? I'm genuinely asking.

They lost control over their country and the right to preserve their Buddhist and Tibetan derived culture as the national culture. Sikkim is majority Hindu now.

Only 14% belong to the two native Sikkimese people. 63% are Nepalis and Nepali the lingua franca.

In short: They got swamped.

Losing control of your home land is a tragedy and a form of cultural genocide.

[politicus]

There is one clear difference between Bhutan and Sikkim and that is that Sikkim became an Indian protectorate in 1950 - only a few years after independence - giving India a formal basis for intervening. Everybody accepted that Nehru pressured Sikkim into this at that time. if India tried something similar with Bhutan it would be more problematic today - with more international critique, incl. from the UN.

Sikkim was more or less seen as a colonial relict like Goa and Pondicherry, which the Indians were also just allowed to take without much reaction.

[politicus]

As has been said, it sounds like a very fascinating (though also critically flawed) country. The OP and Simfan's post have been interesting reads, I'd definitely like to learn more about it.

However, in response to Simfan, I've got to ask, what would be so terrible about being absorbed into India? I mean, I perfectly understand why the ruling class would be against that (having power over a territory is obviously quite pleasant, after all), but why should it be such a tragedy for the population itself? Are the Sikkimese right now oppressed or discriminated? I'm genuinely asking.

They lost control over their country and the right to preserve their Buddhist and Tibetan derived culture as the national culture. Sikkim is majority Hindu now.

Only 14% belong to the two native Sikkimese people. 63% are Nepalis and Nepali the lingua franca.

In short: They got swamped.

Losing control of your home land is a tragedy and a form of cultural genocide.

No. As long as there is no institutional or social pressure forcing them to abandon their culture, the Sikkimese haven't "lost" anything. Living peacefully alongside people who have a different culture doesn't harm your culture in any way. And as I've already told you, a group of people has no right to deny other people the right to live where they want to live.

And frankly, using terms such as genocide in such conditions is an insult to the victims of actual genocides.

Of course it does. There is always a pressure to adapt to the dominant culture - think of native Hawaiians compared to Polynesian peoples that kept control of the land and remained a majority like Tongans or Samoans. I was in Tonga this spring/summer and have been to Hawaii and there is a world of difference.

There is a big difference between living in a public room where your language, norms, customs etc. are the natural and self evident and one there they are marginalized and forced to adapt to other more powerful and prestigious cultures.

Claiming that "a group of people has no right to deny other people the right to live where they want to live" is an extremist approach. It means that small nations have no right to preserve their culture as the dominant one anywhere - that they are instead doomed to become the dominated. You either have power in this world, or you don't. It is strange that you can overlook that in a case as obvious as the Sikkimese.

If a culture dies due to assimilation to a dominant culture it is death - which amounts to a form oh genocide = the elimination of a people as a people with a distinct culture, traditions and language. That is the way the Sikkimese are headed as other small people and that process accelerating to the point it is today is a result of losing control of their own state. There is a point of no return where the settler population becomes too numerous and the takeover irreversible. Sumatra, Borneo and Iriyan Jaya have also been though this process with the Javanese influx (most of the people there didn't have states, but their own ways of organizing society). There are countless other examples.

[politicus]

(It remains to be seen if he'll be a polygamist like dad, however)

Seems unlikely. Their polygamous tradition is almost exclusively sister marriage. His dad is married to four sisters, Jetsun Pema only has two sisters and the eldest is married to the King's brother. Her younger sister is said to be highly intelligent and ambitious, not really wife #2 material + she is only 16, so the age difference would be large. Even in this context. The grandfather wasn't a polygamist, but the great grandfather had two consorts. The most natural would be to move on from polygamy along with ongoing modernization. Also given that the Queen has a modern outlook and a Western university education.