Chet Nath Timisina has had a series of identities. He was born a Bhutanese but was ethnically Nepali. His allegiance was to the government of Bhutan and he called himself a Bhutanese. But for the two decades that Timisina had to live in a refugee camp in Eastern Nepal with 100,000 others like him – all stateless – his identity was constantly questioned.

“Although we were deeply rooted in Bhutan, we had to keep trying to prove to the international and regional community that we were Bhutanese,” Timisina recalls. Now, Timisina is in the United States. Recently, he became an American citizen, ending his status as a refugee. Now he calls himself a Bhutanese-American. Timisina lives in Rochester, New York, and works as a counselor for troubled youth. He is also a certified interpreter and a tax accountant. 

There are 75,000 Bhutanese refugees like Timisina who have been resettled in the US alone. Another fifteen thousand are scattered across other countries in the West. And as these Bhutanese refugees redefine their identities, the identity of Bhutan is also being redefined.

Nepalis’ ethnic identity

Ethnic Nepalis like Timisina are called Lhotsampas in Bhutan. In the late 1980s, the government saw the Lhotsampas as a threat to the ruling order. Bhutan was growing increasingly alarmed at the political activism of ethnic Nepalis in regions bordering their country.

“With the Gorkhaland Movement in Darjeeling and increasing protests by ethnic Nepalis in Sikkim demanding greater recognition of their identity, they feared their own Nepali population could revolt,” says Joseph Stradler, an anthropologist in the US, who has been studying the Bhutanese refugee situation, “And Bhutan seems to have overreacted.”

In what could have been a leaf out of Nepal’s Panchayat textbook, the Bhutanese monarchy introduced a campaign of ‘one nation, one people’ – enforcing the culture and religion of the majority Drukpa community. Bhutan changed its citizenship laws – requiring proof of land ownership. And for children to be Bhutanese, both parents had to be registered citizens. Then, in 1988, Bhutan held its first census. Many Lhotsampas were suddenly branded illegal immigrants.

Protests, calling for greater democracy and respect for the Nepalis’ rights led to a campaign of violence by the government. Stories of rape, murder and disappearances filtered across Bhutan and many were forced to flee.

Garjaman Subba, an elderly refugee living in a camp in Jhapa, told me, “Once the revolts began, the government employed the army in the villages. They were brutal. We would plead to them to leave our wives and daughters free but they showed no mercy. Once they had taken over the village, some of us were able to escape with our lives, some barely escaped. Many died.”

Leaving everything behind, the Lhotsampas crossed the border into India. But they were not welcome there, either. The Indian government picked them up in buses and trucks and transported them to the Nepal border. India did not want to risk offending Bhutan, which provides them with hydropower.

An older refugee, Sabitra Biswa, remembers the traumas of the first days when they had to live in makeshift huts and dysentery spread like wildfire. “So many died. One day we even had to handle 32 dead bodies and they all died of dysentery,” Sabitra recalls. “A family of a father, a daughter and two sons used to live down the street from us. One morning, I had stepped out to buy groceries and when I reached their house, the poor guy was wailing over the dead bodies of both his sons, laid down on the ground. I’ve not been able to forget that my whole life. It still breaks my heart.”

Identity in exile in Nepal

Chet Nath Timisina’s life as refugee was tinged with hope of going back home. “Even as we were building our huts in the camps, we were thinking about our movement and how we could go back to our own country – our home. We were deeply concerned about our rights, so we kept fighting, trying to prove that we were Bhutanese and we had every right to be in Bhutan.”

In Nepal, the Nepali government gave the Bhutanese refugees a place to stay. But they remained outcasts. Nepal would never become their rightful home. The refugee camps set up by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) provided them with basic facilities but they didn’t have the right to work, earn, or own properties.

Over the years, there were many attempts at repatriation but none yielded any results. In 2005, the refugees made a desperate attempt to go back home: 50,000 of them marched towards India on their way to Bhutan. Indian security forces stopped them on the Mechi Bridge. Two people were killed in the violence that followed. For many, that was the final straw.

“Programmes [to return] were all in vain because of the government of India,” Timisna explained. “Talks between Bhutan and Nepal were not going anywhere. And life in the camp was very difficult. I realized we had this difficult life for too long and I didn’t want to put the future of my child into jeopardy.”

Timisina and thousands of others decided to take up on the offer of Western countries to resettle them. But a few thousand stand resolute for repatriation – like 30-years-old Sancho Hang Subba who believes that his identity will remain incomplete if Bhutan does not open its door to him.

“Bhutan is my birthplace, which I will never find anywhere else. It’s my only rightful place to be – that’s my final truth, my biggest asset and my biggest reality,” said Sancho Hang who was only six when he arrived in Nepal. Despite years of Bhutan’s indifference to their situation, he remains hopeful that Bhutan will show sympathy to its wronged citizens.

“We have had enough hardship for these 23 years and only the Bhutanese government can rid us of it. Only they have the medicine to heal our wound. No one else has it. I request the Bhutanese government to take us in and once again accept us as their own.” He is willing to wait till the end, he says, even if the end proves bitter.

Identity redefined in the West

When resettlement in new countries was offered in 2007, it was a welcome relief for most. Despite apprehensions of adapting to a completely different lifestyle, thousands took the leap. But soon after the resettlement process began, the Bhutanese refugees began to be featured in news once again – this time for a different series of tragedies.

Madan Kandel, a 24-years-old resettled Bhutanese refugee, hanged himself in Rochester, New York, last year. Madan had been in the US for three years and had a stable job. His baby daughter was just 17 days old when his wife found him dead in the basement. The couple had saved US$30,000 to buy a new house. Madan had seemingly adjusted well to the US, and his sudden suicide left everyone baffled.

“He never talked about depression. But he was very much into preserving our culture and our cultural identity,” said Lacchuman Kandel, Madan’s father. Was it an identity crisis that led to Madan’s suicide? Or was it something else? Madan left no explanation.

The Bhutanese have the highest level of suicide amongst all refugee populations in the US. Cultural difference and adjustment difficulties have been identified as contributing factors. Timisina says some of the problems refugees face are the results of decades of living in limbo.

“People who have been living in the camps already have a certain level of depression for many years and when they get additional issues which they are not able to handle on their own, they feel very vulnerable and may not take a good decision,” he told me. More than 20 percent of the resettled refugees – young, old, men and women – are reported to be suffering from depression.

But although the move to resettle in the West has been difficult for some, many have found their freedom and see this as an opportunity to redefine their identities. “Even as an American citizen, I and other individuals who are settled here are still concerned about Bhutan. We’re always mindful that other people in that country do not suffer like we have,” said Timisina.

Although 100,000 Lhotsampas fled Bhutan, an equal number or more are still living there. The government bars access to the parts of the country where they live, but reports indicate they still face official persecution.

Timisina is still apprehensive that the Bhutanese government could alienate the remaining Lhotsampas further, a sentiment echoed by those living inside Bhutan. But this time around, the Bhutanese diaspora in the US and around the world is keeping a keen eye over Bhutan. “If they adopt certain policies to evict further, I think we will be better able to raise the concerns of the remaining Lhotsampas in Bhutan with the resources available here,” he said.

In the camps in Nepal, the refugees’ contact with the rest of the world was limited. Now, with more than 90,000 living in the West, they are no longer afraid to speak out, so the idealized image of Bhutan as a Shangri-La is slowly transforming.

As anthropologist Dr Stadler told me, “When I speak to a class full of undergraduates I ask them what they know about Bhutan. Before, they only knew it as a peaceful nation. Now, they’ll either point out their policy of Gross National Happiness or the hundreds and thousands of refugees that Bhutan evicted.”

Bhutan’s carefully constructed identity is being redefined by the changing identities of the Bhutanese refugees. Many wait to see if Bhutan will one day be known as a country which was good enough to welcome the remaining refugees home.

My view

My first memories of Bhutanese refugees are of them arriving in trucks to eastern Nepal. It was the year 1992, and refugee camps had just been set up to house more than 100,000 new arrivals. I have a faint memory of a dusty truck with tired looking people arriving out of a stunning sunset. At high school, I thought I could solve the problem. It was, in my naïve view, just a simple misunderstanding between two communities. That’s what I told my mother. Twenty-two years on, the problem is still intractable.

The story of Bhutanese refugees never captured popular imagination. The expulsion of such a large population did not tarnish the image of Bhutan as Shangri-La, a beautiful Himalayan Kingdom with peaceful Buddhist citizens. While journalists were quick to pick up stories about Bhutan’s “Gross National Happiness”, they let the story of the ill-fated Lhotsampas, or the Nepali-Bhutanese community, slide.

The Lhotsampas always had their own distinct culture and identity. And it is this difference that led to their segregation. The Nepalese-Bhutanese population has always extended beyond the current Nepalese borders. It is easy to forget that long before nations were created and formalized, there was a fluid movement of people.

Bhutan’s ruling Drukpas became concerned about the rebellious nature of the ethnic Nepalese from across its borders and the potential for trouble at home. It wasn’t a new concern. Back in 1954, the Maharaja of Bhutan, JigmeDorjeWanchuk, had written to India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, appealing to him to stop the political activities of Nepalese against Bhutan.

Nehru’s reply was a warning:

“You are no doubt fully aware of the trend of world affairs and how major changes have taken place in various parts of the world as well as in Asia. No one can put a stop to these ideas and the desire of people everywhere to have a larger measure of freedom as well as advance on the path to democracy. These ideas will no doubt reach Bhutan and it is a wise policy not to wait for pressure from outside in order to remove any legitimate grievance.”

Instead, the government ultimately tried to remove the “root cause” of grievance – the people themselves.

Identity

The Bhutanese government’s fear was cemented by events in Sikkim and Darjeeling. In 1975, the Kingdom of Sikkim, which has a majority ethnic Nepalese population, was absorbed into India. In the 1980s, Darjeeling, a district in the Indian State of West Bengal, where many ethnic Nepalese live, became a hotbed of identity politics. For the ruling Drukpas of Bhutan, the fear of losing their grip over the country’s Nepalese population, and the threat of their own traditional identity being compromised as the defining identity of Bhutan, led them to introduce the policy of “One Nation, One People”.

Identity is a very personal thing. Along with genes, our ancestors pass down oral and written histories that can shape our sense of being. When Bhutan made it mandatory to follow Drukpa culture, the Lhotsampas revolted.

Having grown up in Nepal, where political movements and pressure on the government are the norm, I believe that when people raise their voices, it is an opportunity for reform. It means people believe they have rights, and they want a better future. But this very call of reform often instills fear in privileged classes.

It is this fear that led to the Lhotsampa’s heartbreak.

Heartbreak

“Bhutanese refugees are killing themselves at an astonishing rate”, was the headline of a story in the American magazine The Atlantic. According to a study done by the Center for Disease Control, the reasons are still unclear. Perhaps a part of the reason behind their suicide is heartbreak.

A man from the camps explained, “we have no roots or branches to hold on to.” “The world does not understand,” Dr. Bhampa Rai, a refugee, told us. “Even the Nepalese [people in Nepal] have the impression that we actually immigrated to Bhutan illegally and very recently.”

Imagine having to explain your identity – and every time you do, people question you. The Bhutanese refugees don’t feel that they have many allies. When your roots are cut, you are forced to live in limbo for decades, and the country you love has rejected you, it’s not surprising that depression sets in.

Hope

Last year, I was traveling on a bus full of Bhutanese refugees at Doha airport. After a plane ride from Kathmandu, they were suffering motion sickness. They clung on to their small plastic bags, issued by the International Organisation for Migration. They looked tired, and yet their journey had only just begun.

While there are some refugees who are suffering from depression among those who’ve moved to third countries such as the US, many have seized the chance to start a new life. Those who are resilient have built a new identity for themselves. And with this new identity, the story of Bhutanese refugees is changing in popular discourse.

Bhutan is now beginning to be known not only as a Shangri-La, but also a country that chased out one sixth of its own population. That population is sure to keep vigil on how Bhutan treats the remaining ethnic Nepalese and other minorities within the country. The regions where many of these communities live are strictly closed to outsiders, but the stories that emerge tell of fear and discrimination.

The next generation of Bhutanese, resettled and living in countries across the world, will have more education, and a stronger voice. Perhaps one day Bhutan will be forced to reconcile with the idea of being a diverse nation and protect all of their people within.

Published on: 20 June 2014 | Republica