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The Citizenship Act 1985


In 1958, the 'Lhotshampa' population of the southern districts of Bhutan was granted Bhutanese citizenship and tenure of its lands. The Bhutanese government later pursued a policy of integration that met with considerable success: having allowed the south to run its own affairs for decades with minimal contact with the north, the government began to train Nepali Bhutanese for government and for some years even offered a cash incentive for Nepali-Drukpa intermarriage. Thus, the Nepali Bhutanese began to play a more important role in national life, occupying some senior positions in the administration and sometimes even representing the kingdom overseas.

Land tax receipt of 1938 During the 1980s every adult member of the Bhutanese population was issued with a printed citizenship card bearing a photograph of its holder. But in 1985 a new Citizenship Act made a number of far-reaching changes: it amended the legislation on citizenship by birth so that citizenship could only be acquired automatically from both parents instead of through the father alone; it required evidence of permanent domicile on or before 31st December 1958 as the basis for citizenship by registration; and for citizenship by naturalization it required a number of criteria that could not be met by most Nepali Bhutanese, such as fluency and literacy in the national language, the Tibetan-derived Dzongkha.

In 1988, a census began to 'identify Bhutanese nationals' in the southern districts. The term 'census' has always been used by the Bhutan government for these operations, but they do not produce the statistical profile of the population of Bhutan that one might expect from a national census. Instead, their main purpose is to guard against illegal immigration, a constant threat in the south where the border with India is porous. Accordingly, 'censuses' appear to have been conducted annually in southern districts since 1988 but have not taken place regularly in the northern districts, except perhaps in Thimphu. The 1988 census led to unease because, according to those who have since become refugees, excessively strict standards were set for documentation. According to the government, a survey of the south had detected the presence of over 100,000 illegal immigrants, and the population was to be placed into seven categories, from 'Fl' to 'F7' as follows:

F1: Genuine Bhutanese citizens.
F2: Returned emigrants.
F3: Drop-out cases (people who were not around at the time of the census)
F4: Children of Bhutanese father and non-national mother.
F5: Non-national father married to Bhutanese mother, and their children.
F6: Adopted children.
F7: Non-nationals.

Bord of wishes to go home It has been argued that the 1985 Citizenship Act would not have posed major problems for most Nepali Bhutanese, who were accustomed to retaining documents such as land tax receipts, if it had been implemented fairly during the census. But in the event many who could not provide documents that proved they resided in Bhutan in the specific year of 1958 itself were apparently categorized as returned emigrants or non-nationals, regardless of whether or not they held citizenship cards, land tax receipts etc. Amnesty International concluded that the current situation in the south of Bhutan had been exacerbated due to the government's failure to specify and make known in advance what would happen to people in southern Bhutan once they had been categorized under F7.

Driglam Namza

Bhutan's sixth Five-Year Plan (1987-92) included a policy of 'one nation, one people' and introduced a code of traditional Drukpa dress and etiquette called "Driglam Namza". The dress element of this code required all citizens to wear the "gho" (a knee-length robe for men) and the "kira" (an ankle-length dress for women) in the following contexts: Inside and outside Dzong premises [fortress-monasteries now used as centres of district administration); at all Government Offices; at the Schools; at the Monasteries; at the official functions and 'public congregations' appendix. The appendix also stated that pandits, pujaris [Hindu priests] and non-nationals would be exempt from the requirement).

This rule, it is now admitted by the Bhutanese authorities, was applied far beyond the letter of the decree, to the extent that many Bhutanese could not venture out of their homes in their everyday attire without facing the prospect of an on-the-spot fine or imprisonment.Thus, in the author's 1995 visit to the camps, two informants who had been in charge of a pathshala (a non-government school that teaches a traditional Sanskrit/Hindu curriculum) in southern Bhutan explained that when the dress code was introduced the children had to wear "gho" and "kira" in the government school first, but soon the rule was extended to the pathshala too. Soon everyone had to wear national dress everywhere, they said, and an initial fine of Rs. 100. A half-blind woman who I met her long ago in my village, claimed that in midsummer 1991 she was insulted and beaten by a soldier because she was wearing a blouse and had turned her "kira" down at the waist, due to the heat. She said that she was made to stand beside the road in the sun for three hours before he let her go home. Incidents such as these (and they appear to have been widespread) go a long way towards explaining the resentment the policy caused in southern Bhutan.

Land tax receipt of 1991 Language

A central plank of the Bhutanese government's policy since the late 1980s has been to strengthen the role and status of Dzongkha in national life. One effect of this has been a downgrading of the role of Nepali generally (the claim that Nepali is 'banned' in Bhutan is an overstatement) and its removal from the syllabus of schools. Greater stress began to be laid on knowledge of Dzongkha, and local officials and school staff in southern Bhutan had to attend compulsory Dzongkha classes from 1990 onward. Many camp residents were proud to show off knowledge of Dzongkha, which is surprisingly widespread among the educated young. One ex-Mandal said that he had been issued with a Dzongkha-Nepali dictionary (published in Thimphu in 1984) just before the 'movement' began in September 1990 and was told to learn Dzongkha within three years.

At the beginning of the school year in March 1990 the teaching of Nepali was discontinued and all Nepali curricular materials disappeared from Bhutanese schools. The Bhutanese government's case now is that because English had been the medium of education in Bhutan since 1961, the need for schoolchildren to study a third language in the south put them at a disadvantage; that Nepali was only one of many languages spoken in Bhutan and was, moreover, the national language of a foreign country; and that new curricular materials could not be produced in Nepali in line with the New Approach to Primary Education programme, for reasons of cost. However reasonable these arguments might be, the move came on top of the census and the dress code and could only add to a growing sense of cultural marginalization among the Nepali Bhutanese.