The Himalayan Arc

by Namita Gokhale

  Even with the relaxation of censorship and improvement in press freedom, people still do not know how to protect their right of freedom of expression. They do not know how to be independent, since they have always depended on either fear of or favour from successive repressive governments. Even now, under the new government, people still cannot escape from fear and its consequence – the rabid fierceness. In such a scenario, the empowerment of citizens is critical. Civil and political spaces for average citizens are still limited and while the number of civil-society organizations has increased, most of them are still need-based ones.

  One recent entrant in Myanmar’s literary scene, PEN Myanmar, is hoping to change things. One of its regular activities is called Literature for Everyone (Yahta Asone Asan). This activity is participatory and not like most literary talks. There have been more than fifty such events in forty towns. Ground rules for this new kind of ‘participatory talk’ session is that all the participants sit on the floor, in a circle. Everyone gets an equal opportunity to speak, recite literature, or make arguments. The lines between the writers and the audience blur and there is no unproductive naming and shaming. Many new members in the audience usually shed tears of excitement, overwhelmed at the opportunity to participate actively. Though most are initially reluctant to speak up, soon enough, this inhibition disappears altogether and there is enthusiastic participation in writing and speaking activities. Some write their first original compositions during the event and most of their work lays bare the realities of their lives and their thoughts about their situation.

  Granting social security, encouraging social cohesion and transparency, in addition to encouraging people-to-people exchanges across social, cultural, and political divides would be helpful in treating the scars left on the collective psyche of Myanmar’s people. Freedom of expression should be granted constitutionally, legally, institutionally, and individually by amending the Right to Information and the Freedom of Information Bills. Minority-language rights and educational reform to deliver equal education opportunities for every citizen is also necessary, given the level of distrust and xenophobia among the populace. All potential harm to those who are outspoken about their opinions should also be prohibited, either legally or socially. Public consultations on law-making processes should also be held systematically, across the country. Fear and its companion, fierceness, can only be vanquished by enacting such measures.

  BHUTAN, NEPAL AND NAGALAND

  A Dream Come True

  David Malone

  In decades past, whenever I would hear of travel in Bhutan, it always sounded rapturous. So strong a mark did these accounts make on my mind that I formed quite an elaborate mental picture of the country’s scenery (which, on later personal acquaintance, turned out to be completely wrong, but no matter!). Nevertheless, Bhutan always seemed beyond reach. Flights were few, visas hard to secure, the rules governing tourism complicated and expensive. This would have to wait another day.

  I had travelled to Nepal as a tourist in 1989, a side-trip to one of my many forays to India over the years, impelled by the anticipated joys of discovering interesting and exotic places. I did not venture beyond the Kathmandu Valley but was dazzled by its stupendous heritage sites and, in those prehistoric days, I could revel in a clear view of the high Himalayas when the smog consented to lift. Yes, I fell dreadfully ill from ingesting an egg breakfast at a hippy dive. And yes, the border with India was blockaded over political disputes; fuel was in very short supply, electricity mostly curtailed and transport mainly by bicycle. But all in all, I left with very happy memories.

  After half a decade in the think-tank world in New York, I had returned to the foreign ministry in Ottawa, Canada, in 2004 on a busy assignment, overseeing multilateral and economic diplomacy.

  In 2006, I was asked conversationally by the head of Canada’s foreign service where I would most like to be assigned, if I could go anywhere. India, I replied without a moment’s hesitation. My colleague was a bit taken aback, used to hearing colleagues ask for capitals such as Tokyo, Paris, London and Rome. If not India, where? Perhaps Russia, I said. Why? Both were engaged in rapid transitions featuring tremendous potential and risk, making them fascinating as societies, economies and polities. I heard no more about this.

  Only as the G8 Summit in St. Petersburg loomed large later in 2006 did I hear that India’s agreement had been sought for my appointment as high commissioner there. So had Nepal’s and Bhutan’s, for my concurrent appointment as non-resident ambassador of Canada in these countries. My mother, who was ninety and soon to die, was entranced when she heard of this. For her, India had always been the place. My career had not been completely misbegotten after all.

  In Delhi, I experienced an important stroke of good luck: an exceptionally able team had preceded me at the High Commission, both Canadian and Indian, which fulfilled my fondest wish in one stroke – that I be free, as my principal learning strategy, to travel as much as possible, mostly within India, but also, of course, to Nepal and Bhutan.

  As I arrived in South Asia, Bhutan’s monarchy remained not only the principal institution of the country, but a hugely popular one, with the fourth king’s plan to devolve responsibility onto a new empowered parliament generating a degree of public apprehension. On the other hand, the increasingly erratic king of Nepal had largely worn out his welcome at home, following the assassination of much of the royal family in 2001, with the prospect of eventual succession by an unpopular son, a further nail in the monarchy’s coffin.

  Waiting endlessly in Delhi to present my credentials in Kathmandu (which would make me fully official) was an early lesson in how complex and far-reaching a political transition Nepal had initiated as of 2006. The government, run by the patrician Girija Prasad Koirala, had come to the conclusion that while the king had not yet been dismissed by parliament, he should cease to play any official role. Receiving foreign ambassadors was one such official matter. But figuring out who and what might substitute for an official audience with the king was another matter.

  The government made it clear that I could visit any time I wanted, as if I was fully accredited, and could meet with whomever I chose. This was helpful as, with the Maoists down from the hills at last, political ferment in all quarters made Kathmandu an interesting microcosm (however much ignored in most of the world). The United Nations (UN), rather against India’s wishes, was fielding a large-scale political mission in Kathmandu, verifying that the terms under which the Maoists had acceded to political legitimacy, after years of bitter guerilla fighting, were being respected. Kathmandu was a hothouse of intrigue, rumours and stirs of all sorts. Educating myself on its political scene was fascinating. Although some of the political manoeuvres took on the air of comic opera, resolving the country’s slow-moving crisis was important and, at all times, a sensitive undertaking (in which Delhi was involved quite closely, and mostly helpfully, much of the time).

  And how not to be entranced all over again by the durbar squares of Kathmandu, Patan, Baktapur and many other magnificent sites, within only a few kilometres of each other? On a very clear day (increasingly rare, given the growth of the city and the intensity of its air-pollution challenges) the High Himalayas still came into view from atop the right hill, affecting one’s mood electrically, as does the view of Mount Fuji when spotted from Tokyo, where I now live.

  Finally, in the late spring of 2007, I presented my re-cast credentials to Mr Koirala, a relaxed man who managed to look suitably grave on this formal occasion. He received me in a hall of mirrors gracing the former principal royal palace, a brave if tragicomic attempt at a mini-Versailles, attended by an impressive range of senior civilian and military figures, the latter dressed in theatrical uniforms that would have instilled pride in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

  So intense was the infighting, so constantly shifting the tactics, as most major players so clearly lacked an actual overall strategy, that it was hard to prise oneself away from Kathmandu in order to enjo
y the wider expanses of this glorious country that features most conceivable climatic zones, a wealth of vegetation and infinitely dignified and hospitable people everywhere. My favourite memory was a dash away from Kathmandu to visit Pokhara, and from there to engage with the Annapurna range of the Himalayas, in some ways the most dramatic, although not the highest, of them all.

  On one occasion, I was dead sick with viral fever, but managed a two-hour trek straight up a mountain face because the lure of the scenery somehow powered me where my health had let me down. A memorably brisk and taxing two-hour trek straight up steep foothills brought my companions and me to a village dedicating its new classrooms, funded by Canada, to my country amidst much ceremony and hospitality, against a breathtaking high mountain backdrop. Half the rural population of the Pokhara Valley seemed to have assembled for the event, the women ablaze in colourful textiles. Ill as I was, my heart sang.

  In Bhutan, I was received rapidly and very warmly in the early fall of 2006 (although with the reserve for which the Bhutanese population are well known). Within weeks I called on the impressive, quiet and little-travelled and soon-to-abdicate fourth king Jigme Singye Wangchuk, who was nevertheless exceptionally well-informed – by the BBC, he confided. The meeting took place in the colourful and elegant surroundings of the Timphu Dzong (the local monastery-fort, of which many, each distinctive, dot Bhutan. Some can also be found within India, for example, at Tawang). He told me he did not travel abroad, as to do so would occasion expense for his compatriots. A sportif figure in his early fifties, he did, however, travel prodigiously within his kingdom, often on foot – as does his photogenic son and successor, the outgoing Oxford-educated fifth king, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck – in order to reach the most distant valleys and their inhabitants.

  We discussed politics, including the tense relationship with Nepal, on which he was more serene than I had expected, perhaps in the knowledge that this much larger country was not contiguous to Bhutan, human and trade exchanges between them needing to move through a narrow band of India. Recriminations had arisen twenty years earlier over the expulsion of tens of thousands of ethnic Nepalis, many long settled in Bhutan, driven by worries over their loyalty. Only after many years in camps in Nepal are most of them now being resettled in the US, Canada and Australia, as a result of successful campaigning by the UN high commissioner for refugees to attract attention to their plight. And this episode has left deep scars in the relationship with Nepal.

  The king explained to me that he would be stepping down to reinforce the transition to a full parliamentary democracy, because he feared that if he stayed on, the Bhutanese people would continue to look to him for guidance on all matters when they actually should be looking to the government and parliament. (Very few political leaders anywhere would take such a serene view of stepping down from power with many decades ahead of them.) And the fifth king, whom I got to know subsequently, has made a big success of the transition.

  The fourth king encouraged me to travel widely within Bhutan. I followed his advice. The scenery was very different from Nepal’s, as the valleys here are too steep for the high peaks to show beyond them, unless by surprise, rounding a corner high on the country’s rapidly improving valley and pass roads. Upgrades to the road system are largely carried out by imported labour from the Indian state of Bihar, with these courageous souls displaying their characteristic resilience, often with wife in tow serving as beast of burden.

  He told me of a man who had hugely influenced him and the country, improbably a compatriot of mine, a Jesuit priest, William (Bill) Mackey, one of a cohort of Canadian Jesuits who came to the Darjeeling hills in the late 1940s and early ’50s to replace Belgian Jesuits called back to their country to restock the depleted Jesuit ranks after World War II.

  Mackey’s arrival in Bhutan in the mid-1960s was linked to developments in Darjeeling. A strong figure with strong views, he had apparently expressed enough sympathy for those advocating greater autonomy and the local use of the Nepali tongue to make the Indian authorities in Darjeeling uncomfortable with his presence there. Expelled, he removed himself to Bihar, where he was disconsolate.

  Meanwhile, the third king of Bhutan had heard of these developments (a number of boys from Bhutan’s elite were then, and still are, educated at schools in the Darjeeling hills, particularly the Jesuit school of St. Joseph’s, known as North Point, in Darjeeling). He sent an emissary to see whether Mackey might move to Bhutan to create the country’s first secular school. The king’s idea was that classes should be taught in English to promote the country’s greater integration into the wider world and its economic development. Mackey, at loose ends, agreed, a fateful decision, as both he and Bhutan would be remarkably transformed by it.

  He established his school, Sherubtse College (then the first modern secondary school for boys in the country, today part of the University of Bhutan) on scenic slopes near the town of Trashingang in remote but quite densely populated eastern Bhutan, north of India’s Assam. Increasingly, Bhutan’s elite have been trained there, with girls eventually joining and the college moving higher in the educational world to university-level teaching. Mackey, the life and soul of the project, espoused Bhutan with all the force of his personality and died there in 1995, greatly mourned throughout the country. His mortal remains lie amongst his Jesuit brethren in Darjeeling, but a Buddhist chorten recalls his life high above the college, where his spirit likely floats too.

  On my first visit and several subsequent ones, I flew into the country’s then sole airport, an experience requiring considerable fortitude as the jets of Drukair wove their way at reduced but still very high speed down the steep valley leading to Paro, seemingly only feet away from the steep cliffs on either side. But I knew I would see and experience more by driving in, first from Siliguri in northern West Bengal, sampling the rustic but warm hospitality of local inns on my way, and later from Assam, when a Canadian colleague in Delhi, Adrian Norfolk, and I were invited in 2008 to serve as international observers in the first election to parliament following the recent democratizing reforms.

  Towards the end of a long, intensely scenic drive due north from the border, we thought of Father Mackey as Sherubtse College came into view, at first only a speck in a magnificent mountain vista. His imprint was everywhere on the college, although most so through its graduates, cumulatively a very large number today.

  The fifth king had kindly lent us a guest house normally reserved for his use in Trashigang, adorned with handsome Buddhist mural paintings. In spite of the artistic splendour of our lodgings, we were reminded of the rigours of life on the road in remoter parts of Bhutan, with hot water hand-carried to us in the mornings and creature comforts few and far between, nevertheless always compensated for by warm personal hospitality.

  The election was big noise locally. We met both candidates, with the victor (declared on the night of the election, the polling stations having been relatively few within the constituency) soon to be appointed interior minister of the country, the uncle of a fine younger friend of mine in Bhutan’s foreign ministry, Jigme Norbu. Jigme had joined us in the east and was invaluable in introducing us to local notables and guiding us around. The contest was hard fought in that constituency, but civil. No irregularities were reported. Assam’s plains felt sadly humdrum as we headed for Guwahati airport after the five-hour drive back.

  Our time in Trashigang and my visits elsewhere in the country brought into relief the particularities of this isolated but somehow remarkably self-confident society. Thanks to considerable assistance from India and other Asian sources, as well as some Western aid programmes, the rapid progress of modern education in the country and a model of development that encourages both strong attachment to Bhutan’s traditions as well as global connections through the internet and other channels, the economy has been on the move impressively for two decades now.

  The country’s indigenous arts life is vibrant. During one stay in Thimphu, I officiated in handing o
ver one of the prizes in the city’s film festival focused on Bhutanese productions, of which there had been a dozen and a half full-length and a greater number of shorter entries submitted. The soundtracks sounded more Chinese than Indian to my untutored ears, while the sensibility of the films was often startlingly modern. The awards ceremony, held out of doors to accommodate the huge crowd that showed up for it, attested to the support that local productions enjoy in this tiny market. More recently, the Mountain Echoes literary festival in Thimphu, championed by then Indian ambassador (and enviably accomplished littérateur Pavan Varma) has taken off, drawing inspiration from its Jaipur cousin.

  Modernity has also introduced the anxieties of our time, worries about: employment (not just jobs but the quality of jobs, young Bhutanese being quite ambitious in this regard); self-improvement (of which the Bhutanese are enthusiastic exponents); justice, with a modernized court system propelled into the twenty-first century by several key figures, the chief justice himself chief pupil at a number of classes to update judicial knowledge on the basis of international as well as Bhutanese experience, standards and practices; and, perhaps most of all, excitement and worries conjoined about the pull of the future away from the traditions of the past.

  The chaos of Nepal and much of north India is singularly absent here. Bhutan is largely self-policing. The armed forces and police are not particularly evident. Society seems largely self-regulating, although the depredations of modernity, creating expectations rising at least in tandem with the country’s considerable potential, could create tension over time. Bhutanese are keen to study abroad and do so in large numbers. My friend Jigme hopes to be off to Australia for a master’s degree in years ahead.