Bhutan Conference: Staying Afloat
Traditional virtues were abandoned by many scholars of Bhutan, when confronted with the Southern Problem.
I am a journalist and know my place at academic conferences: keep quiet, take notes, and let the experts do the talking. Compared to us hacks, the academics have longer views, deeper knowledge, and are more committed to impartiality. Or so the theory goes.
It didn´t quite work like that at the London conference on Bhutan, organised by the School for Oriental and Asian Studies of the University of London, 22-23 March. There were solid papers on non-political subjects, but in the political arena, where everyone´s focus seemed centered, the traditional virtues were abandoned by many scholars, and it was left mainly to three journalists who presented papers — a British, a Bhutanese and a Nepali — to demonstrate the art of rational debate.
This was in part a sign of good health: at least controversy was aired. The Bhutan scholars were not ostriches, and walked across the sand rather than stick their heads in it. And a good third of them, more like ducks than ostriches, plunged straight into the turbulent waters of what is politely called "the Southern Problem".
The ducks, steered towards the maelstrom by the conference convenor, who thrust controversy forward at every opportunity, are to be admired for entering the debate. But not all of them knew how to swim, it seemed. In the excitement of the controversy, or perhaps eager to show affection to friends in ´high´ places, some of them forgot the basic skills of the trade: check your data and cite sources.
Experts of the stature of Oxford´s Michael Aris, or Berkeley´s Leo E. Rose knew how to hover above the surface of an issue, providing balanced overviews based on evidence that is not in dispute. Lesser mortals tended to immerse themselves in one current or another; without the benefit of documented evidence they had trouble staying afloat. One researcher from Hong Kong accused the Bhutan People´s Party of "a clear attempt to sow disease in the mind of the reader/ viewer", but gave no evidence. A Dutch ethno-linguist had four references in his paper, all of which were to studies he had written himself. An otherwise exemplary Frenchman sank to the level of assassination by innuendo: that "so-called democracy movement," he said en passant of the Southern Bhutanese campaign.
There was a deeper problem: none of the scholars who dealt with politics had surveyed the refugee camps or done field work in Southern Bhutan. They thus could not assess allegations either of violence by Nepali-speakers or of oppression by the Bhutanese Stale. To describe, as one scholar did, Bhutan´s implementation of the single language policy as "characteristically Bhutanese and in keeping with a benevolent Buddhist view of life" was not only, strictly speaking, meaningless, but, unless the perceptions of Nepali speakers had been assessed, invalid even as banality.
The journalists who spoke at the conference were canny rather than angelic, but they did not make those kinds of elementary errors: where they stated facts they backed them up as well as they could. Otherwise, they trod water and stayed out of trouble. They had another lesson to offer the academics: do not take sides. A learned professor from Shillong sank under the weight of his own rhetoric about the "anti-feudal" efforts of the "ancient, material and substantive Nepali commonwealth" to bring civilisation to the "relatively thin, simple and recent Drukpa fold". The researcher from Hong Kong appeared to have the trays mixed up on his desk: we got the paper from the tray marked "Advice from Thimphu on Damage Control". He must have sent his "Objective Research" files to Thimphu by mistake — probably more useful to them in fact.
The journalists paddled in circles around calmer patches of the pond. Kanak Dixit shmgged off his apparently assigned role as token Nepali, demolishing others' theories without revealing his own partialities. Nick Nugent, a hierarch in the BBC World Service, used Thimphu´s own reluctance to admit journalists as an excuse For not revealing which side or sides he thinks are lying on the Southern Bhutan issue. And Kinley Dorje, whose newspaper Kuensel frequently prints unattributed stories, knew not to do that when speaking under his own name: his comments were always prefaced by "the Bhutanese Government claims", or "the Ministers´ view is that", and were all the more useful for that. These are simple precautions, Lesson One for hacks, and vital for survival if you are going to enter into contemporary debates.
It was not just academics who got into difficulties at the conference. A bigwig from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees used the platform to describe another speaker as "mischievous and idle"; it did not help that his victim was not allowed the opportunity to reply. UNHCR has a diminishing reputation for dealing with criticism—see for evidence the recent correspondence from their special envoy in Cambodia on the Yim Sakun affair — and their representatives need to build dialogue rather than exchange abuse. The UNHCR must realise that if they do not have a process of individual status determination (and this February they told me they don´t), then uncertain ties about refugee claims are inevitable and deserve a civilised response.
As for Bhutan´s Secretary for Home Affairs, no one expected him to be impartial. But, having agreed to come to an academic conference, he could have played by the rules. He began nobly enough with an academic discourse on the central issue, which is the history of Nepali migration, but soon descended to unsubstantiated allegations against the absent Bhim Subba. a senior civil servant now a refugee living in Kathmandu. This was ungracious, not least since his Ministry had refused to attend if either Subba or any other Southern Bhutanese were invited to the hearing. Neither was his monody about the imminent swamping of the Drukpas of Bhutan convincing: it smacked of emotional blackmail and sounded too much like inciting other Bhutanese to xenophobia and revenge.
The Secretary´s real failures were not unlike the academics: he too had not been to the refugee camps. Ho could not bring himself to acknowledge, still less to answer, the refugee´s allegations of abuse by the Bhutanese military, reported impromptu to the conference by a young woman who had worked in Jhapa. Her emotions were unacademic but eloquent. His silence was damning: it was a failure of morality as well as intellect.
The tragedy is, of course, that the Minister and his ideologues are right: Bhutan faces acute danger from demographic pressures from the plains, and at the same time incidents of horrific violence are continuing. But they need to encourage debate not rhetoric to solve this, and the greater number of dispassionate scholars whom they can get involved the better. I salute anyone who takes the plunge.
Barnett is editor of the Tibet Information Network, based in London.