Susan Banki on the battles of Nepali-Bhutanese refugees: State of Southasia #16

In the introduction to her book The Ecosystem of Exile Politics: Why Proximity and Precarity Matter for Bhutan’s Homeland Activists, Susan Banki, a researcher of the international refugee system, tells the story of Bhakta Ghimire, a homeland activist from the community of Nepali-speaking Bhutanese. In the early 1990s, Ghimire was a young man working in a cement factory in Samste, in southern Bhutan. One day, he heard rumours that Bhutan’s ethnic Nepalis – also known as the Lhotshampa – were being evicted from their homes following a national census exercise. He rushed to his parents house to find it empty, crossed into India to find them, and eventually joined the stream of Nepali Bhutanese leaving Bhutan.  

Tens of thousands of Nepali-speaking Bhutanese were forced to flee their homes in southern Bhutan after a citizenship policy disenfranchised them, a cultural policy imposed Bhutan’s dominant Drukpa traditions – including clothing norms – on them, and a census exercise forced them from their homes. These families have lived as refugees in Nepal, India and other parts of the world – many in precarious conditions in refugee camps, others resettling in countries such as the United States and Australia. And activists like Ghimire have been asking for the right to return to Bhutan.