It was on June 2, 1974 that the 17-year-old Jigme Singye Wangchuk was coronated the king of Bhutan after the death of his father, King Jigme Dorjee Wangchuk. On June 1999, King Jigme completed 25 years of ruling over this south Asian Himalayan kingdom. The Druk Gyalpo, meaning precious ruler of the Dragon people, is the fourth in the dynasty that has ruled Bhutan since 1907 after the ‘Shabdrung’ was overthrown. For years, Bhutan, an isolated Himalayan kingdom landlocked between China and India, has sought to preserve its culture. But things are changing as the king gradually allowed changes and innovations. Last year, he gave the legislature the power to fire him and yielded to parliament the right to choose the Cabinet, sharply curtailing the power of the monarchy. In recent years, the British schooled monarch has abolished protocol that forbade his subjects to meet his eye, and demanded repeated bowing.

The formal ceremony was held in the capital Thimpu to mark the occasion. The king declared the arrival of television, internet and e-mail to Bhutan. However the King told his subjects to use these symbols of the 20th century wisely to avoid harming the traditional Buddhist values of this poor agrarian society. The king delivered good news to the country’s salary earners by announcing that plans to introduce personal income tax had been shelved and civil servants and armed forces pay would go up. The king said that India’s agreement to pay a lot more for power produced by Bhutan’s Chukha Hydro-electric plant provided room for this largesse in a country where the per capita gross national product is still only $520 per annum. Low cost housing and pension scheme for the poor were also introduced.

However, not everything was all right during the silver jubilee celebrations. Voices of resentment and anguish were heard from the distant territories of Nepal, where almost 97,000 Bhutanese mostly from the South are languishing in refugee camps hoping everyday that they will be soon going back to Bhutan. These refugees have felt betrayed and cheated of their rights when they were labelled as ‘non-nationals’, even after having a long history in Bhuta and possessing land and jobs there. They are now totally disillusioned as a number of bilateral letters between His Majesty’s Government of Nepal and RGOB have failed and contrary to efforts of repatriation, the RGOB is following a resettlement policy of the Southern Bhutanese land by allotting it to Easterners. Some nefarious activities like movement and access of insurgents and extremists from the Indian side into these lands have also surfaced. During the silver jubilee celebrations the refugees from Bhutan, now residing in seven UNHCR refugee camps in eastern Nepal, went on hunger strike and held prayer for their early repatriation. A recent development has been the formation of the Bhutanese Refugees Representative Repatriation Committee (BRRRC) which is an elected body and which aims to work as the mouthpiece of these refugees with the direct aim of honourable repatriation. S.B. Subba, the chairperson of BRRRC initiated a number of agitation programmes in protest against the silver jubilee celebrations of the Bhutan king at a time when honourable and innocent persons like Teknath Rizal continue to languish in Thimpu prison for only raising their voice against the autocratic rule of the RGOB.

Traffic along the national highway at Damak (where the office of the BRRRC is also situated) in eastern Nepal was disrupted for over an hour while King Jigme was going about his silver jubilee functions in Bhutan. The processionists displayed banners and placards and urged the king of Bhutan to issue a royal decree, commanding the immediate return of Bhutanese refugees in Nepal and India.

Lately from inside Bhutan, there have been protests against the presence of ULFA militants and its National Assembly had discussed the issue. According to MHA, Bhutan, the Home Minister is believed to have met the ULFA leadership and has ultimately done some straight talking by asking them to leave. If the militants do not leave within a reasonable time period, then signals of a purposeful joint military operation (as the Royal Bhutan Army is not so well equipped to rise to the task, despite the fact that in the recent past a number of Bhutanese Army personnel have been trained by their Indian counterpart) have been given.