December 17 and Bhutan’s National Day Celebration

Bhutan celebrated its National Day on December 17, marking the foundation of the hereditary monarchy. A day steeped in history and cultural pride, this year’s national day celebration, once more reaffirmed the monarchy’s central role in shaping a holistic narrative for Bhutan. This year’s anniversary was celebrated in the Changlimithang grounds, Thimphu amidst grandeur – featuring traditional speeches, cultural performances, and vibrant public festivities, highlighting the significance of this day in the public. December 17 is a national holiday in Bhutan.

The celebration of Bhutan’s National Day has however spawned messy flashpoints within the Bhutanese diasporic community, creating an unnecessary polarization and dialectical contentions. A small section of the diaspora population engages in a modest replication of the national day celebration, often mirroring traditional state practices. In stark contrast, another section strongly opposes such initiatives, articulating a more critical and nuanced narrative.

As opposed to the pro-celebration group, the views of this majority encapsulate larger concerns surrounding the significance and implications of Bhutan’s National Day celebrations in the diaspora. According to them, each subsequent year, the national day celebration re-traumatizes peoples’ memories and evokes a painful reminder of systemic injustices that uprooted their lives. Each year, they fear that the stories spun by the establishment will add a layer of thread to its narrative of denial. Therefore, they argue, celebrating the national day is a clear betrayal of our own lived experiences and collective sufferings, us being a persecuted community. It is a shameful act tantamount to us endorsing our own oppression.

This group does not wish to be defined by any active participation in Bhutan’s national day celebrations. Instead, they choose to keep such celebrations on hold until the wrongdoings are acknowledged and justice served. As such, the withholding of celebrations is a temporary pause, a minimal passive resistance and non-cooperation, that can be exercised without being confrontational — a Satyagraha. In this Satyagraha, instead of drumming on the grounds, people can sit in silence, remembering the past and introspect, such that their silence becomes their communication, and active ‘remembering‘ becomes a vehicle for diasporic mobilization. Additionally, silence also serves as the language of defiance, and ‘remembering‘ serves as a moral compass that refreshes and reignites society’s conscience. Because the act of ‘remembering’ one thing is also the act of refusing the other; ‘remembering’, unassumingly, becomes a catharsis and a protest at the same time.

It has become a powerful tool of self-representation and self-preservation, protest and resistance. That is how ‘remembering’ becomes political. Like a tiny spark that sets off a blazing inferno, one act of ‘remembering’ can fuel collective consciousness and illuminate the darkest history. Thus, ‘remembering’ has been the cornerstone of movements for justice from the civil rights movement in the United States to the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. That is the reason why oppressive regimes do not want their people to remember their history, especially if they have suffered injustice in their hands. It is on the people to take control of their own narratives, and for that, ‘remembering’ is the key. It is as simple as – remember, you survive; forget, you perish.

However, the pro-celebration group tends to interpret their participation as an act of reclaiming identity and a promise of their ongoing patriotism. They are even refusing to let displacement sever their ties to Bhutan and are using big national events like the national day celebrations to send signals affirming this connection. Such a stance might have been easier to understand if they were still residing in Bhutan, but the irony is that they are also living in foreign countries, of which they are naturalized citizens.

Further, they have adopted the idea of ‘forget and forgive’, an extremely reconciling approach, which they hope will appease the political regime in Thimphu. However, the majority finds this approach deeply flawed as it fails to grasp the depth of institutional violence; and the weight of historical wounds inflicted on our people by the regime. They opine that the call to ‘forgive and forget’ deliberately ignores the profound harm and the complex history of systemic exclusion and persecution inflicted on us by the regime being celebrated.

Basically, how the past is understood and looked upon continues to divide the Bhutanese diasporic community in starkly contrasting ways. The differences become sharper as each side seeks to define what it means to be a Bhutanese in the diaspora, in its own ways. As such they are not finding any common grounds to engage each other. For one group, acknowledgement of wrongdoings and a public apology by the perpetrator is non-negotiable; for the other, shaking off the burdens of historical injustices of the past and moving on is deliverable.

On one hand, those with lived experiences of systemic violence, persecution, uprooting, and the pain of statelessness find the notion of ‘forgive and forget’ not only dismissive, but also highly insulting to the collective sufferings we have endured. As such, they strongly disapprove of the ‘forgive and forget’ stance adopted by the pro-celebration group. On the other hand, the pro-celebration group, having no direct experience of the repression their parents or grandparents endured, are often found detaching and disengaging themselves with their past. Instead, they are increasingly seeking solace in the comfort and opportunities of the west, prioritizing personal agenda above the pursuit of historical reflections.

Communities that gloss over their own atrocities and sufferings jeopardize their own future. Such an act of complicity trivializes the pain of their own sufferings and erases their lived experiences. It also narrows the path to healing and reconciliation. True loyalty to a nation does not lie in manifesting blind allegiance, superficial celebrations or misplaced patriotism; it lies in having the courage to confront past wrongs and seeking justice and accountability.

It is also possible that gravely persecuted communities may sometimes ‘forgive’ out of magnanimity, but they will never ‘forget’ the indelible scars of suffering inflicted on them. Therefore, it is only natural that the pro-celebration group’s ‘forgive and forget’ argument will be quickly consigned to the dustbin of irrelevance.

The Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe has aptly noted, ‘until the lions have their own historian, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter’. In this metaphor, the triumphant hunter is the one with the power to write the narrative of his own victory. From usual physical and psychological bullying to brutal inflammatory charges of violence, there was no time when the Bhutanese regime was not relentless about dismantling the history and identity of the Nepali speaking Bhutanese. If Achebe’s insight did not incite us into ending the hunter’s monopoly on our history — one day soon, we will be defined solely through the lens of the hunter. Lions are naturally stronger than human beings.

But lions being lions, they do not have the brain to think and a pen to write. So, it is possible that they have not written their own narratives. Achebe’s fallen lions – the Bhutanese diaspora, also portrays the same victimhood, despite having the brain to think and pens to write. His insight could be our warning because so long as the lions do not untether themselves from their troubled past and light their way to liberation, the history of the hunter’s triumph will always rule their destiny. Achebe’s metaphor clearly suggests that history belongs to those who dare to tell or write.