The Constitution, the Monk Body and the Lhotshampa Expulsions

The 2008 constitution names Buddhism the spiritual heritage of Bhutan and makes the king the protector of all religions, a formula that establishes a culture without quite establishing a church. The Central Monastic Body is funded by the state and its head, the Je Khenpo, is second only to the king in precedence; five monastic representatives sit on the body that can remove a monarch. At the same time the constitution prohibits inducement to conversion, and no Christian denomination has been granted registration, so Christian worship takes place in homes without legal standing and the dead cannot be buried according to Christian rite.

The harder history concerns the Lhotshampa, Nepali speaking and largely Hindu communities settled in the southern lowlands from the late nineteenth century. Citizenship laws of 1985, a census that required documentary proof of residence in 1958, and a driglam namzha code imposing northern Bhutanese dress and custom produced protests and then expulsions: between 1990 and 1993 roughly one sixth of the country's population left or was forced out, and more than a hundred thousand people spent up to two decades in camps in eastern Nepal before third country resettlement began in 2007. Bhutan has accepted almost none of them back, and the episode is largely absent from the account the state gives of itself.