What's Democracy Got To Do With It?
From Pop Music to Politics, Youth Stand to Inherit a New Bhutan
Click play to listen to a selection of Bhutanese pop ballads while you read.
Not too long ago, I found myself on the balcony of the youth radio station in Thimphu, Bhutan. I was having a discussion with a new radio host at the station, 13-year-old Tenzin “Sora” Tshewang. The skater shoe and hoodie-clad young man spoke impeccable English and had just begun volunteering as a DJ for the station’s popular call-in request show ‘Youth Unplugged’.
A familiar back and forth took place before he went on the air: ‘Favorite bands?’ I asked. Jimmy Eat World and Daft Punk. ‘TV show?’ Dragon Ball Z. As I was no longer surprised by the far reaches of global youth culture, I steered our impromptu conversation toward politics.
‘What do you mean politics?’ he asked.
“Like political parties and stuff,” I replied. “Where I live in Washington, D.C. it’s all over the place. Are you interested in politics at all?”
“Not really,” said Sora. “But I heard in the United States birthday parties are very popular.”
Birthday parties, political parties; I let the confusion go uncorrected, reminding myself that this teenager is like many in Bhutan, surprisingly unaware of the evolving political ‘scene’ in this Buddhist Kingdom of the Himalayas where up until recently political debate was taboo.
But throughout the country a political awareness is growing. With Bhutan’s first democratic elections slated to be held this year, the Bhutanese are forming political parties, campaigning, and practicing voting all in preparation to transition to a Democratic Constitutional Monarchy.
After a century of monarchs practicing absolute rule, many outsiders might expect that the Bhutanese would be thrilled to see their country move towards greater democracy. Instead a cautious “this is all very new to us” seems to be the mantra of the moment, coming from old and young alike, as ambivalent Bhutanese wonder what a new political system might mean for their relatively isolated and deeply traditional country of 600,000 people nestled between Nepal, China and India.
Fifty-nine percent of Bhutanese are under twenty-four and the bulk of participants in Bhutan’s democratic future are young people confronted with more options and information than their parents could have imagined. The country only recently legalized T.V. and the internet. As Bhutan opens up and introduces political reforms, this generation’s responsibilities come with unprecedented power at breakneck speed.
I came to be a part of the youth scene in Thimphu while I was living there with my family last winter. A town of 50,000 people, residents here are proud to live in the only capital city in the world without a traffic light. The city’s main street mills with monks in stunning deep reds and oranges, and vendors selling Chinese contraband to men and women in traditional dress. In contrast, the young people have their own dress code – imposter name brands, jeans, leather boots, hoop earrings, hip haircuts – they are ambassadors of modern ‘cool’ in a land of deep traditions.
With little else to do, I walked the streets daily, from the hospital where my father was volunteering at the physical therapy department downhill to the National Chorten, a Buddhist shrine visited by a daily flow of circumambulating worshippers chanting and spinning prayer wheels in deep devotion. Mahayana Buddhism is the state religion and everyone – young, old, urban, rural – practices these rites.
It was at the Chorten shrine that I met my first Bhutanese friend, 18 year old Pema Dolma, a radio host at the youth-run station, Kuzoo (The word is an abbreviated version of a traditional greeting in Dzongkha, the language of Bhutan). I had always been interested in radio, and was itching for something to fill my days in Thimphu, so I showed up at Kuzoo radio the next day.
“Kuzoo is the youth of Bhutan. Kuzoo is ours; the future is ours,” reads the mission statement of Bhutan’s only independent radio station—scarcely a year old. The programming is a combination of cheery nationalism, feature shows focused on youth, interviews, and Western pop music. Mostly, it is the latter. On several occasions I found myself in the ironic position of hosting shows like “The Top Hits” or “Love Songs Hour,” where I would put forth onto the airwaves, in my opinion, the worst of American pop music, for thousands of people to hear. The almost entirely female production team was familiar with every shred of entertainment news from the United States, remarkably in touch with the lives of Lindsay Lohan and others. They often included these celebrities’ activities in the international news portion of their broadcasts.
An identity was created for me – that of the token young, hip American, who knew close to nothing of the young, hip American culture that Bhutanese relish. I was starting to imagine the future of this traditional society on the shoulders of these Jay-Z-listening, designer-purse-toting, entertainment news-reading hipster DJ’s, and simply couldn’t. So I started asking questions, trying to uncover how the members of this youth vanguard envisioned their future.
Surprisingly by Western standards, most want the absolute power of the monarchy to remain. The sentiment was unanimous among almost all the youths I encountered. Thujee Paul Lhendup, a 19-year-old Kuzoo volunteer explained, “We’ve had benevolent kings up until now – beloved, very good kings. Well respected, loved, more than anything - which is very different from everywhere else. We’re happy with the system that we live in now. For Bhutan, democracy has come from the top down, not from the bottom up, so that’s the difference.”
Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck
Bhutan’s ‘Red Hot Prince Charming’
Thujee is a confident and bookish teenager who recently graduated from high school at the top of his class. Born to an English mother and a Bhutanese father, he wants to go to law school in Europe. Thujee was the host of Kuzoo’s first broadcast on September 28, 2006, planned to coincide with Thimphu’s most important religious festival. He said about the elections, “Obviously there are some hesitations. Kuzoo has tried to get the views of the youth and compare them with what the election commission is saying, or what governmental officials are saying about it.”
Around the same time I was having these conversations at Kuzoo, an article was published on the front page of the Bhutan Times with the headline, Politics is about ‘money and power,’ in which the results of a BT poll explained that most Bhutanese are disenchanted by politics. Of the 200 respondents, 62% said that politics in Bhutan will be ‘dirty’ while 72% felt that those interested in joining active politics were driven by the lure of ‘money and power’ rather than ‘to serve the people and the country.’ The majority of those interviewed believed that it will take 15 years or more for democracy to succeed in Bhutan, putting youth like Thujee well into middle age.
The Bhutanese have never been enthusiastic about politics. Candidates for village leadership have been known to use reverse psychology in their campaigns, walking long distances to ask people not to vote for them, thus presenting themselves as a worthy and moral candidate, expressing the humility so important to Bhutanese social life.
Namgyal Dorji, a tall, serious student, was the only young person I met who wanted to become a politician. We met at Sherubtse College, where he is a second-year English Literature major. Sherubtse, roughly translated as “peak of knowledge”, is located in far eastern Bhutan, a three day bus ride from Thimphu. When I arrived, Namgyal gave me a tour of the campus, pointing out among other attractions, the world’s largest book, consisting of a collection of photos of Bhutan the size of a ping pong table.
Namgyal is the secretary of the student union, and uncharacteristically supportive of political change. Talking about college life, he said, “We can’t just waste our time. We have to think more of our country. While here, we have to make ourselves more productive, we have to make ourselves unique, different from others, and serve our government in more productive and prepared ways.”
Namgyal’s unequivocal enthusiasm for dramatic change is unusual in a country where most people, especially the young, seem equally divided between a reverence for the traditional ways that have historically sustained and protected Bhutan and a clamoring desire to keep up with the rest of the world—or at least its technology and pop culture.
Pema Llamo personifies this contradiction. As the station manager at Kuzoo, she works nearly 12 hours a day. Like many young adults in Thimphu, she likes music - specifically the styles of Lisa Marie Presley, Shakira, James Blunt – and a regularly updated play list of new music. I would occasionally walk into the office and she’d be browsing for handbags on the Neiman Marcus website, or editing her online profile on the hugely popular Bhutanese MySpace equivalent, Kuzoo.net.
But Pema is also skeptical of larger change. She explains, “We’ve had the monarchy for the last 100 years. We’ve been under the guidance of the monarchy and the king. If it were to continue to be a monarch-kingdom, yes, I would definitely like that to happen, but it’s the king’s idea of having democracy, so we should respect his decision. So if that is what he wants, yes, we should also go for it. If that’s what the king wants, I’m sure it is for a good cause.”
Pema’s loyalty to the monarchy might also have something to do with the dreaminess of His Royal Highness Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck who will be officially ascending to the throne in 2008. At 27 years old, he’ll be the world’s youngest head of state. Pema’s tiny desk in the station’s crammed office space boasts several Tiger Beat-style pictures of the 5th King who, after a state visit to Thailand in 2006, was dubbed the “Red Hot Prince Charming” by the Thai press.
There is a history of visionary young leaders in Bhutan. Prince Charming’s father, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, acceded to the throne at the age of 17, after the sudden death of his father. At the time, he was the youngest monarch in the world. He is largely credited for ending the long isolation of the country and introducing democracy by royal decree.
Indeed, portraits of both Kings are essential accessories to any government building, school or private business. The people of Bhutan absolutely revere the royal family, who itself was the impetus behind the recent calls for democratic change. “Bhutan does not have a choice,” reads a March 10 editorial in Kuensel, the state-run newspaper. It came to us as an enlightened initiative from the throne and it is our responsibility to make it work. We have decided that it is going to work.”
Many people I talked to blame a lack of political experience for Bhutanese uncertainty in the face of major political shifts, reminding me that up until recently politics were a kind of non-issue for most in the country. “Politics are completely new and young people don’t know what to expect. The people of Bhutan are spoiled,” said Kuzoo volunteer Thujee Paul.
But whether savvy or innocent, excited or anxious (and perhaps all of the above) these young Bhutanese are guiding their country’s first steps towards the twenty-first century. As would-be politician Namgyal Dorji put it enthusiastically to me, “the time has come to realize that we have to elect the government - to put into power people that we can trust… It is in our hands.”
© 2007 The Common Language Project
