A Day of Dashain in Bhutan

A newly wed couple in Thimphu were counting days for the Thimphu tsechu , not that they mean celeberation but sneaking out of Thimphu to Tshirang and then to Kalikhola. Not only for this couple but to all Hindu Lhotshampa studying or working in Thimphu, Dashain was important festival to celebrate at home. So many of them took advantage of the official holidays allowed in Thimphu in observance of the Tshechu. Otherwise they would have to be satisfied with one day holiday allowed for the great Hindu festival , and remain in the capital wearing gloomy faces.

An engineer and a government employee, also in Thimphu made his way down to his home village across the proposed dam site of hydro-project in Sunkosh river for Dashain, which he missed for a long time owing to his studies in India.

Another family in Damphu that this scribe could catch was returning from their parental home after observing “tika” and showered with blessings from the elders. They traveled all the way from Dagana to Gairigaon taking two day’s off from their job at road construction site. Thanks to the two days’ holiday authorized by the school in Dagana, their children could visit the grandparents.

Most schools throughout the country permitted only a day as official holiday for Dashain. Lhotshamp students of middle schools and higher secondary schools, living away from their parents could not celebrate the festival with the families. So a single mom working in a private company in Phuentsholing had to request leave from the school for her two children in order to visit her parents in Nichula.

Disaster and Dashain

For the south western district of Samtse disaster preceded the festivities. In villages like Bara , tendu, Chargharey some mud houses were demolished by the September 18 earthquake. Keeping themselves busy over the rubbles of demolished houses, people in Sipsu could barely prepare for dashain with religious fervor. However , king’s visit to Chargharey participating in the tika ceremony with the people of affected areas somehow placated them. Besides, Minister Thakur S Powdyel, a Lhotshampa who hails from Samtse district, was accompanying the king to sympathize his electorates.

Navaratra in Thimphu

A temporary Hindu temple in Thimphu has been the abode of navadurga bhawani with annual performance of Durga puja by nine pundits from southern districts. After the inception of Hindu Dharma Samudaya as an organ of the religious organization of Bhutan, performing nine day puja during dashain has finally taken root as an organized community activity. According to a pundit who engaged in nine-days recitation of Chandi in Thimphu, the final ritual was attended by all the cabinet ministers and high level officials of Lhotsampa origin. It is a welcoming gesture of accommodating the religious sentiments of southern Bhutanese, majority of who are Hindu.

Enjoying freedom of religion is not just the fruit of democracy in the country, but the collective representation of a major religion as Hinduism, practiced for over a century in the country to the mainstream of theocratic governance serves a milestone.

Dashain Economy

While most villagers engage in preparing beaten-rice and procuring the best produce of banana to be served during dashain, town dwellers and small-income job holders find the prices of essential commodities exorbitant. Meat, usually the delicacy of this featival, has become a prize worth three hundred ngultrum a kilo in the urban areas.

Thanks to the indefinite closure of local weekly markets in the Bhutan side of Indo-Bhutan boeder, people of interior villages are bound to take three to four hours to weekly Indian markets.

Purna Bahadur had to start a day before the market from his home in Deorali, so that he could make frugal purchase of new clothes to his family, kerosene oil, vegetable oil, salt and some non-perishable vegetables. It is haatkhola on every Sunday. Haatkhola, a Sunday market in upper fringes of Kumargram tea garden, usually become crowded with villagers of hinterland Kalikhola, Deorali, Katahare and Nichula before Dashain.

A corporate employee in Phuentsholing chose to make major purchase in Jaigaon on the way to his home village, Dorokha. By doing so, he said he could obviate the monopoly of traders in Banarhaat or Chamurchi and that the small shops in Samtse bazaar do not sell any of those kinds.

Need more compliance

A businessman in Paro, who served RBA for over sixteen years, had no parental home to go for the festival even he had the choice of doing so hitherto not availed. His parents lived in refugee camps and now got resettled in the far west of where he is vegetating. He said there existed a kind of stigma to be in northern Bhutan during dashain and put tika. ‘The northern people see our festival with contempt,’ he wrote in a offline massage.

A major festival in the south and central part of the country, Dashain and Tihar need to be well recognized and those who follow the faith must be understood in terms of their fundamental rights. Citizens should have no stigma over the practice of their faith or belief, just because it is the other way. However, king’s participation in the tika in a southern village is worth applauding and a gesture of overcoming such stigma by the Lhotshamps who live in north.

A memory of 1987 clicked in me: Nagphey a mate of mine from Paro, studied in Samtse primary school used to be one of our leaders in Samtse high school to sing Deusi during Tihar around the town. We enjoyed the harmony.