Bhutan's External Relations

Abstract

FOREIGN POLICY did not pose complex problems for the Government of Bhutan during the first four decades of the 20th century. The basic operating principles of Bhutan's external relations were set by the events surrounding the British Younghusband Expedition into Tibet (I903-5) and the treaty between Bhutan and British India signed in i9io. The political situation in the Himalayan region thereafter allowed little scope for initiative on foreign policy matters by the Bhutanese authorities even if they had been so inclined-which they were not. Geopolitics thus made it inevitable that British India should be the primary focus of Bhutan's foreign policy, based upon the principle of optimal isolation. Except for a brief fling in the I9IO-I2 period, when Chinese armies occupied Tibet and pushed south to the Himalayan frontier, China was in no position to exert any influence in this region. The overthrow of the Ch'ing dynasty in i9ii also signalled the end of China's physical presence in Tibet for more than four decades. Lhasa emerged as a semi-dependency of the British and had to accommodate itself to British hegemony throughout the Himalayan area. In foreign policy terms, then, British India constituted the only potentially complicating factor for the newly-established monarchy in Bhutan in I907, and it is not surprising that Druk Gyalpo (King) Ugyen Dorji made a satisfactory accommodation with the British his first order of business. The response was encouraging as the terms proposed by the British were interpreted by the Bhutan government as the best possible under the circumstances. The British recognized Bhutan's internal sovereignty and did not even insist upon the establishment of a Residency in Bhutan as they had in Nepal and Sikkim. Formally, the British Political Officer in Gangtok was also accredited to Bhutan, but this was a unilateral act on New Delhi's part, never recognized by the Bhutanese authorities. The Political Officer was occasionally allowed to undertake brief tours of Bhutan, but only under carefully circumscribed conditions that denied him the opportunity to exert an undue influence in internal Bhutanese politics. The only qualification imposed on Bhutan's sovereignty was the clause in the i9io treaty under which the Bhutanese agreed to be guided by the advice of the British on foreign policy matters. But in the context of the existing situation this was nothing more than de jure recognition of the de facto reality, for even without this clause