Doklam, dragons and tigers: Bhutan’s king visits India amid changing ties

Bhutan’s king, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuk, arrived in India on November 3 for an eight-day visit that began in the adjacent Indian state of Assam, a part of which lies directly to its south. The visit, for which queen Jetsun Pema and their two children are accompanying him, will peak during the king’s visit to New Delhi.

It has set India’s policy circles and media to a frenzy of conjecture.

Is this visit designed to soothe nerves before Bhutan takes a forbidden step with China – a step largely forbidden by India’s strategic paranoia – and establishes formal diplomatic relations with each other? And, as a corollary, formally invite China to a trilateral table to sort out a knotty problem of a border demarcation crisis that has bedevilled Bhutan, driven India batty, and, from all available indications, planted a smug smile on China’s face.

For India, a trigger word is “Doklam”, located at the trijunction of India’s eastern Sikkim state, northwest Bhutan, and southwestern China along the Tibet Autonomous Region. Alongside several contentious matters between two of Asia’s largest countries, neighbours, nemeses, and geo-political influencers, Doklam gives India the jitters.

In Doklam, unlike the India-China border along Ladakh far to the northwest, or along eastern Arunachal Pradesh, the dispute here is not directly with India. It’s between Bhutan and China. China claims a little less than 300sq-km of Bhutan’s territory. But the location is so strategic from India’s perspective – and, evidently, China’s – that any ceding of territory here by Bhutan to China would bring China closer to the crucial Chicken’s Neck or the Siliguri Corridor, an approximately 60km long and 20-odd km wide strip that links India’s mainland to its far-east. A crisis here could snip nearly a seventh of India’s landmass.

This awareness is hyper-real for India. In 2017, India sent several hundred troops, and bulldozers, across the border into Doklam to prevent Chinese troops from constructing a road there. A mutual retreat occurred after several weeks of tense standoff.

India also keeps a wary eye on another region, in Bhutan’s northern border with China and not too far from Doklam: about 500sq-km patch in Jakarlung and Pasamlung. As with India’s border disputes with China, Bhutan’s border disputes can be traced to China’s ingress into vast Tibet from 1950 onwards, and the effective negation of several border markers decided upon decades earlier by treaty, for instance, with Tibet and British India.

Best friends forever?

Indian security over-pressure has thus far ensured that Bhutan and China do not formally have diplomatic relations. India plays a hand in Bhutan’s security upkeep, from roads to training to advice. IMTRAT, or the Indian Military Training Team, is an active presence in Bhutan. Its commanding officer is also part diplomat, part chief trainer, and part counsel. And, evidently, part soft-power pamphleteer. This past June, IMTRAT celebrated International Day of Yoga, a pet palliative of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, by holding a public display along with Royal Bhutan Army, the kingdom’s police, and select citizenry. A message on the platform X (formerly Twitter) by Indian Army’s public relations arm proclaimed this as signifying the “everlasting spirit of friendship between #India and #Bhutan”.

Even so, India’s concern stems from the possibility that Bhutan might form a lasting friendship with China. Absence of formal diplomatic relations between Bhutan and China have hardly dampened that concern. If India is a crouching tiger, then China, with its enduring myths of dragons; and Bhutan, which has the “Druk,” or dragon prefix in nearly everything of note – the country is also Druk Yul, the king is formally the Druk Gyalpo, the people Druk-pa, the country’s major airline Druk Air – are seemingly ranged in a species war of attrition. Or, less dramatically, pursuing national interest as each sees fit.

That is perhaps best exemplified by regular border talks between Bhutan and China especially since the increasingly robust, if curious for some, mix of monarchy and democracy in Bhutan since the present king’s coronation in 2008.

This year has seen a remarkable uptick.

In May 2023, the “Expert Group” on the “Bhutan-China Boundary Issue” held its 12th meeting, in Thimphu. It was quickly followed by the 13th meeting in August, held in Beijing. A declaration urged speed for a memorandum of understanding for what is called the “Three Step Roadmap,” although the steps remain hazy to the world-at-large. Negotiators established a “joint technical team”.

This was followed in late October by the “25th Round of Boundary Talks” in Beijing. The previous such round was held back in 2016. Negotiators from Bhutan and China signed a “Cooperation Agreement” on the “Responsibilities and Functions of the Joint Technical Team (JTT) on the Delimitation and Demarcation of the Bhutan-China Boundary.” The talks, according to a Bhutan foreign ministry statement, were held in a “warm and friendly” atmosphere. There was again mention of the mysterious “Three Step Roadmap.”

Stage one

India’s raucous denial of China’s presence in the settling of the Doklam border issue, even as China is clearly involved in the unsettling of Doklam, is akin to an Israel-level denial that Palestinian-Arabs actually have a say in Palestine. Equally, the sheer scale of China’s acquisitions and claims since 1949 – Tibet, Taiwan, South China Sea, et al – would make Israel salivate.

With such dynamics, Bhutan’s approach is one of practical necessity of a country caught between two giants – an approach that is manifest beyond border issues.

Bhutan has steadily tried to diversify its approaches to ensure its socio-economic survival even as it controls access to the country to protect its fragile population – with 770,000 people in an area quarter the size of Bangladesh – and a calibrated ethno-religious mix of cultures and languages. Indeed, economic prosperity could ensure Bhutan doesn’t lose its top crop of youngsters to preferred destinations like Australia.

The approach extends to education. There is an active project, developed with direct patronage of the king, that is fine-tuning an academic approach – an example is the Bhutan Baccalaureate – that, among other things, seeks to holistically mix science with humanities and respect for the environment. There is talk of enhancing the country into a regional knowledge and research hub.

Branching out

India has, for decades, remained Bhutan’s economic mainstay, with tourists, trade, and a range of investment/grants that include financing and know-how for major hydroelectric projects – which permits Bhutan to export surplus power back to India.

Now Bhutan increasingly sees Bangladesh also as a trading destination. Indeed, the two countries have signed a sprawling preferential trade agreement that permits bilateral duty-free access to numerous goods. Bangladesh has offered its major ports to Bhutan as exim hubs.

Here India provides overland transhipment facilities: goods between Bhutan and Bangladesh travel through Indian territory. While returning from Bhutan by road in May, I saw several large trucks loaded with stone chips waiting to cross over to India for a transit to Bangladesh. Overall trade is picking up. Electricity is seen as a major future Bhutanese export to Bangladesh.

Essentially, Bhutan is actively trying to adapt, to branch out. It has to – or bust.

Bhutan’s American prep-school and Oxford-educated king is no stranger to either diplomacy or South Asia. He was born in Kathmandu. In 2002, as crown prince, still in his early 20s, he delivered a speech at the United Nations. He has frequently visited India and is acquainted with its top echelons. The queen, like her husband with a formal education in international relations, and a passion for art history, twice attended boarding schools in India. She was briefly at St Joseph’s Convent in Kalimpong and, later, at The Lawrence School, Sanawar; her photos as a high-school student there are showcased in the best-known photo studio in the nearby hill town of Kasauli.

India’s establishment will surely be hoping that the king and his entourage will soothe India’s nerves. Especially, since the pattern of India’s geopolitical patronage of Bhutan is now being transformed, whether India likes it or not, into one of partnership with Bhutan. And with whomsoever Bhutan chooses to partner with.

Sudeep Chakravarti is Director, Centre for South Asian Studies at University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. He has authored several books on history, ethnography, conflict resolution, and Eastern South Asia. His most recent book is The Eastern Gate: War and Peace in Nagaland, Manipur and India’s Far East (Simon and Schuster).

This article was first published on Dhaka Tribune.