Photo courtesy of Rick Warner (CC)

“When I hear about Gross National Happiness, it’s heartbreaking. When the government of Bhutan or the people of Bhutan say that it’s a beautiful place—an amazing place—I don’t feel happy. I have asked myself this question many times—why do I feel that?” — Anju Subba

There are some beliefs that are hard to let go of. The Easter Bunny. The Tooth Fairy. There’s nothing quite like that crushing feeling a child gets when finding out that the world isn’t as magical as they once thought it is. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been thoroughly disabused of a good fairy tale. But a few months ago, I got wise to a story I didn’t even know was a fairy tale (which, I guess, is how that sort of thing goes). This story, like most good fairy tales, has its origins in a distant magical faraway land. But unlike most fairy tales, the reality crashes back down to earth here in our backyard of Oakland.

Last year, I started working with a group of young Bhutanese refugees who live in the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland.

Bhutanese youth performing at Eastside Cultural Center in Oakland. Photo courtesy of B.A.B.Y.

Before I started working with them, I knew some basic stuff about the Kingdom of Bhutan. Breathtaking Himalayan landscapes. Eco-tourism hotspot. Buddhism. And, of course, Bhutan’s most famous international export, Gross National Happiness.

I think most people in the NPR demographic have at the very least heard about Gross National Happiness. It’s one of those sticky ideas that grabs hold of you the moment you hear it. I think it’s so compelling, because GNH is at once a feel-good philosophy and a sharp rebuke of unsustainable consumption-driven Western society. For us liberal-minded, anti-consumerist folks, the concept fits neatly in a convenient metanarrative — one in which we espouse Eastern-sounding awareness in confluence with our hyper-connected urban lifestyle. Everyone knows that our beleaguered gross domestic product, with its imperative of infinite economic growth, is the death knell of late-stage capitalism. Gross National Happiness, on the other hand—so woke! If only we had something like that.

I was surprised when my Bhutanese friends started saying that GNH was propaganda and a sham. When I heard that, I realized I’d never really given it much thought.

Robin Gurung: “When I hear of Gross National Happiness, it revitalizes my passion to speak up about our story. And that’s what I’m doing. This story that I’m telling to you is because Bhutan is showing the fake story—the fake image to the world—and that is affecting our story and our identity.”

GNH

The inspiration for Gross National Happiness was sparked in 1972 when the Fourth King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, declared, “Gross National Happiness is more important than gross domestic product.” Over the next three decades, this idea of GNH became a guiding principle of Bhutan’s governance. Bhutan created a GNH Index and a GNH screening tool (survey). In 2008, the Gross National Happiness Index was enshrined in the country’s constitution.

Photo courtesy of Göran Höglund (CC)

So what’s not to love? Anything that inflicts shame and reflection upon our depraved capitalist values can’t be a bad thing. And at the very least, Bhutan is a shining example of what’s possible under enlightened leadership.

Gross National Happiness is a similar siren song for the lefty liberal set. The idea conjures a vision of an idealistic fantasy place cloaked in shimmery Buddhist robes and framed by dramatic mountain backdrops.

The Bhutanese/Oakland Connection

But if Bhutan is such an enlightened place to live, why are there Bhutanese refugees living in Oakland? What are they refugees from?

The group I work with, Bay Area Bhutanese Youth, is led by Robin Gurung and Anju Subba. Over the course of the last year, I’d heard snippets of their stories. Last week, I finally got a chance to sit down with them and learn about their journey.

In 1992, Robin was three years old when he and his family were forced to flee Bhutan to live in refugee camps in Nepal until he was 23. Anju’s parents were forced out of their country in 1990. She was born in a Nepal refugee camp in 1993 and lived there for 17 years.

Both Anju and Robin are stateless. They hold no passport to any country. They will eventually become citizens of the US. For now, using their green cards, they can apply for visas to travel to any country an American citizen can travel to — except Bhutan. They are not welcome in Bhutan.

Anju: “Whenever I say I’m from Bhutan, people are, like, ‘Oh, wow, so pretty, so beautiful. Wow, amazing. You’re from the Himalayas—so beautiful!’ They want me to explain this sort of magical land to them. But then I have to tell them about Nepal. They will ask, ‘Why do you not know anything about Bhutan?’ and I have to say I was born in Nepal, and this is my story. And they will say, ‘Oh, are you from Katmandu?!’ and I will say no.”

Bhutanese refugees living in the USA are constantly assailed by people’s projections of what they think they know about Bhutan. But their experience of Bhutan is completely different from the one proffered by popular culture.

In the late 1980s, an estimated one-sixth of Bhutan’s population was forced off their land and out of their country. The Buddhist majority was feeling threatened by the growing ethnic Nepalese community, who had been living in Bhutan for centuries. The government imposed a program called “One Country, One People,” or “Bhutanization,” to force the minorities to assimilate into “pure Bhutanese” culture and religion.

When they resisted, they were forced out. Over 100,000 of them. If you’re interested in more information about this, here’s a good overview. Much violence and tragedy ensued. The rest of the world barely noticed.

On closer inspection, Gross National Happiness is neither gross nor national. It’s an idea born on the backs of oppressed minorities who have been whitewashed out of the central narrative. It’s a happiness for the ruling class at the expense of those whose land and livelihoods were stolen from them.

Robin: “I think that’s the worst story that we have. From 1989 to 1991, when folks were migrating to Nepal, there was no place to live, so they were put by a bank of a river. When our communities were on that bank of the river, you can image that there was no place to live, nothing to eat, no medical facilities. Nobody knew how to survive.” Anju: “People were there in the rain and didn’t have houses. People were really sick—so many people died when the camp started to settle because there was no hospital, nobody to help. My cousin, one year older than me, died the first year when they arrived in Nepal because he was sick, and no one was there to care. So many children died. It just makes me so angry that the world doesn’t know about it.”

Faced with an epic humanitarian crisis, the UN eventually stepped in and formed refugee camps in Nepal. Bhutan refused to let them return to their land. Nepal did not want to let them stay. India wouldn’t take them. The refugees were stuck in a limbo of statelessness, forced to live as prisoners, and 25+ years later, many still live there. The camps are some of the longest-running refugee camps in the world.

The refugees fought hard for the right to return to their homes in Bhutan, but no amount of pressure from the international community would compel Bhutan to take their people back.

Bhutan’s king and queen. Photo courtesy of Istvan Hernadi (CC).

With the rest of the world at an impasse, the USA stepped in. In 2006, Ellen Sauerbrey, the assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, surprised the world by announcing that the USA would take in these people. A unilateral decision was made by the George W. Bush administration to resettle over 60,000 Bhutanese refugees in the USA.

Our country decided that it was in our best interest to resettle the refugees and that the only way to do that was to give them new lives in America—give them new homes and jobs, and put them on a fast track to citizenship. There are now major Bhutanese communities in Kentucky, Ohio and many other states.

This was a mere 10 years ago, and it seems crazy to think that this is the same country as the one we live in today. George W. to the rescue! Many of the same people are still in Congress. One of the most surprising things is that in 2006, there was hardly any press coverage about this and no discernible resistance from anyone in the US. I can’t even find an instance of Pat Buchanan complaining. The US ended up taking in over 90,000 refugees from the Nepal camps. The only resistance I could find was from the refugees themselves, many of whom felt that by resettling, they were giving up their rights to return to Bhutan.

Oakland’s Bhutanese Youth. Photo courtesy of B.A.B.Y.

There are now Bhutanese communities all over America. The biggest are in Kentucky and Ohio. Around 300 ended up in Oakland.

For millions of deftly gerrymandered Trump supporters, the MAGA illusion fits neatly into their metanarrative in the same way that Gross National Happiness fits into mine.

Make Bhutan Great Again

But enough reminiscing about the good ol’ Bush years. One of the most frustrating things about our most recent presidential election was that no one was able to get a direct answer to the question, when exactly was America great? It’s a disgrace to the institution of the free press that Trump was able to campaign on his MAGA slogan without ever having to go on record with a when and a where. For those of us who think we know a dog whistle when we hear one, MAGA is a hard pill to swallow. When exactly was America great? We know the answer. America was great in our halcyon ’50s made-for-TV dreams — an America that was ostensibly great for wealthy white men at the expense of everyone else — back when you could slap your secretary on the ass, and negroes weren’t allowed to drink out of your water fountain.

The majority of Americans see through this jingoism. But for millions of deftly gerrymandered Trump supporters, the MAGA illusion fits neatly into their metanarrative in the same way that Gross National Happiness fits into mine.

Gross National Happiness is a similar siren song for the lefty liberal set. The idea conjures a vision of an idealistic fantasy place cloaked in shimmery Buddhist robes and framed by dramatic mountain backdrops. However, on closer inspection, Gross National Happiness is neither gross nor national. It’s an idea born on the backs of oppressed minorities who have been whitewashed out of the central narrative. It’s a happiness for the ruling class at the expense of those whose land and livelihoods were stolen from them.

Robin: “Bhutan is advocating Gross National Happiness, and when they do that, our story gets suppressed; our story gets hidden in that beautiful story. Because they don’t talk about our story. Which means that it’s not complete. And the idea of GNH, I think it doesn’t become real when the government tries to show just the good side of the country.”

Even now, living as permanent residents in the US, the refugees are barred from returning to Bhutan. The government completely rejects them. Anju might never even have a chance to see her country or her relatives who still live there.

Anju: “When people ask me, ‘Where are you from?’ I describe myself as Bhutanese. My parents are Bhutanese, which means I am Bhutanese too. But when I hear about Bhutan as the happiest country and how it’s very beautiful, I don’t feel good about it. Why do I feel that way? Why am I so sad about it? Well, I think I feel that way because I never got a chance to feel how to be a Bhutanese — a real Bhutanese who was accepted by the government and accepted by the people of Bhutan…Now that I am here [in the US], I thought I could go back to Bhutan, but now I realize that I still cannot. That makes me more sad. Because of my identity, I couldn’t meet my grandparents. Never in my life. And now they are gone…I wish I could talk about it more, and I wish that people could know about it.”

I get why “Partial National Happiness” doesn’t have as nice a ring to it. “Gross National Happiness Through Ethnic Cleansing” might not have caught on either. In the same vein, “Make America Great Again for Wealthy White Dudes” doesn’t look quite as classy on the red hat.

If You’re Happy and You Know It, Take This Government Survey

Gross National Happiness, in and of itself, isn’t a bad idea. Maybe it’s a great idea! Unfortunately, the devil’s in the details. Robin is adamant to point out that Bhutan is a beautiful country and one of the few countries that is carbon negative. Certainly, there must be some upsides to the policies that the government is putting in place. You can check out the most recent GNH survey yourself. You can even take a version of it yourself here and submit your results to researchers. But when you actually look at the official survey itself, you start to see what this is also really about, which is tighter government control and propaganda. The GNH survey is taken in person with a government worker who comes to your house. It takes several hours to get through all the questions. It’s not anonymous. The questions are extremely manipulative. What sort of results are they getting?

Robin: “The government reaches out to people and asks them to take a survey — are you happy? It’s the government, and they know they are very strict, and people are scared of government and them asking, are you happy? Do you say, ‘I’m unhappy’?”

The Gross National Happiness idea is perhaps Bhutan’s most important and powerful export. But ultimately, it’s more a marketing campaign for tourism and international reputation than an enlightened way of governing the people. Until there’s GNH for everyone in the country and not a select few, Bhutan is just another example on the long list of disabused fairy tales.