Bhutan and India- A Study in Frontier Political Relations (1772-1865) (An Old and Rare Book)

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In 1860s, a few years after the transfer of Power in India from the East India Company to the Crown, the British Government in India made a commercial probe feflowed by a military adventure into Bhutan. The British discovered that a brave people lived inside the closed land; the resistance of Bhutan was as brave and as skilful as that of Nepal five decades earlier and of Afghanistan three decades earlier. The story of the encounter, its beginnings and its results, are described in this slim volume, and much more than the encounter can be found in these pages. From published sources like Surgeon Rennie's Bhotan and the Story of the Doar War (London 1866) and the unpublished records in Calcutta, Cooch Behar and New Delhi, the author portrays the events as if with the pen of a contemporary wit- ness. He succeeds in this difficult assignment most creditably. I would attribute this to the author's on-the-spot knowledge of Bhutan, the land and its people and, what is relevant to the principal story here, the author's knowledge of muskets and rifles as a teacher-officer in the National Cadet Corps. A good deal of researches, based on purely bookish knowledge and without any acquaintance with the subject matter, come out in cold print under the patronage of University Grants Commission, Indian Council of Historical Research etc., but a fraction of it should have been ever published. I am happy to find that this publication will uphold the good old tradition of Calcutta University. I would not stand between the book and the reader any longer but for reasons I state at the end of this Foreword. I must highlight three very important points that I have found in this slim volume, for I have read the book not only with great pleasure but with much profit. The author calls the Anglo-Bhutan or Doar War as Un- equal War. "Unequal War" like "Unequal Treaty" is a popular expression with scholars and statesmen of countries which had good beatings from mercenary and mercantile bandits from the West throughout the nineteenth century and beyond.

In 1966 it was the sight of the remains of a stockade in the Duar War on the left bank of the river Torsa in the Duars that first aroused my interest in Bhutan and the people of Bhutan. This silent witness of a forgotten chapter in our Frontier History inspired me to devote myself to a field of study for which I would not claim to be well equipped. By a curious coincidence it was the centenary year of the British Proclamation annexing the Duars; and 1866 was the year of publication of Dr. David Field Rennie's book: Bhotan and the Story of the Doar War. To what extent I have succeeded in adding to this pioneering study it is for the readers to say. I have also ventured into reconstructing the political milieu of the Northern Buddhist state in the Himalayas if only to delineate how bravely Bhutan reacted to foreign aggression. Man can do no more than sacrifice his life for what he values and it is on record that the Bhutanese literally faced death, before the Enfield Rifle.

This book will bear out that the mountain land of Bhutan was not a closed country. It was only anxiety about their own independence and the fate of the neighbouring states of Cooch Behar, Nepal, Sikkim and Assam that made the Bhutanese apprehensive of British intentions. Nor was Bhutan a mere hermit- land. The Drukpa hierarchy had built up a tradition of secular achievements by the nineteenth century though much of the earlier story of this ancient tradition still remains a closed book. The nineteenth century English records regarding Bhutan and her tradition seems to be erratic in view of the tendentious writings of R. B. Pemberton (1838) and Ashley Eden (1864). But their labours have not been in vain, for without them, and with- out Krishnakanta Bose's account of Bhutan (1815), no specialist today can venture into attempting a secular history of Bhutan.

In the period covered by this book the secular chiefs of eastern and western Bhutan including the Depa or the Deb Raja were the de facto authority. The Drukpa hierarch, the Shabdung or the Dharma Raja looks like a distant observer on the periphery of political power.

In 1865 Dr. Rennie wrote, "hidden as Bhutan has been from public notice, a great deal of official information has been on record about it." More than a century has elapsed and it cannot be claimed that these informations have been systematised, let alone subjected to a searching interpretative study. Indeed, the extant papers in Government archives and the well-known re- ports on Bhutan in the 19th century furnish a corpus of facts which, justify a study of the traditional structure and functioning of the Bhutanese state. The first Chapter of the present work ventures into this limited field and does not pretend to be a study of the "peculiar evolution of a primitive people". Drukpa Lamaism, the predominant Buddhist sect of Bhutan which determined the character of the early Bhutanese state as it became known only slowly in the 19th century, awaits its historian. The Bhutanese state was a species of theocracy where the Lamaist hierarchy played an important role in the running of the state. Tibetan ideas of government persisted naturally since the Bhutanese state originated in a colony of Tibetans, Perhaps the most significant example is the doctrine of reincarnation adopted by the Drukpa order in determining the line of succession to the first Shabdung (i.e. the first Dharma Raja). It is interesting that our first available report on Bhutan, namely, George Bogle's ac- count, recorded the conflict between the Lamaist and lay hierarchy where the former under Lama Rinpochay dethroned the ruling Deb Raja, known as Desi Shidariva, whose adventures in Cooch Behar led to the defeat of the Bhutanese forces in the hands of the British. George Bogle also reported that in the internal affairs of the country the Deb Raja enjoyed complete authority. Later records testify that the lay hierarchy and the Deb Raja were really the de facto authority in Bhutan. Since none of the secular posts, including that of the Deb Raja, were hereditary there were ceaseless struggles for power and privilege. The ambition of provincial governors, particularly the Penlops of Tongsa and Paro, plunged the country in recurring civil strifes which have been mentioned everywhere in the records relating to Bhutan.