Identity Jealousy against Lhotshampas-The Evolution of Ngolop: A Sociological Perspective

The crisis of Bhutanese refugees has been neglected in recent scholarly debates, yet it remains an acute case of systematic oppression and ethnic violence in the South Asian context, particularly towards the Lhotshampa community of Southern Bhutan. This research analyses both the political and social dynamics of how the ruling elites of Bhutan, in an act of identity jealousy, portrayed Lhotshampas as Ngolop’, or anti-national terrorists, rationalizing their exile in the latter half of the twentieth century. This paper challenges state-sponsored actions like the1985 Citizenship Act and the 1988 census classifying only Nepali speaking citizens of the south as F1 to F7, as well as ‘DriglamNamza’ (forced cultural assimilation) which curtailed the Lhotshampas’ citizenship, culture, and civil rights.Interviews with refugees living in exile in Nepal, along with archival materials, demonstrate how the Bhutanese state systematically employed legal and administrative means to contrive an absence of Lhotshampa identity, resulting in their mass dispossession. This research re-contextualizes the ‘Ngolop’ narrative, contending that the abusive methods adopted by the ruling clans, composed of arbitrary arrests, enforced population control, and cultural annihilation which represented authentic anti-national actions. This study exposes the Bhutanese government contradiction in claiming to exercise “Gross National Happiness†while practicing violent exclusionism, illustrating the ongoing impacts of identity-based violence and demanding an unrepresented perspective on the Lhotshampadilemma.The research fundamentally disputes the prevailing historiography, placing the refugee crisis as the outcome of a sustained campaign of systematic state displacement motivated by elite insecurity and ethnonationalist dominance, rather than an unnurtured ethnic conflict.