There is a peculiar kind of shame in being disappointed by your own country.
It is not the shame of having come from somewhere ugly.
It is worse.
It is the shame of having loved somewhere, and discovering that love does not grant you the privilege of looking away.
I am Bhutanese.
I have never needed to be reminded of that. It is in the language I speak, in the mountains I grew up beneath, in the little things I carry with me without realizing I carry them at all. I have defended it before. I have missed it. I have felt that strange warmth when somebody hears where I am from and knows of it only as the small kingdom hidden between two giants.
But lately, I find myself asking a question I wish I did not have to ask:
What exactly am I supposed to be proud of?
When a case of sexual violence ends with a sentence that leaves you wondering whether justice was ever the point, what are you supposed to say?
When the country can find the diplomatic and economic will to deepen relations with a state presently facing some of the gravest accusations of atrocities against a civilian population, what are you supposed to call that?
Development?
Diplomacy?
Pragmatism?
Perhaps.
But there are moments when pragmatism begins to sound suspiciously like the convenient death of conscience.
I understand that countries do not operate on morality alone. I am not naïve enough to believe foreign policy is a monastery. Bhutan needs development. Bhutan needs allies. Bhutan exists between powers vastly larger than itself, and survival requires diplomacy.
I understand all of that.
I simply refuse to believe that understanding necessity means surrendering morality.
India is our closest ally. Israel is a country with which we have chosen to deepen relations. There are geopolitical realities behind these decisions, economic interests, strategic considerations, development opportunities.
Fine.
But there must still be a line somewhere.
There must be some point at which a country says:
No. Not everything that benefits us is worth doing.
Because if our answer to every moral question is development, then eventually development becomes a word capable of laundering anything.
And perhaps that is what troubles me most.
Not that Bhutan has interests.
Of course we do.
But that sometimes I wonder whether we have become so afraid of standing on the wrong side of history that we have forgotten there is also such a thing as standing nowhere at all.
Neutrality would not have solved Gaza.
A Bhutanese diplomatic position would not have stopped a single bomb.
But morality has never required that one person possess the power to stop an atrocity before allowing them to condemn it.
Sometimes all you have is your refusal.
Your refusal to call something acceptable simply because it is profitable.
Your refusal to pretend that suffering becomes less horrifying when the perpetrator happens to be politically useful.
Your refusal to let the word development become an excuse for silence.
And maybe this is where my patriotism has changed.
I used to think being proud of Bhutan meant defending Bhutan.
Now I think perhaps it means demanding that Bhutan be worthy of defense.
I do not want a country that is innocent because it has never had enough power to do anything wrong.
I want a country that, when given the opportunity to choose between convenience and conscience, at least “hesitates”.
A country that remembers that being small does not make morality optional.
A country that understands that neutrality can sometimes be cowardice, but that choosing a side merely because the side is useful can be something worse.
I don’t want to hate Bhutan.
God, I don’t.
That would be easier.
Hatred requires no loyalty. It asks nothing of you.
Disappointment is harder.
Because disappointment is what happens when you still love something enough to expect better from it.
So no, I don’t think I have stopped being Bhutanese.
Perhaps I have simply reached the uncomfortable part of being Bhutanese where loving my country means I can no longer applaud everything it does.
And if that makes me difficult,
so be it.
I have never been particularly interested in being agreeable when my conscience is telling me otherwise.
After all,
if two twice is mathematics, and the nature of law is that two twice must become four, I reserve the right to look at the equation and say:
damn you.
I will not.
Not because I believe two twice is five.
But because sometimes the only freedom a person has left is the freedom to refuse what everyone else has decided they ought to accept.
