Following on what some have characterised as an increasingly faltering campaign, recent months have seen a renewed push by the Thimphu government to strengthen the usage of Bhutan's national language, Dzongkha. In mid-May, the Bhutan InfoCom and Media Authority released a draft annex stipulating new rules for the country's film industry. Alongside warnings against depictions of drugs, alcohol use and 'disco scenes', prominent among the 11 points was an admonition to avoid intermixing English and Dzongkha – 'Dzonglish' – words 'as far as possible'. In accordance with official practice, the draft guidelines were released in both English and Dzongkha – seemingly an ongoing necessity, despite the fact that the latter is the country's only official language.
Despite widespread grumbling over the new language rules for 'Thollywood', two weeks later a far more significant piece of policy was mooted. Another piece of draft legislation, this was the Dzongkha Development and Promotion Strategy Framework; it included 48 recommendations put forth by the Dzongkha Development Commission, the body in charge of such things. Most notable among these is a plan to significantly strengthen the amount of Dzongkha-medium classes in the country's schools. While until recently the ratio of Dzongkha-to-English instruction has stood at around 6:2, the new guidelines would push for 'parity' between the two. Certain classes (environmental studies, social studies) would now be entirely in Dzongkha for certain grades, while classes on Dzongkha itself would become a required part of the core curriculum for the upper grades (10-12), as they currently are for lower grades.
Already for years, Dzongkha has been the sole subject that Bhutanese students have not been allowed to fail – anyone who does cannot pass to the next grade in school. So what is behind this new anxiety to shore up the national language? Partly, it is the newness of the language itself, or at least the newness of the way in which it is used today. The roots of Dzongkha are easily traceable to certain forms of classical Tibetan, and from then into the unique linguistic strands of theocratic liturgy in the Drukpa dzongs, or monasteries, from which the language takes its name (kha simply means language). Beyond this, however, the language's history is highly contested. But uncontested – at least in the factual sense – are the dates of official application: Dzongkha only became Bhutan's official language in 1969; before that time, Hindi was the medium of instruction in the schools, while since then nearly all instruction has been in English; the Dzongkha Development Commission was set up only in 1986; the first formal Dzongkha grammar book was published in 1992.
Most sacred cow