Who would have thought the roof of the world could be such a turbulent place? From the foothills of the Himalaya, to the mountain passes of Bhutan, and up on the high Tibetan plateau, people have recently been voting for change – either with their feet or at the ballot box. This burst of political action has taken the international community by surprise, though it should not have done so. There is indeed a salutary lesson here for anyone paying attention: societies everywhere, no matter how isolated or 'traditional' they might be, will act to assert their rights to security and freedom.
What makes the recent events in Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet so instructive are the varied approaches to change that have been utilised, and the starkly contrasting responses by the respective states and the international community. The fact that these situations can be found simultaneously unfolding in similarly traditional communities should teach us about the dangers of using notions of relativism and context to judge human actions.
In the first place, we should be wary of notions that culture and religion are critical variables in politics. Tibetan Buddhist monks, who roamed angrily through the streets of Lhasa in mid-March, share the same fervently observed religion with the people of Bhutan, who just two weeks later voted in one of the most placid transitions to democracy that the world has seen. The variable here is obviously not conservative Buddhism, but rather the wisdom of those who hold power.
Let recent events in the Himalaya also be a lesson to those who regard religious fervour as an inevitable path to violence. In Buddhist Bhutan and mostly Hindu Nepal, longstanding traditions of monarchy associated with these faiths are being, for the most part, peacefully supplanted by representative models of government. International observers must shed romantic Orientalist notions of 'Shangri-La', and recognise once and for all that democratic change is not constrained so easily by religious tradition and dogma.