Word: bhutan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Along the Indian-Chinese frontier, the longest frontier in the world between oppression and a democracy, Communist infiltrators are burrowing into the border states of Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim-which lie upon India's side of the great Himalayan battlement (see below). From this frontier, where ice-winds howl and lichen creeps around the tall mountains, an Indian Army Mission reported: "Long considered impregnable ... the frontier . . . [is] now looked upon as a possible route of infiltration, if not of invasion...
Stretching for some 190 miles along the southern slopes of the Himalayas, north of India and south of Tibet, lies the most remote kingdom in the world. The upland valleys of tiny (18,000 sq. mi.) Bhutan are as green and inviting as those of Shangri-La, and the passes that lead into them just as forbidding. Icy winds howl along the snowswept plains behind the mountain passes to discourage the traveler. Rugged barriers of snow and ice rise as high as 24,000 ft. Dense semitropical growth clogs the lower valleys. Fever haunts the forests, making them uninhabitable...
Time & again attempts by neighboring India to build roads into Bhutan have been halted by the ravages of wild elephants which rip up the road beds and tear down the bridges, but the Bhutanese don't mind at all. In fact they like it that way, and if by chance a foreigner wishes to brave the nine-day journey by mule-back over the mountains into Bhutan, he must first get a special invitation from the King himself. The King is very careful about choosing the people he invites to Bhutan...
...Bhutan, like Tibet, was ruled jointly by a high lama, the Dharma Raja, who was believed to be the reincarnation of Buddha himself, and a temporal leader, the Deb Raja. Finding a new reincarnation of Buddha when the old one died was always a trouble. It involved waiting several years and then finding a baby who would proclaim his identity by recognizing certain suitable symbols. By 1907 Bhutan's lamas, grown fat and indolent with centuries of rule, got too lazy to hunt for a new Raja. The government was taken over by a local governor, the Tongsa Penlop...
...anything for the world's refugees except read about them. If the U. S. did want to do something, obvious step would be for Congress to amend the quota law. Obvious amendments would temporarily reduce favored Great Britain's unfilled allotment, write off uninterested Yap, Bhutan etc., up the quotas for Germany, Poland, etc., without necessarily increasing the total immigrant quota...