The Hindu American Foundation submitted the following letter May 8, 2009. The letter was not published.
Dear Editor:
In Seth Mydans' May 7, 2009 article, "Recalculating Happiness in a Himalayan Kingdom", the real question for former king Jigme Singye Wangchuck is whether religious freedom and personal liberty are part of the four pillars, the nine domains or the 72 indicators for calculating gross national happiness. In the early 1990s, the royal regime evicted over 100,000 Hindu minority and Nyingmapa Buddhists from southern and eastern Bhutan only on the basis of their religio-ethnic identity. After having spent nearly two decades in squalid refugee camps and with no resolution for repatriation in sight, the U.S. government has approved the resettlement of 60,000 Bhutanese refugees to the U.S. over the next five years. What would be the measure of happiness of those cleansed from their homeland?