‘Secularities’ in a Maṇḍala: Boundaries between Religion and Politics in Bhutan

This paper examines boundaries between the societal spheres of religion and politics in Bhutan within the conception and institutionalization of the Joint Twofold System of Governance (Tib. chos srid gnyis ldan). In the first half of the 17^th century, three major Buddhist governments that combined a twofold religious and political structure under a Buddhist ruler were established in the Tibetan cultural area. The Bhutanese government as a constitutional monarchy with a Buddhist king is the only one among the three still in existence today. Bhutan’s transformation into a modern society along the lines of this Joint Twofold System of Governance under the conditions of non-colonialization but with crucial and intense encounters of its societal elites with Western and Asian forms of modernity and secularity represents, therefore, a unique case in point for alternative social orders. 

To determine how classical Tibetan, emic terms have served as functional equivalents for the ‘religious’ and ‘political’ sphere in Bhutan and thereby denote conceptualized or institutionalized boundaries between the ‘religious’ and ‘political’, this paper analyzes the Standardized Legal Code from 1729 written by the tenth Chief Abbot Tendzin Chögyel (1701–66/67) and partially correlates these findings with the Constitution of the Kingdom of Bhutan from 2008 and the Buddhism-induced ideas and policies of ‘Gross National Happiness’ (GNH). This sheds light on ‘secularities’―understood as distinction and differentiation processes in the spirit of the ‘multiple secularities’ approach in a non-evaluating sense.

Thereby, this paper elicits interdisciplinary discourses about (1) secularity, religion, and modernity in contemporary Bhutan; and (2) responses to the pandemic and possible alternative post-COVID-19 social orders.