Those who missed my talk at the last Bhutan Echoes 2024, I post the link to the full video here.

What does it mean to be Bhutanese? To be Bhutanese means to be compassionate, altruistic and spiritual. It emerges out of the sense of self that we construct for ourselves which I define as the interdependent self consisting of the personal self, social self and the spiritual self.

Not in this video, but there is one confusion that seems to be there (and I will elaborate it in my next article) – especially among our youth.

When we talk about identity in Bhutan it is often equated to cultural identity and overpowered by political identity (e.g. ID card, nationality, etc). Unlike self-identity, cultural identity is a collective sense of identity among a group coming from, or is part of, a same culture. For instance, forget about the nationality, even a region such as the Himalayas will have a common and generalisable cultural identity, but very different self-identity among its inhabitants.

The other confusion is with cultural identifiers as identity, such as wearing a gho, speaking the national language, religious festivals, temples, etc. These are known as identifiers in cultural studies and as symbols in everyday language.

Here by identity I refer to the definition from psychology which is the sense of self – the personhood – the self-identity as in those characteristics and attributes, both inherent and acquired, that make us unique. E.g. The way someone from Merak Sakten makes a sense of self will be very different from someone who is born and brought up in Phuntsholing.

Cultural identity will change with culture but self-identity should not. A compassionate person will be compassionate whether you are in Bhutan or in Manhattan. In Bhutan you wear a gho but in Manhattan you wear a suit.

Identity is personal and it provides the foundation of your being – and something that will give you the principle, integrity, resilience, etc. Isn’t this what we are lacking nowadays?

Enjoy the video and happy to keep this in the national conversation.