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Eight chortens lost in one month

31 August 2009

vandalised on Aug 21 in ShumarEight chortens in three gewogs have been vandalised and desecrated in the month of August alone in Pemagatshel.

The last vandalism of two chortens took place in an isolated village of Mawa under Shumar Gewog on the night of August 24. Since all the chortens are old, the details of their nangten were not known.

The desecration continues despite village volunteers trying desperately to keep vigil around the monuments in their villages. “The dzongkhag administration, police and gewogs have been trying to prevent vandalism through different strategies but we could not prevent it,” said Dzongda Gholing Tshering.

He said the locations of these monuments, which are often away from human settlements, had been the main reason why the vandalism took place unabated. “People are doing what they can by taking turns to guard these chortens in the night.

But the criminals, who are bent on their mission, have their own modus operandi by targeting either chortens in the remote places or waiting for people to drop guards,” the Dzongda said.

The last two chortens vandalised in Mawa were located in a forested place away from human settlements. A dzee and some objects were found by the investigating officials the next day.

“This vandalism took place at a time when the village volunteers beefed up their vigilance in other villages. There is a possibility of the involvement of local hand given the fact that these two chortens were in an isolated place,” said Shumar Gup Lepo.

Gup Lepo often makes rounds in the night by himself to ensure that the farmers are guarding the chortens in their locality. He reaches his home in the early morning hours during those rounds. “These criminals deserve capital punishment,” said the gup, angry and frustrated.

He sees this as the only effective deterrent to curb vandalism of ku sung thuk ten. The penal code of Bhutan grades the vandalism of chorten as a felony of first degree with a maximum punishment of life imprisonment.

But it had failed to deter criminals. And in most cases, criminals could never be apprehended. Dzongda Gholing Tshering feels that, keeping vigil is not the ultimate solution.

He says that, after day’s back-breaking works, if the farmers were required to keep night vigils, it is overburden.

“The only way to check further vandalism will be to build new burglary proof chortens near community centres with consolidation of nangtens from intact chortens.

Otherwise, it will only be a matter of time before we lose all of it to vandalism.” Others feel that such a step could save whatever is left.

But, it could also amount to desecration and will dilute the very purpose of building different chortens in different locations and for different purposes in the first place. Dzongda said that he would be tabling this proposal to the government.

There are reported to be over 10,000 chortens in the country, out of which about half the number have already been desecrated so far.

While the exact figures were not available, more than a hundred chortens had so far been vandalised in the dzongkhag and the figure keeps increasing by the month.

While the criminals have become more elusive and clever, officials, law enforcers and the people have no clue as to how they can save sacred chortens that dot the Bhutanese landscape.

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Posted by Bhutan Observer · Filed Under Community, News 

Comments

3 Responses to “Eight chortens lost in one month”

  1. Dre Nagchung on August 31st, 2009 9:08 pm

    C’mon! when we gonna use all them new technologies, m sure we can afford to put up some infrared security cameras or some booby traps(yup u heard me, these men don’t deserve any mercy, they will play around mantraps like they playin with the guards and the law rie now). The only way to catch ‘em traitors is to take measures unknown to ‘em. Please stop with these night guard thingy’s, u r embarrassing us; its old fashion, its too hard on the local ppl and it doesn’t promise any sort of apprehension, only protection ahem! ..which is also not happening in our case. An alarming system ain’t so bad a choice either. When our foreign counterparts have alarms which sets off these annoying high frequencies when we leave the tap open for too long, n m juss talkin about a toilet here…c’mon fellaz its chortens we talkin abt here, yall mite jus go to hell for failin to stop dis..hah!

  2. Charlie Meyrick on September 8th, 2009 2:06 am

    I find this news about the vandalisation of chortens very distrurbing but, as a foreigner, I can’t understand why anyone would want to do such a thing and this article fails to inform me of the possible motives for such behaviour. I thought the Bhutanese treasured their heritage. Who is doing this and why? Is there some dysfunctional tendency happening in Bhutanese society that I don’t know about?

  3. Gyembo Namgyal on September 9th, 2009 2:10 pm

    Although, the article do not mention the motive, it was assumed to have understood the motive. Vandalism apparently takes place for robbing these monuments of their inner relics which are normally antique statues, precious stones and other valuable relics. The vandals rob these treasures and sell them off to buyers outside the country.
    While majority of Bhutanese are law abiding and god fearing people, section of people as in any other society are bent on making fast and easy money by robbing our heritage rampantly. For the common people taking care of these monuments always prove difficult given that these monuments dot almost all the Bhutanese landscape.
    I hope Charlie now knows the motive of chorten vandalism.

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