𝘽.𝙀𝙙-𝘽𝘾𝙎𝙀 - 𝙂𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙡 𝘼𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙨

They say that teaching is a noble profession. That those who choose to dedicate their lives to educating the next generation are true Heroes. “Thank You, Sir!” streaming only on Shangreela starting May 2nd in honor of all our Heroes – past, present and future.

𝐁𝐇𝐔𝐓𝐀𝐍 𝐂𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐋 𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐂𝐄 𝐄𝐗𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟐 𝐒𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐃𝐔𝐋𝐄

1) e-registration deadline: June 17 - July 16, 2022 (link for registration https://bcse.rcsc.gov.bt/Login)
2) Conduct PE: Aug 7, 2022
3) Declaration of PE result: 24th August 2022
4) Conduct of ME: Oct 7 - 9, 2022
5) Declaration of ME result: 7th Dec 2022

Link to know more about BCSE examinationhttps://www.rcsc.gov.bt/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/BCSE-2022-Announcement-web.pdf
Link to know about RCSC 2022 vacancy https://www.rcsc.gov.bt/en/bcse-2022-vacancy-announcement/ -27458

BREAKING NEWS
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2021 to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace. Ms Ressa and Mr Muratov are receiving the peace prize for their courageous fight for freedom of expression in the Philippines and Russia. At the same time, they are representatives of all journalists who stand up for this ideal in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions.

Maria Ressa uses freedom of expression to expose abuse of power, use of violence and growing authoritarianism in her native country, the Philippines. In 2012, she co-founded Rappler, a digital media company for investigative journalism, which she still heads. As a journalist and the Rappler’s CEO, Ressa has shown herself to be a fearless defender of freedom of expression. Rappler has focused critical attention on the Duterte regime’s controversial, murderous anti-drug campaign. The number of deaths is so high that the campaign resembles a war waged against the country’s own population. Ms Ressa and Rappler have also documented how social media is being used to spread fake news, harass opponents and manipulate public discourse.

Dmitry Andreyevich Muratov has for decades defended freedom of speech in Russia under increasingly challenging conditions. In 1993, he was one of the founders of the independent newspaper Novaja Gazeta. Since 1995 he has been the newspaper’s editor-in-chief for a total of 24 years. Novaja Gazeta is the most independent newspaper in Russia today, with a fundamentally critical attitude towards power. The newspaper’s fact-based journalism and professional integrity have made it an important source of information on censurable aspects of Russian society rarely mentioned by other media. Since its start-up in 1993, Novaja Gazeta has published critical articles on subjects ranging from corruption, police violence, unlawful arrests, electoral fraud and ”troll factories” to the use of Russian military forces both within and outside Russia.

Novaja Gazeta’s opponents have responded with harassment, threats, violence and murder. Since the newspaper’s start, six of its journalists have been killed, including Anna Politkovskaja who wrote revealing articles on the war in Chechnya. Despite the killings and threats, editor-in-chief Muratov has refused to abandon the newspaper’s independent policy. He has consistently defended the right of journalists to write anything they want about whatever they want, as long as they comply with the professional and ethical standards of journalism.

Free, independent and fact-based journalism serves to protect against abuse of power, lies and war propaganda. The Norwegian Nobel Committee is convinced that freedom of expression and freedom of information help to ensure an informed public. These rights are crucial prerequisites for democracy and protect against war and conflict. The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov is intended to underscore the importance of protecting and defending these fundamental rights.

Without freedom of expression and freedom of the press, it will be difficult to successfully promote fraternity between nations, disarmament and a better world order to succeed in our time. This year’s award of the Nobel Peace Prize is therefore firmly anchored in the provisions of Alfred Nobel’s will.

Press release: https://bit.ly/3lpYirs

BREAKING NEWS
The 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to the novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, born in Zanzibar and active in England, “for his uncompromising and compassionate pe*******on of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.”

Abdulrazak Gurnah was born in 1948 and grew up on the island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean but arrived in England as a refugee in the end of the 1960’s. After the peaceful liberation from British colonial rule in December 1963 Zanzibar went through a revolution which, under President Abeid Karume’s regime, led to oppression and persecution of citizens of Arab origin; massacres occurred. Gurnah belonged to the victimised ethnic group and after finishing school was forced to leave his family and flee the country, by then the newly formed Republic of Tanzania. He was eighteen years old. Not until 1984 was it possible for him to return to Zanzibar, allowing him to see his father shortly before the father’s death. Gurnah has until his recent retirement been Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent in Canterbury, focusing principally on writers such as Wole Soyinka, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Salman Rushdie.

Gurnah has published ten novels and a number of short stories. The theme of the refugee’s disruption runs throughout his work. He began writing as a 21-year-old in English exile, and even though Swahili was his first language, English became his literary tool. He has said that in Zanzibar, his access to literature in Swahili was virtually nil and his earliest writing could not strictly be counted as literature. Arabic and Persian poetry, especially ‘The Arabian Nights’, were an early and significant wellspring for him, as were the Quran’s surahs. But the English-language tradition, from Shakespeare to V. S. Naipaul, would especially mark his work. That said, it must be stressed that he consciously breaks with convention, upending the colonial perspective to highlight that of the indigenous populations. Thus, his novel ‘Desertion’ (2005) about a love affair becomes a blunt contradiction to what he has called “the imperial romance”, where a conventionally European hero returns home from romantic escapades abroad, upon which the story reaches its inevitable, tragic resolution. In Gurnah, the tale continues on African soil and never actually ends.

Gurnah’s writing is from his time in exile but pertains to his relationship with the place he had left, which means that memory is of vital importance for the genesis of his work. His debut novel, ‘Memory of Departure’, from 1987, is about a failed uprising and keeps us on the African continent. The gifted young protagonist attempts to disengage from the social blight of the coast, hoping to be taken under the wing of a prosperous uncle in Nairobi. Instead he is humiliated and returned to his broken family, the alcoholic and violent father and a sister forced into prostitution.

Gurnah often allows his carefully constructed narratives to lead up to a hard-won insight. A good example is the third novel, ‘Dottie’ (1990), a portrait of a Black woman of immigrant background growing up in harsh conditions in racially charged 1950’s England, and because of her mother’s silence lacking connection with her own family history. At the same time, she feels rootless in England, the country she was born and grew up in. The novel’s protagonist attempts to create her own space and identity through books and stories; reading gives her a chance to reconstruct herself. Not least names and name changes play a central role in a novel that shows Gurnah’s deep compassion and psychological adroitness, completely without sentimentality.

In Gurnah’s treatment of the refugee experience, focus is on identity and self-image, apparent not least in ‘Admiring Silence’ (1996) and ‘By the Sea’ (2001). In both these first-person novels silence is presented as the refugee’s strategy to shield his identity from racism and prejudice, but also as a means of avoiding a collision between past and present, producing disappointment and disastrous self-deception.

Gurnah’s dedication to truth and his aversion to simplification are striking. This can make him bleak and uncompromising, at the same time as he follows the fates of individuals with great compassion and unbending commitment. His novels recoil from stereotypical descriptions and open our gaze to a culturally diversified East Africa unfamiliar to many in other parts of the world. In Gurnah’s literary universe, everything is shifting – memories, names, identities. This is probably because his project cannot reach completion in any definitive sense. An unending exploration driven by intellectual passion is present in all his books, and equally prominent now, in ‘Afterlives’ (2020), as when he began writing as a 21-year-old refugee.

Anders Olsson
Chairman of the Nobel Committee
The Swedish Academy

Learn more: https://bit.ly/3nAYozj

𝕷𝖎𝖐𝖊 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝕾𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖊!
𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐋𝐨𝐬𝐚𝐫

Many people in Bhutan will be observing losar (ལོ་གསར་) or New Year’s Day today, 14 January 2021, and it is appropriate that we celebrate this day as a traditional New Year’s Day in the Bhutanese calendar. Like Lomba, Karm Nyaru and Nyilo, this is an ancient calendar event observed in many parts of Bhutan, although today it has got the misnomer Sharchokpi Losar as it is currently popular in eastern Bhutan, and Chunyipi Losar for falling on the first day of the twelfth Mongolian and Tibetan month. It is an old tradition of New Year’s Day based on both the movement of heavenly bodies in the sky and agricultural cycle on the ground.

This ancient tradition of New Year’s Day, falling on the first new moon day after nyilo or winter solstice and in the month when the full moon meets with the constellation Gyal (རྒྱལ་), Pushya Nakshatra or Cancri, was widely celebrated in Bhutan and other parts of the Himalayas, and was also recorded in texts such as the Gongdue (དགོངས་འདུས་) teachings of Sangay Lingpa (1340-96). Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal, the founder of Bhutan, was a staunch follower of Sangay Lingpa’s teachings. He invited Sangay Lingpa’s descendant Rigzin Nyingpo to bestow him the entire teachings of Sangay Lingpa and incorporated rituals such as the Lama Gongdue into the ritual curriculum of the State Monk Body. In this way, the Gongdue calendar is also significant in Bhutan’s religious institutions.

However, it was perhaps not only due to Sangay Lingpa that Zhabdrung followed this New Year’s Day. When he came to Bhutan, this losar was probably the most popular New Year’s Day among his new subjects and they most likely considered this as the beginning of a year. Probably for these reasons, Zhabdrung chose this losar as the time to change the officials of his new government and monastic body in Punakha, and perhaps, it was also on this New Year’s Day that his subjects paid tributes and felicitations to him, which may have led to the traditional day of offering. Thus, the tradition of observing this losar or New Year’s Day and this lunar month of Gyal or Tiger month (སྟག་ཟླ་) as the first month of the year was probably important to Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal for both religious and worldly reasons.

Given this, it is odd that Bhutan did not adopt this losar as the main losar or New Year’s Day but followed the Tibetan New Year which was a legacy of Mongol rule over Tibet. The losar, which we now call Dangpi Losar and have two days of public holiday, is based on a calendrical system started by the Mongolians. When Ghengis Khan invaded the ancient Tangut kingdom and successfully took control over it in 1227, he held celebrations of victory. The month of victory celebrations was marked as the first month of the year, and the day came to be annually observed as New Year’s Day. This tradition later reached Tibet through the descendants of Genghis Khan as they took control of the Tibetan plateau. The months came to be known as Horda (ཧོར་ཟླ་) or Mongolian months and the New Year was observed as Royal or King’s New Year (རྒྱལ་པོའི་ལོ་གསར་) perhaps referring to the Mongolian Rulers. In subsequent centuries, the practice reached Bhutan and the term Horda was used in Bhutan as late as 1980s when it was changed to Drukda (འབྲུག་ཟླ་) or Bhutanese month by our astrologers. Thus, the day we call Dangpi Losar has no auspicious reason or significance for the Bhutanese and Himalayan communities as a part of seasonal cycle although it is considered the beginning of a holy Chotrul month.

The origin story of Dangpi Losar shows how calendar systems can change with political and religious changes. So, it is about time we also stop celebrating a losar which commemorates somebody else’s victory in a land most Bhutanese have not even heard of. In contrast, this losar has much antiquity and significance for its astral, agricultural and political significance. This ancient losar truly marks a new season as it falls around winter solstice and the midpoint between old and new agricultural seasons.

This losar is an old Bhutanese New Year’s Day and a real beginning, when one can wish everyone a happy, joyous and successful New Year.

Contributed by:
Lopen Karma Phuntsho (PhD)
President of the Loden Foundation and the author of many books and articles including The History of Bhutan.

P.S. This article was contributed to Kuensel on January 25, 2020. The coincidence of the Losar date has been changed here to contextualize this year's losar which falls on 14th January, 2021.

Picture Courtesy: iBEST INSTITUTE

𝙍𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙣𝙜𝙚 𝙤𝙣 𝙖𝙣 𝘼𝙣𝙤𝙣𝙮𝙢𝙤𝙪𝙨 𝘼𝙩𝙩𝙖𝙘𝙠𝙚𝙧 𝙤𝙣 𝙁𝙖𝙘𝙚𝙗𝙤𝙤𝙠
02 January 2021

Written by: Chablop Passang Tshering

“Tobgay, did you see what’s written about you on Bhutanese Forum?” Tobgay's phone kept ringing every now and then. He put it off.
Khandruma, an anonymous Facebook account has posted seven paragraphs long fictitious story about Tobgay out of nowhere. He would have just laughed about it if it hadn't involved his wife and daughter.

His sister had driven from Phuntsholing and brother from Paro. His mother-in-law had arrived quickly to check on her daughter who had been shattered. Close relatives were walking in one after another as if someone had died in the house. The energy in the room was intense, heavily loaded with rage. Everyone seemed to want to find out who Khandruma was. They were ready for blood.

The vicious post that was shared in a group called Bhutanese Forum was being read by thousands and shared by a few hundreds of jobless people who had nothing to do with it. If it was an important message that required to be shared, people won’t be so keen. Did they know they were helping the attacker destroy the family?

Of course, in their minds, Tobgay deserved to be punished and by sharing the post and putting up nasty comments, they were only doing their moral duty of punishing the wrong. One article, not even written well, was enough to let people think ill of him and write awful comments against him and his family. Only a few people have expressed sympathy for him. There was hardly any friend who defended him.

In the post, Tobgay was accused of misusing his duty car for his family. He was alleged of being promoted unfairly because he was related to the secretary. He was accused of sexually harassing three female colleagues. So far he took it with a smile, but what caused him to lose it all was the attack on his wife and daughter that followed. His wife was accused of sleeping around with her colleagues and ex-boyfriends. "May the little one not turn out to be like her mother."

He wanted revenge. But whom to take the revenge on? The enemy had no identity, there was no way he could find who wrote it. He could not think of anyone who would do that to him. In fact, at the moment he was angry with everyone; his colleagues, his friends, and even the random people who liked the post or people who have shared it. Everyone seemed guilty in his eyes. His wife made a long list of people who had liked, commented or shared the post. She had made up her mind that should she ever meet them in person she was going to spite on their faces.

For someone to call her a hoe and accused her of bearing a child from another man, she thought that someone must be the worst enemy anyone could have. She could hardly think of anyone, living or dead, who could hate her so much. With nowhere to outpour her rage, she locked herself in her bathroom and looked for any medication that could put her to sleep and help her forget everything.

The Police registered the case but there was nothing much they could do. All they could legally do was to create a list of suspects and question them, but Tobgay didn't want to do that. He didn't want innocent people to be questioned by the police. It was frustrating that the police of a country did not have the power to ask Facebook to reveal an anonymous user or remove a post. The group admins were all anonymous people and police have no grip on them as well. Any hope of legal action, justice or revenge was dead when Tobgay realized that Police could only do so much unless he could name the suspect with substantive evidence.

The officer in charge of the police said in confidence, "Tobgay, we don't have the technical knowhow to find out the suspect but there are companies overseas specialized in this field. I can share one address to help you. They are expensive but they deliver."

"I just want to find the damn person, for that, I will take a loan or leave my job and use up the provident fund and gratuity. I can only sleep peacefully after I hear that person justify his action."

"When you get the name, just call me. So sorry for now." Said the officer, handing him an email address.

In a few days, the company wrote back. They were definite about their ability to trace the person. They have asked for the profile link of the anonymous user and the hate post along with an advance payment to enable them to initiate the process. The agreement had to be signed wherein the client agree to non-disclosure of the company should the matter go to the court. The client had to make the full payment to receive the report within a week with significant evidence of who wrote the post.

Tobgay didn't think twice before wiring $ 5000 advance payment and anxiously waited for the report. No one in the family objected to his decision. They agreed to chip in to help him pay the company. They wanted revenge as much. They wanted the person to pay for every ounce of pain the family suffered. They wanted the person to swallow every word. They wanted the person to be tied to a pole in public and confess. But why did the person want to harm Tobgay so much? Tobgay couldn't wait to discover the person.

The couple hadn't gone to office since the day the post surfaced. They didn't want to face people. They could not trust anyone now. They have seen how people they knew were engaging with the post, sharing it as if to rub salt on their injuries. They somehow felt like everyone was gossiping about them. They logged out of their Facebook accounts to find a moment of peace.

By the third day, the newer controversies had taken over Bhutanese social media scene, and the hate post against Tobgay and family has faded in the background. It was just within two days that the post accumulated over 2200 likes, 340 comments and 210 shares. His wife recorded every bit of these data manually into a notebook. Some of these people who had liked the post and wrote the comments might not have meant it seriously but on this side, the family had taken it badly. Every single thumbs up on the post felt like a jab.

Tobgay received the much-awaited mail from the overseas company on the sixth day. He was shivering as he opened the mail, unable to control his excitement and rage. He had been waiting to outpour his anger on someone and the name of that someone was about to be revealed. As the mailed opened he saw a 20 MB PDF attachment file. The email read, “Thank you for entrusting us to help you. We are pleased to submit the full report containing 243 pages. Please download the file and keep it safe. This email will be self-destructed within 24 hours from the time you open it. All the best.”

Tobgay had only asked for the name of a person whose face he wanted to smash but he was presented with 243 pages. What could all these pages contain? He opened the attachment and saw that he was given the entire digital biography of the attacker. He sat on the dining table alone and started reading the thrilling report.

The table of contents was enough to tell him how savage the report was in capturing the entire digital footprint of the attacker. Before he could establish the identity of the attacker who had been hiding behind a pseudonym, Khandruma, he was presented with all the other four fake accounts the attacker has created from his laptop. The dates, times, locations and names, everything was recorded precisely.

It was a shock for him to discover that the sworn hater was the chief finance officer, Jamtsho, in his own office, with whom Tobgay has no problems at all, not even a little disliking. Could it be a mistake? It seemed unlikely until he saw the few deleted messages he had sent to his friends that established the intention. He had applied for the post of a director, where even Tobgay had applied. In those messages, he has bitterly expressed how Tobgay could easily land the job unless something unfortunate happened to him.

Tobgay had no idea that his colleague who hardly spoke anything was a candidate for the same job he applied to, and he could hardly establish any reasonable connection between the job and the attack. It took him a while to understand that the intent was to reduce his chances in the interview by establishing him as a dishonest person. Tobgay could hardly imagine how a desperate person could plot to destroy a person's reputation and his family for the sake of a job interview.

He picked his phone and dialled Jamtsho's number. But he stopped right away. He was on the third page and there was so much to read before he could call. He checked on his wife, who went to bed after taking a highly sedative medication the doctor prescribed for her after she reported to have been sleepless for three-night straight. Now she was sleeping like a baby. Their daughter was fast asleep by her mother.

He spent the next three hours reading the report and making notes from it. By the end of his reading, Tobgay found the amount of stalking Jamtsho has done on him and his family creepy; the search history on Jamtsho's laptop and in his phone revealed a scary state of his mind. He was obsessed with the job.

Flipping through his notes several times, Tobgay gave up on his idea to confront Jamtsho and do all those things that he and his family had wanted to do if they found the person. Tobgay carefully made a list of people and made a folder each in their names. In each folder, he put the screenshots of the messages and posts he took from the report. There was a total of 8 folders.

The first one was named as Pelmo, Jamtsho's wife. The folder contains all the messages he had exchanged with at least five women. These private and intimate messages of his affairs were cleverly deleted on Facebook messenger but the report has captured it under the chapter "Important messages Recovered". Tobgay looked at the dozens of pages of really personal and secret stuff in surprise, knowing how they were once deleted. All these messages would be sent to his wife, Pelmo.

The next folder was named 'Secretary' in which screenshots of emails and messages he had exchanged with suppliers are put. The mails and messages gave chilling details of how he was indulged in favouring certain business and what he took from them. He didn't even spare the fuel pump managers with whom he made deals to steal from the fuel books. The folder explained how he had built a three-star hotel in his wife's name in Paro.

The rest of the folders were named after individual persons against whom he had written defaming posts on Facebook from several different accounts. There are many posts that were nasty but these six persons were respected people in the society and he had tried to defame them in the worst possible language using all sort of fake and vulgar details like he did with his wife and daughter. Some of the posts were made several years ago and perhaps the victims may have forgotten the pain, but some are as recent as few months old and Tobgay could imagine the pain inside of those persons and their family members. He was going to write to them anonymously and handover the folders to help them to have their revenge. After reading these posts, Tobgay was convinced that there was something wrong with Jamtsho to have done the same with so many people.

Tobgay is no more interested in confronting Jamtsho. He was going to watch the 8 folders do their job. And if at the end of it, if he still can't forgive enough then he will make the entire 243 pages of Jamtsho's digital biography public on the Bhutanese Forum, the same platform where he has caused pain to so many people.

The report also contains details on the identity of the forum's admins and the nasty posts they have written. In fact, Tobgay knew that the day he made the report public, so many anonymous heroes on the Bhutanese forum, including some of the admins, would go into hiding.

-This short story is inspired by true events from different times and places.

P.S. This article first appeared on PaSsu Diary and it is shared here because its importance is felt deep. Share.

P.C: theconversation.com

A brief history of Yongla Goenpa and its successive lams

Yongla Goenpa or Yongla Riwo Pelbar Dargeychholing Goenpa in Pemagatshel was reconstructed under the Command of His Majesty The King after the 2009 earthquake caused major damage to the goenpa.

A brief history of Yongla Goenpa and its successive lams – Kuensel Online Kuensel A brief history of Yongla Goenpa and its successive lams January 11, 2020/0 Comments/in Opinions /by kuensel1 Post Views: 903 Yongla Goenpa or Yongla Riwo Pelbar Dargeychholing Goenpa in Pemagatshel was reconstructed under the Command of His Majesty The King after the 2009 earthquake caused....

Did you know?
Gongsa Ugyen Wangchuck was the reincarnation of Lama Drupchen Rinpoche from Kham Amdo. When Rinpoche was about to enter nirvana, his disciples requested for the prophecy of his reincarnation. Then, the Lama said,
སྐྱེ་བ་ཕྱི་མ་མོན་ཡུལ་བུམ་ཐང་ཕྱོགས། །
མིང་གི་ཐོག་མར་ཨུ་ཞེས་སྐྱེ་བར་འགྱུར། །

Source: Druk Juedzin Gi Gyalchog Dangpa Miwang Ugyen Wangchuck Chog Gi Tog Joed Zhukso (CBS)