Bhutan
| This article is a 'brief overview' of a biographical, historical or geographical subject. See the external links for more information on this subject. |
Bhutan (འབྲུག་ཡུལ་ Druk Yul), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan (འབྲུག་རྒྱལ་ཁབ་ Druk Gyal Khap),[1] is a landlocked country in South Asia. Located in the Eastern Himalayas, it is bordered by Tibet Autonomous Region of China in the north, the Sikkim state of India and the Chumbi Valley of Tibet in the west, the Arunachal Pradesh state of India in the east, and the states of Assam and West Bengal in the south.
Situated on the ancient Silk Road between Tibet, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, the Bhutanese state developed a distinct national identity based on Buddhism. Headed by a spiritual leader known as the Zhabdrung Rinpoche, the territory was composed of many fiefdoms and governed as a Buddhist theocracy. Following a civil war in the 19th century, the House of Wangchuck reunited the country and established relations with the British Empire. Bhutan fostered a strategic partnership with India during the rise of Chinese communism and has a disputed border with the People's Republic of China. In 2008, it transitioned from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy and held the first election to the National Assembly of Bhutan.[2]
Notes
- ↑ Driem, George van (1998). Dzongkha = Rdoṅ-kha. Leiden: Research School, CNWS. p. 478. ISBN 90-5789-002-X.
- ↑ Dalrymple, William (2008-03-23). "What use is democracy to idyllic Bhutan?". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2017-10-24.
External links
| This article includes content from Bhutan on Wikipedia (view authors). License under CC BY-SA 3.0. | 
|