ABSTRACT
Bhutan is like a pebble between two boulders – a small, landlocked kingdom of just 720,0001 citizens, sandwiched between the world’s two most populous countries, India and China. Historically China and India have shared intellectual exchanges in law, philosophy and politics: between the fifth and twelfth centuries, Chinese scholars and monks studied at the famous international Buddhist university, Nalanda, in eastern India, and Indian monks also visited China (Thussu 2013, p. 10). Situated between two such dynamic civilisations made Bhutan both strategically important (Penjore 2004, p. 109) and a ‘cultural junction’, whereby its people benefited from the ideas flowing in both directions (Ura 2009, p. 62).
