Lhotshampa

Lhotshampa

Lhotshampa refugees in Beldangi Camp in Nepal.
Total population
(241,899 Many Lhotshampa claim to have been forcibly evicted by the military, who forced them to sign "Voluntary Migration Form" documents stating they had left willingly.)
Regions with significant populations
United States · Nepal · Thimphu · Paro · Phuntsholing
Languages
Nepali  · Dzongkha
Religion
Hinduism · Buddhism
Related ethnic groups
Nepali

The Lhotshampa or Lhotsampa (Nepali: ल्होत्साम्पा; Tibetan: ལྷོ་མཚམས་པ་, Wylie: lho-mtshams-pa) people are a heterogeneous Bhutanese people of Nepalese descent. The Lhotshampa people are native to southern Bhutan, and are thus colloquially referred to as Southerners. Starting in 2007, most of the Lhotshampas, or Bhutanese Refugees, were resettled to third countries, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and other European countries. Today, the number of Lhotshampa in Nepal are significantly lower than that in United States, and other countries where they were resettled. Since then, Bhutanese people of Nepalese origin started to settle in uninhabited areas of southern Bhutan.

The first small groups of Nepalese emigrated primarily from eastern Nepal under Indian auspices in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The beginning of Nepalese immigration largely coincided with Bhutan's political development: in 1885, Druk Gyalpo Ugyen Wangchuck consolidated power after a period of civil unrest and cultivated closer ties with the British in India. In 1910, the government of Bhutan signed a treaty with the British in India, granting them control over Bhutan's foreign relations. Immigrants from Nepal and India continued to enter Bhutan with a spurt from the 1960s when Bhutan's first modern 5-year plan began, many arriving as construction workers. By the late 1980s, the Bhutanese government estimated 28 percent of the Bhutanese population were of Nepalese origin. Unofficial estimates of the ethnic Nepalese population ran as high as 30 to 40 percent, constituting a majority in the south. The number of legal permanent Nepalese residents in the late 1980s may have been as few as 15 percent of the total population.