(From left) Foreign secretary Nirupama Rao, Bhutan’s Dasho Daw Penjor and Pakistan’s Salman Bashir in Thimphu on Sunday. (PTI)

Thimphu, Feb. 6: A monk’s apparent inability to withstand a cursed Indian temptation has posed the first test for Bhutan after it renewed a 300-year-old drive to combat tobacco.

A little over a month after a stringent anti-tobacco law kicked in this New Year’s Day, a 24-year-old Buddhist monk was arrested for smuggling in 72 packets of chewing tobacco (gutkha) from India.

The new law has also banned the sale of tobacco products in Bhutan. Tobacco products can be brought into the country but only after paying a 200 per cent tax.

The monk’s identity cannot be disclosed since he is still under trial but he is the first to be arrested after the new law came into effect. If proven guilty, the monk can be jailed for up to five years — the same punishment meted out to rapists in the kingdom.

Gutkha, which causes oral cancer, is not banned in India but its sale in plastic sachets is expected to be outlawed from March. Smoking in public places is banned but is largely not enforced, other than in confined spaces. Errant smokers are supposed to be slapped a fine of Rs 200.

Bhutan, which has been trying to keep tobacco away from government buildings since 1727, too had tried the monetary stick in 2004. Like in neighbouring India, it did not work.

So, the kingdom, which has a way of keeping out corrupting influences, passed a law last year to incorporate the jail term of three to five years. The law took effect from the New Year.

The plight of the monk, in any case eyebrow-raising because he is supposed to be infallible to such seductions, has drawn unusual attention because it has become a test case in Bhutan. Some religious scholars had described smokers as sinners who are only a trifle better than a monk who covets a woman or a woman who covets a monk.

The monk has pleaded ignorance of the law but to little avail so far.

Many, including a legion of the young, are watching with interest to see if the law will actually take its course and go the whole hog of jailing the accused if the charges are upheld.

Bhutanese can consume tobacco products in private — in restaurants where smoking is allowed or in the privacy of their homes. But they need to have paid the 200 per cent tax and carry a certificate to prove it.

But the young are facing a problem that will find resonance in countless homes in India. “We cannot smoke at homes as it is considered disrespectful. We look for desolate alleys but duck for cover at the sight of a cop,” says 19-year-old Tsering, adding that he and his friends know people who smuggle in cigarettes from India.

Going by a signal sent on the first day of the New Year, there seems to be quite an appetite for tobacco products. Officials burnt tobacco products seized from smugglers earlier — the quantity so large that the bonfire raged for three days in the city of Gedu, 12km from Thimphu.

“The government felt the need for the new law because a December 2004 one that had banned smoking in public places was largely ineffective. It (the old law) only prescribed monetary penalty,” said an official at Phuentsholing town on the Bhutan-India border.

For the time being, the amended law appears to have achieved its objective – striking fear in the hearts of the Bhutanese youths, the biggest consumers of cigarettes in a traditionally non-smoking society.

It is difficult to find a Bhutanese smoking in the open now. Youths can be found smoking at the city’s discotheques and dance bars — but inside clearly defined smoking rooms. A discotheque this weekend was filled with smoke thick enough to cloud the optimism of those who think the new law will succeed.

Officials at the immigration post warn all foreigners about the changed law. In a concession to its rural population, the law exempts consumption of doma or betel nut which Bhutanese have been chewing for generations.

That doesn’t mean that the cities are devoid of other pleasures of life. Bhutanese society does not frown upon young men and women or boys and girls hanging out together. No licence is needed to sell alcohol and nearly every other shop stocks it.