There’s little reason for whoops of joy in Delhi’s corridors of power because the People’s Democratic Party trounced the ruling Druk Phuensum Tshogpa in Bhutan’s second parliamentary election. If one bunch of Bhutanese politicians leans towards India, another is bound to lean towards China. Given the fragility of Sino-Indian relations, this polarization is not in Bhutan’s interest. It is even less in India’s interest for the Bhutanese to have to face such a choice.

If India “carefully nurtured and fostered” relations with Bhutan in its innocent infancy, to cite Manmohan Singh’s letter to the new Harvard-educated prime minister, Tshering Tobgay, a maturing Bhutan calls for even greater nurturing and fostering. The transition from absolute monarchy to parliamentary governance, from guided foreign policy to the role of full player on the world’s stage, and, above all, from medievalism to modernity presents many challenges. The historian, Karma Phuntsho, says that while global sophisticates were going ga-ga over gross national happiness, simple Bhutanese couldn’t grasp even the concept of gross national product. Since GNH sounded feminine in Dzongkha, a man who was asked about it replied, “From what I hear, she seems beautiful but I have not yet seen her.”

Inevitably, people must wonder where ultimate power rests in this time of change. It’s difficult to believe that any politician in a disciplined hierarchical society would take any major initiative without the royal nod. This applies especially to the DPT’s suave and seasoned Jigmi Y. Thinley, who was an outstanding bureaucrat for some 30 years before his political debut to become the dragon kingdom’s first elected prime minister. Personal factors like a son-in-law’s reported interest in vehicle spares might influence some business deals but not key political decisions. But if the palace calls the shots, who in the palace do politicians look to for guidance?

The young, attractive and highly educated fifth monarch, King Jigme Khesar Namgyal, cut a dashing figure as chief guest at India’s 64th Republic Day celebrations. But it must be a great loss for Bhutan and Indo-Bhutanese stability if his father, King Jigme Singye, called K4 with irreverent affection, really has retreated into hermetic seclusion at the ripe old age of 58. Reared in difficult circumstances, K4 was astute beyond his years when he inherited the Raven Crown (which he refused to wear because it wasn’t authentically Drukpa!) at 17. While his father, King Jigme Dorji, took Bhutan into the United Nations, every other modern feature — the civil service, Drukair, the opening to China, parliamentary governance, consolidation of citizenship, a less unequal treaty with India, the alluring concept of GNH and much more — is his creation. King Jigme Khesar Namgyal makes no secret of his tremendous respect for K4’s wisdom and experience.

With China looming over the future, Bhutan needs both. King Prithvinarayan Shah’s description of Nepal as a yam between two boulders applies just as much to Bhutan as it did to the lost kingdom of Sikkim. Prudently sensitive to geopolitics, Bhutanese monarchs are India’s most reliable friends in South Asia. King Jigme Dorji was the first head of government after Indira Gandhi to recognize Bangladeshi independence. His son always treated India’s leaders with deference. When Indira Gandhi was addressing the 1976 non-aligned nations conference in Colombo, the 21-year-old K4 — attending his first-ever international meet — got up from his seat to escort her to the dais. He was waiting at the foot of the steps to walk her back when she finished. Since seating was alphabetical, K4 had to walk from Row B to Row I and back both times. His courtesy contrasted markedly with royal Nepalese hauteur at similar events.

Though the Bhutanese are understandably touchy about any comparison with Sikkim, the flurry over Thinley meeting Wen Jiabao during last year’s earth summit at Rio de Janeiro recalled Jawaharlal Nehru’s wrath in 1963 when Liu Shao-chi, China’s president, sent a condolence telegram to the Chogyal on his father’s death. According to P.N. Dhar, Indira Gandhi’s principal secretary, the last straw for India was the Chogyal meeting China’s vice-premier, Chin-hsi Liu, at King Birendra’s coronation in 1975. Playing footsy with China has to be punished, and the Thinley-Wen meeting is blamed for Indian Oil Corporation’s sudden stoppage of kerosene and cooking gas subsidies worth Rs 50 crore, similar moves regarding the subsidy on the power tariff and excise duty refund, and even confusion over Indian aid for the kingdom’s 11th five-year plan.

New Delhi did not react publicly in 1984 when Dawa Tsering, Bhutan’s foreign minister for 28 years, met his Chinese counterpart, Wu Xueqian, in New York, even though India cannot have enjoyed being excluded from the 20 rounds of bilateral border talks that followed. Perhaps India trusted Dawa. Perhaps South Block was manned then by more mature diplomats who knew that a nominated minister like him acted only on the orders of the royal master he called “Boss”. Nothing could have been more ham-handed and, in the long run, counter-productive than India’s response to the Thinley-Wen meeting.

Even if it’s possible to draw a connection between that incident and the voting result, New Delhi’s experience of Nepal — to say nothing of America’s unrewarded global generosity — should have warned against expecting aid to influence policy. The fig leaf for control provided by Article 2 of the 1949 India-Bhutan treaty disappeared when the 2007 treaty replaced Bhutan’s obligation “to be guided by the advice of India” in foreign affairs with “abiding ties of close friendship and cooperation” and the stipulation that neither government would allow its territory to be used “for activities harmful to the national security and interests of the other”. True, this seemed to put a brake on Chinese mischief while ruling out a Bhutanese equivalent of King Birendra’s six-point peace zone strategy, but the emphasis is on willing cooperation, not coercion.

India cannot force Thimphu not to cut its losses and follow up the guiding principles on which Bhutan and China agreed in 1988 and the 1998 agreement on maintaining peace and tranquillity in border areas with a full-fledged border settlement. Diplomatic success will lie in ensuring Bhutan doesn’t want either. But Thinley didn’t exceed his rights if he did seek an exchange of ambassadors, as Wen claims. Bhutan can’t forever be hidden in India’s backyard. Each step the kingdom has taken has been taken with extreme circumspection and care not to ruffle India’s feathers, but no one can miss the single preordained direction in which the steps point. A Chinese embassy in Thimphu or a Sino-Bhutanese treaty that might affect India’s position in the formerly Sikkimese Chumbi Valley trijunction cannot be ruled out for all time.

Duplicity is integral to Chinese diplomacy. Asked about Bhutan at his New Delhi press conference on April 30, 1960, Zhou En-lai retorted, “I am sorry to disappoint. We have no claim with regard to Bhutan, nor do we have any dispute with it.” It now emerges there are four disputed areas and that Bhutan has probably already lost two territorial humps as well as the several enclaves in Tibet that it (like Sikkim) owned. The process of whittling away at India’s rights began on September 8, 1959 when Zhou wrote to Nehru that China had “always respected India’s proper relations with Sikkim and Bhutan”. According to Hsinhua news agency, he repeated “proper relations” at his 1960 press conference, although the official Indian transcript has him saying “special relations”. The difference matters — what is special is not always proper. Nepal strongly resented the term special relations. It also rejected assertions that India’s defence began at Nepal’s northern frontier.

Nothing as obvious mars India-Bhutan relations and won’t in the foreseeable future. But Indian policy must be far more nuanced if India is to remain (again quoting Manmohan Singh’s letter to Tobgay) Bhutan’s “privileged partner”. The fracas sounded a distant bugle that cannot be ignored.