The historic kasho or the royal edict came on June 29, the first day of the 76th National Assembly. Along with the power to dethrone him by a two-third vote of no-confidence, it gave the Assembly the powers to elect the Cabinet and made the Cabinet accountable, no longer to the King, but to the Assembly. It asked the Assembly to evolve a mechanism on how to move a vote of confidence in the King.

What followed the presentation of the kasho in the Assembly was no less momentous. When the 150-member parliament discussed the royal declaration fortwo days, it laid bare the nation's wounded heart.

Member after member pleaded with the King, gasps choking their voices, to take back the kasho, particularly the proposal for a vote of confidence in the monarch. Men and women in the visitors' galleries cried openly.

``We chimis (Assembly members) cannot return home to tell the people that we have endorsed a vote of confidence in our king,'' said Namgay Phuntso from the Punakha constituency.

``When a Lam (Buddhist guru) preaches,'' said another member, Dasho Rinzin Gyaltshen, ``his disciples do not question the authenticity of his teachings; a king's command is not questioned and a parent's love for his children is unconditional.''

Here was an extraordinary situation -- a king offering to surrender powers to the people's representatives and the latter rejecting the offer in the name of the people. A clergyman member thought the vote of confidence in the king would bode ill for the dragon kingdom. ``Our glorious past will mean nothing withoutour king, for then religion will not flourish nor will peace and prosperity.''

Brian Shaw, a former journalist of the Far Eastern Economic Review and now with the Hong Kong-based Centre for Asian Studies, witnessed the historic proceedings as he had done most of the Assembly sessions since 1981. ``It was a highly emotional affair,'' he told The Indian Express, ``the members felt like a flock whose shepherd was leaving them behind for the next valley.''

Exactly 30 years ago, King Jigme's father had proposed similar changes including the proposal for a vote of confidence in the monarch and the ministers. But the Assembly kept that kasho hanging. When the last King died in 1972 and the present ruler acceded to the throne the proposals were given a quiet burial.

Seated on his throne behind the Speaker's podium, the 43-year-old King Jigme, who has been reigning for 26 years, heard it all. At the end of the deliberations, the Speaker told the members that the King had issued the kasho after long anddeep thoughts in the ``interest of the welfare of the nation at the present time and in future.'' The members had no choice but to endorse the king's command.

Why did the King do this and why now? Was it his way of modernising the hereditary monarchy that his forefather, Ugyen Wangchuk, established in 1907? Will this eventually see the first stirrings of democracy in Bhutan?These are the questions the Bhutanese and the small international community here are now asking. ``It truly is a turning point in the country's history,'' said a UNDP official. ``The monarch stays but it'll be a very different kind of monarchy from now on,'' according to a diplomat of the Indian Embassy here.

The new Bhutanese foreign minister, Jigmi Y Thinley, agrees, ``It does not threaten or change the institution of monarchy. But it does transform the role of the institution.'' And he finds it perfectly in order that the King himself has brought about the transformation. ``All changes here emanate from the throne, even if thistime's edict diminishes the role of the throne.'' Although the kasho came as a surprise, King Jigme did give some hints of the far-reaching changes he had in mind. Earlier in June, he dissolved the Cabinet, which had nominated ministers serving for over two decades. The kasho proposed that the Assembly elect the new members. All six new ministers have since been elected by the Assembly for a five-year term.The king will no longer preside over Cabinet meetings. The ministers will have a chairman from among themselves by rotation.

Surprising though it was, the kasho is in a way a culmination of the process of changes King Jigme initiated way back in 1981, say Kinley Dorji, editor of the kingdom's only newspaper, the weekly Kuensel. In 1981, the King had the first ever elected bodies -- the district development councils -- and ten years later, he followed it up with the first elected geog (block) development councils. What the future holds will be clearer in the 77th Assembly session whenit will have to evolve the mechanism for the implementation of the kasho. When the new millennium arrives, this mystical land and its inward-looking people will begin an exciting, if also uncharted, journey.