The decision will be celebrated in Thimpu which has long awaited India’s formal acknowledgement of Bhutan’s full sovereignty. As part of a bold democratisation of Bhutan, initiated by the previous King a few years ago, general elections are due to be held next year under a new Constitution that passes much of the power to the people.

The renewed treaty with Thimpu will be closely read in Beijing, for China and Tibet have always been at the core of India’s own Bhutan policy. The 1949 Treaty with Bhutan and the 1950 treaty with Nepal were written amidst Chinese assertion of territorial control over Tibet.

Signed during the early years of first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, these agreements were based on treaties that Britain had imposed on Nepal and Bhutan in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of the provisions of the 1949 treaty that seemed to undermine Bhutan’s independence and sovereignty had ceased to operate in practice.

Bhutan had stopped taking dictation from the South Block on its foreign policy long ago. But few in the Indian security establishment were prepared to address the imperatives for change. At least until recently.

While Thimpu was careful not to make public demarches on New Delhi to rewrite the out-dated treaty, the treaty’s unequal provisions were increasingly at odds with the new realities within Bhutan. The revision of the treaty apparently came up for bilateral discussion during King Jigme Singye Wangchuk’s visit to India last year.

Public hints that India was reconsidering the terms of this outdated treaty came last September, when the then Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran said India had “no objections” to its revision. The new foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon’s first trip abroad was to Bhutan last October, where he discussed the renewal of the treaty with the rulers of Thimpu. During the External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s visit to Thimpu in December, India had publicly stated its readiness to rework the treaty.

... contd.