Driglam namzha
Bhutan's official code of dress and etiquette
The Driglam Namzha (Dzongkha: སྒྲིག་ལམ་རྣམ་གཞག་; Wylie: sgrig lam rnam gzhag) is the official code of etiquette and dress code of Bhutan. It governs how citizens should dress in public as well as how they should behave in formal settings. It also regulates a number of cultural assets such as art and architecture. In English, driglam means "order, discipline, custom, rules, regimen" and namzha means "system", though the term may be styled "The Rules for Disciplined Behavior".
History
The Driglam Namzha traces its roots directly back to the 17th-century pronouncements of Ngawang Namgyal, the first Zhabdrung Rinpoche, a Tibetan lama and military leader who sought to unify Bhutan not only politically but also culturally. He established guidelines for dzong architecture, the characteristic monastery-fortresses of Bhutan. He also established many of the traditions of the tshechu "district festival" such as the Cham dance. The guidelines were intentionally codified to encourage the emergence of a distinctively-Bhutanese identity.
In 1989, the government elevated the status of the dress code from recommended to mandatory. All citizens were then required to observe the dress code in public during business hours.
“Driglam namzha” enters the record as bhutan's official code of dress and etiquette. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Driglam, namzha and Bhutan's can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Driglam namzha” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.