Kamal Dhimal

Kamal Dhimal is the President and CEO of the Global Bhutanese Hindu Organization (GBHO), the largest religious organization of the Bhutanese diaspora, and a Bhutanese refugee community advocate, human rights activist, and organizational leader based in Columbus, Ohio. A Lhotshampa who fled Bhutan at the age of six after his father was imprisoned and killed by the Bhutanese government, Dhimal has devoted his career to serving the Bhutanese refugee community through organizational leadership, religious and cultural preservation, and advocacy. He chaired the founding First Bhutanese Hindu Conference in 2014, founded the Bhutanese Community Association of Charlotte, and received the Refugee Congress Excellence Award for his contributions to advocacy, community engagement, capacity building, and mentorship.

Early Life and Displacement

Kamal Dhimal was born in Bhutan into a Lhotshampa family. His early life was marked by the violence of the Bhutanese refugee crisis. His father was imprisoned by the Royal Bhutan Army in 1991, tortured, and killed — one of many cases of detention, torture, and extrajudicial violence directed at the Lhotshampa population during the systematic campaign of expulsion in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Dhimal fled Bhutan at the age of five or six, joining the more than 100,000 Lhotshampa who were forced into exile. He spent approximately 20 years in the refugee camps in Nepal.

Before his resettlement, Dhimal served with the Human Rights Council of Bhutan, one of the exile organizations that documented abuses against the Lhotshampa and advocated for international attention to the refugee crisis.

Resettlement and Community Leadership

Dhimal resettled in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2010 through the UNHCR third-country resettlement program. He quickly became one of the most active community organizers in the Bhutanese American community in the southeastern United States.

Bhutanese Community Association of Charlotte

Dhimal founded the Bhutanese Community Association of Charlotte, an organization that provides support, cultural programming, and advocacy for the Bhutanese refugee community in the Charlotte metropolitan area. The organization serves as a hub for community activities and a point of contact for Bhutanese Americans navigating the challenges of resettlement in a region with a growing but relatively new refugee population.

Global Bhutanese Hindu Organization

Dhimal is the President and CEO of the Global Bhutanese Hindu Organization (GBHO), which he has built into the largest religious organization of the Bhutanese diaspora. He chaired the First Bhutanese Hindu Conference on January 1, 2014, in Charlotte, North Carolina, the founding event that brought together 108 members to establish GBHO as a unified platform for Hindu Bhutanese across the diaspora.

Under Dhimal's leadership, GBHO has grown into a major institution:

• Acquired a 150-acre world headquarters — Om Center Divya Dham — in Galion, Ohio, in 2022, developed into a vibrant Dharma Kendra with rolling farmland, forests, two lakes, and a winding river
• Registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with over $2.4 million in total assets
• Organized the Vishwa Shanti Gyan Mahayagya in July 2025, one of the largest Bhutanese American religious gatherings in history, with approximately 50,000 attendees, 175 priests (including 35 women), and 1.5 crore (15 million) oil lamps lit to honor 67 Bhutanese individuals killed or disappeared during the 1990s mass expulsions
• Hosted the landmark "Women on the Pulpit" event in August 2023, where 55 women took center stage — 4 delivering discourses on scriptures, 17 reciting the Bhagwat Puran, and 33 assuming traditionally male priestly roles — which Dhimal described as a "landmark occasion" championing women's leadership in Vedic traditions
• Built a network of over 150 registered priests providing rituals and sanskaras across the diaspora

Dhimal's vision for GBHO has been driven by concerns about the erosion of Hindu religious and cultural identity among resettled Bhutanese refugees, and by the conviction that the Vedic Sanatan Dharma traditions of the Lhotshampa — which were suppressed by the Bhutanese government alongside their language and cultural customs — deserve preservation and revitalization in the diaspora.^[1]

Recognition

Dhimal received the Refugee Congress Excellence Award, recognizing his work in advocacy, community engagement, capacity building, and mentorship. The award specifically acknowledged his sustained contributions to strengthening the Bhutanese refugee community and his effectiveness in developing future community leaders. He has also received the Asian Community Leader Award from the Asian Chamber of Commerce.^[2][3]

Significance

Kamal Dhimal's story connects the personal cost of the Bhutanese refugee crisis — the loss of his father to state violence — to the broader project of community building and cultural preservation in the diaspora. His leadership of GBHO represents one of the most ambitious institutional achievements of the Bhutanese refugee community: the creation of a large-scale religious and cultural organization, complete with a 150-acre headquarters, that serves tens of thousands of Hindu Bhutanese across the United States and beyond. His career demonstrates how the experience of injustice has motivated many Lhotshampa to dedicate their lives to advocacy and community service, transforming personal loss into collective benefit.

References

1. Global Bhutanese Hindu Organization. Official website. https://www.gbho.org/
2. Bhutan News Service. "Kamal Dhimal Awarded Refugee Congress Excellence Award." https://www.bhutannewsservice.org/kamal-dhimal-awarded-refugee-congress-excellence-award/
3. Refugee Congress. "Kamal Dhimal — Delegate Profile." https://refugeecongress.org/delegates-cards/kamal
4. Hindu American Foundation. Social media coverage of Vishwa Shanti Gyan Mahayagya, July 2025.