By Prabhat Sinha
Surveying the state of India’s relations with Nepal, one cannot but lament the persistence with which certain terms have become part of the bilateral conversation. Koshi, Kalapani, Susta, security, trade, transit and a host of other words have different connotations in each country. It seems New Delhi and Kathmandu, over the last six decades, have been talking past each other.
Nepal has long complained about how it was “cheated” when India built the Koshi river project in the 1950s. But it is India that continues to bear the brunt of the floods each year. Kathmandu accuses Delhi of occupying territories like Kalapani and Susta, but India, amid the rancor, cannot persuade its neighbor of the urgency of scientific mapping to render a final judgment.
Ordinary Nepalis view India as being grossly insensitive to their sovereignty, while New Delhi sees successive governments in its northern neighbor oblivious – often callously – about its legitimate security interests. When Indians raise the issue of smuggling along the border, Nepalis stress how many Indian nationals are complicit in the crime. Yet when Delhi seeks its neighbor’s cooperation on bringing the culprits to book, Kathmandu drags its feet on such vital matters as extradition.
So it was with an expectation of this dissonance that one picked up “The Raj Lives” (Vitasta: New Delhi, 2008, Rs. 640). Early on in his broad history of India-Nepal relations, Sanjay Upadhya clarifies that the book title is merely reflective of perceptions in Nepal. The caveat serves to pique the reader’s interest.
As the pages progress, a clearer picture of the collective Nepali consciousness emerges. Upadhya, a leading Nepali journalist, has done much more than meticulously collate Nepali complaints. He explains how perceptions have hardened into reality as Nepali politicians, academics, the media and civil society have defined India’s role and motives in line with their sectoral expediency. It is this latter point that remains most instructive for Indians eager to understand Nepal.
Although Upadhya concludes his study before Nepal held elections to the constituent assembly that eventually abolished the monarchy, “The Raj Lives” offers important pointers to what India can expect from a republican Nepal. For a regional power aspiring to a greater global role, it becomes tempting to dismiss Nepal as a needless distraction. Smugness, however, is not an option. This is so not only because of the multifariousness of the relations but also because of the many current and potential challenges emanating from that flank.
The fragility of the Nepali state has worsened as the polity remains highly fragmented, characterized by ideological extremities. The government lacks the resources as well as the will – given the perpetual bickering in the ruling coalition – to establish its authority over the country. Nepal’s vast and largely unregulated border thus becomes a greater attraction for the plethora of forces inimical to Indian interests – ranging from foreign governments and terrorists to economic subversives.
Another message that comes across loud and clear from “The Raj Lives” is how the growing involvement of China and the United States in Nepali affairs could multiply India’s woes. Over the last several years, Washington and New Delhi have publicly espoused a coordinated stance on Nepal. But America’s own troubled relations with China tend to resonate often in Nepal. The anti-China protests by Tibetans in Nepal earlier this year were a case in point. The Americans – mostly non-government quarters – helped to enflame passions in Kathmandu in a way that made the normally reticent Chinese lash out against all three countries.
When Nepali Prime Minister Prachanda visited Delhi last month, the Indian media went overboard on the arrival of a new era in relations. Indeed, Prachanda emitted none of the anti-Indianism that drove his decade-long Maoist insurgency in Nepal. Instead, he virtually rolled out the red carpet for corporate India to invest in Nepal. Yet Prachanda also made every effort – as far as permissible within diplomatic constraints – to insist that Nepal would seek balanced relations with India and China.
This assertion came days after Prachanda broke with Nepali diplomatic tradition by visiting China before India. Days after the premier’s return to Kathmandu, Defense Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa Badal traveled to Beijing to sign a military cooperation deal. Prachanda then met briefly with US President George W. Bush and held talks with other American officials on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York City.
No matter how you look at it, Kathmandu’s insistence on equidistance/equiproximity vis-à-vis its two giant neighbors can only reflect a calibrated effort to bring Beijing closer into Nepal and, by extension, the South Asian heartland. With the Tibet issue remaining a sore in US-Chinese ties, Kathmandu could swiftly plunge into a crisis that could easily become India’s worst nightmare. Hyperbole or not, India cannot ignore how the Raj lives in Nepal.