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VOL. 27, NO. 39, June 13 , 2008 (Jestha 31 2065 B.S.)
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Nepal 's tryst with India
By KAPIL SIBAL, former foreign secretary to India
Can Maoists intelligently leverage New Delhi's strength to both countries' advantage?
Nepal has made a break with its own history by abolishing the
country's 240-year-old monarchy. The former king came to power in
dramatic circumstances, with the palace killings creating a scandal
around the monarchy. Rather than setting about restoring its image by
finding ways to make himself popular, and playing a constructive
constitutional role, Gyanendra added to the woes of the institution by
exhibiting his autocratic instincts.
His temperament handicapped him in building any real rapport with the
people. Imperious in his instincts, he believed he had a higher
responsibility towards the nation, over and above the constitution. He
inherited from his father a disdain for the political parties and had
an insurmountable aversion to the idea of any communist leader heading
the government under his watch.
Not that he was solely responsible for the breakdown of constitutional
rule in Nepal. The Nepalese political parties must accept a large
share of the blame because of internecine rivalry and competing
ambitions. Complicating the scenario was the armed Maoist insurgency
that controlled many parts of the country.
Gyanendra exacerbated the problems by a personal ambition to rule the
country. The wrong man was on the throne at the wrong moment in the
country's history. History has had its revenge and now the monarchy is
in the dustbin.
For long, India believed that the two pillars of stability in Nepal
were the constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy. This
implied that if the Gyanendra aberration could be corrected somehow,
constitutional monarchy in Nepal would be a stabilising force. Now it
is not only Gyanendra who has gone, it is the institution itself.
Our reaction to this transformation in Nepal suggests that at some
stage we abandoned the idea of a constitutional monarchy in Nepal as a
pillar of stability. The question is why we believed in the positive
value of a constitutional Nepalese monarchy in the first place and why
we do not believe in it any more. Is it that earlier we were taking a
position of convenience as we did not want to alienate the monarchy
beyond a point and now too we are taking a position of convenience,
since we want to alienate the Maoists even less?
Evaluating the past attitudes of the Nepalese monarchy towards India
would hardly have given reason to support it as a pillar of stability
for India-Nepal relations. The palace always felt threatened by our
democracy, seeing the Nepali Congress as India's instrument to
undermine the monarchy. It nurtured the Maoist forces as a counter. It
openly played the China card against us, to keep us off-balance and on
the defensive. King Birendra qualified Nepal's South Asian identity by
recalling that northern Nepal lay beyond the Himalayas. To demarcate
himself from us politically, he would define Nepal's nonalignment as
one between India and China. His proposal to make Nepal a Zone of
Peace was to embarrass India. Relations were cultivated with Pakistan
with the idea of poking India in the eye.
Sections of the press were assiduously used to sow distrust of India,
often inventing instances of Indian high-handedness. Nepalese
nationalism was deliberately directed against India by circles close
to the palace. To limit India's presence, no progress was permitted in
developing large-scale joint cooperative hydro-electric projects.
The underlying factors complicating our relations have not changed for
the better with recent developments; some have changed for the worse.
Earlier, the Maoists were handy instruments of the palace; now they
are their own masters. Negative approaches towards India can therefore
be pursued with more conviction and less opportunism. The palace was
acting out of a sense of vulnerability; the Maoists will act with the
confidence of popular backing. The China factor could backstop even
more strongly the policies of the new dispensation in Nepal. China too
may want to further increase its influence in Nepal to control better
Tibetan elements there following the failure of its policies in Tibet.
Prachanda's statement that Nepal will maintain equidistance from India
and China means pursuing a policy that has precluded a normal
relationship with India that would recognise the compulsions of
geography, economics, culture, religion and, indeed, enlightened
self-interest. Nepal should have good relations with China; but
"equidistance" distorts relations with India as it actually means
positioning Nepal much closer to China than to India, given the much
more substantial content of its relationship with India than with the
other neighbour. It is this flawed concept that has conditioned
Nepal 's flawed policies towards India in the past.
Prachanda's call for renegotiating the 1950 treaty with India — which
we do not need to reject — is an expected revival of old agendas of
suspicion and mistrust.
The open border with Nepal has, in practical
terms, more disadvantages than advantages for India. Reversing this
historical legacy would be moving in the wrong direction for emotional
reasons. Apart from the practical difficulty on both sides of
effectively regulating the border, instituting tight border controls
and associated regimes will seriously hamper the existing
people-to-people relationship that, between any two friendly
countries, should be seen as a valuable cementing force.
Defence procurement arrangements with Nepal have a crucial national
security dimension. India's concern is not earnings for its defence
industry, as arms transfers to Nepal are on highly concessional terms.
As Nepal occupies a vital space in India's overall security,
especially after China removed a centuries-old buffer by occupying and
militarising Tibet, it is normal for India to expect even Maoist Nepal
to be a friendly country that respects its legitimate concerns.
The deplorable inability of India and Nepal to realise large-scale
joint multi-purpose hydro-electric projects is not going to be
remedied with the Maoists in the driving seat. For Nepal to graduate
from a foreign aid, remittance and tourism dependent economy, it would
need to develop its water resources assets. Energy hungry India is a
ready market. But this has, over the years, become a highly
politicised issue, around which have coalesced all the India-related
grievances and suspicions of Nepal. India's growing economy and the
vigour of its entrepreneurs could be leveraged by Nepal to its
advantage, but such thinking is unlikely to sway the Maoists. Even
before this can happen, the Maoists will need to reassure the
country's own business class about their future policies so that
investment and economic activity in general do not slow down, making
poverty alleviation in Nepal yet more difficult.
(Courtsey India Express, 11 June 2008)
