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| Kathmandu, Wednesday January 01, 2003 Paush 17, 2059. |
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Troubled coexistence
By MADHAB P KHANAL
Any one attempting to portray an objective
picture of Nepal-India relations in their current perspective is likely to land himself
amidst a hostile political landscape and be confronted with a barrage of accusations
ranging from being a part of Pakistan sponsored anti-Indian bogey to an agent of diehard
reactionaries or a staunch protagonist of the pro-Chinese political cult against Indian
interests. The reality, however, is that due to India’s uncompromising stand on
several issues, Nepal and India have visibly failed to cultivate any environment of mutual
trust and goodwill, that are essential for positioning a multifaceted relationship like
that of Nepal and India on an enduring track of meaningful cooperation.
The official facade of Nepal-India relations
is indisputably deceptive as it does not reflect the inexhaustible source of Indian
improbities that lies behind it. Having had witnessed her diplomatic vagaries on numerous
occasions in the last fifty years or so, sensible people of this country are convinced
that India continues to harbour an inherent prejudice against Nepal. In fact, ever since
the late King Mahendra forged ahead with expanding Nepal’s bilateral relations with
the People’s Republic of China beyond the frontiers of diplomatic rhetoric to the
areas of viable economic cooperation in the early sixties, Indian behaviours towards Nepal
have remained incessantly censorious.
Similarly, the historical proposal introduced
by the late King Birendra that Nepal be declared ‘a zone of peace’ came under a
persistent stricture from Indian leadership ever since its inception. Despite the fact
that more than a hundred friendly countries had granted their unstinted endorsement to the
proposal, India willfully brutalized it with utter disregard to its long-term bearing on
peace and harmony in South Asia. Likewise, her unfriendly act of imposing an economic
blockade against Nepal in the late eighties retarded the pace of its modest economic
development by at the least ten years. Nobody knows how many more years the poor country
would have to struggle again to pick up the momentum as a result of the serial destruction
of its basic infrastructure by the CPN (Maoists) whose top leaders are operating their
nefarious activities from the south of the border with apparent connivance of the local
authorities there.
The callous attitude of India towards the
humanitarian problem of Bhutanese refugees is another serious lapse in its moral
obligations towards Nepal. In the face of the close diplomatic nexus that Thimpu has been
maintaining with New Delhi ever since their friendship treaty of 1949, India’s
cunning reiteration that the refugee stalemate is a bilateral problem to be settled
between the two kingdoms simply shows her double standard with regard to the blatant
violation of human rights by Bhutan. Similarly, India’s intransigence to resolving
the border disputes involving its encroachments at more than fifty places and the unlawful
occupation of Kalapani at the tri-junction for more than four decades, is another
hindering factor in normalising relations between the two countries. Likewise,
India’s unilateral decisions to build dams in the close vicinity of its border with
Nepal and inundating thereby thousands of villages of the Terai people is not only a
flagrant violation of international law and morality, it is yet another instance of her
overbearing attitude towards a small neighbour.
What should have been a perfect model of an
amiable coexistence between two contiguous neighbours with so much in common in many
respects, an enormous chasm of distrust and doubt has divided the two countries. In fact,
ever since Nepal and India entered into the lopsided treaty of Peace and Friendship in
1950 relations between them have never been friendly in the true sense of the term. An
incurable pathology of ambivalence and mutual hatred among their respective political
leadership is what would describe the texture of today’s Nepal-India relations.
Unmindful of the fact that much waters have flown down the Bagmati river since the
politically inchoative days of the early fifties, many of India’s diplomatic envoys
to this country still entertain a fallacy that meddling with Nepal’s internal
politics is a part of their mandated diplomatic terms of reference.
One of such intriguing examples was the
political rendezvous of ambassador Shyam Saran with a couple of opposition politicians
before his official call on the prime minister of the host country after he presented his
Letters of Credence to His Majesty the King. Whether ambassador Saran’s diplomatic
misdemeanour paid him a good dividend or not, his marked deviation from the established
norms of diplomatic decency did not make a favourable impact on Nepali intelligentsia.
Similarly, during his interaction programme at the Reporters’ Club recently what the
Indian ambassador said in his opening statement that ‘India trusted Nepal with an
open border’ justifies how India looks at Nepal currently. He could have added a
little more lustre of authenticity to his statement if he had shown some magnanimity by
saying that Nepal, too, was equally, if not more, generous in throwing open its eighteen
hundred kilometres long borders to ‘Indian diaspora’ who have menacingly flooded
the country as facilitated by articles 6 and 7 of the treaty.
Thus, viewing such fractured relations
between Nepal and India one is tempted to echo the sentiments that Lord Melbourne, a Whig
prime minister of Britain under Queen Victoria’s reign, had expressed in the
nineteenth century: "What wise men had promised has not happened. What the damned
fools predicted has actually come to pass." Though Melbourne’s exclamation was a
part of his fits of exasperation over the situation in Ireland, his sentiments perfectly
fit in with the type of diplomatic predicament that Nepal and India are ineluctably
grappled with today. In view of Indian authorities admitting that India’s Maoist
guerrillas might be frequently crossing into Nepal by misusing the open border, one would
be prompted to ask them: Why should then the Nepal-India borders remain unregulated for
eternity?
Given the type of disillusionment that
Nepalis have had experienced over the years there is no reason to be optimistic about
mutual cooperation on broader spectrum with India in any sector of common benefits. If
viewed against the backdrop of Koshi and Gandak deals, sharing of equitable benefits from
harnessing of Nepal’s abundant water resources is simply a diplomatic delusion. With
regard to Mahakali treaty the role played by Pashupati Shumsher Rana and Dr Prakash
Chandra Lohani during the Deuba-coalition was equally opportunistic. India’s
meticulously laid out traps of Tanakpur and Mahakali projects, have badly exposed the
vulnerabilities of some of our prominent leaders who always considered New Delhi as the
abode of their political messiahs and guardian angels of democracy.
After having reviewed the troubled coexistence between Nepal
and India for over fifty years a very pertinent question arises as to who is ultimately to
be blamed for such deterioration in bilateral relations which is indisputably
ill-affordable for both the countries? India’s political strategies might have their
own contentions; but for the Nepalis it is undoubtedly India which is to be blamed for the
obvious reasons that she never parted with her political vanity and unpropitious
behaviours towards a neighbour which had always been at the receiving end in all respects.
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