BEYOND BORDERS
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Someone looking at the political map of Nepal today must wonder how it has managed to stay independent for so long, how one of the great Indian or Chinese rulers in the past did not make it his own. Prithvi Narayan Shah united the country with brute force, in the process bringing together vastly different regions and ethnic communities.
The continuity of such a forced unity was possible, it could be argued, only under the iron-fist of the autocratic monarchy and its imposition of uniform language and culture. Predictably, this imagination of the Shah monarchs is slowly unraveling.
In this day and age it is impossible to force people to follow prescribed rules without their consent. After the end of the Cold War there has been a wave of disintegration around the world as people's aspirations for greater autonomy and self-rule are being realized, not always thorough democratic means. As the federal experiment in Nepal is being hijacked by vested interests, there are fears Nepal might also implode.The demand for 'One-Madhesh' after the 2007 Madheshi Uprising was the first articulated attempt at a decisive rupture. CK Raut added fuel to this fire. Such revolutionaries are emboldened because there has been a sizable constituency in India since its independence that believes that the Tarai belt in Nepal, inhabited by people of recent Indian origin, should come under the sovereignty of India.
More recently, Manmohan Singh government was happy to delegate all things Nepal to Indian spies, who, lest we forget, played a crucial role in the annexation of Sikkim in 1975. Their security-minded approach to conduct of international relations makes for strange bedfellows, including in Nepal.
But the Indian foreign policy establishment is not a monolith. As in Nepal, India's foreign policy priorities aren't always well articulated and the PMO, the Ministry of External Affairs, and India's domestic and foreign intelligence agencies often work at cross-purposes. But compared to Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has retained more foreign policy powers with the PMO. He has made restoration of political-level engagement with the states in the SAARC region a priority, thereby greatly reducing the power of Indian bureaucrats and spooks to meddle. Their heavy-handed involvement had badly bedeviled India's Nepal policy in the last decade.
Of course, Modi also hews close to the Neruvian policy whereby the Himalayan frontier in Nepal is considered the northernmost border of Indian "sphere of influence". For instability in Nepal has direct implication on Indian security. India, some believe, may use this pretext to militarily intervene in Nepal. But that is still a remote possibility, unless Nepali security apparatus completely collapses and Nepal becomes a hotbed for anti-India elements, which again is unlikely.
Nor is a Crimea-like usurpation of Nepali territories on the cards, not the least because the Americans—who maintain a big diplomatic and intelligence presence in Kathmandu, in what is a convenient outpost to monitor the activities of Indians and Chinese next door—won't allow it. The huge presence of international community and their affiliated NGOs in Kathmandu also mitigates this danger. Besides, at a time India is seeking a permanent seat at the UN Security Council, such an invasion would reflect poorly on India's image as the most vibrant democracy in the world. Democratic India is as far from Putin's Russia, now the chief mischief-maker in the Caucasus, as we can get.
Yes, India is worried about growing Chinese inroads into Nepal. But such worries might prove meaningless in light of growing economic links between India and China. The way the two countries signed a treaty on movement of goods via Lipulekh, a tri-junction border point between the three countries, without informing Nepal, suggests that the two emerging superpowers will comfortably overlook Nepal's vital interests if it suits them. This is a sign that things are starting to slip out of the control of the political establishment in Kathmandu.
The Madheshis and Tharus want to be ruled by their own representatives, which Kathmandu is not ready to concede, not yet. But if the inhabitants of Madhesh continue to be pushed away, their gravitation towards India will only increase. Nor is the demography in Madhesh in the favor of the Kathmandu ruling elite. Already, hundreds of thousands of Indians have acquired Nepali citizenships (even as many genuine Madheshis have been deprived of it). If the issue of secession is put to a referendum in the Tarai belt tomorrow, as happened in Scotland recently, this illegal floating population of Indians could cast a decisive vote.
This is why in private conversations political leaders of Pahadi origin express fear that Madhesh might finally have gone out of their hands. So like it or not, New Delhi will once again play a decisive role in the settlement of the political and constitution impasse in Nepal, something it has done to its great success since 1951. If New Delhi continues to push for dialogue between Pahadi and Madheshi leaders, sooner or later, the two sides will have to return to the talks table. But this will be possible only if the ruling elite in Kathmandu can see the writing on the wall and realizes that there is no alternative to a federal model that respects the sensitivities of Madheshis and Janajatis.
Otherwise, the risk is that baseless propaganda like Jai Krishna Goit's recent petition to PM Narendra Modi, warning him of the Pahadi leaders' quest to form 'Greater Nepal' by including territories lost to British India, would gain traction. If mainstream political actors are discredited the likes of Goit and Raut will find increasingly bigger audience in Madhesh, and, possibly, even in New Delhi.
Again, we would do well to remember that only an autocracy that was the Shah monarchy could have put a lid on the legitimate aspirations of marginalized communities to live with dignity. But with that institution gone, the only way the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Nepal can be maintained is through real devolution of political power to marginalized communities through judicious state-restructuring.
India's disproportionate influence in Nepal is not something that can be wished away. Nor can its direct intervention here be ruled out completely. But the biggest threat to Nepal's existence right now is still not RAW or India or China, or any of the other foreign forces that are often blamed for destabilizing Nepali polity. It's our shortsighted leaders who refuse to face the hard truth.
biswasbaral@gmail.com
