Nepal: A Rare Opportunity To Strengthen Sovereignty
By Krishna Singh Bam
A crucial element of developments in Nepal in the aftermath of King Gyanendra’s Feb. 1 takeover of full executive powers
is the speed with which the kingdom is struggling to break free from India’s stifling embrace by expanding ties with its
other giant neighbor, China.
Weeks after describing the royal takeover as an "internal affair," China sent its Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing to
Kathmandu for talks. A more forceful reiteration of Chinese support came last month during King Gyanendra’s meeting with
Jia Qinglin, the chairman of National Committee of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
Meeting on the sidelines of the Boao Forum for Asia conference in southern Hainan province, the head of China’s top
advisory body assured the monarch of Beijing’s full “support” and “friendship” in its hour of crisis.
On the ground, too, events have been moving swiftly. The first direct passenger bus service linking Kathmandu and Tibet
began earlier this month. Efforts at developing Nepal as a transit point between China and India have received a fresh
impetus. Nepal expects to provide the transit facility with the objective of expanding its service sector and physical
infrastructure development. A Nepalese government study has identified three alternative routes linking the three
countries.
A Chinese delegation was recently in Kathmandu to expand cooperation in investment, tourism promotion and infrastructure
development. Both sides have agreed to hold trade fairs in Kathmandu and Lhasa.
Nepal expects China's modernization of Tibet will assist the development of its own mountainous northern districts.
Specifically, the kingdom hopes to benefit from a railway project linking China with Tibet’s heartland, which Beijing
plans to complete this year, two years ahead of schedule. Chinese officials say the railway will bring in 5.64 million
tourists to Tibet over the next five years. The Lhasa-Kathmandu bus service is likely to benefit.
Kathmandu is planning to set up a special economic zone in its north with Chinese cooperation. Both governments will
have special laws, special taxation structure and special investment policies in an effort to ease the access of
Nepalese products to Chinese markets.
Nepal and China have taken special interest in developing the kingdom’s vast hydro-electric power potential. China and
Australia will invest in West Seti Hydropower project, the biggest hydro-electric project of Nepal with the capacity of
750 megawatt, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported last week. The construction of the $1.2 billion project, likely to
begin in September, is scheduled for completion within five and half years. The power generated will be sold to India.
The project is expected to yield $29 million in the first year of operation.
For Nepal, integrating the economy more closely with China’s has been a compulsion for survival derived from the
kingdom’s bitter experiences. In 1952, an Indian military mission arrived in Kathmandu to reorganize Nepal's armed
forces. In order to bring Nepal’s defenses more in line with India's security requirements, the kingdom was forced to
drastically reduce the size of its army. Training and organization, too, were streamlined along Indian requirements.
Against Nepalese objections, Indian advisers played an active role in training the civil service and police force.
Clearly, Nepal was left to endure this humiliating infringement on national sovereignty.
As Sino-Indian tensions mounted in the late 1950s, Indian soldiers and technicians assisted in staffing some of the
checkposts on the border with Tibet. It took Nepal a full decade to persuade India to withdraw those checkposts.
Although Nepal did not become involved in the hostilities, the Sino-Indian war of 1962 forced the Nepalese to
acknowledge their country's perilous position.
Nepal embarked on assertive international diplomacy as a survival strategy. An active participant at the United Nations
and the Nonaligned Movement, Nepal firmly supported the creation of the South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation.
In 1975, India absorbed the Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim following escalating tensions there. Alarmed by India’s regional
ambitions, King Birendra proposed that the United Nations declare Nepal a zone of peace. The proposal symbolized Nepal's
desire to maintain cordial relations with both of its giant neighbors by placing internationally sanctioned restrictions
on the use of military force. New Delhi interpreted the proposal, which went on to win the endorsement of 116 countries,
as an egregious Nepalese effort to pull itself out of India’s sphere of influence.
Matters came to a head in June 1988, when Nepal concluded a secret arms purchase with China, under which Beijing would
supply obsolescent air defense artillery at bargain prices. India protested vigorously that Nepal’s action had violated
the spirit, if not the letter, of a1950 peace and friendship treaty. Admittedly, a limited number of vintage air defense
weapons hardly could have represented a threat to India. Hawks in New Delhi interpreted the sale as a dangerous
precedent that could not go unchallenged.
In bilateral discussions, India went on to raise the issue of Nepal's supposed insensitivity to India's vital interests.
Nepal continued to insist it had the sovereign right to determine its own defense requirements. Nepalese officials
pointed out that that use of air defense assets against India would never arise as long as Indian fighters respected
Nepalese air space.
In March 1989, the Nepal-India trade and transit agreement came up for renewal. Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi
refused to extend the agreement unless Nepal agreed to meet India's commercial and defense concerns. After allowing the
agreement to lapse, India closed 13 of the 15 border checkposts that regulated most of Nepal's trade with the outside
world. The blockade was a severe blow to Nepal because there were no other reliable transit routes. The Chinese railway
ended 800 kilometers short of the Nepalese border, and the road linking Kathmandu and Tibet was closed much of the year
by avalanches and monsoon landslides. Pakistan and Bangladesh were hardly in a position to supply major assistance
because their only land routes to Nepal traversed India.
Nepal simply did not have the military, diplomatic, or economic clout to withstand the Indian blockade, which was
gradually eased following the installation of pro-Indian parties in power in 1990. The refusal of the United States and
other Western powers to come to Nepal’s aid exposed their acquiescence to the assumption that Nepal is an exclusive area
of Indian influence.
The blockade was a manifestation of India's policy of isolating and subjugating its smaller neighbors – a policy Nepal
is not alone in perceiving or reacting against. Pakistan has been expressing such concerns ever since the partition of
the subcontinent in 1947. Recent border clashes between Indian and Bangladesh forces exposed the flaws in Indian
diplomacy. True, India was instrumental in the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971, but taking relations for granted is
fraught with danger.
Some 15 years ago, Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels fighting for an independent homeland for the island nation’s Hindu
minority joined hands with the country’s armed forces to chase out Indian peacekeeping troops sent to protect the
Tamils.
As for Nepal, it is instructive to note that India’s relations with the world’s only Hindu kingdom reached one of their
lowest points in history when the assiduously pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party was leading the government in New Delhi.
The United States and Western democracies would do well to recognize that the flip side of Nepal’s aspirations for
democracy is the desire to exercise full sovereignty as an independent country.
Admittedly, close historic, economic, social and cultural links will still allow India exercise a dominant influence on
Nepal. New Delhi asserts that its reaction to the royal takeover is guided by this reality. However, India’s flip-flop
on the issue of military assistance raises serious questions. Is India worried that the Nepalese have lost their
democratic freedoms or are the noises emanating from New Delhi merely a bargaining tool to recover ground it perceives
it has lost in the country through the marginalization of political parties?
Like its smaller South Asian neighbors, Nepal fully understands that China and India have some mutual interests that
tend to transcend their rivalry. With the United States increasingly viewing containment of China as a major
foreign-policy imperative, Beijing cannot afford to see New Delhi slip away into Washington’s orbit. To believe that the
two Asian giants, which have seen a dramatic improvement in bilateral ties, have a convergence of opinion on South Asia,
however, would be a monumental misreading of geopolitics.
For Nepal, the much-maligned “China card” – in the words of the Indian press – is merely a quest to assert its sovereign
right to define its relations with its two powerful neighbors. The royal takeover has facilitated that process. This
historic opportunity must not be squandered.
ENDS