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Nepal attracts US attention, to India's
dismay
By Dhruba
Adhikary
KATHMANDU - Would the United States
have enhanced its concerned interest in Nepal's Maoist
insurgency had the tragic events of September 11, 2001
not occurred? It is difficult to say, but it is unusual
that the US has suddenly chosen to increase contacts
with the Himalayan kingdom that it has officially known
for more than 55 years.
Washington and Kathmandu
established diplomatic relations on April 25, 1947 -
shortly before independent India and Pakistan were born.
(Though small in size in comparison to her giant
neighbors, Nepal was never under British colonial rule.)
Nepal started to accept US assistance shortly
after the formal establishment of ties, adding up to
about US$700 million in 50 years. The size of the annual
package grew only recently - to $38 million - after the
visit of US Secretary of State Colin Powell in January
2002. The military component in the package was allowed
to be slightly increased in view of the need to make the
Royal Nepal Army capable of effectively fighting Maoist
guerrillas. Some of the grant money was spent in
procuring small arms from the US and Belgium.
More than 7,000 people have lost their lives in
as many years of armed insurgency in Nepal. The victims
include Nepalis working as guards at the US embassy in
Kathmandu, as well as in a US-aided development project
in the western region. A ceasefire was agreed in January
this year between the government and the rebels, but it
is far from certain whether stuttering talks will bring
peace to this largely mountainous country.
As is
obvious from the figures, the US assistance is very
modest, and Nepal's present difficulties are real. But
India, Nepal's neighbor on the south, is perturbed at
these developments. New Delhi's displeasure has been
made public through periodic pronouncements, and by
senior officials handling India's external affairs.
Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal has spoken several times
in Paris, New Delhi and elsewhere that Nepal must not
take "outside assistance" to quell a domestic rebellion.
"Anywhere else in the world, this small amount of
military assistance would have been seen as trivial,"
wrote Indian journalist C Raja Mohan in The Hindu
newspaper on June 18. "But in the context of Nepal, this
has acquired a larger than life dimension," he added,
indirectly scoffing at India's foreign policy managers.
Ostensibly on official prompting, some sections
of the Indian media are obsessed by what they describe
as the "growing American presence in Nepal". Giving
credence to such perceptions, Indian ambassador Shyam
Saran told a newspaper interviewer in Kathmandu
recently, "The government of India is in close touch
with the US government concerning the developments in
Nepal, since both are friends of Nepal. There is no
competition or rivalry between India and the US in
Nepal," he added, leaving no doubts to readers that this
indeed is the case.
In fact, in New Delhi's
opinion, Nepal should always resolve its problems
through bilateral consultations, as suggested by a
controversial treaty concluded more than half a century
ago. The Treaty of Peace and Friendship was initialed -
on July 31, 1950 - when a revolution was going on in
China. And the accord itself was signed by Nepali prime
minister Mohun Shamsher Rana, whose autocratic regime
was overthrown six months later in a popular
pro-democracy movement that dismantled the 104-year-old
autocracy.
Turning a blind eye to these
developments, hardline bureaucrats in India's capital
still prefer to offer interpretations requiring Nepal to
understand the "spirit" of the anachronistic treaty.
Indians want Kathmandu not to buy defense supplies
elsewhere, even if they cannot always give assurances
that the goods made in India would maintain minimum
quality. If they had their way, army sources said, they
would like Nepal to spend the American grants to
purchase weaponry from Indian manufacturers.
But
even the discredited treaty says that Nepal can procure
its supplies from anywhere in the world. Article 5 reads
as follows: "The government of Nepal shall be free to
import, from or through the territory of India, arms,
ammunitions or warlike material and equipment for the
security of Nepal. The procedure for giving effect to
this arrangement shall be worked out by the two
governments acting in consultation."
There was
no need for India to be alarmed when Nepal imported some
defensive weapons, such as anti-aircraft guns, from
China in 1988. Since Nepal did not need to use Indian
territory for those imports, authorities in Kathmandu
did not find it necessary to inform India about the
consignments coming overland via Tibet. But New Delhi
considered it an offense, and accused Nepal of breaching
the "spirit" of the 1950 treaty. Subsequently, the
Indian government imposed a trade and transit blockade
on Nepal, at the start of 1989, which lasted for 15
months. Relations became normal only after June 1990.
Will New Delhi again think of taking such
punitive action against Nepal for accepting a few
air-borne military consignments from the US and Belgium?
Will India take a step "to teach a lesson" to Nepal, as
its prime minister Rajiv Gandhi did 14 years ago?
Probably not this time. The political environment has
undergone a sea change over the past years: there is no
USSR to back India in a hegemonic role in the
neighborhood. And the present-day reality is that the US
is omnipresent in terms of its economic and military
power. China, Nepal's neighbor on the north, has also
become too big a factor to be glossed over.
The
Indian establishment, however, seems reluctant to accept
what is a stark reality. On the contrary, it is
insisting on the implementation of an accord that has
been billed "unequal" since the day it was signed. This
is evident from the different status of the signatories:
from Nepal's side it was the prime minister, Mohun
Shumsher Rana; from India's side it was just an
ambassador, C P N Singh. And it is believed that Mohun
Shamsher Rana accepted the treaty in the hope that his
signature would produce a quid pro quo in the form of
Indian support to his falling regime.
But
inconsistency in protocol matters alone did not make the
treaty unequal. Articles 6 and 7 of the document, for
instance, contain provisions for granting national
treatment to each other's citizens on a reciprocal
basis. "How can a small country of 23 million people be
asked to extend 'reciprocity' to India, which has a
population of over a billion?" wonders Mohan Man Sainju
, a leading expert on developmental issues.
Despite these asymmetries, Indian authorities
continue to cite the dated pact to reject Nepal's
suggestions for regulating the 1,800 kilometer porous
border that the two countries share. Presently, there is
unrestricted movement of people from either side. It is
conspicuous that none of India's other contiguous
borders remains porous. In a write-up published in a
journal in 1994, Japanese scholar Kyoko Inoue took note
of the prevailing Nepali perception that provision for
reciprocity "might result in serious constraints on
national integration and national economy-building under
its difficult geo-political condition, while no such
constraints were being felt in India." Nepal's northern
border is a regulated one, despite the fact that China's
Tibet region is a very sparsely populated area - of
about only 6 million inhabitants.
That India in
1950 imposed an unequal treaty on Nepal is a widespread
perception, and popular reaction to this imposition
surface often, and particularly during parliamentary
elections. Leaders of even known pro-Indian political
parties find it expedient to promise that, if elected,
they would seek the abrogation of the treaty. This trend
has been evident in all three elections since the
democratic restoration of 1990. The pact is construed as
an instrument that, it is felt, undermines Nepal's
status as a sovereign and independent country.
Foreign policy analysts agree that in the
camouflage of an innocuous accord, the Indian government
inserted clauses to constrict Nepal's future policies on
immigration, flood control, utilization of river water,
defense systems, trade and transit. "Operative clauses
of the treaty make it clear that it was designed to
corner Nepal from every conceivable direction," says
Madhab Prasad Khanal, an analyst who once served in the
ministry of foreign affairs. "That Maoist rebels can
carry on their anti-Nepal activities from Indian soil is
distinct proof of New Delhi's desire to develop
friendship with Nepal!" Khanal adds sarcastically.
The attitude in New Delhi has become something
that some Indians themselves find hard to digest. "India
became free in 1947, but could not free itself from the
British mindset," concedes K V Rajan, former Indian
ambassador to Nepal, in the recently-released anthology
"External Affairs: Cross-Border Relations". Accepting
that the 1950 treaty is a major "psychological irritant"
for Nepal, Rajan, whose tenure in Kathmandu was from
1995 to 2000, urges India to come forward with positive
proposals of its own.
C Raja Mohan is another
Indian author to identify "contradictions between
India's global policy and its regional approach." In his
new book Crossing the Rubicon: The Shaping of India's
New Foreign Policy, Mohan makes the following
observation, "At the international level, India rejected
the notions of balance of power and exclusive spheres of
influence; within the region it clung to them."
"New Delhi needs to shed its untenable
expectations that the world can be kept out of Nepal and
that the problems in Kathmandu can be resolved purely in
a bilateral framework with India," Mohan, strategic
affairs editor of The Hindu newspaper, said in a
separate article published earlier this year.
Avatar Singh Bhasin, editor of books comprising
documents on Nepal-India relations, describes the
treaty-bound relationship as "feudal" and suggests that
New Delhi to modernize it. "The sooner it [treaty] is
replaced, revised or abandoned the better ...", he
writes.
The contentious treaty has often been
compared with the accord that the former Soviet Union
imposed on neighboring Finland in 1948.
Nevertheless, the official Indian contention has
been that the treaty imposed certain security
obligations on Nepal in exchange for important economic
benefits. Nepal, on the other hand, argues that it would
not be "asking for things which India does not want to
provide".
Everything said and done, admit
intelligentsia on both sides of the border, the 1950
treaty has been implemented more in the breach than in
observance. For example, article 2 requires both sides
to inform each other should any friction or
misunderstanding occur with any neighboring state. India
went to war with Pakistan and China, but it never
officially informed Nepal. Similarly, while Indian
nationals enjoy unrestricted entry into Nepal and
movement within the kingdom, Nepali nationals visiting
India are not allowed to enter most of its northeastern
states without prior permits. Likewise, Nepal has
enacted laws that prevent foreigners, including Indian
nationals, from buying landed property in this country.
What then is the use of retaining a treaty that
fails to meet the needs of the 21st century? Since the
accord does not provide any room for changes, amendments
or revisions, Nepal could, though, initiate steps for
its annulment. The last article (article 10) provides a
solution: "This treaty shall remain in force until it is
terminated by either party by giving one year's notice."
But is Nepal prepared to invoke this article when it
knows well that the other party is still living under an
illusion that it can retain the "unique" relationship on
the strength [or weakness] of this document? The
alternative is to wait until the day that India realizes
that it is being subjected to further ridicule for not
being in tune with changing times.
But what if
India quickly agreed to get rid of the treaty? How would
Nepal adjust to the new situation? While traditionalists
sound apprehensive about such a possibility, others are
not worried. Keshav Raj Jha, president of the Nepal
Council of World Affairs, is one of them. "Nepal can go
for one of the two available options: sign a treaty
similar to the one it concluded with China in 1960, or
begin conducting bilateral relations without any treaty,
like Bangladesh," Jha said.
Jha's reference is
to the 1960 treaty with China, signed by premiers Chou
Enlai and B P Koirala in Beijing ,which was based on the
principles of equality and mutual benefit. The second
allusion is to the friendship treaty that India and
Bangladesh initialed in 1972 which was allowed to lapse
after 25 years. Similarly, India's 20-year pact with the
then Soviet Union remained a one-time deal.
"No
treaty, howsoever good and well-meaning it may be, can
achieve its goal if its articles are not allowed to
remain relevant to the issues at hand," comments Badri
Bahadur Karki, a seasoned lawyer who once had a stint as
Nepal's attorney-general.
(Copyright 2003 Asia
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