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Right royal headache for
India
By Sultan Shahin
NEW DELHI - Though India has not quite
made up its mind yet on how it should react to
what is being described as a palace coup in Nepal,
the contours of a likely response are beginning to
emerge.
In view of the immense complexity
of its relations with its tiny neighbor, which
have lately been showing signs of stress, and a
less than friendly neighborhood, New Delhi must
take a subtle and nuanced approach. Nevertheless,
it is not going to treat King Gyanendra's move to
suspend democracy, against specific advice from
India and the US given a few weeks ago, as a
fait accompli. It is also not going to
allow the king to take Indian military help for
granted on the pretext of his country facing a
major Maoist threat with grave security
implications for India itself.
On February
1, King Gyanendra sacked Prime Minister Sher
Bahadur Deuba's government for the second time in
just over two years and took full control of state
power. The king accused Deuba's government of
failing to conduct parliamentary elections and
being unable to restore peace in the country.
In his very first response, Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh got the summit meeting of the South
Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)
scheduled to be held on February 6 and 7
suspended. As the leader of the world's largest
democracy, he didn't want to be seen shaking hands
with a leader who had just dealt democracy a
crippling blow. Both Pakistan, the present head of
SAARC and Bangladesh, where the meeting was to
take place, are deeply unhappy with this decision.
India took a similar approach to President
General Pervez Musharraf's coup against an elected
government in Pakistan in 1999, and couldn't be
seen to be making an exception in the case of
Nepal. New Delhi's stand had become inevitable the
moment the Nepalese King announced that he would
represent his country at the summit.
The
timing of the coup and the announcement from
Narayanhiti Palace - the residence of the king in
Kathmandu - that he would be going to Dhaka
himself smack of a predetermined plan on his part
to get his misdeed endorsed by the regional
grouping, despite severe condemnation from the
international community. SAARC comprises
Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal,
Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
India has gone
ahead with its decision not to participate in the
SAARC summit, leading to its postponement, knowing
full well that it will not go down well with other
neighbors. Besides consulting two former prime
ministers, V P Singh and I K Gujral, Manmohan met
his cabinet colleagues and opposition leaders,
former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and
former deputy prime minister L K Advani before
going ahead with the decision. The decision had
been taken in principle by the Cabinet Committee
on Security itself. Indian External Affairs
Minister Natwar Singh called his counterparts in
Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Bhutan to explain
Delhi's decision.
Pakistan spokesman
Masood Khan reacted sharply: "Frequent
postponements of the summit conference have raised
doubts about the seriousness with which the agenda
for regional cooperation is being pursued." He
added, "On the sidelines, Prime Minister Shaukat
Aziz and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were
scheduled to meet on February 7. This high-level
contact was important to give a fresh impetus to
the composite dialogue. Now we will have to see
when this opportunity arises."
Bangladesh
was livid: "We are shocked and dismayed at India's
unwarranted and unexpected decision not to attend
the summit when all preparations had been
completed." In a sharply worded statement, a
government spokesman said, "Once again, a SAARC
summit has been postponed at the last minute
because of a decision by India ... It is a sad
commentary for South Asia that its largest member
state should retract its commitment to the charter
on this excuse." It also outright rejected India's
concerns for security in Bangladesh.
Now
the new Indian army chief General Joginder Jaswant
Singh is deferring his visit to Kathmandu, where
he was to take over as honorary chief of the Royal
Nepal Army. He may be asked to cancel the trip
altogether. The chiefs of the Indian and Nepalese
armies enjoy honorary chief status in each other's
country. New Delhi is clearly sending a
not-so-subtle message to Kathmandu that their
unique military relationship is in peril. By
convention, the first foreign trip of a new Indian
army chief is to Nepal. (General Singh took over
as the 22nd army chief on January 31.)
"I
see military-to-military relationships as part of
the overall diplomatic strategy of the country. I
have not yet indicated a time frame [to visit
Nepal] because of the situation there. I will
decide on it with the permission of the
government," General Singh said on Thursday in an
interview with a Kolkata daily, The Telegraph.
This cannot be good news for the king, who seems
to be preparing for a major military offensive
against Maoist insurgents, particularly as India
is the primary supplier of military equipment,
much of it at a third of the normal cost. Most
Nepalese army officers are trained at Indian
military institutions, the newspaper pointed out.
An estimated 80,000 Gurkhas from Nepal serve in
crucial combat formations of the Indian army.
The king is the supreme commander of the
Royal Nepali Army, a force currently with a
combined strength of 138,000 armed personnel,
including those from civil and armed police
agencies. Both India and the US have recently
given massive support to these security
organizations in the form of training and
equipment. But for this support the royal regime
could hardly take on the rebels, who launched a
"people's war" in 1996 to rid the country of the
constitutional monarchy. India recently took
serious action to curb the Maoist's ability to
procure guns and ammunition on the Indian black
market across the porous Nepal-India border, where
no passport is required for travel by the citizens
of either country. India also arrested a few
guerrilla leaders in the Indian states bordering
Nepal recently, thus raising the morale of the
Nepalese security forces.
The war has so
far claimed more than 11,000 lives, including
women and children. Rebel Maoist leaders maintain
that they now have a fighting force of 25,000
young men and women, grouped into three divisions,
nine brigades and 29 battalions. This force,
called the People's Liberation Army (PLA - as the
Chinese army is also called), is backed by a
100,000-strong People's Militia. They are now
capable of attacking targets in more than one
district center at the same time. They have set up
provisional governments in all the nine provinces
in which they have divided the country. They now
claim that their leader, Prachanda, runs a
parallel government of Nepal.
In strongly
worded statements, New Delhi has described the
seizure of power by King Gyanendra as a "serious
setback" to the cause of democracy and said it
"cannot but be a cause of grave concern to India".
In a formal statement, the External Affairs
Ministry said it had received reports that several
political leaders had been confined to their
residences.
The official statement went on
to clarify India's position: "The safety and
welfare of the political leaders must be ensured
and political parties must be allowed to exercise
all the rights enjoyed by them under the
constitution. India has consistently supported
multiparty democracy and constitutional monarchy
enshrined in Nepal's constitution as the two
pillars of political stability in Nepal. This
principle has now been violated with the king
forming a government under his chairmanship. India
has a longstanding and unique relationship with
Nepal, with which it shares an open border, a
history of strong cultural and spiritual values
and wide-ranging economic and commercial links. We
will continue to support the restoration of
political stability and economic prosperity in
Nepal, a process which requires reliance on the
forces of democracy and the support of the people
of Nepal."
India has vital security
interests involved. Intelligence sources told Asia
Times Online that Delhi is already preparing to
meet the fallout of a major crackdown on Maoists
in Nepal. Maoists in large numbers could try to
take shelter in adjoining Indian states, in
Uttaranchal, Uttar Pradesh and above all, Bihar.
Already, a so-called red corridor or "compact
revolutionary zone" (CRZ) of Maoists seems to
stretch from Kathmandu, across Nepalese territory
up to India's southernmost tip of Kanyakumari
through states like Bihar, Orissa, Tamil Nadu,
Chhatisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh,
Maharashtra and Kerala. This CRZ then goes on to
provide a link with the armed insurgents in Sri
Lanka, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
The Indian government has for some time
been aware of a nexus between all the Maoist
organizations working in these states. They help
one another in terms of training and movement of
arms. The Nepalese connection and the implications
of the CRZ are the main reasons, according to
sources in the government, that Delhi has allowed
and encouraged some state governments to talk to
Maoist groups in their region, despite the obvious
difficulties. India is also wary of Nepal's
Maoists being able to link up with secessionist
insurgents in the northeastern states of Assam and
Nagaland, etc.
India's Maoist movement
issued a stern warning to the government of India
recently and threatened "retaliatory action" if
New Delhi continued to help the Nepalese
government in combating the Maoists. Indian
Maoists have acquired greater cohesion since they
put their own house in order recently with two
major organizations, the People's War and the
Maoist Communist Center of India merging to form
the Communist Party of India (Maoist). Maoists in
Bihar last week blew up opposition Bhartiya
Jananta Party leader Venkaiah Naidu's chopper
after it force-landed near Gaya, as he was
campaigning for elections in the state. In the
first phase of state assembly elections in Bihar
and adjoining Jharkhand on Thursday, about 20
people are said to have died in violence as a
direct result of clashes with Maoists, who had
called for a boycott of elections. Their ongoing
talks with the state government of Andhra Pradesh
broke down recently on their refusal to surrender
arms during the negotiations.
Pakistan
and China hover
But a refusal on India's
part to support Nepal's government in the fight
against Maoists not only encourages Indian
Maoists, it also leaves the door open for Pakistan
and possibly China to step into what is clearly
India's backyard. Already there is speculation
that the king's latest moves have been encouraged
by China and Pakistan. Both Beijing and Islamabad
have labeled the palace takeover of power as
Nepal's internal matter. While India has been
advocating negotiations with the Maoists, at a
press conference in Kathmandu recently, Pakistani
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz generously offered to
help Nepal crush the Maoist insurgency. He said,
"If Nepal wants, Pakistan is ready to extend all
possible help in fighting the terrorists," and
added that Islamabad was "ready to extend army and
civilian training in Pakistan". He also said that
"control of terrorism will be one of the main
issues on the agenda during the 13th SAARC summit
in Dhaka". He was visiting the Himalayan kingdom
as current chairman of SAARC, during a tour of the
seven member countries.
Several Indian
analysts feel that China knew in advance of the
palace coup. Some feel that the sudden closure of
the Tibetan Welfare Center in Kathmandu in late
January and the coup on February 1 cannot be just
a coincidence. Initially, many had thought that
the palace coup had Indian and US backing. Indeed,
one minister asked the prime minister as much in
the first cabinet committee on security to discuss
the event. But clear denunciation from India and
the West has now led to speculation that the king
had the blessings of China and Pakistan instead.
It is being speculated that one reason
behind the king's decision could be that he wanted
to pursue an exclusively military solution in
dealing with not only the Maoists but also other
dissidents, like those in the media, and he had
Chinese and Pakistani support in the matter. The
Nepali army is reported to have used chopper fire
on student protestors in the tourist town of
Pokhra on February 1, the day of the coup and when
a state-of-emergency was announced. About 15
students are said to have taken bullets at the
Prithvi Narayan College campus in Pokhra, about
200 kilometers from the capital Kathmandu,
protesting against the proclamation suspending
democracy.
India, however, believes it is
unrealistic to try and tackle the Maoists solely
through military means. India itself is
encouraging state governments to negotiate a deal
with home-grown Maoists. Since the coup in Nepal,
for the first time one is hearing voices on Indian
television arguing that the Maoists, whether
Nepalese or Indian, are not foreigners, nor
secessionists, and that these frustrated
individuals represent legitimate grievances of the
people and therefore should be treated differently
than militants in the northeast or Kashmir. Left
Front leaders, too, who support the central
government from outside, are making similar
noises, though they themselves fought a bloody
battle with Maoist militants in states such as
West Bengal that they rule.
Silver
lining for India
There could be one silver
lining for India in the present gloomy scenario.
Almost all political parties in Nepal were
disenchanted with India and considered it
mandatory to take anti-India positions in election
campaigns. With India putting pressure on the king
for the restoration of democracy, politicians who
are currently under house arrest may start
revising their opinion. They suspect India of
harboring hegemonic designs. The very gigantic
size of India and the tiny space that most of its
neighbors occupy in the sub-continent precludes an
easy relationship. India cannot help being big,
and therefore suspect in the eyes of its smaller
neighbors. Also, on many occasions, Indian leaders
have not shown the magnanimity that its smaller
neighbors rightly expect. With its strong showing
in favor of democracy and a relatively soft
approach toward the Maoist insurgency, India may
be moving in the direction of building fences with
those who are likely to rule Nepal in the future.
India wants to be on the right side of history. It
doesn't see generals in Pakistan or absolute
monarchs in Nepal as legitimate and long-term
rulers of these nations.
India has good
reasons to think that it is siding with the people
of Nepal and its future rulers with its current
approach. A survey carried out in August and
September 2003 by a team of Nepali political
scientists led by Professor Krishna Hachhethu of
the Center for Nepal and Asian Studies, Tribhuvan
University, Kathmandu made it clear that the
people firmly support democracy, despite
disenchantment with many of the politicians.
According to Indian psephologist Yogendra Yadav of
New Delhi's Center for the Study of Developing
Societies, who was involved in the survey, it
shows that Nepali citizens retain their trust in
democracy as the best form of government, despite
disappointment with the working of democracy and
with the behavior of politicians.
As many
as 62% of the respondents said that "democracy is
always preferable to any other form of
government"; only 10% said authoritarianism was
acceptable, while 28% were indifferent. It should
be noted, said Yadav, that these figures are not
very different from responses to the same question
in India. Not only do they like democracy, they
think it can work in Nepal. An overwhelming
majority of 79% holds that democracy is suitable
for Nepal, while only 21% say it is not. This
despite strong reservations about the record of
democracy in the country.
Yadav's
conclusion, "If this survey is any guide to the
political mind of Nepal today, the king may have
undertaken a very risky gamble in trying to revive
the executive monarchy. In the short term, he may
have an upper hand, given the state of disunity
and disrepute in which the mainstream political
leaders find themselves today. But in the long run
he is likely to encounter a public that has tasted
democracy and is no longer willing to surrender
its sovereignty. Unwittingly, the king may have
paved the way for a republic of Nepal."
Sultan Shahin is a New
Delhi-based writer.
(Copyright 2005
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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