KATHMANDU - The April uprising is still
fresh in the minds of Nepalis, but transition to a
democratic order is taking time. While political
forces with leanings to both left and right
successfully fought together to end a repressive
monarchy, subsequent negotiations to harmonize and
reconcile positions on issues between an alliance
of seven parties with democratic credentials and
the leaders of the Communist Party of Nepal
(Maoist) are yet to come to a satisfactory
conclusion.
The Seven Party Alliance
(SPA), for example, supports the idea of
deciding the fate of monarchy
by a constitutional assembly to be set up through
a poll, but Maoists are skeptical about this idea.
They want the monarchy to be put on suspended
animation till the assembly polls are held, or
else there could be a ploy to retain the
discredited monarchy by assigning it a "ceremonial
role". In any case, the alliance has a joint
stand: that the monarchy must not have a role in
the democratic Nepal.
Girija Prasad
Koirala, who was appointed prime minister after
King Gyanendra bowed to the people's movement for
restoration of democracy, continues to head what
looks like a pre-interim government. It would
become a proper interim government only after the
Maoists joined it, as per previous agreements. One
striking hitch has been the weapons that Maoist
combatants have been carrying. Efforts are being
made to obtain United Nations assistance in arms
management in the period leading to the elections,
expected by next June.
In other words,
Nepal's political status is still in a state of
flux. And the rest of the world knows about it:
India and China, the two giants to the south and
north, are no exception.
However,
authorities in New Delhi, who do not always
reflect the views of the people living across the
vast landmass called India, are not bothered. Even
before the Nepali people found time to
institutionalize the democratic rights they won in
April, enthusiastic officials in the Indian
establishment thought it wise to persuade Nepal's
fledgling "pre-interim" government to ink an
extradition treaty (together with a legal
instrument to implement it) that would replace a
pact signed in 1953.
"It would be a major
step in bilateral relations," the Himalayan Times,
a pro-Indian newspaper, quoted unnamed Nepali
officials as saying. The paper reported that Home
Affairs Minister Krishna Sitaula would visit New
Delhi on October 4 and sign the pact the following
day, along with his Indian counterpart, Shivraj
Patil.
The time chosen to conclude this
controversial treaty was equally interesting, if
not palpably disturbing. It was to be signed
during the Dashain holidays, Nepal's largest
festival, when most of the people, including
student activists, would have returned to villages
for family reunions.
This is the time of
the year when almost all the newspapers take an
extended break. Radio and television networks too
run their shows with a skeleton staff. To make the
matter worse, no official announcement was made
about that upcoming important event, neither were
details of the proposed treaty made public. The
whole exercise was being conducted as if it were a
covert operation.
At least the secretive
method adopted left room for public apprehension.
"There is no shortage of people in our
neighborhood who would always want to fish in the
troubled waters," said Narayan Man Bijukchhe, head
of the Nepal Workers and Peasants Party, a
component of the SPA. Jhalanath Khanal, a senior
leader of another constituent of the alliance,
told a radio interviewer that he and his party had
no information about the signing of the pact.
That indeed was an irony, because one of
his party colleagues, Khadga Oli, the deputy prime
minister and in charge of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, was away in New York to address the
United Nations at that time, and he later told the
media that he, too, did not know about the treaty.
He said he was not consulted at all though the
issue was under his ministry's jurisdiction.
Something happened in the interim, and
Koirala directed his home minister to defer his
trip to New Delhi, even if the decision had to be
made at the eleventh hour. The reason given
publicly for the postponement of the visit was a
request by top Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal,
aka Prachanda ("awesome"), to Koirala to accord
priority to a crucial round of political
negotiations at home, between rebel leaders and
government representatives. It sounded logical, as
Home Minister Sitaula has been the coordinator of
the government team at peace talks with the
Maoists.
But knowledgeable Maoist sources
told Asia Times Online that the visit to New Delhi
was canceled primarily because Prachanda expressed
his party's reservations, contending that a treaty
concluded with an unrepresentative government
would not be binding to subsequent, elected,
governments in Nepal. In other words, Prachanda
played the role of opposition even though his
party does not have representation in the present
parliament that was restored at the end of April.
Officials in New Delhi were visibly upset
when they learned about Kathmandu's abrupt
decision. Their unhappiness, as reported by the
Times News Network on October 4, was directed at
the Maoists for having misunderstood the intention
of the treaty in question. They (Maoists)
perceived that the agreements were aimed at
breaking the "nexus" between Indian and Nepali
Maoists.
Besides, there are a few dozen
Nepali Maoists detained in Indian jails on various
charges. Indian officials might also have found
Maoist objection untenable because had it not been
for New Delhi's efforts, first discreetly and then
overtly, no 12-point agreement between the Maoists
and the SPA would have been possible last
November. And without that, the Nepali Maoists
would not have been in the position they are in
now.
High-ranking officials in the Koirala
administration concede that an imminent danger has
been averted, giving Nepal some breathing space.
In their opinion, prolonged complacency will
inevitably give an opportunity to those who are
bent on bending Nepal's sovereignty.
Why
are Nepalis so upset about these treaties? What
makes them so apprehensive about India's perceived
"grand design"? Some of the reasons that appear
plausible in this context are based on experience.
New Delhi has often found it expedient to push
through crucial pacts when Nepal is run by a weak,
a divided or a coalition government.
The
1950 treaty of peace and friendship is a case in
point. That treaty, signed by an autocratic ruler
who was about to be overthrown within months, has
been rightly described as an "unequal" pact since
the day it was concluded.
In January 1965,
India secretly concluded a defense agreement with
Nepal's embattled monarch, King Mahendra, who was
getting unpopular in Nepal for having dismissed an
elected government and dissolved parliament. When
that agreement was made public in the late 1980s
in the wake of Nepal's defense purchases from
China, New Delhi's message to Kathmandu was that
Mahendra had agreed to limit some of Nepal's
defense-related options through that pact.
In 1990, as in 1950, New Delhi accosted
beleaguered King Birendra with a draft of an
"agreement" on mutual cooperation through its
foreign secretary, S K Singh. The palace, however,
avoided jumping on the bait.
The draft,
initially kept as a secret document, was later
obtained by an Indian author, Avtar Singh Bhasin,
who produced it in a book he published called
Nepal's Relations with India and China
(Documents 1947-92). A careful study of the
draft makes it quite clear that the real intention
behind the draft was to downgrade independent
Nepal's status to a "protectorate" like Bhutan.
"When the chips are down, India may find
the going tough in Nepal, if she fails to
modernize her feudal relationship with Nepal and
put it on a equal footing of trust and
confidence," Bhasin says in the book's
introductory chapter. New Delhi's repeated
contentions that India's relationship with Nepal
is "unique" and age-old are not something
acceptable to the Nepali intelligentsia as well.
It is a recorded fact that political/diplomatic
relations between the two countries began only in
1947, when an independent country called India was
born.
Controversy over the extradition
treaty began, in fact, in January 2005, when Nepal
was under the indirect rule of King Gyanendra.
Senior officials of home ministries on both sides
had then met in New Delhi and "initialed" the
treaty and the accompanying document. Media
reports, then and now, indicate that the treaty
contains provisions to permit extradition of even
"third-country nationals" to and from India.
Theoretically, reciprocity requires India
to hand over suspected criminals to Nepal as well,
but in reality Kathmandu's ability to retrieve
third-country criminals from India would be
severely restricted. In essence, it is only India
that stands to gain, at Nepal's cost. New Delhi,
which remains obsessed by Pakistan and its
intelligence service, would find it easy to invoke
the treaty and pick up any Pakistani nationals
legally residing in Nepal.
Indian
officials might also be tempted to get Chinese
nationals detained whenever New Delhi's relations
with Beijing become sour. There are a number of
other countries with which India might not be
comfortable at different times. If the nationals
of these countries are also arrested on New
Delhi's "request", Kathmandu would find itself in
a highly embarrassing situation. Not only that,
some of the countries might take serious steps
aimed at winding up their diplomatic presence in
Nepal, gradually pushing it toward isolation.
Neither China nor Pakistan nor Britain nor
the United States has openly reacted to these
media reports (which incidentally have not
officially been contradicted), but to think that
nobody will react if the treaty is actually signed
would be preposterous. China, for instance, is
unlikely to remain silent if Indian moves turn
provocative. If for no other reason, China has
always been sensitive on the issue of Tibet, which
shares a border with Nepal.
Apart from
that, Chinese scholars on private missions to
Nepal often drop hints of what Beijing thinks
about South Asia. China continues to see only
Pakistan as its ally. Simultaneously, China
accepts India as a regional power, considers trade
with India important and wants widen its market
area. That is why it does not seek to antagonize
India, either for developing closer relations with
the US or projecting itself as a country demanding
a greater role in international affairs.
However, when it comes the matter of
safeguarding its security interests, Beijing is
least likely to remain a silent spectator. It
"would be unrealistic to assume that they
[Chinese] have no alternative strategy in case the
present policy fails", Yadhunath Khanal, the grand
old man of Nepali diplomacy, wrote in a book
published shortly after India and Pakistan made
their nuclear tests in 1998.
The late
Khanal is the only Nepali diplomat thus far to get
ambassadorial assignments in New Delhi, Washington
and Beijing. "Nobody, however friendly, can think
for us about our relations with India and China
and the sensitive balance implied in it," he
observed. Khanal was appointed ambassador to New
Delhi around the time China and India fought a war
in 1962.
Around that time, China's vice
premier, Marshal Chen Yi, made a statement that
China would support Nepal if it were to be invaded
by another country. But is that undertaking still
valid, more than four decades later when there
have been substantive changes in China's world
view and its policy toward smaller neighbors?
"Yes, it is still valid," was the answer
Chen Hao-su gave a Nepali journalist who posed
that question at a Kathmandu seminar Chen attended
last December. Besides being the son of Chen Yi,
Chen Hao-su is the head of the Chinese People's
Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries.
This association is not just an ordinary
non-governmental agency. The jobs that Chen and
his association do are highly significant in terms
of policy input to the Chinese Foreign Office,
Nepali diplomats admit.
Nepal's
geopolitical situation is different from Sri
Lanka's. While Sri Lanka does not have an
immediate neighbor other than India, Nepal does
have a neighbor in China, which has to safeguard
its own security interests, mainly in Tibet. Those
who have seen New Delhi sending troops to Sri
Lanka in 1980s to rescue Tamils involved in a
separatist movement do not believe that India
would repeat that exercise in Nepal.
The
other important catch is the presence of Gurkhas,
soldiers drawn mostly from rural Nepal under a
1947 tripartite treaty signed by Britain, India
and Nepal. How would the Gurkhas, who make up
one-eighth of India's infantry battalions, react
or respond if New Delhi ever decided to send
troops to control their homeland?
According to Maoist sources, while taking
up the extradition treaty issue with Prime
Minister Koirala, their top leader was thinking
about the safety and security of Nepali Maoists in
India. He was also made to realize the diplomatic
implications of the treaty with Nepal's other
friends and neighbors. In addition to this,
Koirala was briefed about the direct impact the
treaty would have on Nepal's domestic
administration.
One of the worrying
factors, for instance, is a provision that in
effect lifts the reasonable restrictions on Indian
police personnel entering Nepal without prior
permission in their bid to arrest criminals and
collect evidence against them. The porous and
unregulated nature of the border makes it
virtually impossible to monitor such movements.
New Delhi, which used to offer apologies for
"inadvertent action" of police teams in the past,
would no longer be required to apologize.
This kind of arrangement is simply not
acceptable to Nepalis. Sensing possible outbursts
of anger, the Nepali official who initialed the
treaty in January 2005 offered this clarification:
"These [treaty] provisions do not mean that Indian
police can do anything inside Nepal." In fact,
this "clarification" is a proof that the
controversial treaty indeed contains provisions
unacceptable to citizens of an independent
country.
Politically sensitive Nepalis
tend to assume that New Delhi's meddlesome
behavior is largely responsible for turning
Nepal's political process murkier day by day. What
looks incredible but is true is reflected in a
demand for a ceremonial monarchy. The April
uprising was a clear message to end this feudal as
well as expensive institution.
Koirala,
who would have become the country's first
president in a republican setup, suddenly changed
his original stand for a republican Nepal, mainly
because of pressures from Indians and Americans to
retain the monarchy in ceremonial form.
Americans want it because of the Maoist
threat, especially when Nepal's non-communist
political forces appear weak. Indians are also
against the idea of abolishing the monarchy
inasmuch as Hindu nationalists in the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) insist that the monarchy in
Nepal is essential if "Hindutva" is to be given a
chance for resurgence in South Asia. Sadly, very
few of BJP fundamentalists realize the fact that
Nepalis are not, and cannot afford to be, as
orthodox as their followers in India are.
The main constituent of New Delhi's
governing coalition, the Congress party Sonia
Gandhi heads, looks ambivalent. However, leaders
of its left-leaning coalition partners, such as
Sitaram Yechuri, are quite active, often offering
their own prescriptions. Then there is the Indian
bureaucracy, which has yet to change its colonial
mindset inherited from British masters. The
bureaucracy is adept at taking advantage of the
lack of clarity at the level of political
leadership. This has become more obvious since the
time the Ministry of External Affairs was made
bereft of a full-fledged minister, after the
resignation of K Natwar Singh.
That
India's external relations, especially those with
neighboring countries, are not being conducted
under a coherent and visionary policy guideline
has been a matter of intense debate in New Delhi
itself for a while. The latest discourse, with
stinging criticisms on the issue, took place on
September 9 when the Indian Council of World
Affairs invited Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran to
give a talk the title of which was: "Does India
Have a Neighborhood Policy?"
This implied
that the organizers did not have a shred of doubt
that New Delhi lacked a policy that could look
after India's long-term interests in the
neighborhood. Saran, who was retiring from the
post at the end of September, unwittingly admitted
the lapse when he referred to the ongoing "effort"
to construct an overarching vision for South Asia
"so that we do not deal with neighbors in an ad
hoc and reactive manner".
His presentation
there contained several paradoxes and
contradictions, later attracting a volley of
questions from the audience. While responding to a
question, Shyam Saran, who was his country's
ambassador to Nepal before being appointed foreign
secretary some two years ago, expressed a view
that reveals New Delhi's thought at least at the
bureaucratic level: "What we have been able to do
with Bhutan we would certainly like to do with
Nepal as well." He referred to Nepal's large
potential, of about 87,000 megawatts, of
hydropower - and India's needs - on economical
terms.
Too many cooks spoil the broth, so
goes a saying. This appears to be Nepal's case in
New Delhi. Men and women handling defense-related
matters see it prudent not to bother about
democracy and assist the Nepalese army, preferably
with the monarchy; politicians think it unwise to
ignore the people's will and the democratic order;
the bureaucracy finds it expedient to push through
treaties and pacts even if these defy
international norms and practices.
What
emerges ultimately beyond dispute is that New
Delhi's interest and interference in Nepal is
excessive. It would be unrealistic to assume that
the United States and the rest of the
international community are unaware of these
trends based on events reports of which are
available to those keen to read and discern them.
The fact is that Washington does not want
to annoy or antagonize New Delhi for obvious
reasons: the United States' relationship with
India is of a strategic nature, and the US
administration cannot afford to introduce bold
measures on Nepal, fearing that these could have
negative effects on its relations with India. The
case of the Bhutanese refugees is a burning
example. Instead of persuading India to "advise"
the Bhutanese king (a 1949 treaty has provision
for advice on external matters) to take back his
forcibly evicted subjects, Washington chose to
obfuscate the matter further by offering to take
up to 60,000 of nearly 100,000 refugees for
settlement in the United States. Refugees in camps
are unable to understand its implications and are
not sure what would happen to the remaining
40,000-plus hapless men, women and children.
What does India want in
Nepal? In the words of an American analyst
studying Maoist movements worldwide, India first
needs to give up its desire to remain the
hegemonic power in South Asia.
Said Thomas
A Marks: "India's interest in the current
situation is in having a stable neighbor,
especially one that does not contribute to India's
own growing Maoist problem." This is feasible only
when New Delhi offers public support for a
functioning democracy in Nepal. And this goal, in
turn, can be achieved once Indians stop becoming
omnipresent in each of Nepal's major political
parties. The policy of instigating one party
against the other cannot be construed as a
farsighted strategy.
In fact, the best
help India can extend to Nepal is to offer an
atmosphere where Nepalis can help themselves. This
is a view also shared by some of India's
well-meaning distinguished citizens. S Sudhakar
Reddy, a member of the Indian parliament, is one
of them. He was a member of an Indian delegation
that visited Nepal a month after the April
uprising.
His following observations, made
after the Nepal visit, were reported by the Press
Trust of India: "Keeping in view ... experiences
with Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, it is better that
we keep away from the internal affairs of that
country."
Dhruba Adhikary, who
has been a Dag Hammarskjold fellow, is a
Kathmandu-based journalist.
(Copyright
2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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