Relevance : GS Paper II
Theme of the article
India must recast relations with Nepal on basis of geographic and cultural interdependence, sovereign equality and mutual benefit.
Introduction
President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Kathmandu has helped focus on the changing dynamic between India, China and Nepal. One of the central themes in the new discourse is the alleged loss of Indian “hegemony” over Nepal.
India’s hegemony overstated
- India’s hegemony or primacy in Nepal is somewhat over-stated. Lodged between Tibet and the Gangetic plain, Nepal has close civilisational ties with both China and India. Its geopolitics, too, were shaped by both the neighbours.
- Balancing between Tibet and the Qing empire in the north and British Raj in the south was very much part of modern Nepal’s political evolution. It was only with the weakening of the Qing and the rise of the Raj from the mid-19th century that set the stage for southern dominance over Nepal. But it was not going to last forever.
- When China gained control of Tibet in 1950, Nepal’s monarchy that was frightened by the communist threat turned to Jawaharlal Nehru for protection. Delhi and Kathmandu revived the 19th century security arrangements of the British Raj in a 1950 Treaty of Friendship.
- The Sino-Indian conflict, meanwhile, opened up space for Kathmandu to weaken the treaty arrangements with India and re-balance the relationship.
- India has struggled since the middle of the 20th century to sustain the primacy in Nepal it had inherited from the Raj. China’s dramatic rise in the 21st century makes Beijing a far more compelling partner for Kathmandu.
Reason for loss of hegemony
- India’s failure was not in an over-reliance on geopolitics, but the neglect of geoeconomics. While the security establishment and the political classes operated as if Nepal was a protectorate of India, Delhi’s economic bureaucracy treated Nepal as a separate entity.
- Delhi’s emphasis on economic autarky meant there was no special value attached in India to the commercial interdependence with land-locked Nepal, let alone nurture it.
- Vested interests inevitably found space to arbitrage the wide gap in the economic policies of the two nations.
- Delhi also allowed the border infrastructure to rot over the decades.
- Delhi’s attempts to revive connectivity with Nepal in recent years have run into India’s traditional problems with project implementation.
- Even more important, there has been growing political resistance in Kathmandu to deeper economic relations.
- Put simply, the change in the regional balance and the communist dominance over Nepal’s domestic politics means the old rules don’t apply any more in the triangular relationship.
Options before Nepal
- Kathmandu has at least three possible options in crafting a new strategy for Nepal.
- One is to opt for neutrality and symmetry in its relations with India and China.
- Second, it could decide that a special relationship with China is more valuable than the one with India.
- Third, it could continue a policy of dynamic balancing and make the best of the possibilities with both China and India.
- If Nepal opts for strict symmetry, it would have to turn its open border with India into a closed one similar to its northern frontier with China.
- A considered strategic tilt towards China means Kathmandu would want to discard the special privileges it has in the relationship with Delhi, for example, the freedom for Nepali citizens to live and work in India.
- The third option would involve modernisation of the India relationship and expansion of the China ties with sufficient regard to the concerns of both the powers.
Way forward for India
- For India, it is time stop whining about China’s growing presence in Nepal or lamenting the loss of much-vaunted primacy in Nepal.
- Nothing infuriates the Kathmandu elite more than Delhi’s claim to know what is good for Nepal. Delhi does not. Instead, Delhi should let Nepalese decide what is good for them and tailor India’s own responses accordingly.
Conclusion
India has had its share of strategic errors in dealing with Nepal. The best corrective Delhi can offer is a new compact with Nepal that can build on the natural geographic and cultural interdependence between the two nations. This time around it must be based on sovereign equality and mutual benefit. It is up to Kathmandu in the end to accept, reject or negotiate on such an offer.
