On Monday, the Indian ambassador to Nepal, Vinay Mohan Kwatra, was summoned before Kathmandu’s Foreign Minister, Pradeep Gyawali, where he was handed a diplomatic note on the country’s position regarding its disputed border issues with New Delhi. This move came as a response to last week’s events, when Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh virtually inaugurated an 80-km road in Uttarakhand, which is set to run via the contested Lipulekh pass. What is this conflict about and what does it mean for Indo-Nepalese relations?
To summarize briefly, Nepal claims that as per the Sugauli Treaty of 1816 signed with the British colonizers, the territory to the east of river Mahakali was to be considered Nepali territory and that both India and Nepal had agreed in 1988 to adhere to the principle of a fixed border for the latter. This territory includes the Lipulekh pass as well as the highly strategic areas of Kalapani and Limpiyadhura. However, as put forth by former Nepali diplomat Lok Raj Baral, a major setback to the Nepali claim is the lack of maps published by Nepal until 1962, as well as the ambiguity of which of the two streams of the river is the demarcation line.
Due to this apparent lack paperwork, India rejects Nepal’s historical claims to the disputed territories. Therefore, while Kathmandu claims Kalapani as part of its Darchula district, New Delhi’s maps recognize it as being in Uttarakhand’s Pithoragarh district. India claims that the construction of the road through the Lipulekh pass, which lies on the India-China border and is a far-western point near Kalapani, is essential to help Hindu pilgrims visit Tibet’s Kailash Mansarovar safely and quickly.
Hence, on Saturday, the Nepali government launched an official protest against India’s “unilateral” inauguration of the road on grounds that it passes through Nepali territory. New Delhi swiftly rejected this statement, saying that the region is “completely within the territory of India.” And while Gyawali stressed that Kathmandu wants an urgent diplomatic resolution to the problem, his country is also considering heightening security by deploying more security forces along its border with India. Of course, this move is doubly a bid to manage the spread of the novel coronavirus. Reports of returning migrant workers entering Nepal via cargo trucks have also prompted stricter border security from Nepali forces. Hence, rising tensions amidst all of this have prompted Indian External Affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to contemplate holding a foreign secretary-level bilateral meeting soon to solve the border dispute.
Over the past few years, several factors have soured India’s deep historical, sociocultural, religious, and economic relations with Nepal. The existing distance between the two countries increased significantly in 2015, when then-foreign secretary Jaishankar visited Kathmandu to heavily criticize the country’s first Constitution for not recognizing the rights of Nepali Madheshis, an ethnocultural group with Indian ancestry. Nepal’sPrime Minister K P Sharma Oli, who was newly elected at the time, saw this visit as an affront to the country’s sovereignty, and matters worsened as India subsequently imposed a trade blockade on trucks at crucial border points. This was a major blow to Nepal as the country relies heavily on Indian supplies and was just about recovering from a devastating earthquake. Further, the signing of a bilateral agreement between Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in the same year to use the Lipulekh pass as a trade route enraged Oli as he was not consulted for this by either side.
Nepal has always leaned closer to China since the 1960s, despite its highly lucrative open border with India. This is a direct perceived threat to New Delhi, who has always considered smaller countries in the region as being vulnerable to external pressures due to their incapability in managing their own security. And even though Modi’s 2014 Neighbourhood First Policy was shaped by this concern, over the years, a surge in China’s economic and strategic presence in the region, as well as Nepal’s preference for Beijing’s rising influence, has continued to diminish its ties with India. For example, Nepalese leaders have supported the membership of China in the SAARC even though it is not a South Asian country. Further, Oli also signed on to Jinping’s famed Belt and Road Initiative in 2016 to construct roadways and railways to further ensure connectivity with the East Asian power. In 2018, he finalized the Transit and Transport Agreement with China, which gave Nepal access to four Chinese ports in Shenzhen, Lianyungang, Zhanjiang, and Tianjin–in addition to dry road and port facilities–in order to dilute Kathmandu’s trade dependence on New Delhi.
It is undeniable that Nepal’s precarious geopolitical positioning makes it a strategic playground for the two giants in the region. Despite laying down the Arun III 900-megawatt hydroelectricity project in 2018, India’s investments in Nepal pale in comparison to China. Beijing has been crucial in financing collaborations to develop Nepal’s water resources and has even become the country’s highest foreign investor. Experts also believe that its critical economicfpizz support to Kathmandu during India’s 2015 blockade strengthened their strategic relationship and ended New Delhi’s monopoly over its fuel imports to its neighbour.
In the larger context of military and security relations at the border, it is important to note that Nepal has, so far, refrained from supporting India or commenting on the abrogation of Article 370 and the removal of Kashmiri statehood in 2019. This is notwithstanding the fact that India has trained and equipped the Nepali police and has even established the Nepal-India Bilateral Consultative Group on Security Issues. The Indian armed forces also have special Gurkha regiments comprised of Nepali soldiers. But the Oli government’s decision to withdraw from the first-ever joint military exercise of the India-led BIMSTEC at the end of 2018–in comparison to its willingness to participate in the Sagarmatha Friendship-2 exercise with China–shows that the country is moving towards being less dependent on India, despite the fact that over two million of its citizens live and work freely across the border as low wage labourers.
There are also pending issues, the most important being the Indian administration’s reluctance to accept the Eminent Person’s Group report on India-Nepal Relations, which proposed the amendment of certain treaties to balance the massive trade imbalance between the two countries. As of 2019, Indian exports to Nepal were valued at over $44 billion. The Oli government also alleges that India has not yet resolved the issue of its foreign exchange reserves after the 2016 demonetization, which resulted in losses worth $108 million to the country.
In tandem with his foreign policy, Modi has consistently relied on soft power to try and present a positive image of India to Nepalis by underlining their cultural similarities and visiting religious sites in the country. Oli and Modi even launched a bus service between Ayodhya in India and Janakpur in Nepal, two crucial places from the Ramayana. Most recently, New Delhi sent around 23 tonnes of essential medicines to Kathmandu to aid their fight against the coronavirus. But none of these efforts seem to be enough to repair the fractured relationship between the two neighbours.
The events that have transpired over the past few days have exposed Nepal’s growing distrust in India and the rather hegemonic role it currently plays in the region.Therefore, unless Modi and Jaishankar urgently comply with Oli and Gyawali’s request for an early meeting of the boundary-talks mechanism, the link road incident may just be a turning point for this important strategic bilateral partnership and has the potential to permanently damage the power’s influence in its neighbourhood. To counter Chinese influence in Nepal in the long term, India must also ramp up its investments in Nepal and maintain a policy of noninterference on its domestic affairs.
Image Source: PM India