The posthumous memoirs of Pranab Mukherjee, India’s 13th President, among other things, echoes the lament over how India lost an opportunity in 1950 to incorporate Nepal into the Indian union.
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru dealt with Nepal very diplomatically, Mukherjee writes in ‘The Presidential Years: 2012-2017’ released on January 5, 2021.
“After the Rana rule was replaced by the monarchy in Nepal, he wished for democracy to take root. Interestingly, Nepal’s king, Tribhuvan Bir Bikram Shah, had suggested to Nehru that Nepal be made a province of India. But Nehru rejected the offer on the grounds that Nepal was an independent nation and must remain so,” Mukherjee says.
“Had Indira Gandhi been in Nehru’s place, she would have perhaps seized upon the opportunity, like she did with Sikkim,” he adds.
Although not a new contention, what makes it significant this time is that it comes not only from a former Indian president but from someone who has dealt with Nepal under successive Nehru successors as foreign and defense minister over several decades.
In a memorable interview with Qatar-based Al Jazeera television in 2009, Mukherjee detailed how India had played a direct role in mainstreaming the former Maoist rebels in an alliance with leading Nepalese opposition parties against the monarchy. If there was anyone versed well enough on Nepal matters amid his own considerable vicissitudes, it was Poltu Da, as Mukherjee was affectionately known.
Far from daunting physically, Mukherjee’s amiable Bengali-tuned diction made him personally likeable. I was struck by his easy accessibility and remarkable openness in discussing a few Nepal-related issues in the corridors of the United Nations Headquarters in the mid-1990s.
It was hard to believe that this was a man who had the audacity to challenge Rajiv Gandhi for the leadership of the Congress Party in the immediate aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination in October 1984.
At a broader level, however, Mukherjee remains emblematic of Indians who know Nepal well – but in their own way. The facts surrounding what really happened at Hyderabad House during King Tribhuvan’s exile in New Delhi in 1950-51 will remain in the realm of speculation. Indians like Mukherjee continue to see an independent Nepal as a product of Nehru’s misguided altruism.
From the Nepalese standpoint, admittedly one not widely known in the country, the situation was so dire that King Tribhuvan and Crown Prince Mahendra were said to routinely converse in Newari to evade their eavesdropping hosts.
This fixation with how Nehru, in rejecting Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel counsel of Nepal’s full and formal incorporation into the Indian union as a matter of national security, was bound to gain credence in India in subsequent decades amid the vagaries of bilateral relations. What must not be overlooked is that much of those difficulties stemmed from Nepal’s assertion of its identity as a sovereign and independent nation.
The 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Nehru’s ambassador and the absolute ruler of a tottering oligarchy may have been one way India thought it could handle the largest of three disparate Himalayan states (the others being Bhutan and Sikkim) the British Raj had left behind.
Nepal came to the treaty table intending to assert and preserve its status as a sovereign nation. If Nehru’s notion of security expressed through the 1950 Treaty had resonance for Nepal, it was to the extent of ensuring an independent Nepal did not threaten India’s interests. It may be entirely fortuitous that the new treaty triggered a chain of events that would culminate in the grand Delhi Compromise. Still, the parties and palace that displaced the Ranas adhered to Nepal’s original expectation from the treaty. Only nine years later, when Nepal was under an elected government, would the reciprocity the Indians sought become public knowledge, when New Delhi revealed the confidential exchange of side letters to the treaty.
Those letters obliged Nepal to depend on India for its security. In case of any threat to the security of the other by a foreign aggressor, the two governments would consult with each other and devise effective countermeasures. Nepal agreed that it would not import arms, ammunition and other military equipment except with India’s consent. Yet when Nepal and India agreed to joint manning of posts on the Nepal–Tibet border and set up an Indian Military Mission in Nepal, they did so when Nepal feared a Chinese threat, particularly after the Chinese occupation of Tibet. These steps were not Kathmandu’s confirmation of India’s invocation of any right to control Nepal’s political and economic life.
The security aspects lost their relevance as Nepal established diplomatic ties with China and concluded their boundary agreement, Nepal’s pursuit of a foreign policy intended to assert its independent identity no longer automatically provided India a second vote at the United Nations General Assembly. A landlocked country dependent on transit through India for trade with third countries went on to find new opportunities for economic diversification. Thus, adhering to international law, it considered transit to be a right but trade a matter of convenience.
Every time Nepal sought a review, India pointed to the provision for unilateral termination on a year’s notice. It was only after democratically elected leaders in the 1990s began pressing the case that New Delhi agreed to discuss the matter. Yet even some of the same Indians who acknowledge how the Indian government and public have never shown adequate sensitivity to Nepalese pride in their sovereignty and independence have difficulty in seeing Kathmandu’s assertion of its independence as more than skilful leveraging of its geographical contiguity with China. During the latest border dispute, many Indian experts and analysts have placed much faith in how the unique people-to-people relations would see the two countries through this crisis. While urging India to do everything it should to nurture the invaluable asset it has in the goodwill of the Nepalese people, some in this fraternity still counsel India to reject the Nepalese state’s ill-conceived territorial claims.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pledge in 2014 to see a revision done during his tenure and invitation to Nepal to present proposals was the clearest articulation of India’s change of heart. Yet Modi still has had the time to receive the report prepared by the bilateral Eminent Persons Group in 2018. How much are pledges worth if a set of nonbinding recommendations agreed together cannot merit sufficient official attention in New Delhi? Mukherjee may not be available to provide an answer. His acolytes must.
Based on the author’s forthcoming book, Backfire in Nepal: How India Lost the Plot to China (New Delhi: Vitasta, 2021).
