70 Years of India-China Diplomatic Relations: 5 Questions

Foreign Policy Research Center Journal interview with Sanjay Upadhya

1. What Mao Zedong did to Jawaharlal Nehru, Xi Jinping has done to Narendra Modi. Has ‘personal diplomacy’ failed in the case of India-China relations?

Personal diplomacy was always going to have its limits vis-à-vis India and China, considering the scope, content, regional and global impact of the bilateral relations. Moreover, too many external variables are at play with varying levels of intensity. Hoping to reconcile so many complex dynamics through personal chemistry into a stable bilateral relationship can be audacious at best. If Mao Zedong’s and Jawaharlal Nehru’s warmth fizzled amid the geostrategic realignments of their time, the Modi-Xi bonhomie alone could not have seen the two countries through the shifts in the global landscape that COVID-19-has accelerated. For a moment in the vast sweep of time, domestic disagreements, competing ambitions, and threat perceptions amplified by opposing political systems were balanced by a given set of external factors that appeared to have been in equilibrium. The pandemic suddenly shook the international system by accelerating developments already in play. Its impact on the China-India relationship was bound to appear precipitous.

2. America’s fickle foreign policy play with India continues. (Navtej Sarna) The US hasn’t woken up to India’s nightmare of a two-front war with China and Pakistan. To what extent can India expect support from a semi-isolationist America that is withdrawing from various parts of the world and demanding erstwhile allies take care of their own problems?

Despite the current bilateral bonhomie and the attendant rhetoric on both sides, the US foreign policy and defense establishment is severely affected by cold memories of the past. There may have been moments where the world’s largest democracy and its most powerful one could have struck an enduring alliance, say in the 1950s and around the 1962 India-China war. Yet even before New Delhi moved toward an alliance with Moscow a decade later, the United States had enough reasons to be wary of India. To Pandit Nehru, non-alignment was the vehicle that would allow the great powers as well as newly independent nations to find and foster their respective places. As India sought to perfect strategic autonomy as a viable instrument of foreign policy, the Americans were already detecting in the Non-aligned Movement a pronounced tilt toward the Eastern bloc. Unofficially, India and the United States would find themselves on opposite blocs on such issues as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Vietnamese invasion of what was then Kampuchea.

The perceptible US lukewarmness on India’s Himalayan front and alacrity on securing a maritime alliance with New Delhi is driven by Washington’s specific considerations and requirements. Obvious, while weighing the merits of waving – so to speak – the Taiwan and Tibet cards, New Delhi views Washington’s general intentions and motives with deep skepticism, if not outright suspicion. A shared democratic heritage, economic system, language, and other complementarities may not be enough to compensate for the disparities in their values, attitudes, needs and expectations. As a matter of internal consensus for India, dependence on America cannot yet be a prudent strategy. Thus diversification of multilayered relationships across an assortment of nations becomes a logical extension of India’s strategic autonomy. That many of those nations also happen to be on inimical terms with the United States becomes of less relevance in New Delhi and Washington. As for China, New Delhi realizes that a momentary convergence of Indian-US interests on one dimension of the US-China equation cannot be expected to distort the complex triangular relationship. 

3. China impacts India’s ties with her neighbours. Have neighbours gone too far away from India?

If familiarity has bred contempt for India among its neighbors, China continues to benefit from a sense of exoticism. What appears to be a phase of Indian withdrawal amid Chinese inroads is also a time for India and China’s neighbors to weigh their relations with each giant against those with the other. More importantly, in the next phase, neighboring countries must work out how much more they would stand to gain from cooperation with both. This process, perhaps one that could take decades, would require shedding old attitudes, recognizing current ones for what they really are, and making a rational choice for the future. Efforts to manage conflicts well enough certainly have not resulted in unimpeded cooperation – as the breakdown in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation underlines. But, then, cooperation, must be given a fair chance to mitigate conflict. 

4. Will India be able to balance a growing security dilemma vis-a-vis China against the magnetic appeal of its market as a spur to domestic economic growth?

Just as India’s comprehensive personality cannot be understood in unidimensional terms, it cannot allow one part to hold the rest hostage. India’s security dilemma vis-à-vis China will certainly influence the bilateral economic relationship. There are enough economic complementarities for the two countries to work relatively easily in certain areas. Other areas might require prudence, or even contraction/expansion as the situation in any given moment may warrant. The logic of the Rajiv Gandhi-Deng Xiaoping consensus in the late 1980s to disallow the border dispute from seizing the general promise in bilateral ties was not flawed. Precisely because they did so have India and China today been able to share such a vibrant and multifaceted relationship in the decades since. Today, the border certainly has come to bear the larger tensions spread across the relationship between two rising powers. But India and China do have shared interests in promoting a fair and equitable international order where both can continue striving for their full potential while sorting out their disagreements. Operating in such constrained circumstances would certainly require greater persistence and commitment amid growing pushback from different quarters. Fortunately, India’s civilizational strengths provide it with the wisdom and maturity to protect and project its interests. 

5. What should India do to safeguard her interests in view of the changing world geopolitical scenario? External Affairs Minister Jaishankar said that India will never join any alliance system in the future just as it never did in the past.

I believe Dr. Jaishankar has spoken well. India has aspirations, expectations, capacities and beliefs that may flower or wither in keeping with its proper recognition of the realities of the times. An alliance-driven set of expectations and obligations would require India to depart from an approach that has, on balance, worked fairly well. World geopolitics will always be in a state of flux and India would have to find a space to pursue its objectives and interests within the specific demands and circumstances of the time. In that sense, an alliance system would be more of a constraint. Instead, India has the means and methods to address challenges and explore opportunities based on issue-specific deliberations.

Foreign Policy Research Centre Journal (J-44) 2020 (4): 56-58

COVID-19: Impact on World Geopolitics

Foreign Policy Research Center Journal interview with Sanjay Upadhya

1. Misplaced priorities – expenditure on armament vs public health care – have been exposed in the context of COVID-19 pandemic. Do you agree?

 That persistent incongruity would certainly rank among today’s most glaring ironies. Countries that have spent untold precious billions defending themselves against one another have been now left cowering under this collective threat to humanity. We may debate endlessly whether even the most arduous and educated preparations could have minimized the scale of the calamity COVID-19 has inflicted on us. Still, the obsession of countries – big and small –with ever-modern weapons to defeat and deter real and perceived adversaries diverted vital resources and energies away from civil defense, first responders, hospitals, clinics and other essential services and facilities. 

Sadly enough, though, our thoughts and actions are unlikely to change significantly. If anything, the pandemic has sharpened rivalries among great and medium-sized powers alike at a time when there is still so much we do not know about the origins and implications of Covid-19, much less about the most effective ways of emerging out of the crisis.

 

2. Do you believe the efficacy of international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization is at stake in the light of COVID-19?

The World Health Organization and the wider United Nations system are symptomatic of the paralysis that had crept into international organizations long before the pandemic broke out. The White House has buttressed its serious allegations that China’s failure to disclose the origin and extent of the outbreak of the virus in Wuhan with equally grave accusations that Beijing pressured the WHO to take Chinese claims at face value, thereby contributing to the current scale of the pandemic. The fact that the United States has dissociated itself with the WHO and pulled funding from the premier international health organization at such a crucial time is telling. The deadlock in the UN Security Council that has prevented meaningful action against what is by all accounts such an egregious threat to international peace and security has exposed the failure of world powers to act collectively even where such action is so obviously warranted. In that sense, the pandemic is a political crisis as much as it is one related to health.

The general trust deficit has trickled down and manifested itself locally in the lackluster response to the UN Secretary-General’s appeal for a global cease-fire. Where other international and regional organizations have mustered the determination to act, their responses have fallen far short of the challenge faced. The case for reforming international organizations to better reflect the realities of the modern world has now been bolstered by the urgency of such restructuring in the interest of effective and sustained collective action.

 

3. COVID-19 and the environment: Is there a relationship? What issues deserve urgent attention?

 

The pandemic has underscored humanity’s inextricable links to the environment in the broadest sense of the term. The onset, seriousness and cost of COVID-19 have been tied, one way or another, to people’s relationship with one another and to the environment they share. A healthy and durable human-environment relationship will have to progress in more diverse ways and at different levels. Cities, towns and smaller population centers alike will need room for greater autonomy to act in line with their specific contexts and circumstances. As provincial and national authorities seek broader integration of action, nations-states, too, must cooperate more effectively on sharing information, resources and technical capabilities.

More broadly, our discourse on the environment must break out of the destructively politicized medium- to long-term framework of climate change to encompass everyday solutions that would help to preserve and perpetuate the secure and stable environment so vital to our shared existence. Our challenge will certainly mount commensurately as we start fostering collective action amid a simultaneous dilution of authority and approaches. Yet it is a challenge we can ignore at our collective peril.

 

4. How do you visualize the shape of future world geopolitics – bipolar or multipolar? How will the pandemic impact the US-China rivalry?

 

The multifaceted US-China rivalry that has been sharpening over the years would likely exacerbate amid today’s heightening passions, anxieties and misperceptions. This would indicate an ever more unstable bipolar paradigm of conflict, confrontation and cooperation. With the United States increasingly likely to be preoccupied domestically and China showing signs of having emerged more resilient than the rest, it would be tempting to foresee a clear-cut scenario. However, the United States will continue to retain its other forms of power and influence such as language, religion and religious heritage, arts and literature, pattern of political and social life that would fortify its economic and military preponderance. China, needless to say, would find it difficult to compete in many of these areas. Still, the world has become too integrated for a complete decoupling of its two preponderant economies. Amid this dichotomy, other powers like Russia, United Kingdom, India, Japan, Brazil and South Africa as well as key member states of the European Union have their own comparative advantages in distinct areas and would continue to leverage them. Each would have an incentive to exercise greater independence in cooperating with both Washington and Beijing as they would see fit. How much space smaller states can enjoy to make choices independent of the major protagonists as well as the middle-sized powers would go on to determine the stability or otherwise of the emerging global order.

Ideally, the pandemic should have taught nations and peoples the virtues of cooperation. However, human nature, political systems, economic constraints, social and cultural diversity, among other things, would continue to present a multiplicity of values, attitudes, needs and expectations that must be reconciled with the imperative of collaboration.

 

 

5. Do you see an enhanced role for India in the post-COVID-19 world order?

 

The post-COVID-19 imperatives of repositioning the international manufacturing base and ensuring secure and stable global supply chains, among others, anticipate an enhanced role for India. More significantly, India’s historical experiences, geographical expanse, political pluralism, economic robustness, scientific and technological capabilities, ethnic diversity and military prowess are all invaluable assets in the quest to drive the kind of global cooperation the world is going to need ideally to overcome the current challenge and meet similar ones in the future. That vision must, however, contend with realities as they exist today. One area that is likely to come in sharper focus is India’s vision and practice of strategic autonomy. As it aspires for and assert its claims to a broader and more beneficial international leadership role, New Delhi may also find itself under growing pressure to ‘hedge’ and ‘bandwagon’ between the principal global protagonists. Enlightened self-interest would have to contend with sheer pragmatism based on issue and context.

How significant and advantageous a role India can play would depend on the level of freedom it can enjoy from its traditional security-defense preoccupations. In that sense, the deliberate as well as fortuitous actions of other key global actors as events unfold would be major determinants.

Foreign Policy Research Centre Journal (2020), 43(3): 72-74

India–Nepal Relations: Post-2014

Foreign Policy Research Center Journal interview with Sanjay Upadhya

1. How does Nepal look at India’s ‘Neighborhood First’ Policy post-2014?

Nepal welcomed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election in 2014 as a harbinger of change in bilateral relations. Over the months, Mr. Modi overtures – rhetorical as well as real – reinforced Nepali perceptions of the advent of a positive era. The economic blockade India imposed the following year changed all that. If India had any legitimate reservations on the content of Nepal’s new constitution as well as the nature and direction of Nepal’s growing relationship with China, New Delhi could have chosen to address them through proper diplomatic and political channels. To this day, the Nepali people do not know much about India’s grievances.
That India used an agitation launched by Nepali Madhesi leaders for greater internal autonomy to camouflage its imposition of a wholesale economic blockade for months on only served to validate Nepali perceptions of the enduring nature of the divide-and-rule policy India had inherited from the British Raj. Moreover, the fact that the blockade came merely months after Nepal suffered a devastating earthquake only hardened Nepali sentiments. The blockade has left Nepal in a cautious wait-and-see mood vis-à-vis any Indian initiatives such as ‘Neighborhood First’.

2. How does India look at Nepal’s foreign policy – From ‘looking at India’ to ‘backing up China’?

China’s growing assertiveness in Nepal is an undeniable reality. It is also true that Nepal continues to use its relations with China to balance India – sometimes too flagrantly. Today Nepal is ruled by a Communist Party formed recently by two factions sharing a pronounced Maoist legacy, which is new experience for the country. Nepali opposition parties regularly caution the government against tilting to the north out of sheer ideological fealty. It would be wrong, however, to view official Nepali policies and pronouncements as an outgrowth of some collective national strain of anti-Indianism.
In 2006, India played a major role in facilitating the alliance between mainstream democratic parties and the Maoist rebels to restore peace after a 10-year ‘people’s war’. Yet Chinese engagement in the economic, social and cultural spheres of Nepal has grown precipitously since 2006. While the causes and consequences of China’s expanding footprint in Nepal precisely during this period continues to be studied extensively in Nepal and India, there has been a natural political impact of Beijing’s active engagement. We cannot keep dwelling on the supposed ease with which Nepal flashes the China card against India at every opportunity without trying to understand the real compulsions that may lay behind Nepal’s recent policies and pronouncements.

3. Do you agree that India’s effort to revitalize BIMSTEC is signaling that its foreign policy is now shifting to address the reservations of its neighbours?

Nepal looks forward to the revitalization of BIMSTEC as a new dimension of regional cooperation for collective prosperity. The eastward shift of the locus to include new partners certainly brings new opportunities for Nepal. At the same time, there is a feeling in Nepal that BIMSTEC may be evolving in a way that would supplant the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. Nepal is fully behind the notion that bilateral issues, such as those between India and Pakistan, must not be allowed to hold back regional cooperation. However, it also recognizes the limits that could be imposed by overtly exclusionary efforts. SAARC and BIMSTEC are antithetical entities and should not be considered as such.

4. Why did Nepal prefer to be neutral during the Doklam standoff in 2017?

From Nepal’s perspective, the Doklam standoff was a symptom of the larger border dispute between India and China. New Delhi and Beijing have wisely decided not to let their long-running border dispute prevent cooperation in other mutually beneficial areas. Yet Nepal cannot be oblivious to the possibility of periodic India-China border flare-ups pending a formal and final settlement between the two countries. More importantly, Nepal recognizes the direct and dire implications of such tensions given its own precarious position between the two giant neighbors. As such, Nepal needs to maintain extreme judiciousness in its approach so as to do no further harm. Neutrality on Doklam was guided by Nepal’s national interest.

5. India bashing is still a favorite sport with most Nepalis who blame New Delhi for most of the ills in their country little knowing the dynamics of relations between both countries. Do you subscribe to this viewpoint?

This has been a long-standing trait in Nepal because of the rich political value it produces domestically. However, a shift in Nepali public opinion is also becoming palpable in recent years. There is growing recognition that Nepal must engage more constructively with India on all contentious issues and shun grandstanding in order to sustain a mutually productive relationship. Over the last decade, increasing contacts with China in different areas have allowed Nepal to compare and contrast its relationship with each neighbor. There is growing appreciation of how geography, culture, politics and language bring Nepal closer to India as well as the advantages they offer. History and geography as well as the realities of the modern world have taught us that Nepal-India and Nepal-China relations cannot and need not be mutually exclusive.

6. Do you believe transforming the India-Nepal border from an ‘open border’ to a ‘closed border’ would severely damage the traditional socio-cultural ties?

I do. More than that, I am not sure Nepal can sustain the short-term costs closing the border would entail – or even whether the costs would be short. Nepalis recognize the benefits accruing from an open border with India very well because they are living it every day. In a spirit of true reciprocity, Nepal should address the political, security, economic and diplomatic concerns of India as far as practicable to maintain what I believe is a basic underpinning of our vital relationship.

7. What are the existing security relations and strategic perceptions of India and Nepal? What are the reasons for the erosion of mutuality and its impact on Indo-Nepal relationship?

Theoretically, at least, the key underpinnings of a robust security relationship between Nepal and India are in place. Concerns on both sides relate to implementation of those commitments. Each country has grievances over the safe haven criminals and questionable characters enjoy on the other side of the border. As far as Nepal is concerned, India may perhaps pause to consider whether lack of action on the part of Nepali authorities is deliberate or is rooted in administrative and police weaknesses. This is not to deny the existence of malicious motives behind certain cases.
On contentious cases, India could approach Nepal on a case-by-case basis. Definitional gaps relating to criminal activities need to be handled through legal and judicial institutions.
Similarly, the strategic perceptions of each country are defined by realities based on their sovereign existence. The erosion of mutuality is rooted in the tendency on both sides to attribute every instance of inaction, hesitation and deliberation to some deep-seated antipathy toward the other. However, I do see signs of change for the better on both sides. One is that India and China have become more aware of the potential of third countries engaged with Nepal to disrupt the stability of what is emerging as a vital triangular Sino-Indian-Nepali relationship. Of course, there is a vast distance between recognizing something and doing something about it. Still, this realization could provide a sound basis for positive action for all three countries to usher in a phase of peace and prosperity in the region.

8. Indian army chief General Bipin Rawat says Nepal and Bhutan cannot delink from India due to geography, cautions countries against China’s aid. Do you agree with this statement?

There is little to quibble with the first part of Gen. Rawat’s statement. The second part is problematic on at least two counts. First, any decision on whether to accept Chinese aid has to be made by Nepalis themselves. Second, Gen. Rawat’s caution comes from his specific and specialized vantage point, i.e., the Indian military, which is but one dimension of relations between states.
Nepali decision-makers and the public are aware enough of the global debate surrounding costs and benefits of Chinese assistance. Nepalis are equally aware that China, like India, is a sovereign and independent country that makes decisions based on its values, attitudes, needs and expectations. Based on a careful assessment of relevant considerations, Nepalis should be free to make decisions. Of course, Nepalis should listen to the views and perspectives of people like Gen. Rawat in a spirit of utmost goodwill.

9. The proposed China-Nepal railway is expected to be game-changer. Nepal’s hope is that apart from new trading opportunities, the railway will offer a crucial lifeline against potential Indian blockades. Do you agree?

The China-Nepal railway has been a promise dating back to the first meeting between King Birendra and Chairman Mao in the early 1970s, when it was a technical improbability. Even though the idea is becoming more feasible, Nepalis have gradually come around to realizing the futility of hyping it without at least gaining a vague idea of when it might eventually come into operation. From most accounts, the project is still in the technical feasibility phase. Then there are questions of funding. Furthermore, we need to know what those trains will carry into Nepal and how those commodities and products will eventually be priced and whether Nepalis can afford them as an alternative to supplies from India.
Yes, there are people who think the Chinese railway will offer a crucial lifeline against potential Indian blockades. Even if that were true, I think such a focus would be misplaced. We need to deploy our collective efforts to conduct Nepal-India relations in an atmosphere of mutual trust and goodwill so as to preclude future blockades.

10. Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his May 2018 visit said India-Nepal relations are like those of a family and that misunderstandings were now over. However, India remained silent on exchanging banned Indian notes parked in various financial and banking institutions and held by general people. Any prospects of solution to this problem?

From media accounts and public pronouncement of key Indian political figures, it seems India has realized that the blockade was a mistake. Nepali leaders, too, while periodically raking up the issue of the blockade, recognize the imperative of turning a new page. On the issue of banned Indian notes, it looks like both governments have decided to address the issue quietly.
The political process facilitated by India in 2006 eventually abolished the monarchy two years later and ushered in a political order that – at least, theoretically – has broadened popular political participation and inclusion. Perhaps as an unintended consequence, it has also created strategic ambiguity as a multiplicity of actors such as the European Union and the United States are active alongside India and China, sometimes at cross-purposes. Amid growing disenchantment with the government and even the political order, many Nepalis are watching whether Prime Minister Modi’s second term will see any significant change in India’s Nepal policy.

FPRC Journal, 38-2019(2), Foreign Policy Research Center, New Delhi, 2019.

Nepal: Stabilizing A Soft Strategic Triangle

By Sanjay Upadhya

With the dust still swirling on the path Chinese President Xi Jinping tread during his 22-hour state visit to Nepal earlier this week, the international reaction is all over the place. From one set of headlines, you would be forgiven for believing that Xi just pulled the geostrategic locus of the world’s newest republic – ruled by democratically elected communists – northward.
From the other set, you could hardly be faulted for wondering how Kathmandu mustered the courage to snub Beijing by so brazenly refusing to sign extradition and defense treaties. In an age of extremes, such tension acquires additional news value.
The reality, though, lies somewhere in the middle.
While Xi’s visit was long on pomp and ceremony, it was also the first visit by a Chinese president to Nepal in 23 years. Kathmandu was the last South Asian capital Xi chose to visit since assuming the presidency six years ago. (Bhutan, which is under India’s tight overlordship, does not qualify yet as a destination for a Chinese president.)
Nepal’s plight was a far cry from the proximity it enjoyed with China under Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin. While Mao never went abroad barring two trips to the Soviet Union, his premier, Zhou Enlai visited Nepal twice. In early 1978, Deng made Nepal as part of the itinerary of his first foreign visit since his return to power in post-Mao China. President Li Xiannian visited in 1981, which Jiang arrived in 1999.
A significant fact is that Xi landed in Kathmandu after holding an informal summit with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in southern India. Although Beijing and New Delhi remain tight-lipped on the place Nepal occupied in the bilateral agenda, post-visit comments in both capitals have spoken of a new era of trilateral cooperation between China and India and Nepal.
Nepali Prime Minister K.P. Oli affirmed his government’s support for the Belt and Road Initiative more cogently, a decision widely seen as having been reached in consultation with New Delhi. Despite India’s own reservations on the ambitious Chinese project, New Delhi recognizes the value of Beijing-built infrastructure that would bolster Sino-Indian trade and commerce through Nepal.
While Kathmandu declined to accede to a formal extradition treaty with Beijing, it did sign a treaty on mutual legal assistance, a thinly veiled substitute.
Globally, the comments that got the widest play internationally were Xi’s warning that anyone who attempted to split any region from China would perish, “with their bodies smashed and bones ground to powder”.
Naturally, many were quick to link that warning to the protests in Hong Kong. If Xi had Tibet in mind, others wondered, why he would issue that warning in Nepal, which has consistently refused the Dalai Lama entry, and not in India which hosts the Tibetan leader as well as the Tibetan government in exile?
For Nepalis, there was an additional mystery. That section of Xi’s public pronouncements in Kathmandu was not conveyed by his official interpreter. The warning came in a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement issued in Beijing.
But, then, considering that very little is unscripted in Chinese officialdom, maybe that was a message from Beijing to third countries not to use Nepal’s instability and flux to foment unrest in Tibet amid the Dalai Lama’s advancing age and inevitable succession.
After all, Nepal’s northern Mustang district did serve as a base for CIA-backed Khampa rebels in the 1960s before the onset of the Sino-American rapprochement in the early years of the following decade.
Today, caught between the BRI and the United States’ Indo-Pacific Strategy, Nepal poses a peculiar problem for both its giant neighbors. They have deep and entrenched strategic differences that transcend those two issues but also have worked to boost cooperation in areas they consider mutually productive. More specifically, India and China realize that Nepal – through the auspices of third countries – has the potential to undermine the careful balance they have struck in their simultaneous quest for global leadership.
Amid its praise for New Delhi’s overall strategic autonomy in external affairs, Beijing has been careful not to challenge India’s core interests in Nepal. The two countries’ respective emphasis on cultural nationalism would find new ground for cooperation in Nepal, imbued as it is by Hindu and Buddhist traditions.
To be sure, such a Sino-Indian framework for stability – if what that is indeed – is embryonic. But it would be vital on a volatile front that is becoming increasingly so. Western powers, on the other hand, have invested too heavily in national re-engineering in Nepal in the name of enlightened and progressive transformation. It will take a long while for the dust to settle, if at all.

Nepal: ‘Indo-Pacific’ in History and Geography

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (R) meets with Nepal's Foreign Minister
Pradip Gyawali at the State Department in Washington DC
(Photo: US Embassy in Nepal)

By Sanjay Upadhya

If Nepalis seem a bit flustered at the way the United States now sees them as central to a free and open Indo-Pacific, you can blame their collective saga and surroundings.
Viscerally skeptical of their giant southern neighbor India, the ‘Indo’ part of the latest international relations fad carries heavy historical baggage. The ‘Pacific’ side is a geographical contrivance that might be partly redeemed by its connotation to Nepal’s other giant neighbor. But, then, containment of China remains the clearest implication of Washington’s assertive yet ambiguous formulation.
Nepali Foreign Minister Pradip Gyawali, back home from talks with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in mid-December, was prompted to issue a clarification. Nepal’s ‘central role’ in a free, open, and prosperous Indo-Pacific, as the State Department stressed in its official statement after the discussions, did not pertain to geostrategy. Pompeo’s focus was on how the US saw Nepal in a vital geographic region.
The resumption of direct high-level contact between the United States and Nepal after a 17-year hiatus itself was bound to generate much interest. The prevailing view in Nepal is that the United States took the initiative. That in turn brought back memories of early 2002, when then-Secretary of State Colin Powell made a hastily scheduled stopover in Kathmandu.
During that visit, Powell had largely bypassed the elected government to discuss directly with the Nepali monarch and generals on ways of strengthening the Royal Nepali Army’s capabilities in suppressing a decade-long Maoist insurgency. Washington, like Kathmandu and New Delhi, had designated the Maoists a terrorist group. Powell’s trip paved the way for an Oval Office meeting between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba later that year. Nepal’s entry into the global war on terror set in motion a chain of events that ultimately led to the abolition of the monarchy and triumph for the Maoists in multiparty elections.
The United States and Nepal have had a mutually beneficial relationship ever since diplomatic relations were established in 1948. The early decades were characterized by regular exchanges of high-level visits and US economic assistance in such key areas as health, education, infrastructure. Since the 1990s, the United States has focused on strengthening democratic institutions along with military engagement. In recent years, however, Nepalis have also sensed a proclivity on the part of the United States to subcontract its Nepal policy to new-found ally India.
In 2006, Washington, which still saw the monarchy as a bulwark of stability despite a royal coup, was dragged by New Delhi to back an agreement it had brokered between mainstream Nepali parties and the Maoist rebels, which ultimately led to the creation of a federal and secular republic. The State Department did not have to waste too many words to explain that although the Nepali Maoists were on its terrorist list, they were not in the same league as Al Qaeda.
Welcome as this renewed American interest may be, there are also reasons to be apprehensive. Much of Nepal’s post-2006 political evolution has been driven by Sino-Indian cooperation and conflict. Prior to the agreement, New Delhi had quietly engaged with Beijing on the imperative of a mainstream-Maoist alliance for stability in Nepal. China, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and India, then serving a two-year term on the body, carefully cooperated to limit a United Nations political mission that oversaw the early phases of the Nepali peace process. New Delhi and Beijing subsequently worked to ensure the departure of the UN lest it replicate the staying power of its peace missions elsewhere.
In the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that hit Nepal in 2015, India and China quietly cooperated in immediate rescue and recovery, as many donors were deeper pockets dithered on issues of operations and accountability.
Sino-Indian engagement on Nepal has been a delicate balancing act. When India felt Nepal was veering too close to China, New Delhi imposed an unofficial economic blockade on the landlocked nation in 2015. Instead of succumbing to Indian pressure as it had during previous blockades, Nepal signed a series of agreements cementing comprehensive cooperation with China. While India recognized the agreements as immediately irrelevant, it saw their ominous portents over the long term.
China promptly reiterates its commitment to upholding Nepali sovereignty and independence when Nepalis experience India’s overbearing embrace. Yet Beijing has also deferred to New Delhi’s sensitivities, such as when Nepal cancelled Chinese projects that India deemed objectionable.
A sharp public display of Sino-Indian engagement on Nepal emerged on the sidelines of a regional conference in the Indian city of Goa in October 2016, when Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Nepal’s then Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal happened to be around the same area of their hotel lobby and decided to convene an impromptu trilateral summit.
Admittedly, much has changed since then. And much has remained the same, including the grudging recognition by India and China that they need to maintain their delicate balance in Nepal. India may find it difficult to see beyond its cultural, religious and social affinities with Nepal as China struggles to move past the reality that Nepal was the last tributary state to the Qing dynasty. But the Asian giants know they do not need another roadblock to their simultaneous rise.
Renewed American engagement with Nepal may excite India in terms of the broader contours of its relationship with the United States. Locally, it is bound to raise Indian apprehensions, as New Delhi assiduously avoids being relegated to a junior partner to Washington as well as raising Beijing’s suspicions.
The general ambiguity of Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy may be a source of satisfaction to China, but it knows that it cannot afford uncertainty over US and Indian intentions in Nepal amid an aging Dalai Lama and the inevitable search for the next Tibetan leader. The 14th Dalai Lama has been living in exile in India since 1959 along with thousands of followers apprehensive of the future. The Chinese are too steeped in history to forget that Nepal once served as an important base for a US-sponsored Tibetan insurgency against China.
Such external undulations are bound to play out in Nepal’s cantankerous politics. The Nepali Congress, traditionally friendly to both Washington and New Delhi, was trounced in the last election and would be tempted to use any perceived deviation in Nepali foreign policy to undermine the government.
The ruling Communist Party of Nepal, an amalgam of Marxist-Leninist and Maoist parties, would relish an opportunity to extricate itself from the India-China straitjacket. Its more radical cadres, however, are not likely to appreciate their leaders hobnobbing with ‘imperialists’ at a time when the party is mired in factionalism.
The Nepali people, anxious for tangible economic and social benefits of democracy, may see in the new United States International Development Finance Corporation a source of some succor and sustenance, if history and geography leave them enough breathing space.

Nepal: Maneuvers, Military And Otherwise

By Sanjay Upadhya

Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Nepal withdraws from the BIMSTEC military exercises India is organizing in Pune but participates in Chinese-led drills in Sichuan. Suddenly Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘neighborhood first’ policy is deemed dead.
A Nepali snub to India sharpened by a full kowtow to China? Looks so at first glance. And international headlines, sadly enough these days, are rarely made up of anything beyond first looks. They do fit the narrative established for the better part of a decade, though. China has gained extensive ground in what India has traditionally considered its exclusive sphere of influence.
Beijing doesn’t like to hear that characterization in public. Beyond a point, it doesn’t really seem to mind. New Delhi doesn’t like the storyline, in public or private. But it can’t stop moaning and carping.
Maybe Nepal is just doing what a sovereign and independent is supposed to do: exercise its options without fear or favor. Playing one neighbor off the other could be another way of describing it. But don’t blame Nepal alone here. Games have to have other players. Willing or otherwise, they are still participants.
Nepalis like to count themselves as citizens of one of the dozen or so oldest and continuously existing nation states. For most of their recent existence, they have been struggling to find their place in the region and beyond. The Chinese Qing empire and the British East India Company both checked the march of an inherently martial Nepal.
For all practical purposes, Nepal became a tributary of the Qing in 1792. In exchange, the Middle Kingdom promised Nepali protection from any third-party threat. When such a threat emerged from the British two decades later, the Qing refused any help. Nepal lost a third of its territory to the British in 1816. Nepali soldiers enlisted in the East India Company army and went on to help crush the 1857 mutiny, often called the first Indian war of Independence. Nepalis were active in both world wars. In World War II, the Allies got Nepalis firmly on their side, but not before a phase of active German and Japanese courting.
As the international system grew more complex, Nepalis went on to live through wider contradictions. During the Cold War, western democracies helped Nepal experiment with an alternative polity after it abolished multiparty democracy because they didn’t want the other side to make gains through the ballot box. The CIA used Nepal as a major staging ground for Tibetan insurgents as part of its effort to counter Red China.
During three decades of partyless rule in Nepal, Queen Elizabeth II visited the kingdom twice. French President Francois Mitterrand, US Vice President Spiro Agnew, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl were among the other leading world leaders who weren’t terribly bothered by the nature of the Nepali polity.
Zhou Enlai visited twice while Deng Xiaoping included Nepal in his first foreign trip after returning from his second purge to head post-Mao China. The Nehru-Gandhis and seat-warmers in between were regulars. The Soviets were quite thrilled at first but seemed to feel there was not enough room.
Nepal’s East-West Highway, built in parts by the Indians, Americans, British and Soviets is emblematic of the glory days. (Under four-power pressure, Nepal asked China to withdraw from the part of the project it was interested in.)
Then things came crashing down with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The post-Cold War decade saw Nepal embrace multiparty democracy so tightly, often with funding from those same western democracies, that it engendered a Maoist rebellion. Come 9/11 and the Nepali Maoists provided the excuse for the extension of the global war on terror. With the help of American and British military assistance, a monarchy badly weakened by bloody a palace massacre that wiped out the reigning king and the heir apparent, overran the democratic space. And in irony of ironies, the Chinese armed the royal army against the Maoist rebels, whose main leaders were housed and fed in India (which also officially supported the palace against the rebellion).
Today the monarchy is gone and most countries are hailing the Maoists as peacemakers. Of the three pillars of the new Nepal they created, secularism and federalism are on the defensive. As for the monarchy, it may not come back. But the last king continues to issue messages on national occasions and sometimes admonishes the government for not working for the people.
If all this is confounding, remember that Nepalis are still trying to figure things out. A cancelled Chinese project here or there in Nepal is not an indictment of Beijing’s massive Belt and Road Initiative. Nor can the withdrawal from Indian military drills be construed as an automatic snub to India.
Nepal’s links with India are too multilayered to wither under Chinese hard and soft power combined. Nepalis, moreover, know their history reasonably well to recognize the cool unsentimentality traditionally inherent in China’s external relations. But that won’t stop them from engaging northward to loosen the southern embrace. The search for geopolitical equilibrium may continue to be elusive. But that’s what has always animated the country.

‘Prime Pilgrim’ Modi in Nepal And the India-China Reset

By Sanjay Upadhya

May 12, 2018

It was always going to be impossible to view Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s May 11-12 visit to Nepal outside the prism of India-China relations. The defining feature, however, is not the rivalry between the Asian giants but their latest efforts at rapprochement.
Although Modi described himself as having arrived on his third visit to Nepal in four years as ‘Prime Pilgrim’, the two-day trip contained all the trappings of traditional diplomacy. Be they temples, felicitation ceremonies, or official talk venues, Modi used the right words and gestures to win over Nepalis still bruised by the unofficial blockade India had imposed in 2015-2016.
Officially a state visit, Nepali Prime Minister K.P. Oli deployed the full administrative machinery to ensure that Modi felt welcome. Modi left with abundant pledges of support to Nepal – in terms of specific projects and more general commitments.
While many in India and Nepal viewed Modi’s visit as part of an effort to shore up his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party’s prospects ahead of crucial national elections next year, the trip embodied the dynamics of politics, religion, economics and culture that have traditionally linked the two countries.
From this perspective, Modi’s affirmation that Nepal remained the first neighbor in India’s ‘neighborhood first’ policy sounds innocuous. However, it’s full current import can be gauged only when viewed against the triangular India-China-Nepal relationship that has been evolving since 2006, when Nepal began the process of transforming itself from a unitary Hindu monarchy into a secular federal republic.
 Most of those dozen years have witnessed an intensification of the traditional rivalry between India and China for influence in the Himalayan state. India has customarily considered Nepal falling within its exclusive sphere of influence. That assessment has had to contend with the reality that Nepal was the last tributary to the Qing Dynasty.
By most measures, China has outpaced India in the race for influence in Nepal. Oli himself is emblematic of the transformation. Once considered the most India-friendly communist leader in Nepal, he has projected an image of a staunch nationalist, largely based on pro-Chinese public expressions and policy platforms.
It was during Oli’s last tenure as prime minister that Nepalis faced the unofficial trade embargo. While the ostensible trigger was New Delhi’s displeasure over Nepal’s political transition pertaining to bordering regions, the wider spark was Oli’s eagerness to embark on China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Himalayan Moment of Truth
The weeks-long military standoff between India and China in the Himalayan border outpost of Doklam in 2017 marked a turning point in India-China relations. In the immediate aftermath of the crisis, Indian analysts were quick to proclaim that China blinked. At some level, it was almost as if India had avenged its humiliating defeat in the 1962 war with China.
Yet post-Doklam developments have demonstrated the limits of hyperrealism in New Delhi’s and Beijing’s approach to one another. Of the three prongs underpinning their relations, both China and India have recognized the virtues of relegating confrontation behind cooperation and competition.
The uncertain role of the United States in Asia’s regional security environment has only been accentuated under the administration of President Donald J. Trump, allowing neither India nor China to make comfortable assumptions.
During the Doklam crisis, New Delhi witnessed the extent of loneliness it would have to endure if it decided in earnest to take on the world’s second-largest economy in place of cooperating with Beijing globally in feasible areas.
The Modi government’s polite curtailing of the more overtly political activities of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile which India hosts almost coincided with official Chinese media’s friendly counsels to Nepal to improve relations with India.
No less wary of the disruptive potential of American capers in an era of global flux, China has realized the downside of seeking to advance relations with countries like Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh without taking India into confidence.
It may be a stretch to suggest that the Chinese may be toying with the idea of putting Nepal (and Bhutan) last in its South Asia policy, at least for now. That suggestion could be put to the test during Oli’s expected visit to China shortly. It would be wise to watch for how energetically Beijing reiterates – if it does so at all – its pledge to safeguard Nepali sovereignty and independence.

Xi, Modi and the Rest of Us

By Sanjay Upadhya

April 26, 2018

The hastily convened informal summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Wuhan has produced its predictable dose of analyses.
The commentariat has generally zeroed in on the wisdom, timing and possible outcomes, while also veering into questions of motives and relative strengths/weaknesses of the interlocutors.
The two Asian giants, however, have long illuminated the futility of that kind of thinking, as far as their bilateral relationship was concerned. New Delhi and Beijing have recognized the rudiments of competition, cooperation and – yes –confrontation that underpin relations between such civilizationally self-assured aspirants to great-power status.
As China and India rise together, it is in their mutual interest to make the ascent peaceful. Yet each recognizes the precariousness of that yearning. Satisfied that the basic logic of their bilateral relationship has taken the desired course, Beijing and New Delhi are now focused on securing that validation from external spasms.
When Xi and Modi look around their wider world, what they see must not be altogether pretty. Third countries may have complementarities here and convergences there that China and India can hope to benefit from individually. But those have to be weighed incessantly against the risks third parties can pose to the orientation of the Sino-Indian relationship.
A renewed commitment to resurrecting the Quad or rechristening the Asia-Pacific as the Indo-Pacific may have the power to annoy or even alarm China – but only up to a point. Granting concession after concession to China on fundamental matters amid tepid arm-twisting on matters India deems tangential can only encourage New Delhi to be more realistic in its expectations from others.

When ‘strategic patience’ meets ‘strategic autonomy’
The Chinese may be vociferous about their century of humiliation. Indians, while reticent to talk about it, are conditioned by a longer legacy of colonialism. So when Beijing’s ‘strategic patience’ meets New Delhi’s ‘strategic autonomy’, it can only animate their existing bilateralism.
When third countries mock Xi’s decision to extend his tenure or Modi’s Hindu-nationalism-inspired subsuming of the once proudly secular Indian state, neither needs to be outraged. For them, the best adjudicators are their own domestic constituencies.
Nor are Xi and Modi under any obligation to revise their definitions of constitutionalism, legality, sovereignty, nationalism, borders, a rules-based world order and the like based on which U.S. party happens to be in the White House or on the prevailing cultural milieu in the wider West. However, if the dysfunctions spilling over even start showing signs of upsetting the orientation of the Sino-Indian bilateral relationship, the imperative for action is clear enough.
The Wuhan summit may or may not yield anything tangible. But the Modi-Xi message to the rest of the world has been clear and its reiteration may be enough.

Maybe China And India Blinked Together – For Now

By Sanjay Upadhya
August 29, 2017

The official Chinese posture on the agreement by Beijing and New Delhi to ‘disengage’ from their weeks-long standoff in Doklam on Bhutanese territory makes it sound like Beijing has scored a decisive triumph.
The flurry of commentary immediately following the Indian Ministry of External Affairs brief tweet making that announcement seemed to suggest that New Delhi had finally exorcised the ghosts of the 1962 border war.
Then, prominent Indian voices began stressing the obvious: Since no one knows enough yet about what led to this apparent resolution, it is futile to obsess over the winner-loser paradigm. The new narrative? Diplomacy prevailed on both sides.
This, to be sure, raises its own set of questions, ranging from the obvious to ones bordering on the realm of conspiracy theory.
What form of diplomacy prevailed now that so defied us in the past, including those conducted on the sidelines of international summits leaders of both countries attended. Plucky old patience? Lord luck?
Or did the imperative of preserving the sanctity of the BRICS format prevail on both sides – no doubt with pressure from the other members?
The Indian urgency to depict this agreement as an outright win is understandable. The brief 1962 border war took its toll more on the Indian psyche than on the battlefield. So the notion that India proved to be the only country who has successfully stood up to China carries its own resonance.
Since the Chinese have been relatively subdued on the definition of victory, it becomes tempting to read deeper.
Was the spur for Beijing US President Donald Trump’s announcement of his long-awaited Afghanistan (and, by extension, South Asia) policy? New Delhi welcomed Washington’s efforts at ensuring India’s greater engagement in Afghanistan despite New Delhi’s insistence that the US still had not taken its concerns adequately.
In other words, did Beijing already see big enough holes in a putative US-India alliance against China? Have the Chinese detected in the prospect of India becoming bogged down in Afghanistan along with the US enough reassurance regionally?
What all this boils down to is the living reality that India-China tensions have subsided until the next flare-up. The Asian giants have bound themselves into a complex relationship that reaches for the promises of the future without their having resolved the perils from the past.
Sidestepping their border dispute in the interest of substantive progress on newer areas is deft diplomacy, as long as the border remains calm.  The substance and consolidation of the bilateral relationship will depend on how China and India manage and overcome old and new challenges.
Specifically, as they continue to rise in power and influence, China and India will continue to struggle to devise a bilateral framework that provides enough room for cooperation, competition and, yes, confrontation.
So maybe both sides blinked on Doklam. The expectation is not one of no new tensions: there could be another flare-up anywhere, anytime over anything.
Yet if both sides could pull themselves back from the brink after having come so perilously close to war, perhaps they do have what it takes to coexist relatively peacefully.

India-China Standoff: Better Learn To Live With It

By Sanjay Upadhya
July 25, 2017

WITH China and India having juxtaposed their war rhetoric with a fervent commitment to dialogue for over six weeks, the Asian giants seem to have perfected the model of coexistence they inaugurated in 1985.
For every analyst predicting the outbreak of a full-blown conflict, there is another cautioning us how far the two countries have come since 1962, when they fought their last war.
Regardless of whether Beijing and New Delhi actually end up trade blows along their Himalayan frontier or resolve their current tensions peacefully, history and geography will not let them – or the rest of the world – sit back and relax.
Ever since the latest bilateral tensions erupted over a Chinese road-building project in the small Himalayan plateau of Doklam, both sides have been digging in their heels. This contested region, where Bhutan, India, and China share an ambiguous frontier, has merely provided the pretext for the inevitable.
Beijing’s precondition is that New Delhi remove the 300 troops it has moved to the border, some 150 meters from similarly strong contingent of Chinese soldiers. That precondition is far from palatable for India, which considers the Chinese road as a potential threat to India’s ability safeguard its northeastern states.
New Delhi’s fear that Beijing could sever the “Chicken Neck,” a narrow strip of land connecting India’s seven northeastern states to the rest of the country, may have impelled its hard line. The broader reality is that the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi cannot afford to back down on home turf at a time when it is espousing vast global aspirations.
This week’s security dialogue among BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) in Beijing was seen as an opportunity for high-level talks on a face-saving resolution. However, China on Tuesday ruled out the possibility that any discussions on the Doklam Plateau with visiting Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval – if they are held at all – would help resolve the issue. One hardline Chinese newspaper editorial went to the extent of calling Doval as “a main schemer” behind the standoff.
More broadly, the Chinese media have been warning India not to forget the “lessons of 1962”. New Delhi, however, has drawn its own lessons from a war in which its defeat caused a national mood of humiliation. The aftermath also spawned a community of ‘hyperrealists’ who lament India’s seeming inability to forge a coherent response toward what they see as China’s consistency in maintaining an aggressive and unfriendly posture against their country.
Instead of continuing to appease Beijing, these Indian hardliners argue, a durable settlement of the disputes with China would require a resolution of the Tibet issue. If the Chinese do not prove to be tractable on the border question or on the Kashmir question, such Indians maintain, New Delhi should remind Beijing that it could raise the cost in Tibet. Adding Taiwan to the arsenal might serve to fortify New Delhi’s bargaining position.
Another chance for high-level dialogue could present itself during a summit of BRICS leaders in Xiamen, China, in September. Whether President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Modi will seize that opportunity would depend on what happens in during the intervening period. For now, New Delhi is intent on whittling away Beijing’s influence in the neighborhood.
The Modi government has begun wooing the new president of Mongolia, perceived as a China skeptic. Similarly, the Indian prime minister is planning to visit Nepal, where Beijing has made political, economic and security inroads in a nation New Delhi has traditionally seen as its zone of influence.
Both sides feel time is on their side. But for how long? Neither side seems to know.

पुस्तक समीक्षा: सामरिक प्रतिस्पर्धाको चेपुवा

- प्रेम खनाल

मंगलवार, चैत्र २९, २०७३

पुस्तक : नेपाल एन्ड दी जिओ–स्ट्राटेजिक राइभल्री बिटविन चाइना एन्ड इन्डिया
लेखक : सञ्जय उपाध्याय
प्रकाशक : रुटलेज
मूल्य : १२०० रुपैयाँ

छिमेकी राष्ट्रहरू भारत र चीनमा पछिल्ला दिनमा निकै ठूला आन्तरिक परिवर्तन भएका छन् । अन्तर्राष्ट्रिय राजनीतिमा पनि दुवैको प्रभाव बढ्दो छ । दुई ठूला भूगोल, जनसंख्या र सैन्य शक्तिबीच रहेको नेपालमा दुवैको प्रभाव पर्नु नौलो विषय रहेन । अझ, पत्रकार सञ्जय उपाध्यायको विश्लेषणमा त यो मञ्जुश्रीको पाला अर्थात् नवौं शताब्दीदेखि नै कायम छ । र, त्यस्तो प्रभावले आधुनिक नेपालमा अन्तर्राष्ट्रिय बहसको रूप पाउँदै आएको छ । विश्वशक्तिउन्मुख चीनसँग एक हजार चार सय १५ र भारतसँग एक हजार सात सय ५१ किलोमिटर सिमाना जोडिएको छ, नेपालको । ‘स्वतन्त्र तिब्बत’का लागि अन्तर्राष्ट्रिय आन्दोलन तथा भू–राजनीतिक चासोको केन्द्रमा रहँदै आएको छ ।
बीबीसी रेडियो, दी टाइम्स लन्डन, वल्र्ड पोलिटिक्स रिभ्युजस्ता अन्तर्राष्ट्रिय सञ्चारमाध्यममा काम गरेको अनुभव बटुलेका पत्रकार उपाध्याय नेपालको राजनीति र कूटनीतिमा विशेष दक्खल राख्छन् । ‘नेपाल एन्ड दी जिओ–स्ट्राटेजिक राइभल्री बिटविन चाइना एन्ड इन्डिया’ शीर्षकको पुस्तकमा उनको त्यही विज्ञता प्रतिबिम्बित हुन्छ । नेपालको राष्ट्रिय राजनीति र अन्तर्राष्ट्रिय सम्बन्धका तथ्यहरूको सूक्ष्म अध्ययन, अनुसन्धान र विश्लेषण गर्दै ऐतिहासिक पृष्ठभूमिका साथ माधवकुमार नेपाल प्रधानमन्त्री रहेको समयसम्मका घटना क्रम केलाएका छन्, उनले । २२३ वटा पृष्ठमा नेपाल, तिब्बत, चीन र भारतको बहुआयामिक सम्बन्धबारेका १२ वटा लेख छन् ।
आधा शताब्दीभन्दा बढी समयदेखि निर्वासनमा रहेका तिब्बती धर्मगुरु दलाई लामा र उनका दशौं हजार समर्थकलाई भारतले चीनसँगको सम्बन्धमा रणनीतिक स्वार्थ पूरा गर्ने साधन बनाएको लेखकको विश्लेषण छ । सन् २००८ मा बेइजिङ ओलम्पिकको समयमा काठमाडौंमा तिब्बती शरणार्थीले ‘स्वतन्त्र तिब्बत’ आन्दोलन चर्काएको विषयलाई ‘नेपालको तिब्बत चुनौती’का रूपमा उपाध्यायले विश्लेषण गरेका छन् । चीनबाट आएका मञ्जुश्रीले काठमाडौं उपत्यकामा बस्ती बसालेको, १७ औं शताब्दीको मध्यमा बुद्ध धर्म तिब्बतमा फैलिएको तथा नेपाल र चीनबीच सीधा हिमालयन रुट स्थापना भएको उल्लेख गर्दै दुई मुलुकबीच धार्मिक र व्यापारिक सम्बन्ध रहिआएको पुस्तकमा व्याख्या छ ।
भारत बेलायती उपनिवेशमा रहेको समयमा नेपाल र तिब्बतबीच पटक–पटक युद्ध भयो । नेपालले आफ्नो स्वतन्त्र पहिचान कायम राख्दै सन् १९१२ मा बेइजिङ र ल्हासाबीच सम्बन्ध सुधार्न कूटनीतिक मध्यस्थकर्ताको भूमिका निर्वाह गर्‍यो । ‘ट्रेल्स अफ ट्रुथ एन्ड ट्रेड’ शीर्षकको लेखमा मन्जुश्रीको योगदान, बौद्ध धर्मको फैलावट, किराँतकालमा नेपाल–चीन सम्बन्धबारे उल्लेख छ । चौथो शताब्दीमा लिच्छवी राजाहरूले धर्म, कला र संस्कृतिको विकास गरे, जसप्रति चिनियाँहरू आकर्षित भए । चिनियाँ पर्यटक र भिक्षुहरू त्यसपछि नै हो नेपाल आउन थालेका, जसले काठमाडौं र लुम्बिनीको यात्रा गरी बौद्ध धर्मलाई आफ्नो भूमिसम्म फैलाए । तिब्बतको आक्रमणबाट बच्न लिच्छवी राजा अंशुवर्माले छोरी भृकुटीको विवाह त्यहाँका शक्तिशाली राजा स्रङचङ गम्पोसँग गरिदिएका थिए ।
मल्लकालमा अरनिकोे नेतृत्वमा ८० जना कलाकार कुब्लाई खाँको निमन्त्रणामा मूर्ति बनाउन तिब्बत गए र उनीहरूले बेइजिङसम्म प्यागोडा शैलीको विश्वव्यापी प्रचार गरे । १८औं शताब्दीको मध्यतिर गोर्खाली राजा पृथ्वीनारायण शाहले काठमाडौं कब्जा गरेपछि व्यापार र सिमानाको विषयमा द्वन्द्व भयो । ‘बबलिङ बिटविन बोल्डर्स’लेखमा तिब्बतसँगको व्यापारमा ब्रिटिस इस्ट इन्डिया कम्पनीको चासो समेटिएको छ । त्यसका लागि मार्ग दिन आग्रह गर्दै काठमाडौंमा उक्त कम्पनीले दूत पठाएकामा पृथ्वीनारायण शाहले मल्लकालदेखि उपत्यकामा बस्दै आएका विदेशी व्यापारी र इसाई मिसनरीहरूलाई देशनिकाला गरेर जवाफ दिएको पुस्तकमा उल्लेख छ ।
तिब्बतमा चीन र भारतीय उपमहाद्वीपमा इस्ट इन्डिया कम्पनीको प्रभाव बढ्दै जाँदा पृथ्वीनारायण शाहले नेपाललाई ‘दुई ढुंगाबीचको तरुल’का रूपमा व्याख्या गरेका थिए, जसलाई उपाध्यायले सही ठह¥याएका छन् । एकीकरणको क्रममा रहेको आफ्नो मुलुकको भू–राजनीतिक अवस्थितिमाझ सबैभन्दा मुख्य चुनौती दक्षिणतर्फबाटै रहेको पृथ्वीनारायण शाहको विश्लेषण थियो ।
‘कन्टेन्मेन्ट एन्ड कार्नेज’ शीर्षकको तेस्रो अध्यायमा राणाहरूबीचको झगडाका कारण तत्कालीन राजा रणबहादुर शाह निर्वासनमा बनारस गएको समयमा नेपालको आन्तरिक राजनीति कमजोर रहेको खुलाएका छन् । त्यही मौकामा इस्ट इन्डिया कम्पनीले सन् १७९२ को व्यापार सन्धि पुनरावलोकन र काठमाडौंमा आवासीय दूतावास खोल्न प्रयास गरेको तथ्य उल्लेख छ । नेपालको आन्तरिक सन्तुलन बिग्रिएको मौकामा विदेशी शक्तिहरूले आ–आफ्नो प्रभाव विस्तार गर्ने पुरानै प्रचलन सम्झाएका छन्, उपाध्यायले ।
जस्तो : त्यसबेला काठमाडौंमा आवासीय दूतावास खोल्न सफलता पाएको इस्ट इन्डिया कम्पनीले डब्लुडी नक्सलाई त्यसको प्रमुख बनायो । उनको काम नेपाल, नेपाली सेना र नेपाल–चीन सम्बन्धबारे जासुसी गर्नु थियो । सिमाना र व्यापारमा असमझदारी हुँदा नेपाल र इस्ट इन्डिया कम्पनीबीच सन् १८१४ मा युद्ध भयो । सन् १७९२ को शान्ति सन्धिअनुरूप चीनले सैन्य तथा राजनीतिक सहयोग नगर्दा नेपाल आफ्नो एकतिहाई भू–भाग गुमाउँदै सुगौली सन्धि गर्न बाध्य भयो । ‘क्राउन एन्ड एम्पाएर’ लेखमा जंगबहादुरको बेलायत भ्रमणको मुख्य उद्देश्य बेलायतलाई नेपालको सार्वभौमिकता स्वीकार्न लगाउने तथा बेलायती महारानी र राजनीतिज्ञहरूसँग सीधा सम्पर्क स्थापना गर्ने रहेको उल्लेख छ ।
राजनीतिक रूपले नेपाल स्वतन्त्र रहे पनि अनौपचारिक हिसाबमा ब्रिटिस शासकहरूले नेपाली सेना र व्यापारमा प्रभाव जमाइसकेको तर्क उपाध्यायको ‘गेम्स ग्रेट एन्ड स्मल’ लेखमा छ । त्यसको उदाहरण पहिलो विश्वयुद्धमा नेपाली सेनाको सहभागिता र योगदानलाई मानेका छन् । राजा महेन्द्रको परराष्ट्र नीतिबारे ‘न्यु किङ, न्यु आउटलुक’ लेखमा विस्तृत उल्लेख छ । नेपालले संयुक्त राष्ट्रसंघको सदस्यता पाएको, चीनसँग दौत्य सम्बन्ध कायम गरेको, प्रधानमन्त्री टंकप्रसाद आचार्यको चीन भ्रमण तथा नेपालले भारत, चीन, अमेरिका, रुस, फ्रान्सलगायत मुलुकसँग सहयोग लिन सफल भएको कुरालाई उपलब्धिका रूपमा व्याख्या गरेका छन् ।
यस्तै, ‘रिफर्म एन्ड रिक्रिमिनेसन’मा राजा वीरेन्द्रको शान्तिक्षेत्र प्रस्ताव, इन्दिरा गान्धीसँगको सम्बन्ध, खम्पा विद्रोह र वीरेन्द्रको चीन भ्रमणको समयमा तत्कालीन चिनियाँ राष्ट्रपति झु इलनले नेपालमा वैदेशिक हस्तक्षेपविरुद्ध आफ्नो मुलुकले सघाउने आश्वासन दिएको उल्लेख छ । नेपालले चीनसँग हतियार खरिद गरेको विरोधमा तत्कालीन भारतीय प्रधानमन्त्री राजीव गान्धीले नाकाबन्दी लगाए । नेपालले सन् १९५० को शान्ति तथा मैत्री सन्धि उल्लंघन गरेको गान्धीको आरोप थियो । राजा वीरेन्द्रले त्यसलाई सार्वभौमिकतामाथिको हस्तक्षेप ठाने । र, राष्ट्रिय हितविपरीतको भारतीय प्रस्ताव अस्वीकार गरिदिए । उपाध्यायले यिनै प्रसंगहरू समेटेर वीरेन्द्रलाई राष्ट्रवादी राजाका रूपमा व्याख्या गरेका छन् ।
तथापि, भारतले पटक–पटक नाकाबन्दी लगाएर संकट सिर्जना गर्दासमेत नेपाली शासकहरू चीनतिरको सहज पहुँच बढाउन उदासीन रहँदै आएका छन् । ‘रियल पोलिटिक्स टु रेजिसाइड’ लेखमा सन् १९९० को राजनीतिक परिवर्तनपछिको नेपालको विदेश नीति, माओवादी विद्रोहको शुरुवात र चिनियाँ राष्ट्रपति जियाङ जेमिनको नेपाल भ्रमणबारे उल्लेख छ । ‘माओ भर्सेस मोनार्की’ मा दरबार हत्याकाण्ड, ज्ञानेन्द्रको शासनकाल, माओवादी विद्रोह, आतंकवादविरुद्ध अमेरिकी युद्धको नेपालमा प्रभावलगायत विषय समेटिएका छन् ।
राजतन्त्रको अन्त्यपछि चीनले नेपालमा राजनीतिक दलसँग सम्बन्ध बढाएको, विस्तृत शान्ति सम्झौता र सशस्त्र द्वन्द्वको अन्त्य तथा लडाकु समायोजनका लागि राष्ट्रसंघीय मिसन अनमिनको प्रवेशबारे ‘स्क्र्याम्बल फर न्यु एलिज’ मा विश्लेषण छ । सन् २००६ को परिवर्तनपछि नेपालमा चिनियाँ प्रभाव बढेको विश्लेषणका साथ अनमिनमा आफ्ना प्रतिनिधि नरहेकामा चीनले राष्ट्रसंघसँग गरेको गुनासो उक्त लेखमा समेटिएको छ । सार्कमा चीनको पूर्ण सदस्यता, मधेश राजनीतिमा चिनियाँ चासो, नेपाली सभासद्हरूले दलाई लामासँग गरेको भेट तथा तत्कालीन प्रधानमन्त्री पुष्पकमल दाहालले पहिले नयाँदिल्ली जाने परम्परा तोडेर बेइजिङ ओलम्पिकमा सहभागिता जनाएकामा भारतीयहरूले आपत्ति जनाएको विषय उक्त लेखमा समेटिएको छ ।
‘वियोन्ड टिबेट’ लेखमा म्यानमार, बंगलादेश र पाकिस्तानमा बढ्दो चिनियाँ प्रभावबाट भारतमा छटपटी पैदा भएको उपाध्यायले लुकाएका छैनन् । र, चीन–भारत, चीन–अमेरिका तथा भारत–अमेरिका सम्बन्धको जटिलताबारे व्याख्या गरेका छन् । प्रशस्त सन्दर्भ सामग्री तथा धेरै व्यक्ति र स्रोतसँगको कुराकानीका कारण पुस्तकका लागि उपाध्यायको मिहिनेत झल्किन्छ । पुस्तकका हरेक अध्याय उत्सुकता पैदा गर्ने प्रकृतिका छन् । यसमा केही तथ्यगत कमजोरी पनि छन् । र, नेपाल–भारत सम्बन्धमा मुख्य व्यवधान मानिँदै आएको सन् १९५० को सन्धिबारे व्याख्या, विश्लेषण गर्न छुटाएका छन् ।
चीनको चासोमा तिब्बती शरणार्थी मात्र रहेको बुझ्न सकिन्छ, यस पुस्तकको अध्ययनबाट । भारतको भने बहुआयामिक स्वार्थ औंल्याएका छन् । दुवै छिमेकीसँग असल सम्बन्ध र उनीहरूका जायज चासो ख्याल गर्दै आफ्नो राष्ट्रिय स्वार्थमा केन्द्रित हुनु नै नेपालको हितमा रहेको उपाध्यायको सुझाव छ ।

साभार: अन्नपूण टुडे राष्टि्य साप्ताहिक
http://today.annapurnapost.com/bookcafe/56

Birth Of A Republic: Stories Behind The Story

By Sanjay Upadhya

The idea that the deep unpopularity of Nepal’s last monarch became the greatest catalyst for republicanism has an alluring pithiness. But tight headlines and terse nut-graphs cannot tell what is, by any measure, a far more complex story. The Nepalese political discourse has been dominated by incessant criticism – justified as well as inflated – of the palace. This singular obsession with former king Gyanendra’s “excesses” and the monarchy’s inherently “anti-democratic” proclivities creates a warped picture of the past. More importantly, it obstructs the extrapolation of valuable pointers for an increasingly uncertain future.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the monarchy was not always the preponderant national institution during its 240-year existence. The death of Prithvi Narayan Shah, seven years after the founding of the Nepalese state, led to a weakening of the monarchy. A succession of minor kings left rival royal factions competing for power. The loss of a third of the nation’s territory in a debilitating war with the British only fueled the feuds. From the bloodletting rose the Ranas, who oversaw the eclipse of the monarchy for over a century.

Nepal’s foray into modernity in the 1950s revealed the new contradictions the monarchy would reign atop. The overthrow of the Rana regime, hailed as the dawn of democracy, ended up consolidating the monarchy. The inauguration of Nepal’s first elected government precipitated a battle of wills in which the palace prevailed over the Nepali Congress. Royal preponderance reached its zenith during the three decades following King Mahendra’s dismissal of Prime Minister B.P. Koirala’s government and abolition of multiparty democracy.

The incongruity of an impoverished nation having to finance an expensive institution was ideologically anathema to the communists. Yet the communists, whom the palace considered a counterweight to the Nepali Congress, prospered the most during 30 years of palace-led nonparty rule. The Nepali Congress, for its part, saw a constitutional monarchy as a bulwark against a preponderance of the left. Yet it made attempts on the lives of two kings.

The restoration of multiparty democracy in 1990 was expected to put Nepal irrevocably on the path of democratic modernity. Barely six years later, an avowedly republican Maoist insurgency helped the palace to gradually consolidate its position. International and regional powers, mindful of such internal contradictions, considered the palace the fulcrum of stability. India and the United States – the world’s two most prominent democratic republics – joined communist China to support the monarchy.

That compact was shaken – more internally than internationally – by the June 2001 Narayanhity massacre. The carnage dealt a grievous blow to the monarchy from multiple directions. It ended any halo of divinity surrounding the monarchy. The notion that the king was the guardian of the nation exploded with the bursts of gunfire. Nepalis were reminded of the history of bloodshed and machinations associated with palace politics.

The shady reputations of the new monarch and the heir apparent, coupled with swirling suspicions of their role in the palace massacre, could hardly provide a promising beginning. Yet the political parties lay discredited by their own performance and the Maoists had little to offer politically. A wary political class as well as public watched King Gyanendra’s moves to strengthen the palace’s role. Still, the royal interventions of October 2002 and February 2005 failed to rouse the people into vigorous opposition. Within Nepal, the two events were considered part of a continuum. Geopolitically, they were different. The contrast revealed an essential truism of Nepalese politics. International and regional powers, with their competing interests in and expectations from Nepal, have precipitated political changes.

When King Gyanendra dismissed an elected prime minister in 2002 for failing to hold elections on schedule, India and the United States seemed generally content. China maintained its characteristic silence. Over the preceding years, Western governments and international donors had been growing increasingly critical of the infighting, corruption and mismanagement that had gripped the polity. Their representatives in Kathmandu had become increasingly explicit in voicing those concerns.

The 2005 royal takeover, on the other hand, instantly infuriated the Indians and Americans, while the Chinese, again, professed non-interference. Yet Beijing’s anxiety was clear. A series of palace-appointed premiers had failed to quell the Maoist insurgency, prompting greater Indian as well as American military involvement. New Delhi’s own discomfort with American activism was palpable. Allowing the Maoists to triumph over the state would have grave implications for India’s Maoist insurgency.

Cautious China

Chinese apprehensions ran deeper. The Nepalese rebels’ wholesale discrediting of Mao Zedong’s reputation was intolerable enough, something Beijing expressed with great candor. It was not hard to fathom how a total Maoist triumph could energize restive populations in the Chinese hinterland deprived of a part of the post-Mao economic miracle. The prospect of Nepal’s inexorable drift toward the Indian-American camp carried grave implications for China’s soft underbelly, Tibet. On the eve of the 2005 royal takeover, Nepal shut down the local offices of the principal Tibet-related organizations. The event was thus cast as a pro-Chinese initiative.

Far from extending full support to the royal regime, however, the Chinese remained cautious. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao skipped Nepal during his South Asian tour, sending his foreign minister to Kathmandu instead. King Gyanendra’s anticipated visit to China to mark the 50th anniversary of bilateral ties did not materialize. The Indians succeeded in preventing the Americans from striking a separate deal with the palace. New Delhi, for its part, was negotiating with the king. It bailed out Nepal from massive censure at the UN Human Right Conference in Geneva and dangled the promise of a resumption of military – and perhaps even political –assistance.

A section of the Indian establishment always considered the monarchy the problem and found a conducive political alignment in New Delhi. The communist parties backing the ruling Indian coalition took the lead and moved swiftly to bring the Maoists and mainstream parties in an anti-palace alliance. The Indian army and internal security apparatus, insistent on helping the king and the Nepalese army, was not pleased, as a series of leaks in the Indian media showed. This conflict emboldened the royal government, which sought to internationalize its fight against the Maoists by linking it to the global war on terror. On the ground, it went after the mainstream parties without being able to dent the rebels. New Delhi checkmated the king by facilitating a ceasefire on the eve of his attempt to raise the insurgency at the United Nations General Assembly.

The monarch responded by spearheading a campaign to secure China’s position as an observer in South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. The move came amid China’s drive to block India from regional initiatives in East Asia. In New Delhi, the palace’s brazen flaunting of the “China card” hardened critics and alienated the remaining supporters of the king. The Seven Party Alliance (SPA) and the Maoist rebels hurriedly signed the 12-point pact to bring down the royal regime.

The collaboration energized the Nepalese masses. The opportunity for peace and stability after years of bloodletting and instability was too enticing to squander. As anti-palace demonstrations picked up speed, India sent a royal relative, Karan Singh, as an emissary. The king’s invitation to the SPA to form the next government won instant praise from New Delhi, Washington and London. It failed to quell the protests. For the republican camp within Nepal and outside, the public defiance served to expose the depth of anti-monarchism.

The collapse of the royal regime led to a swift and systematic clipping of the palace’s powers. Still, a republican Nepal was not a done deal. The next phase – the suspension of the monarchy after the enactment of the interim constitution – morphed in line with a careful power play. A precipitous de-monarchization of the nation was precluded by the imponderables involved. The true nature of Nepalese public opinion vis-à-vis the monarchy, the loyalty of the army and the Maoists’ real commitment to the democratic process remained unknown. What was obvious was not inspiring: the mainstream parties’ poor record of governance.

Yet for India, mainstreaming the Maoists had become a matter of national security. The insurgency launched by Indian Maoists, or Naxalites, was spreading fast. The Naxalites were in no position to overwhelm the state, but they risked exacerbating India’s already grave internal security challenge. Engaging the Nepalese Maoists in the peace process through incremental carrots was tied to India’s plan to tame the Naxalites.

Faith-based Initiative?

For influential international quarters, King Gyanendra became too much of a liability. He continued to insist that he had seized power in good faith, adding that the effort failed because of “several factors”. The caveat could not have been lost on India. For the democratic West, the monarch’s overt tilt toward China was inexcusable enough. His espousal of the Hinduism mantle, with a fervor surpassing that of any of his predecessors, was tantamount to insolence. While Christian organizations had not listed Nepal high on the list of persecutor nations, many called it one of the most unreached nations for the Gospel. A Hindu monarch in a secular nation was far from tenable.

There were scattered reports of contacts in Delhi between the Maoists and Christian groups – some suggesting financial transactions – but they mostly emanated from the Hindu nationalist spectrum of the Indian media. Given the Maoists’ record of successfully using secondary adversaries to accomplish their immediate ends, the convergence of interest was plausible.

Had Crown Prince Paras enjoyed a better public image, forcing King Gyanendra to abdicate in favor of his son might have been an option. Passing the crown to Paras’s son, Hridayendra, would have mollified royalists. For the country, it meant a return of regency. King Gyanendra, more than anyone else, understood what this would mean for the monarchy. He dismissed calls for abdication made by Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala and others.

Publicly, the international community shunned the monarch. Privately they maintained channels. One reason was China’s swift move to build ties with the Maoists. The arrival of a modern high-speed train to the Tibetan capital Lhasa had greatly improved China’s access to Nepal. Nepal’s open border to the south exposed the Indian heartland to what many analysts there considered an enhanced military threat from China. The Terai erupted in violence against centuries of injustices inflicted by the hillspeople. The specific assurances foreign governments sought from the palace in exchange for the retention of some form of monarch remains unknown.

Clearly, the second amendment to the interim constitution, which declared Nepal a republic subject to an elected assembly’s ratification, was intended as a carrot and a stick for the palace. The monarch found more time to reconsider his options. To pre-empt any royal assertiveness, the statute also provided for the removal of the monarchy by two-thirds majority of the interim parliament. This ultimatum failed to influence the king but vitiated the political climate for the palace.

Previously, the Maoists and the mainstream parties – for their own interests – had made a distinction between the institution of the monarchy and individual kings. If Mahendra and Gyanendra were denounced as autocrats, Birendra and Tribhuvan, in their estimation, fared better as liberals. But now statues of Prithvi Narayan Shah were being demolished. Paradoxically, those committed to preserving Nepal’s sovereignty and territorial integrity viewed the state as the culmination of unjust wars of aggressions. Supporters of some form of monarchy in the Nepali Congress attempted to frame the discussion in different ways. The fear of being perceived as royalists in a ruling alliance heavily dominated by republicans dissuaded them. Moreover, royalist parties like the Rastriya Prajatantra Party and the Rastriya Janashakti Party had become monarchy neutral.

Opinion polls up to the run-up to the elections showed that half the country wanted to retain some form of monarchy. A referendum would have put the issue to rest. Victory would have permitted King Gyanendra to recreate the monarchy in his own image. A defeat would have allowed him to depart as a democrat.

Many expected the king to resist the republic declaration. The inability of the ruling alliance to agree on the precise structure of the presidency as well as power sharing up to the first meeting of constituent assembly suggested as much. Whether royal defiance would have succeeded is a different thing altogether. Ultimately, the ex-king saw the overwhelming assembly vote in favor of a republic as the best expression of the popular will under the circumstances which he and his predecessors always invoked.

The monarchy had been central to the policies of the three major international stakeholders in Nepal. The Maoists took in royalists reportedly on the advice of the Chinese to bolster a nationalist front. A Maoist-UML alliance could go a far way toward mollifying Beijing. For New Delhi, the Nepali Congress and the three Madhesi parties could provide succor. Washington, which began its own rapprochement with the Maoists after their electoral success, perhaps sees the military as the backbone of a non-communist front.

The presence of the ex-monarch within the country would probably help stabilize politics in the same way the return of Zahir Shah, Afghanistan former king, helped the Hamid Karzai government find its footing. With the end of the monarchy, a new quest for internal and regional equilibrium has begun.

(A version of this article appeared in the August 2008 inaugural issue of Global Nepali)

Precarious Premise Of Peacemaking

By Sanjay Upadhya

The grins, quips and all the other breezy displays of optimism surrounding the post-Dasain phase of the peace process have dissolved in the somberness of the indefinite postponement of the Seven Party Alliance (SPA)-Maoist talks.
Given the murkiness of the enterprise, however, another phase of ebullience and enthusiasm could bounce back with surprising speed. The “homework” hiatus should afford the country an opportunity to reflect on the predicaments on both sides.
For the Maoists, blaming the palace and foreign powers for conspiring to keep them out of power would help energize the base and thwart the prospect of serious discontent over the political leadership’s capitulation to the machinations of the mainstream.
When the rebels continue to ascribe to the palace the ability to torpedo the peace process, they are virtually negating the finality of the “historic” proclamation the House of Representatives adopted in May. Yet the SPA – at least the sections of the two Nepali Congress parties that seem to be propelling the ruling alliance – does not seem too bothered.
The Unified Marxist Leninist (UML) and the other communist constituents may be too busy protecting their own turfs against the imminent influx of their more radical cousins to challenge Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala’s deepening affection for the monarchy. The mainstream communists, like the republican wing of the Nepali Congress, have evidently recognized the asset a sufficiently and certifiably tamed palace could prove to be.
The two factors supposedly holding back the breakthrough that was so tantalizingly close – the monarchy and Maoist arms – have brought out the painful predicaments of peacemaking. The government’s annoyance with the Maoists eagerness to maintain simultaneous access to their arms and political power – in defiance of international pressure – is understandable.
No less so is the Maoists’ bafflement over the government’s refusal to “suspend” the monarchy, when, for all practical purposes, the House proclamation has already done that.
Introspection is in order. Considering the approaching anniversary, it should begin with the 12-point SPA-Maoist accord reached in New Delhi last year. The reality that the accord stands on flimsier ground than the 1951 Delhi Compromise rests not on the absence of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the preponderant player.
The real distinguishing feature is that Jawaharlal Nehru represented India far more credibly than the current Congress premier – and perhaps any future leader of the world’s most populous democracy – can expect to.
The fragility of the peace process becomes more ominous when Maoist chief ideologue Dr. Baburam Bhattarai praises India for facilitating the accord and then blames it for conspiring to keep the rebels out of power, almost in the same breath. If the adroit hair-splitter is making a distinction between those in the Indian Left who mediated the talks with the SPA and the “official sources” who leaked reports to the media that Indian intelligence agencies were “chaperoning” him around New Delhi, then he needs to be more explicit about those negotiations.
The question is, can he? When UML general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal traveled to Lucknow in November 2003 to meet with Prachanda and Dr. Bhattarai, there was palpable mix of outrage and embarrassment in both sides of the border over the ease with which the leader of the opposition could meet “terrorists” on Indian soil.
Those sentiments obscured the more relevant story: Dr. Bhattarai’s candid acknowledgement that the Maoists, like any other political organization in Nepali history, could not advance their objectives by criticizing India. The Indians, for their part, must be equally baffled by how the Maoists, who have vowed to launch massive peaceful urban protests in case the talks fail, could still keep their broader pledge to turn South Asia into a flaming field of Maoist revolutions.”
Such fiery rhetoric cannot obscure the flexibility behind the Maoists’ growth. An organization that took up arms against both the monarchy and parliamentary democracy – more vigorously against the latter until the June 1, 2001 royal palace massacre – has now allied with one.
A 40-point list of grievances heavily targeted against India has now been distilled into diatribe against the 238-year-old monarchy. The obfuscation and prevarication that has gone into justifying such shifts are not helpful. Yet the Maoists persist.
Providing revolutionary ardor to Prithvi Narayan Shah’s famous counsel, the Maoists describe Nepal as a dynamite between two boulders. The yam metaphor of the first Shah king may have contained traces of weakness – as the Maoists allege -- but it still pulsated with a quest for life.
The notion of self-destruction – and its wider devastation -- inherent in the dynamite analogy may not have alarmed many Nepalis. The international community has taken notice. No wonder U.N. General Assembly members on Monday refused to be taken in by the peace-and-democracy platform in Nepal campaign for a two-year seat on the Security Council.

Originally posted on October 16, 2006

क्रान्तिकारी भाषामा राजकीय शव्द

सञ्जय उपाध्याय

नयां नेपाललाई पुरानोले कति सम्म लखेटिरहेको छ भन्ने एउटा उदाहरण नेपाली काङ्ग्रेसका उपसभापति रामचन्द्र पौडेलले हालै पोखरामा दिन पुगे। प्रधानमन्त्री पुष्पकमल दाहालले अचेल प्रयोग गर्ने गरेको भाषामा पौडैलले तत्कालिन राजा महेन्द्रका शब्दहरु भेट्न थालेछन्।
आफ्नो संघर्षमय राजनीतिक जीवन राजा महेन्द्रकै शासनकालमा सुरु गरेका पौडेललाई उनको त्यस बखतको सम्झना बेला बेला कुनै न कुनै रुपले आइरहंदो हो। दाहालले खुलेरै नेपालले आफ्नै प्रकृतिको लोकतन्त्रको विकास गर्नु पर्ने कुरा गर्न थाले पछि पौडेललाई विगतले झन् सताएको होला।
दाहालको कथनका पछाडि जेजस्ता कारण रहे पनि केही त माओवादीहरु कै राजनीतिक आस्था, हाम्रो विगतको संसदीय अनुभव र समसामयिक राजनीति संग गासिएका छन्। मूलधारमा आइसके पछि नेकपा माओवादीले आफ्नो विशिष्ट क्रान्तिकारी छवि गुमाउदै गएको भन्ने कार्यकर्ताहरुमा बढ्दै गएको असन्तोष कसैबाट छिपेको छैन। जनयुद्ध राजतन्त्र र संसदीय व्यवस्था दुवै विरुद्ध सुरु भएको स्मरण गर्नेहरु मध्ये धेरैले त त्यो असन्तोष नै दाहालका लागि सबैभन्दा ठूलो समस्या बन्न सक्ने शान्ति प्रक्रियाको आरम्भ संगै ठम्याएका थिए।
उता नेपाली कम्युनिष्ट आन्दोलनको नेतृत्व सम्हाल्ने होडवाजीले पनि काम गरेको छ। अघिल्ला पुस्ताका उग्रबामपन्थीहरुको मूलधारिकरण गर्न सफल मदन भण्डारीको जनताको बहुदलीय जनवादका तत्कालिन बिरोधीहरु मध्येका एक वर्तमान एमाले महासचिव झलनाथ खनालले आफ्नो दललाई क्रान्तिकारी छवि दिने भरमग्दूर प्रयास गरिरहेका छन्। उनले पनि नेपालको अनुभव र आवश्यक्ता अनुरुप राजनीतिक व्यवस्थालाई परिमार्जन गर्नु पर्ने मनतव्य दिइरहेका छन्।
नयां संरचना सम्वन्धि स्पष्ट विवरण माओवादी वा एमाले कसैले दिन नसकेको सन्दर्भमा त्यस्ता भनाईहरुलाई लोकतन्त्र बिरोधी चरित्र दिन नेपाली कांग्रेसलाई सजिलो पर्यो। अनि राजा महेन्द्रद्धारा संसदीय प्रजातन्त्रको अन्त्य गरी प्रतिपादित निर्दलीय पञ्चायत व्यवस्था संग दाहाल र खनाललाई जोड्न पौडेललाई सजिलो भयो।
तर यहां अर्को खेल सुरु भएको आभाष हुन्छ। निश्चय पनि आधारभूत दलविहीन स्वरुपले नै पञ्चायत ब्यवस्थालाई अप्रजातान्त्रिक बनाएको थियो। जनताको राजनीतिक आस्थाका आधारमा संगठित हुने अधिकारलाई बर्गीय संगठन जस्ता अन्य बैकल्पिक माध्यमबाट सुनिश्चित गर्ने निर्दलीय अभियान ब्यर्थ रह्यो। आधारभूत निर्दलीय स्वरुपकै आयामहरुले राष्ट्रको समग्र जीवनलाई नियन्त्रण गर्यो।
तत्कालिन अन्तरराष्ट्रिय परिस्थिति माझ संसदीय प्रजातन्त्रको भविष्य कति सुरक्षित थियो भन्ने विवाद कहिले नटुंगेला। तर पनि फर्केर हेर्नु पर्नै हुन्छ। एकातिर परस्पर विपरित राजनीतिक प्रणाली बोकेका हाम्रा उतर र दक्षिण छिमेकी वीचको शत्रुता थियो भने अर्को तिर पूर्व र पश्चिम विश्व राजनीतिक आस्थाका आधारमा शितयुद्धमा लिप्त थिए। अनि दोश्रो विश्व युद्ध पछि एशिया, अफ्रिका र लेटिन अमेरिकामा उदाएका नेपाल जस्ता नवप्रजातन्त्रहरुले अन्तरराष्ट्रिय शक्ति संघर्ष माझ गुमाउनु परेको राजनीतिक स्वतन्त्रता फेरी हासिल गर्न शीत युद्धको अन्त्यको प्रतिक्षा गर्नु परेको यथार्थ थियो।
राजा महेन्द्रको राजनीतिक अनुदारता भित्र पनि उनको शासनकालमा नेपालले आफ्नो विशिष्ट अन्तरराष्ट्रिय पहिचान बनाउन सफल भएको स्वीकार्न कन्जुस्याइ गर्नु पर्ने कारण छैन। भारत संगको सम्वन्धलाई शान्त कूटनीति भित्र समेटेर नेपालले त्यतिवेला आफ्ना स्वतन्त्र र सार्वभौम आकांक्षा र अपेक्षाहरु विश्वव्यापी रुपमा सम्प्रेषण गर्न राजा महेन्द्र सफल भएका थिए।
हो, उनको कूटनीतिले छोडेको पिडादायी पक्षहरुमा कालापानी र १९६५को हतियार खरिद सम्वन्धि समझदारी जस्ता मुद्दा हाम्रा सामु अझै छन्। राजा महेन्द्रलाई जति दोष दिए पनि विर्सन नहुने कुरा चाहीं के हो भने कालापानी र १९६५को समझदारीले वोकेको आधारभूत अन्यायलाई उनको अप्रजातान्त्रिक पक्ष संग जोडेर भारत मूल विषयबाट उम्कन सफल भएको छ।
नेपाल राज्यको उदय, बिकास र वर्तमान स्वरुपका आलोचकहरु राजा महेन्द्रलाई आन्तरिक रुपमा कृतिम नेपालीत्व लादेकोमा दोषी ठान्छन्। तर नेपाली नेपाली वीच भावनात्मक एकता बन्न नसकेको एवं एउटा वर्ग, समुदाय र तप्काले समग्र मुलुकलाई शोषण गरेको भन्नेहरुले पनि नेपाललाई दर्जनौ सूक्ष्म राष्ट्रहरुको पुंजका रुपमा परिकल्पना गरेका छैनन्। जे जति न्यायपूर्ण प्रतिनिधित्व, समावेशिकरण र सम्वन्वय बढाउनु पर्ने हो अहिलेकै हाम्रा भौगोलिक यथार्थ र अन्तरराष्ट्रिय पहिचानकै परिधि भित्र गर्नु पर्ने हुन्छ।
यो आकांक्षालाई बुझेको अभाष नेकपा माओवादीले जनयुद्ध सुरु गरे देखि नै औपचारिक दस्तावेज, नेतृत्व पंक्तिका सार्वजनिक भनाई र लेख रचना मार्फत दिएको हो। प्रधानमन्त्रीका रुपमा दाहालले त्यसो गर्न सफल होलान् वा राष्ट्रियता सम्वन्धि मुद्दाहरुलाई सत्तारोहणको मार्गमा सीमित राख्लान् त्यो त भविष्यले नै बताउला। तर प्रधानमन्त्री भएको महिना दिन जसो भित्र दाहालले नेपालमा प्रभावशाली तीनवटै शक्तिशाली मुलुकका सर्वोच्च नेतृत्वलाई भेटी नेपालीहरुको स्वतन्त्र र सवल भई वाच्ने आकांक्षा सम्प्रेषित गर्न सफल भए जस्तो देखिन्छन्। साथै उनले ती सरकारहरुको अपेक्षा बुझेका पनि होलान्।
तिनको समायोजन गर्न सक्नुमा नै नेपालको भविष्य निर्भर हुने कुरामा दुईमत नहोला। अहिले नै नयां नेपालको सम्भावित सम्वन्धि दाहालको एउटा अस्पष्ट अवधारणालाई राजा महेन्द्रको एउटा अप्रीय पक्ष संग जोड्न खोज्नु मुलुकका लागि कतिको हितकर होला?