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)

Backfire in Nepal: How India Lost the Plot to China

From the back cover:

Backfire in Nepal explores how China has become the ultimate beneficiary of India’s democracy-promotion agenda in Nepal. New Delhi had made a bold bet in 2005, but one that contained two mutually fortifying flaws: the abolition of the monarchy and the empowerment of the former Maoist rebels. The world’s only Hindu monarch and kingdom were bound to India in a special relationship that neither country needed to define or assert. True, Indians had been put off by successive Nepalese monarchs playing New Delhi off against Beijing. In retrospect, a little more compassion for Nepal’s compulsions might have put things into sharper relief.

Nepalese Maoists, being communists first, were trained to denounce Indian ‘expansionism’ before American ‘imperialism’. Experience may have impelled the senior leadership to make practical compromises. It was a leap of faith for New Delhi to trust the leadership to rein in their cadres’ radicalism.

More broadly, since India had also enlisted Western democracies, it needed to address their often-contradictory concerns throughout Nepal’s turbulent transition. The Chinese could act purely on their national interests. India continues to misread how Beijing sees Nepal – both in terms of China’s visions of the past and the future. This complicates the core trilateral challenge: ensuring that Nepal is not sucked deeper into the Sino-Indian vortex, only to be scorned for aggravating the Asian giants’ rivalry.

Backfire in Nepal: How India Lost the Plot to China
By Sanjay Upadhya
New Delhi: Vitasta, 2021 (forthcoming), Rs. 495

Nepal: What Just Happened?

By Sanjay Upadhya

A prime minister enjoying a near-two-thirds majority in parliament dissolves the house, citing his constitutional prerogative. Most of his own party legislators join the opposition in denouncing the move as a ‘coup’ and petitioning the Supreme Court to reinstate the legislature.

Parties that turned Nepal into a federal democratic republic are now on the streets scrambling for space already occupied by groups demanding a return of the monarchy and more extreme republicans, secularists and federalists. What just happened?

You have to go back a decade and a half. In 2005, India facilitates a deal between seven mainstream Nepalese opposition parties agitating against the monarchy and Maoist rebels waging a bloody decade-long insurgency against parliament and the palace. Behind the democracy banner, India’s unspoken objective is to pull Nepal away from the tilt it sees the palace take towards China. Despite having armed the monarchy fight the Maoists, China becomes the ultimate beneficiary in Nepal.

Nepal-India relations – touted as unparalleled in the world for the depth and diversity – hit their nadir, as the communist government in Kathmandu prepares a new political map of the country incorporating territory Nepal accuses India of illegally occupying for decades. Before India can react, the government amends the Constitution to include the new map with overwhelming cross-party support.

Oli’s pronouncements turn eerily wild. In parliament, he asserts that the coronavirus strain entering Nepal from India is more virulent than that from China. Then, he publicly accuses New Delhi of instigating rivals to oust him from power. Before long, Oli maintains that Lord Ram was born in Nepal, not Ayodhya, accusing India of cultural encroachment. 

The Nepal Communist Party, despite its near-two-thirds majority in parliament, is deeply divided. The Chinese ambassador is actively involved in preventing a party split. India is left agog at Oli’s audacity, but more so at China’s inroads. The stakes rise as New Delhi and Beijing are locked in their worst border clashes since the 1962 war.

And the monarch deposed ostensibly for his pro-Chinese tilt? Citizen Gyanendra Shah remains the de facto head of state, issuing messages on national occasions and exhorting his successors not to upset the precarious balance his ancestors struck between the Asian giants to maintain Nepal’s independence. Quietly, India and China continue engaging with him. What happened?

In retrospect, Beijing’s intentions were visible early on. Having supported the Royal Nepal Army’s operations against the Maoist rebels towards the very end, Beijing conveniently replaced its ambassador. The new Chinese envoy became the first foreign representative to present credentials to the prime minister concurrently acting as head of state. The substance of the move would outweigh its symbolism.

There were two fatal flaws in India’s approach: facilitating the abolition of the monarchy and empowering the Maoists. First, the world’s only Hindu monarch and kingdom were bound to India in a special relationship that neither country needed to define or assert. The Nepalese king’s patronage of India’s vast Hindu population also was a guarantee that the palace would not stray too far from the civilisational relationship. True, Indians had seen successive Nepalese monarchs playing New Delhi off against Beijing. A little more compassion for Nepal’s compulsions might have put things into sharper relief.

Second, Nepalese communists closely resembled their Indian cousins. But as communists first, they were trained to denounce Indian ‘expansionism’ before American ‘imperialism’. Experience might have impelled the senior leadership to make practical compromises. It was a leap of faith for New Delhi to trust the leadership to rein in their cadres’ radicalism.

Since India had rallied the Western democracies in 2005, it needed to address their concerns as well throughout the twists and turns of Nepal’s transition. The Chinese could act purely on their national interests. More broadly, India monumentally misread China and Chinese perceptions of Nepal. A policy based on the amity that opened up the Nathu-la Pass to Sino-Indian trade could not work in the era of Doklam and Galwan. 

Given their great power aspirations, China and India are likely to intensify their rivalry over Nepal. The three countries urgently need to stabilise the triangle. India needs to cease seeing Nepal as a Chinese client and recognise the pressures it bears from Beijing. Understanding that China, too, sees Nepal – the last tributary state to the Qing dynasty – as part of its sphere of influence would help India reach more rational choices. As they continue to experience the asphyxiating presence of the Chinese, Nepalese, too, would be impelled to find a geostrategic equilibrium between the two giant neighbours. With their fundamental interests addressed, the Chinese might resist overplaying their hand in Nepal.

Based on the author’s upcoming book Backfire in Nepal: How India Lost the Plot to China.

Republicanism: How About A Real Public Debate?

By Sanjay Upadhya

Amid the flurry of political activity in Kathmandu and New Delhi in recent weeks, the myth surrounding the restoration of multiparty democracy in 1990 is being dispelled. From the outset, it was clear that the tripartite agreement among the royal palace, the Nepali Congress and a disparate alliance of communist factions was an uneasy one.

The main communist faction, the Marxist-Leninist, had officially expressed qualified support for the new constitution. The party’s objections primarily centered on the role and privileges of the monarchy. It was hardly a secret that the communist parties’ acceptance of constitutional monarchy was a tactical decision. The comrades, not too surprisingly, saw the palace as a useful counterweight to the Nepali Congress’ ambitions.

In the aftermath of King Gyanendra’s February 1 takeover of full executive powers, the Nepali Congress, too, has signaled that its support for constitutional monarchy is, at best, driven by expediency.

Ever since King Gyanendra dismissed the last elected government in October 2002 for failing to hold elections, Nepali Congress president Girija Prasad Koirala has been warning that the king’s political ambitions would compelled him to contemplate an alliance with the Maoist rebels to abolish the monarchy. This is surely a leap of faith for a man who headed the government that inaugurated the unleashing of state power against the rebels, who have been fighting since 1996 to establish a communist republic.

Now Koirala’s one-time deputy, Ram Chandra Poudel, has gone a step further by asserting that King Birendra was not satisfied with the powers granted him under the constitution. For a party that proclaimed that King Birendra was the paragon of virtue when it came to adherence to the constitution, Poudel’s disclosure was revealing departure. Moreover, Poudel must have had to summon much antipathy to speak in the way he did against the former monarch around the fourth anniversary of the palace massacre that wiped out most of the royal family.

The monarchy, to be sure, could not have been satisfied with the restricted political role the two major parties envisaged for him in the new constitution. What King Birendra announced on the night of April 8, 1990 was merely the lifting of the ban on political parties. The ensuing days witnessed a struggle for power on the streets and in the media. The scales were tipped against the palace, already weakened by a crippling trade and transit embargo imposed by India. Fifteen years later, the palace stepped in to claim a role it believed it never had relinquished under the tripartite agreement.

Among the leaders still detained by the royal government after the lifting the state of emergency on April 30 are leading proponents of a constituent assembly. This is a key demand of the Maoists, who expect the elected body to transform the kingdom into a republic. The detentions indicate that the palace is ready for a showdown regardless of the quarter it emanated from.

Koirala, the leader of the seven-party anti-palace alliance formed last month, is currently in India for medical treatment. He has been holding talks with sympathetic Indian leaders in an effort to consolidate the democracy movement in Nepal. Advocating a “fight to the finish for full democracy”, he may be contemplating some kind of alliance with the Maoists, who have acknowledged opening their own contacts with key Indian leaders. It remains unclear, though, whether the latest consultations would help clarify the republican agenda.

Indeed, precious little has been heard so far. Considering the Nepalese political parties’ propensity for polarization while in power – a trait preponderant during the two phases of multiparty democracy in 1951-1960 and 1990-2002 – the contours of a republican future need to be drawn clearly. The process needs to begin with a precise definition of the relationship between the head of state and head of government, including role, functions and powers.

To some extent, a United States-style presidential system might help avoid conflicts. Since such a model would be seen centralizing power in one branch, legislative and judicial checks and balances acquire special attention.

An Indian-style prime ministerial model would envisage a titular head of state. Since the president would be the supreme commander of the armed forces, the command-and-control conflicts the mainstream parties see under the monarchy would still exist. This issue acquires additional urgency in view of the heavy politicization of the police force and bureaucracy under successive elected governments.

Irrespective of the model, effective safeguards against potential conflicts between the executive and legislative branches must be put in place. Questions relating to the president’s tenure, including impeachment, must be addressed vigorously, considering the frequency with which no-confidence motions were introduced against the prime minister in the past.

The prime minister’s prerogative to dissolve parliament and call fresh elections, a subject of much divisiveness in the past, must be clearly addressed. There are legitimate issues concerning the judiciary, especially since each prime minister that dissolved the House of Representatives was eventually challenged in the Supreme Court.

In the case of direct elections to both offices, the issue of power-sharing by a president and prime minister representing rival parties becomes crucial. French-style “cohabitation” under which jurisdictions for foreign and domestic policies are clearly laid out, might provide some insights.

Awaiting greater clarification, though, is the precise mechanism of ushering in a republic. The current discussions on a constituent assembly remain superficial. Worse, they presume that the popular verdict is already known. Will voting be conducted along the present first-past-the-post system or proportional representation? How can traditionally underrepresented groups expect their voices and concerns to be heard? Would the people’s representatives elected on diverse platforms assemble to vote on a future model? Or would the issue be put directly to a referendum? Considering the deep divisions in the electorate, how would each of the alternative outcome scenarios be addressed? Who exactly will be drafting a new constitution? Discussions have focused too narrowly on how the palace might react to an adverse result. How would the mainstream parties and the Maoists respond to an outcome not to their liking?

In the case of a republican victory, how would the ambiguities contained in the Maoists’ commitment to their ultimate goal of establishing a communist republic be addressed? This question becomes all the more important in view of the growing interest and influence of external powers in Nepal.

For China, India, United States and Britain, among other countries, the monarchy has been the pivot of stability since the 1950s. Public support, tradition and continuity have conferred special legitimacy to the institution, which external powers have acknowledged and incorporated in their policies vis-à-vis the country.

A full Maoist takeover would hardly be acceptable to them, albeit for different reasons. The United States, which sees its victory over communism as a seminal event of the last century, would hardly countenance such a brazen reversal of that reality. Moreover, Washington has designated the rebels a terrorist group.

The Maoists, who have carefully calibrated their postures in keeping with the exigencies of the moment, may be ready to shed some of their doctrinaire policies and rhetoric in exchange for legitimacy.

However, it remains doubtful whether they would be ready to change the party name and flag in exchange for western support, especially when the far more moderate Unified Marxist Leninists have not been able to do so.

Despite misguided attempts to portray a Chinese hand behind the insurgency, it is clear that Beijing would hardly acquiesce in the emergence of a hard-line Maoist government in Nepal. The Nepalese Maoists continue to espouse aspects of the Cultural Revolution—including class conflicts and retribution – which modern-day Chinese communists would prefer to forget. Moreover, at a time when economic reforms have left a huge rural-urban income divide in China, the communist leadership in Beijing cannot be unaware of the destabilizing effects of a homegrown yet antiquated ideology in a volatile part of South Asia.

As for India, extreme left-wing insurgencies grip some 40 percent of the country’s 593 districts. A full-fledged Maoist takeover in Nepal would serve to energize these groups into forging their wider compact revolutionary zone in South Asia. Considering the long and porous border between the two countries and the peoples’ longstanding links, sections in the Indian establishment might be willing to contemplate a Maoist-dominated republican Nepal under the presidency of, say, the Nepali Congress.

Indeed, New Delhi’s recent decision to open direct channels of communication with the Nepalese Maoists, purportedly under the auspices of leftist supporters of the ruling coalition, could be aimed at facilitating such an alliance. Would the vociferous Hindutva element in India accede to the destruction of the world’s only Hindu kingdom?

Despite the much-hyped bonhomie between China and India, New Delhi’s enthusiasm in defining a new state structure in Nepal would clearly sensitize Beijing. Growing cooperation between the world’s two most populous nations cannot mask the reality that they are also competitors. The limits to conciliation have been on display for some time.

Despite India’s full recognition of Tibet as an integral part of China, Beijing has hardly shown unequivocal reciprocity on the issue of Sikkim, the Himalayan kingdom India annexed in 1974. China’s reticence on India’s candidacy for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council provides yet another illustration of this complex relationship.

In keeping with its massive economic expansion, China has decided to deepen its strategic influence in the region, especially with Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. According to a report published in April by Washington DC-based Jamestown Foundation, Nepal’s strategic location makes the kingdom an important part of South Asia. Nepal’s borders meet China’s restive western province of Tibet on the one hand, and Naxalite-dominated Indian states on the other.

China has traditionally viewed the monarchy as the cornerstone of its Nepal policy. Weeks after describing the royal takeover as an “internal matter,” China sent Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing to Nepal in a clear gesture of support. Jia Qinglin, chairman of the National Committee of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, China’s top advisory body, reaffirmed his country’s support during a meeting with King Gyanendra in April on the sidelines of the Boao Forum for Asia conference in Hainan.

In return, the Jamestown report says, China wants the Nepalese government to stay clear of any foreign (Indian or the U.S.) influence that could make trouble in Tibet. To further the goal of status quo in Tibet, China is integrating Nepal into the Tibetan economy, and laying a highway that will connect the two. Chinese President Hu Jintao, who served as Communist Party secretary in Tibet from 1988 to 1992, perhaps best understands the importance of this integration.

The United States, which joined India and Britain in arming and training the Royal Nepalese Army in its fight against the Maoists, has embarked on a deft policy. While the other two countries responded to the royal takeover by announcing a suspension of military assistance, the United States adopted a watch-and-wait policy. Publicly, Washington continues to emphasize policy coordination with New Delhi and London. Behind the scenes, Washington has engaged with Beijing, already is a key intermediary in the North Korean nuclear crisis.

The Bush administration, aware of China’s recent moves to fill a vacuum in Asian leadership, has assigned Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick to head a permanent U.S. delegation to talk with China one a variety of international issues, including Burma, Nepal and Sudan.

In a 2002 report, the U.S. research organization Stratfor wrote that Washington has relatively little interest in Nepal’s insurgency. However, it added, the Pentagon likely would not mind having another emergency air base or logistics center close to Pakistan and Central Asia. “In looking toward the longer term, the United States definitely wants as much of a presence on the border with China as possible,” the report said.

Beijing is well aware of Washington’s intentions and is no doubt concerned about the U.S. encirclement that is already taking place, Stratfor said. “The U.S. military has bases in Pakistan, throughout Central Asia, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, and it has relations with Mongolia, Taiwan, Singapore and Thailand. Nepal is another link in the chain,” it added.

Referring to India’s strategic decision in the mid-1990s to move closer to the United States, Stratfor said New Delhi hoped to benefit from increased trade, eventual access to U.S. weapons systems and the formation of a strong alliance to counter China.

“However, American involvement with Nepal and Sri Lanka raises conflicting impulses. On one hand, New Delhi is glad to see Washington trying to clean up the insurgencies that have spilled over into its borders for years. On the other hand, there is a visceral reaction against foreign involvement in India’s backyard, especially when those foreigners maintain strong ties with Indian rival Pakistan.”

The report added: “Many in India’s foreign policy circles are concerned that Washington may replace India as the dominant power in South Asia, assuming that Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bhutan prefer the freedom that comes with casting their allegiance with a distant giant rather than one close to home.” This, according to Stratfor, has dampened India’s hope of becoming the dominant power in the Indian Ocean and interacting with Washington as a near equal.

In an earlier report, Stratfor underscored Nepal’s strong geo-strategic value to world powers. “The power that stations its space-linked surveillance, intelligence and navigation systems on Nepal’s high mountains gets geo-strategic leverage over several Asian regions, from Central Asia to South-East Asia,” the report said.

Clearly, Nepal must brace for new domestic and international challenges. Proponents of a republican agenda need to persuade the people that the new model would be more effective than the monarchy in address these challenges. Rhetorical threats must not be allowed to take the place of substantive discussions. The accusation that King Gyanendra in this day and age is bent on reviving autocracy is an insult to the intelligence of the Nepalese people.

Originally posted on June 8, 2005

Webinar on the Role of the Media in Nepal-India Relations

China, India and US: Geostrategic Competition in Nepal: Talk Program by Sanjay Upadhya

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— Sanjay Upadhya (@SanjuPad) December 5, 2020

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.