[Three Indian blunders have proved costly for
India — spearheading the abolition of Nepal’s constitutional monarchy; bringing
the Maoists to the centre stage of Nepali politics; and aiding the plains
people’s revolt against the new Nepali Constitution and then abandoning them.]
By Brahma Chellaney
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Prime
Minister Narendra Modi with his Nepali counterpart KP Sharma Oli during
delegation
level talks in Kathmandu earlier this year(PTI)
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Nepal’s new communist prime minister, KP Oli,
has paid obeisance in Beijing, where he agreed to the proposal to extend the
railway from Shigatse in Tibet to his country so as to reduce Nepali dependence
on India. For India, Nepal is not just another neighbour but one that is
symbiotically linked through close cultural affinity, overlapping ethnic and
linguistic identities, and an open border permitting passport-free passage. The
China-Nepal railway — a “game changer”, as a Chinese mouthpiece called it —
will compound the impact on India’s strategic interests of Nepal’s emergence as
the world’s sixth communist-ruled country.
The two communist groups that came to power
in February merged into a single party in May. The new Nepali Communist Party,
with almost two-thirds majority in Parliament and governments in six of the
nation’s seven provinces, casts an ominous shadow over Nepal’s sputtering
democratic transition. From constitutional functionaries, such as the president
and vice president, to key officials, including the chief of police services,
are today card-carrying communists.
Emboldened by the communists’ pervasive
domination, Oli has started undermining the independence of Nepal’s
institutions, from the judiciary to the election commission. The communists’
next target will likely be the army. Whether democracy will survive under
communist rule is uncertain. What is clear is that Nepal is impinging on Indian
security.
A Nepal increasingly open to Chinese
influence shares a tightly guarded frontier with Tibet but wishes to maintain
an open border with India. India has repeatedly advised Nepal that its southern
border belt is turning into a zone of jihadist and foreign intelligence
activities that threaten Indian security. Nepal has also become a major transit
point for the flow of counterfeit Indian currency, narcotics and Chinese arms
to India.
Simply put, Nepal represents a critical
challenge for India. But, to a significant extent, this is a self-created
problem. Three Indian blunders since the mid-2000s have proved very costly for
India — spearheading the abolition of Nepal’s constitutional monarchy; bringing
the underground Maoists to the centre-stage of Nepali politics; and, more
recently, aiding the plains people’s revolt against the new, 2015-drafted
Nepali Constitution and then abandoning their movement and pressuring them
(Madhesis) to participate in the 2017 elections, thus legitimising a Constitution
it said was flawed.
New Delhi indeed owes an apology to Nepal’s
citizens for its past meddling, which, as if to underscore the law of unintended
consequences, boomeranged on India’s own interests. India’s mistakes set in
motion developments that seriously eroded its clout in Nepal and helped China
to make major inroads.
The upshot was that Nepal went from being a
Hindu kingdom (indeed the world’s only officially Hindu nation) to coming under
the sway of communists, who largely filled the void from the monarchy’s
removal, thereby undercutting the influence of the Nepali Congress Party,
dominant until then. From 2008, the Nepali communists were in coalition
governments for almost a decade before capturing power on their own in the last
elections. Oli’s Marxist-Leninist Party and the Maoists, which fought the
elections jointly under China’s advice, tapped into grassroots anger over the
Indian-backed Madhesi protesters’ earlier border blockade.
India, paradoxically, is still unable to make
peace with its own Maoists. In fact, the Nepali Maoists’ Indian-assisted
success in enjoying power after a decade-long bloody insurrection has
emboldened the Indian Maoists to step up their hit-and-run attacks on police
and paramilitary troops. Meanwhile, the Maoists’ dreamland, China, is pulling
Nepal into its orbit. India is reaping what it sowed.
Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and
author.
The views expressed are personal
