Between the Lines
By Rabi Raj Thapa
Realpolitik is more sensitive and risky. Since the political change of 1990 and especially the political change of 2006, Nepalese political stalwarts have turned to mere political ideologues. Present imbroglios on all legislative, executive and even judiciary and criminal justice systems of Nepal.
The border issues between Nepal and India regarding Lipulek are getting more complex, serious and complicated day by day. In a recent interview, Nepal’s retired Army General Rajendra Thapa said Nepal has lost Lipulek forever due to legislative parliamentarian sanction. In practice, that land is controlled by the foreign government authority and the map is hanging on the walls, the logo of the parliamentarians and now the government wants to depict it on 100 rupees bank-notes.
Border issues are something that every citizen needs to be serious about, and the government decision-makers need to shake off their amateurish statements, words and demeanour that can really pull down bilateral relationships from good to bad and to worse.
Subramanian Swamy in his book, “Himalayan Challenge, India and China and the Quest for Peace” in 2020 has tried to uncover the perfidy committed by the British vis-à-vis the McMahan Line in 1936 and the circumstances that led to the Indo-China War in 1962 with the continued fluid situation between Indian-Chinese border even today.
The Beginning
During the Imperial British Raj, a British Colonel Francis Younghusband marched over, annexed Lasha and forced the Government of Tibet to sign the Treaty of Lasha in 1904 that forced Tibet to deal directly with India instead of through China. For the same reason, the Britishers leased Sikkim’s Chumbi valley to British India for 75 years.
According to the author, Indian leaders were ranting, ”Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai” when the Chinese were building roads through the borders. He questioned, “If India supports the independence of Tibet and succeeds in it, can India sustain Tibet’s defense and security?” Then Swamiji questions, “Today, we are getting the worst of both positions. We accept Tibet as part of China, and yet we allow the seeds of doubt to germinate in the mind of our neighbor about our intentions. However, sadly, India does not have easy options on Tibet”. To end, he summarizes – India-China relations thus suffer from this ambivalence…India-China relations should, therefore, not be derailed by misconceptions and misplaced adventurism, whereby all that happens is that our valiant soldiers die for nebulous cause, and are forgotten soon after.
McMahan Line and Indo-China Border
A 17-Point Agreement signed between authorized delegation of Tibet and the Chinese government in Beijing on May 23, 1951, merged Tibet to the People’s Republic of China. Before that, it was McMahan line that demarcated British India and the Tibetan border that was never accepted by the Chinese authority.
But when the Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru wanted to develop a good and cordial relationship with Mao’s PR China, he signed the Panchsheel or the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, that enunciated in the Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between the Tibet Region of China and India but didn’t raise the border issues as it should be. Such an unsettled approach slowly rocked the India-China relationship. At first, it was not the border dispute, but India’s convoluted and often unarticulated approach full of misperception of vague opaque goals fueled misunderstanding with China about Indian intentions. This is the main argument Dr. Subramanian Swami has written in his book. (p. 29)
Nepal-India Border Issue
For this reason, this book is very pertinent and important to analyze the concurrent political imbroglio between Nepal and India. Both countries need to be serious and realistic before things get out of hand; before it is too late, too damaging. Recently, there has been a lot of podcasts, interviews and news both on Nepalese and Indian media. Indian media have wider outreach that can propagate the negative image of Nepal and Nepalese while Nepalese media is waging its own battles for credibility, public trust and survival. War of wits between a former media tycoon, Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister, and another media-tycoon: the CEO of Kantipur Media Group, Kailash Shirohia, as self-proclaimed messiah of the federal, secular republic of Nepal has rocked the country. Besides, the torrents of blame and counter blame, political horse-trading and scams of unprecedented scales have disillusioned and provided ample ground to suspect deep penetration of foreign hands, corruption and criminal nexus, and most alarmingly the dirty hands of deep-state running the government apparatus whether it is media, education and health, culture and religion, economy or the development works.
Finally, going back to Nepalese border and bilateral relations with India, China and the West; Nepal is falling into a Slippery-Slop that may lead to disastrous consequences that would be unfortunate to the whole nation.
The writer is the former AIG of the Armed Police Force, Nepal.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect People’s Review’s editorial stance.
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