By Dr Janardan Subedi
Recently, I read a piece in Aajakonews about the renewed India–China understanding to reopen border trade routes through Lipulekh, Shipki La, and Nathu La. What struck me most was not the agreement itself but the chilling familiarity of the pattern: two powerful neighbors making decisions on routes that pass through Nepal’s sovereign territory—without even the courtesy of consultation. It was as if history had pressed the “repeat” button once again.
Only a few weeks earlier, in an interview with Deshsanchar, I had remarked that if Nepal continues on its current trajectory of passivity, corruption, and institutional decay, the country risks disappearing as a sovereign nation within three to ten years. That statement, though stark, was not meant as an exaggeration; it was an analytical reflection grounded in sociological observation. The Aajakonews piece was simply one more reminder of the reality I had been pointing toward.
Lipulekh is not just a mountain pass in the far-western Himalayas. It is a symbol of Nepal’s cartographic integrity and the dignity of its sovereignty. Officially included in Nepal’s 2020 political map alongside Kalapani and Limpiyadhura, Lipulekh represents more than disputed land; it embodies the question of whether Nepal has the will, the capacity, and the imagination to act as a sovereign state in the twenty-first century. Since the Panchsheel Agreement of 1954, India and China have repeatedly incorporated Lipulekh into their bilateral arrangements, treating Nepal as an absent entity. Each time, Nepal protests with a diplomatic note; each time, both neighbors ignore it. The cycle repeats, and Nepal’s silence becomes normalized.
This normalization of exclusion has two consequences. At the geopolitical level, it signals to New Delhi and Beijing that Nepal can be sidelined without consequence. At the sociological level, it erodes the shared imagination of nationhood. Citizens who watch their leaders fail to defend sovereignty gradually lose faith in the state itself. National pride gives way to cynicism, and migration becomes the rational response to the perception of a failing homeland.
But the deeper issue is not only external. It lies within Nepal itself. Instead of crafting a coherent national strategy, Kathmandu’s political class and intellectual community are mired in corruption scandals and petty factional power struggles. The recent debates over Rabi Lamichhane’s cooperative scandal, or the endless reshuffling of parties in government, illustrate a system where survival in power and accumulation of wealth have displaced the very idea of national sovereignty. For Nepal’s ruling elite, the borders matter less than the ministries they control, and the nation is secondary to the spoils of office.
Instead of expecting visionary diplomacy from the Foreign Minister, Madam Arzu Rana, what the nation witnesses is a descent into political theatrics where foreign policy becomes entangled with personal networks and partisan games. Rather than articulating Nepal’s sovereign standing with clarity and strength, the ministry seems reduced to a political brothel, where external relations are commodified for domestic bargaining. In parallel, Prime Minister K.P. Oli continues to act less as a statesman and more as a self-righteous prophet, hurling venom at his opponents while presenting himself as a saint. Such contradictions hollow out the very meaning of political leadership. At a time when the nation needs sober vision to negotiate with its neighbors and forge a 50-year peace treaty of coexistence, its highest leaders are engrossed in survival politics, patronage, and mutual mudslinging.
This is why blaming neighbors, though convenient, is insufficient. Yes, India treats the far-western frontier as a security buffer, and China views it as a corridor for trade. Both operate from strategic logic. But Nepal has not matched their logic with its own. Instead, we reduce sovereignty to a ritualized performance of grievance—protests without follow-up, maps without diplomacy, declarations without strategy. In truth, the question is not simply what India or China does, but why Nepal continues to do so little in return.
Here, an alternative vision becomes crucial. Instead of imagining sovereignty only as a matter of bilateral bargaining, why not pursue a bold regional framework? One possibility would be a tripartite 50-year peace and cooperation treaty among Nepal, India, and China. Such a treaty could guarantee respect for Nepal’s territorial sovereignty, neutralize the perpetual suspicion of encirclement, and institutionalize Nepal’s role as a buffer of peace rather than an object of rivalry. It might sound utopian, but history shows that windows for such agreements open and close quickly. Today, such an initiative might still be possible; in the future, as power asymmetries deepen, it may not be.
Yet, in Kathmandu, no such imagination exists. The political system and the intellectual class are engrossed in scandals and self-preservation. They debate Lamichhane’s citizenship or a minister’s commission cut with more urgency than Nepal’s survival in a rapidly shifting geopolitical order. The media cycles are filled with the theatrics of internal power plays, while the slow erosion of sovereignty in Lipulekh or Kalapani barely registers beyond a few symbolic headlines. This is not simply negligence—it is a failure of imagination.
From a sociopolitical perspective, this reflects what I call institutional silence: the inability of a state to act even when its existence is directly challenged. Institutional silence emerges when politics is captured by patronage, when intellectuals are reduced to commentators rather than visionaries, and when national strategy is replaced by tactical maneuvering for personal gain. In such contexts, sovereignty becomes ornamental—a word repeated in speeches but stripped of substance in practice.
The tragedy, then, is twofold. Externally, Nepal is bypassed by its neighbors. Internally, Nepal bypasses itself. Each act of omission becomes a precedent. Each failure to act deepens the habit of inaction. And gradually, a nation does not need to be conquered; it simply withers into irrelevance. This is the essence of what I meant when I warned of Nepal’s possible disappearance. Nations rarely die in a single dramatic collapse; they fade slowly, undone by silence, corruption, and the failure to imagine alternatives.
What is to be done? Four steps are urgent and unavoidable:
1. Diplomatic assertion: Nepal must insist on equal-footing dialogue with both India and China. Not as a favor, but as a right of sovereign parity. Silence must no longer be the default.
2. International legal recourse: Sovereignty claims must be anchored in treaties and pursued in international forums. If not now, when?
3. Domestic consensus: Political parties must forge unity on sovereignty questions. Corruption scandals will come and go, but if national borders are compromised, no government can claim legitimacy.
4. Long-term imagination: The idea of a 50-year tripartite peace treaty must be seriously debated. It may be dismissed as ambitious today, but history punishes those who fail to act while the window of possibility is open.
The Lipulekh episode is not merely a territorial dispute; it is a mirror. In it, Nepal sees both the disdain of its neighbors and the decay of its own political system. To continue blaming neighbors alone is to miss the point. The real danger lies in our own complacency, our own corruption, our own refusal to imagine sovereignty beyond empty ritual.
Reading the Aajakonews piece, I was reminded again of the phrase I used in Deshsanchar: Nepal risks disappearing. But disappearance here does not mean physical annexation. It means the gradual hollowing out of sovereignty until Nepal becomes little more than a name on a map, managed by others, abandoned by its own.
The question, therefore, is not whether India and China will continue to bypass Nepal—they will, as long as it suits them. The real question is whether Nepal will continue to bypass itself. Will it remain locked in scandal and corruption, content with blaming others? Or will it muster the imagination to secure its sovereignty—perhaps even through bold initiatives like a 50-year peace treaty—before the window of opportunity closes forever?
History does not wait for the indecisive. The silence of a state is not neutral; it is a slow consent to its own erasure.
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