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I keep hearing two competing narratives on India’s recent involvement in Nepal from the Kathmandu intelligentsia. The first has a ring of a conspiracy theory; the second sounds more benign. As India never accepted the 2015 constitution, goes the first one, it has been trying to discredit it right from the start. In no position to remove the strong KP Oli government, it decided to take the Nepali prime minister into confidence, and get him to amend the constitution to include Nepal’s new geopolitical map.

By incorporating an unsettled map in it, Oli ensured that the constitution would be impossible for India to approve. As he did so, Oli must have known no future Nepali government would dare to amend the constitution to remove parts of Nepal—if and when Nepal and India negotiate a border settlement. Oli for his part has always been a reluctant federalist, the federal project seemingly coming in the way of his majoritarian impulse. Oli thus connived with India to discredit the constitution.

Oli charted a course that would eventually lead to a complete loss of faith in the national charter. He passed another major milestone on this course when he unconstitutionally dissolved the House. That done, most recent bit of this narrative continues, Oli’s utility for the Indians ended, thus also explaining Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s refusal to see Pradeep Gyawali while he was in New Delhi.

The second narrative is that India had nothing to do with either the map’s inclusion in the constitution or the House dissolution. In fact, the unsettled map’s inclusion without its say-so displeased the Indians no end. Yes, Oli did try to later seek India’s support after doing away with the federal parliament. But he never got it. In this narrative, having had its conjuring hands repeatedly singed in Nepal, India this time decided to wait, and gleefully watched the Chinese plot to keep the Nepal Communist Party intact unravel.

At this point, the two narratives meet: Now that ‘pro-China’ Oli appears to be on his way out, India would like to have someone more agreeable in his place. India will keep watching as the NCP implodes and when the process is complete it will help cobble together a more India-friendly government. Meanwhile, India will up its charm offensive in Nepal, which has in fact already started with the offer of a million doses of Covid-19 vaccines on grant. 

Whichever narrative is closer to the truth, the Chinese are the clear losers. They keep trying to unite the NCP—their informal envoys in Kathmandu STILL busy meeting top NCP leaders as well as President Bhandari. Short of immediate unity, they want the two NCP factions to together contest future elections. The Chinese want to keep their chief enablers in Nepal united at a time the Americans seek ever-closer strategic ties with India to check China’s designs here.

By contrast, things are nicely falling into place for India. The much-hated communist government is now a caretaker one; there is a chance of its closer partners in Nepali Congress and JSPN coming to power; the stock of China in Nepal has never been lower; and the US has publicly pushed for India’s lead role in Nepal. The perception India is trying to create is that it will wait and watch, at least until the Supreme Court verdict on House dissolution. Indeed, it gains nothing by showing its hands too early.

A lot of speculation always swirls around India’s motives in Nepal, and it is no different this time—and some of it can be pretty wild. But there is also some commonsense consensus: the constitution of Nepal has, by default or design, been put in danger by making it progressively harder for India to accept it.  

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The declassified “US Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific” reinforces American paranoia over China’s rise. The intent of the Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) had never been in doubt: containing America’s chief geostrategic and ideological rival. Also widely known was American reliance on India to accomplish this goal. What the declassified document has done is show the extent of this reliance.  

The framework pitches for ever-closer strategic alliance with India. Rather explicitly, it says the US should “offer support to India—through diplomatic, military, and intelligence channels—to help address continental challenges such as the border dispute with China and access to water, including the Brahmaputra and other rivers facing diversion by China”. Translation: In the event of a future India-China border war, the Americans will come to India’s aid. They will also back India’s right to uninterrupted flow of the rivers originating in Tibet, which will perforce involve opposing China’s various dam-building projects upstream. 

Likewise, the strategic framework’s section on China vows to “promote US values throughout the region to maintain influence and counterbalance Chinese models of government”. The US engagement in the region will be enhanced, partly to educate people here about “China’s coercive behavior and influence operations around the world”. American allies and partners will also receive help “to ensure strategic independence and freedom from Chinese coercion”. 

There is now no doubt that the overarching goal of American engagement in South Asia is to minimize China’s role in the region while enhancing India’s. How should smaller South Asian countries like Nepal respond, then? To protect China’s interests, should Nepal shun all future American help and cooperation, even at the risk of inviting greater Indian meddling? That would be unwise.

For Nepal, there really is no alternative to broad engagement. Rather than shun Americans and make them more reliant on India, it would be wiser for Nepal to keep them engaged. Whatever the framework says, Nepal is a far too important geostrategic outpost for the Americans to leave its patrolling to India. For one, they know the Indians are incapable of containing China on Nepali soil on their own. Let us not forget: Nepal established diplomatic ties with the US precisely to gain some leverage over its two giant neighbors—and the importance of having such leverage has never been greater.  

Nepal should therefore endorse the MCC compact—even if it’s a part of the IPS, as the declassified framework suggests when it speaks of helping India “diversify its energy supplies”. Otherwise, what are our options? Nepal’s primary strategic concern was and remains not letting its two giant neighbors dictate terms here.  

Some say Nepal should follow in Sri Lanka’s footsteps: throw out the MCC and engage with the US under a different framework. But what difference does that make when the Americans have clearly spelled out the terms of their future engagement in the region? How does stripping the MCC of its old garb and getting pretty much the same thing under a different guise help Nepal’s cause?  

The cost of a precarious existence between a bullying neighbor and one we barely understand is eternal vigilance and diversification beyond the two. This entails doing business not just with the Americans but also the Europeans and our other bilateral and multilateral partners—keeping all our options open. This may not please China. We will have to try to make it understand our compulsion—a tough ask. But the effort will be worth it.

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Indian experts on Nepal, everyone from Shyam Saran to Ranjit Rae, have been advising their government to exercise restraint. That, they aver, will best protect Indian interests in Nepal. The naked Chinese intervention to save the sinking Nepal Communist Party ship, they argue, has discredited China in the eyes of common Nepalis. By contrast, India’s ‘quiet diplomacy’ has been a welcome change, and gone down well among common folks. Has it?

Arguing India should not intervene (and it shouldn’t) and that its interests are best protected by subtle diplomacy (perhaps) is one thing. Whether it really has been ‘hands off’ in Nepal now or if it will be so in the future, is another. No thinker this writer talked to before penning these lines thought India had no role in Nepal’s recent political ructions. Nor did they reckon it would desist from intervening in the future. 

In fact, they suspected India’s direct hand in House dissolution. Why? Because India has never explicitly accepted the new constitution and the governments formed under it. Now by helping KP Oli to unconstitutionally dissolve the House, it has put the constitution in jeopardy. The other common thread among these thinkers was their suspicion that India’s utility of Oli had perhaps ended now, and it would look to install someone more amenable in Singhadurbar. 

When Indian intellectuals argue India shouldn’t intervene in Nepal, it is worth asking back: which India are they advising? The one represented by the Hindu nationalist BJP and Narendra Modi? The South Block that has never liked taking orders from the PMO on smaller countries in the neighborhood? Or the RAW, the Indian external intelligence agency, notorious in Nepal for its part in the unceremonious dissolution of the Maoist-dominated first Constituent Assembly? Or for the current disastrous course set in motion by Kathmandu visit of its new chief Samant Goel?

Which of these three actors believes in non-interference and stability in Nepal? The BJP has for long been lobbying for a Hindu state, a goal that would be hard to realize in a stable polity. The South Block likes to maintain total control over events in the neighborhood, which, again, is not possible without creating a semblance of instability. For the RAW, well, instability is its natural playground. 

In evaluating India’s role, we must also ask a fundamental question: what is New Delhi’s chief interest in Nepal right now? To ensure democracy, peace and stability, or to push back against the assertive dragon that seems intent on gobbling up India’s traditional strategic space? Considering recent events on Indo-China border, the Indian establishment’s preference is easy to guess. Yes, there are still those who believe India’s continued support for democratic process and non-intervention are India’s best offense against the Chinese; given its natural advantages in Nepal, goes this argument, the Chinese will eventually tire themselves out.

Yet, surely, the Indians won’t agree to so easily loosen their hold in a country traditionally under their strategic grip. If anything, Indian intervention, of every kind, will grow in Nepal as China too throws off its shackles. The Chinese have lately been brazen in the pursuit of their interests. And so will the Indians. Perhaps this is why no serious thinker in Nepal is ready to buy the trope of ‘aloof India’ that only ‘takes note’ of events here. We all know what happened in 2015 when it took such a note.

Following the monarchy’s ouster China started cultivating all major political actors in Nepal: Nepali Congress, the big communist parties, as well as the emergent Madhesi outfits. It had come to believe that in an unstable polity like Nepal’s, any of them could be running the show at any time. Yet when KP Oli sought China’s balancing role against India following the 2015-16 border blockade, Beijing saw an opportunity to benefit from the changing political equations in Nepal.

In the 2017 federal elections, the UML-Maoist coalition romped home to victory, partly as a result of Oli’s efforts to minimize Indian interference with China’s help. China continued to encourage the two largest communist parties to unify and the Nepal Communist Party was born. (The Chinese didn’t have the final say on this unity, but they did play an important role.)

As the NCP locked in government leadership for five years, the Chinese sought to train its leaders in ‘Xi Jinping thought’ and to vigorously push the BRI, Xi’s signature foreign policy initiative. China also leaned on the new communist government to reject the American MCC compact and to keep India, Uncle Sam’s new ‘poodle’, at arm’s length.

The internal power struggles in the ruling party put paid to China’s plans. After engaging in a futile, last-ditch effort to undo the NCP split, it has already started distributing its Nepali eggs in multiple baskets. Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba has been invited to attend CCP’s birthday bash next year. Feelers have been sent to the JSPN, the unified Madhesi party. Meanwhile, the Chinese will continue their efforts to unify Nepal’s communist forces.

The Chinese are reinventing diplomacy. With the help of their increased financial clout, they are building support among elites in every country they operate in. Top politicians, businesspersons, academics and journalists are invited on all-expenses-paid trips to China, and hosted like royalty. When these people get back to their country, they bring stories of modern China’s dazzling development, and emphasize on the need to follow China’s path.

In time, these elites, who are repeatedly invited to tour and learn from China, become its points of influence. Thus, today, China has powerful friends in every sector of the Nepali society—and across the political spectrum. The inducements on offer are just too good to resist.   

Public opinion, the Chinese don’t much bother with. At least the Indians seem worried about ‘unfavorable’ public opinion in Nepal, as was evident during the blockade. Not so the Chinese leadership, which can give any domestic spin to events outside their borders. When it singled out The Kathmandu Post for censure last year, many thought China had committed a diplomatic faux pas. Yet intimidation was exactly the point. The message was that China under Xi wouldn’t be charitable to its vocal critics.

So, yes, China is helping us balance against India, but at what cost? What level of Chinese interests do we accommodate and still retain our democratic values?

Nepal cannot do without China, its all-powerful neighbor. But how do we import its developmental model while keeping its governing ideology out? And is there a way to minimize China’s influence on our elites, or to use this influence in our national interest? 

Countries around the world are grappling with these questions in their dealings with China. Not so in Nepal. Our new, elitist foreign policy framework for one is predictably silent on this all-important issue. 

A few things are clear enough. Multiple Nepal Communist Party sources confirm that Prime Minister KP Oli has been desperately trying to mend his strained ties with the Indian establishment and the BJP leadership. Informal envoys have been deputed to New Delhi to explore ways to restore his credibility with the Indians. The Chinese were set on preserving the ruling party’s unity—even if it entailed requesting Oli to give up one of his two executive posts. Oli wasn’t prepared to do so. He instead split his party and sought India’s help to save his twin chairs. 

New Delhi was hesitant at Oli’s overtures. Indian political leaders and bureaucrats who had once closely worked with him had not forgotten the blockade-time ‘betrayal’. Back then, the communist prime minister had conveniently ditched his old allegiance with India and pushed measures to establish China as India’s counterweight. This popular nationalist stand helped him become prime minister for the second time. 

So the Indian babus were wary this time. But they also saw an opportunity. After the 2015-16 blockade, China had steadily gained ground in Kathmandu at India’s expense, and New Delhi had been scrambling for a response. India realized that so long as the NCP—with its budding fraternal ties with the Chinese Communist Party—remained intact, things would be hard for India. Also acutely aware of China’s reasons for backing NCP unity, India decided to play it cook with Oli’s party-split efforts. 

Oli could not have risked it all without India’s backing. One simple way to guess which foreign actor was involved in the NCP split, suggested a retired PMO official with vast experience of dealing with foreign actors, is to ask who benefitted most from it. “The modus operandi is classic India, which will again get to play in the unstable polity,” he said.  

The strongest ‘pro-China’ force now out of the picture, most coverage of Oli’s parliament dissolution in Indian media portrayed the move as a strategic victory for their country.

The contrasting Chinese reaction can be gauged by a Dec 25 Global Times op-ed. “The coordinative role played by China”—supposedly in bringing the NCP together and later to keep it intact—“should not be viewed as interference in Nepal's internal politics,” it said. The same op-ed chastised the Indian media which “often provoke China-Nepal relations, but this will not send big waves. Politicians in Nepal well understand the importance of cooperating with China.”

Bluster aside, China has definitely lost its trusted ‘permanent friend’ in Nepal. The Chinese had looked to cultivate such an all-weather friend in their bid to crimp India’s strategic space in Nepal, as a part of their new push against the Indians in South Asia. But with the NCP behemoth gone, Oli back in India’s corner, and Nepali Congress increasingly seen in Beijing as doing India’s bidding, China appears short of options. It’s now lobbying for the parliament’s reinstatement, including with President Bhandari. (Yes, the dragon’s started to bare its fangs.)  

Along with India, aging Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba is the other big winner of the communist split. With Oli’s help, Deuba will now look to worm his way back to the center of Nepali politics. In internal party deliberations following the NCP breakup, Deuba has stood vehemently against protesting Oli’s parliament dissolution. Perhaps he already has a tacit understanding with Oli to forge an electoral alliance and, in the most favorable case, even dreams of reclaiming the prime minister’s chair. The Supreme Court judgement, whichever way it goes, won’t much affect this calculus. Deuba has always enjoyed New Delhi’s blessings. The political comeback of this darling of the westerners will also please the Americans.

Foreign policy is but an extension of domestic policy, goes an old Bismarckian saying. The current Nepali regime found the axiom relevant enough to include in its new foreign policy document. But in our case, could the opposite be as true? Could Nepal’s domestic politics be but an extension of its foreign policy? 

India has had a major—if not the decisive—role in each of contemporary Nepal’s major political changes. Back in the late 1940s, without the Indians getting worried about the prospect of the communist China gobbling up Nepal (after Tibet), perhaps it would not have given refuge to King Tribhuvan and backed Nepali democratic forces against the reigning Ranas. The 1989 border blockade had a big role in the removal of absolute monarchy in 1990. Pretty much the same story of active Indian intervention has been repeated in more recent times.

New Delhi set the terms of the 2005 12-point agreement—the precursor to all recent progressive changes. In 2015, India blatantly intervened in Nepal’s constitutional process, pushing the Nepali prime minister into China’s open arms. This marked the start of China’s unprecedented sway in Nepal. In fact, whenever Kathmandu has felt threatened by the south, it has invariably looked north for succor. 

The Nepali Congress internalized the ideals of independent India’s founders and the party has since had a soft spot for the largest democracy in the world. Nepali communists, naturally, borrowed heavily from Chinese and Soviet Marxists. Now they are in thrall to a faux-communist capitalist state. It says much that the Nepal Communist Party might not have existed without the Chinese looking for a new permanent friend in Nepal. Having invested so much, China has also sought to actively shape Nepali politics, much like India has done for all these years.

Nepali monarchy survived for so long following its restoration in 1950 because it was mighty useful to China. It died partly because its existence started threatening core Indian interests. The precariously placed, landlocked country has thus had to chop and change its institutions and politics in tune with changing Indian and Chinese interests. 

Look at our important national issues today: Kalapani, high-speed rail, hydropower development, tourism, remittance—they all depend on outside actors, mostly India and China. Nepali elections are won by demonizing India; the government formed thereafter tries to cover its incompetence by appeasing China. 

Isolated in his own party, KP Oli is again looking to secure his twin chairs by cultivating the Indians. But the rest of the NCP is still firmly in the Chinese camp. Nepali Congress, meanwhile, has taken upon itself to push the American MCC compact. In one way or the other, our domestic political actors are inviting foreign meddling as befits them.  

In this cloudy climate, it is impossible to gauge whether domestic politics influences foreign relations or vice versa. For instance, is Oli reaching out to India to save his chair? Or it is a case of India wanting to mend bridges with Oli, an old (if estranged) friend, as China tightens its grip on Nepal? China stitched up the NCP and now wants to forestall its split, an effort with as yet unclear ramifications for Nepal.   

In this interconnected world, it is hard for any country to remain unaffected by outside developments. But Nepal, primarily by the virtue of its unique geography, remains more vulnerable to foreign headwinds.

Communists easily cotton to ‘contradictions’, as is again seen in the just-publicized foreign policy framework of Nepal. Perhaps the central contradiction in this 31-page document is the contention that Nepal can have a workable foreign policy only with a level of political consensus. Efforts will hence be made to take opposition parties and intellectuals into confidence on vital foreign policy issues. Yet the same document acknowledges that it will be a tough task. 

Concomitantly, the new foreign policy outlook will purportedly help realize the Nepal Communist Party’s election slogan of ‘Prosperous Nepal, Happy Nepalis’. Other political parties will naturally shun an electoral slogan as a tenet of the country’s foreign policy. As it is, after the all-round failure of the Oli government in two and half years, the slogan has become bit of a joke. The government would have done well to quietly drop this NCP shibboleth than continue to hype it up and invite further ridicule. 

Again, as the document avers, consensus in foreign policy will be hard to get. But is it even possible? When Nepali political commentators, including this writer, talk of the importance of such consensus, are they being realistic? In the true spirit of dialectic materialism, let me this time argue against the likelihood of such foreign-policy consensus, as desirable as it may be.  

We hear of other more ‘successful’ countries in the international arena having such consensus. But is that true? The two main political parties in the most potent democracy in the world cannot even agree on America’s enemy number one. The Democrats say it is election-tampering Russians; for the Republicans, there could be no bigger villain than IP-stealing Chinese. The former want to bolster global alliances, the latter think it is better to go it alone; the first group to save global climate, the second to sustain local coal-miners. 

What about India, does it have a basic political consensus on foreign policy? Hardly. The BJP and the INC are forever at loggerheads over the best way to deal with China. Interestingly, promoting engagement with Pakistan has become toxic for either party, not because the ruling and opposition parties see eye-to-eye on the Islamic republic. The BJP has rather successfully demonized Pakistan in the public eye, to an extent it would be politically suicidal for the INC to advocate any kind of Indo-Pak truce. But don’t they at least agree on the neighborhood? The official foreign policy wing of INC describes Modi’s ‘Neighborhood First’ policy as ‘Neighborhood Lost’ policy. Thanks to Modi’s misguided ways, the “long-held perception of India as a friendly ally has taken a major hit in Nepal”.

In fact, realistically, only one-party states like China, Vietnam and North Korea have such broad foreign policy consensus. For smaller South Asian democracies, the major foreign policy contradiction remains how to best balance India and China, with domestic forces in these countries bitterly divided over which of these regional giants should be favored.  

As KP Oli seeks rapprochement with the BJP leadership—Prachanda is reportedly warning his NCP acolytes that the Nepali prime minister has already sold his soul to the RSS, and is backing its Hindu-state restoration agenda in return for the longevity of his government—we are all being forced to reevaluate the NCP’s ‘pro-China’ image. Rest assured: If Oli goes India’s way, China will quickly find his replacement as its trusted power center in Nepal. 

Even if our domestic actors were willing, the big outside powers won’t allow such foreign policy consensus that cramps their own room for maneuver in this increasingly important geopolitical hotspot.

The Chinese hate foreign meddling in their domestic politics. Hence their reluctance to butt into the internal politics of other countries. That, at least, was traditionally the case. But as it gains economic and military heft, and under a leader determined to establish China as the preeminent world power, China’s diplomatic instruments are getting blunt. There was no gainsaying its recent message to Nepali Prime Minister KP Oli: maintain the Nepal Communist Party unity at all costs, even if it entails him giving up the post of prime minister or party co-chairperson. Oli, unsurprisingly, has rebuffed Chinese envoy Hou Yanqi’s many recent meeting requests.

Unhappy with the pressure from the north, Oli has looked to cultivate the southern neighbor. He has sent to Delhi ‘informal’ envoys to resurrect his old contacts. Foreign Minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali is himself slated to visit the Indian capital at December-end. India has reciprocated Oli’s gesture, espying no other way to cut the ‘pro-China’ NCP down to size: witness the recent flurry of high-level Indian visits to the Nepali capital. But, one may ask, didn’t Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe also come calling at the same time?

He did, but of his own accord. Oli didn’t seem to be listening to the Chinese envoy in Kathmandu or to China’s other emissaries. Wei came to force Oli to listen. Interestingly, during his brief Kathmandu stay, Wei spent hours chatting up the Nepal Army top brass, not in pow-wows with top political leaders. The Oli government appearing shaky, China is hedging its bets and has intensified efforts to establish the mighty Nepal Army as its new ‘permanent friend’ in Kathmandu, much like it relied disproportionately on the monarchy before 2006.

Revealingly, Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla, during his own two-day Kathmandu trip, met leaders from across the political spectrum—but not Prachanda. This was done at Oli’s special request, say insiders. These are not the only signs of thawing ties between the Indian and Nepali establishments.

It’s an open secret within the NCP that the current pro-monarch and Hindu state protests have Oli’s tacit support. Otherwise, pandemic-time protests with thousands of attendees would have been impossible, when much smaller gatherings were nipped in the bud. (The prohibitory orders against pro-monarchy protests later came from the Maoist home minister.) Oli wants to reciprocate India’s support by keeping the BJP in good humor. This bolsters the speculation of otherwise more conspiracy-minded strategic analysts who reckon the BJP would like to see Nepal reinstated as a Hindu state ahead of the 2022 Uttar Pradesh state elections, to further strengthen Aditya Yoginath’s grip on the heart of the Hindi belt.

Oli ascended to power on the back of the 2015-16 Indian blockade. He is minded to jump ship again, back into the arms of his old Indian patrons. He wants to kiss and make up. In return, he will not needle India on border (left out of agenda during Shringla’s visit) nor speak too loudly in favor of the EPG (again not discussed).

The fast-changing power equations in Kathmandu are ripe for geopolitical maneuverings too. If the NCP splits, will the Chinese openly back the Prachanda faction? Or do they look to further cultivate the army? How does India balance its old support for Nepali Congress and Madhesi parties with its new penchant for Oli? And what will be the American role in all this?

On cue, international publications have started describing Nepal as “a frontline state in the new cold war”.