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Although International Relations (IR) is taught at Tribhuvan University as a social science discipline, one’s attempt to identify the ingredients of ‘social’ and ‘science’ in the prescribed syllabus of IR may become a futile struggle. Scanning the syllabus, one may notice a perceptible dearth of topics, concepts, approaches, and methods for enquiring, understanding, and interpreting the role of wider social interactions in a country’s foreign policy choices.

The syllabus was introduced in 2013 and revised after receiving ‘expert opinions’ in 2017. Still, misreading and misrepresenting IR only as the study of state power further repudiates the role that social units have in the production, accumulation, and reproduction of power. While IR fundamentally claims to study the relations between the state and non-state actors, the Nepali IR has principally failed to identify and inculcate the larger social aspects of such relations that help measure power as social production.

Firstly, teaching IR in Nepal is robbed of any academic inquiry into the existing social phenomenon that presents politics as a social activity. Secondly, its minuscule reliance on political science for any scientific observation is not sufficient to produce a good political scientist. Thirdly, its overemphasis on national power and national security divulges divergence between everyday social realities and political rhetoric. As such, IR is more of an elite sense, not a social science.

More elite, less social

The syllabus of IR is crammed with global, regional, and national issues. But those issues are scarcely studied and investigated in the context of social realities. Professors in the IR program may make a quick escape by divulging the lack of required human resources to teach the subject. Here, physical walls built by departments inside the university also share the blame. After all, the physical walls confine your epistemic behavior to the constructed sense of belonging to one academic discipline. It utterly prevents the discipline from becoming suitably interdisciplinary. Just lettering your syllabus as interdisciplinary doesn’t fulfill the objective unless an IR wala is made enthusiastic to sit in the classrooms of political science, sociology, anthropology, history, and economics prior to his/her foreign policy analysis of any diplomatic episodes. Sad but true, there are no practices of visiting philosophically associated departments and spending time in each other’s libraries and classrooms. In such a context, how and from where a young program like IR will acquire and develop the components of ‘social’ and ‘science’?

A prevalent irony in Tribhuvan University’s social sciences is the rationale behind classifying the academic subjects as social sciences. Generally, social science is understood as the study of society, social institutions, and social behavior. But those elements are missing in the syllabus and teaching of IR in the university.

University’s social sciences—which are largely expected to study social realities—have today poignantly failed to grasp the nature and characteristics of existing Nepali society. Despite the mediocre history of social sciences in Nepal, just a cliche(mentioned as an example below) may instantly attest that social sciences in the university remain ignorant of everyday social experiences. For instance, academic departments and programs at Tribhuvan University, including the IR program, are never tired of describing Nepal as a “poor and underdeveloped/ developing country”. But the exorbitant semester fees imposed on the students of “the poor and underdeveloped/ developing country” stands contrary to their claim. It’s an apt example revealing the indifference of university authorities to existing social realities shaped by class, wealth, income, and social inequalities. When the university doesn’t pay heed to the students of “the poor and underdeveloped/ developing country” opposing the exorbitant semester fees, it becomes obvious that the university is apathetic to social realities. In such an environment, programs like International Relations may attract more money to the university.

An IR wala never gets bored of reiterating foreign policy as the extension of domestic policies. But the social actors and factors associated with those domestic policies are seldom discussed in the classroom. It may be because of two reasons: Firstly, faculties find it easier to weave the accessible media narratives on the everyday changes taking place in global and regional politics. Secondly, IR students remain submissive to the details drawn from the elitist phenomenon of decision-making in world affairs. Actually, they find the world being presented to them in the classroom adventurous. As such, they rhapsodize world political affairs, where the amount of ‘social’ is swiftly relegated to the study of power and influence.

While the IR program at TU is all set to make a decade-long institutional history, students and young faculties in the IR are incessantly lured by the mere mentions and fleeting references of the globally renowned diplomats. Being ignorant of the significance of intellectual biography and intellectual history, their taste and flavor are either reduced to general likes/dislikes or driven by popular narratives. In the Nepali context, two historical characters are seemingly glorified in the IR classroom—PN Shah and Mahendra Shah—for their reported contributions to Nepal’s national security and diplomatic responsibilities. Interestingly, the social realities in their days never become the units of the syllabus, the matter of classroom discussion, and the topic or argument of dissertation writing/ supervision.

Although the key actors shaping Nepal’s foreign policy and diplomacy in different periods of time are taught and studied, neither the IR faculties nor the students have the access and understanding to identify the backroom boys and decipher their roles in foreign policy decision-making. Take the case of MCC as an example, the classroom discussions of international relations in the university were widely dependent on the news and views from the mainstream media. The IR faculties may be well paid for what they teach but their dependence on media analyses and internet surfing corrode the analytical and observatory capacities, which a university faculty should cultivate unremittingly. Consequently, their routine emphasis on the secondary data positioned around the matters of national power, national security, and national interest fails to comprehend the social realities shaping both the historical and contemporary episodes with regard to what is nation and national.

Mere sense, no science

Social science studies society on various fronts. In today’s academic milieu, while political science, sociology, anthropology, and history themselves have botched to report, investigate, and analyze society and social institutions treading on the existing philosophical, historical, and theoretical standpoints, it may not be fitting to expect a new program like IR—which theoretically and philosophically doesn’t have anything of its own—concentrate its teaching and study on the inevitability of social elements shaping foreign policy decisions?

Already, as a discipline, IR is preoccupied with the interests and relations between the states. Saddest of all, in developing countries, those interests and relations are also not taught as per global academic practices, commenced and continued by the best IR schools around the world.  As a result, faculties and students in countries like ours may make sense of the events and phenomena but can rarely practice it as a social science.

After all, the strands of society are largely elapsed in their approaches and analyses. In all the dissertations produced by the students of the IR department since 2016, the social component is relentlessly missing. A cursory look over the analysis and inferences drawn in their dissertations may indicate the presence of scientific research methods but a thorough probe into the dissertation may reveal the story of duplication and oversimplification. Dissertations produced on Nepal-China relations are an apt example. How justifiable is it to pen a dissertation on Nepal-China relations without knowing basic Mandarin or the basic attributes of Chinese society? Is it convincing and per the popular research ethics to pull the information already available in Google or archives and reproduce it as your own analysis? The most bewildering aspect of teaching IR at the university is the acceptability of the dissertations without any scientific knowledge of the proposed issues. Not even a handful of dissertations are based on field visits, participant observations, ethnography, and interviews. Against such a backdrop, on the basis of what remaining yardsticks can IR be considered a social science in the Nepali context? Methodologically, it has compromised science over sense. In terms of perspectives, it has dismissed social interests and social relations over the promotion of elite interests and power relations, which are often misunderstood as national interest in IR classrooms.

'Khambandi'

Injecting a few components of ‘social’ and ‘science’ into the disciplinary hat of International Relations won’t make its approach social, however. Instead, the understanding of ‘social’ may vary from one IR walla to the other, at least, until power remains at the core of its disciplinary existence. The element of ‘science’ that the syllabus is supposed to carry—not in a prescriptive sense, but more in a reflective sense—has already been compromised to the 'Khambandi' culture. When acquaintances come to know that your department has received funds from the University Grants Commission (UGC) or elsewhere, you will see ‘experts’ in droves being welcomed with 'Khambandi'—paid in an envelope for their ‘expertise’. Despite the reckless duplication in the contents of the syllabus being revised, plagiarism in the units, and above all, more guff-gaaf and less expertise in the process of syllabus-making, they don’t hesitate to receive the 'Khambandi'. On what moral and professional grounds is that justifiable? When experts and practitioners are lured more by 'Khambandi', faculties are dependent on Google and popular narratives, and students are reliant only on the faculties’ slides, one can imagine the future of Nepali IR under the semester system in the oldest university of Nepal.

The idea of relations is as old as human civilization. First, humans entered into relations with nature. Then, possibly into a tribe. And, with rituals. And, slowly with clans, classes, and castes. Hence, it is clear that humans haven’t always endured under states, which are considered the key actors, today, in steering International Relations (IR). The component of relations in IR goads anybody willing to explore how states and non-state actors have popularized the genus of relations through their approaches and engagements. Situating the word “international” just before the term “relations” has popularized the lexicon but politicized the entire idea of relations in a very nebulous manner.  Already, the discipline of sociology and anthropology finds human relations complex. Historians and political scientists have spent decades acknowledging the intricacies of studying the relations between states and individuals, groups, and associations. In social sciences, various methods and methodologies, narratives, and narratologies are familiarized as an attempt to twig the intricacies associated with various forms of relations. Despite the hurdles faced by different disciplines in analyzing various forms of relations, IR boldly and bluntly defines relations. Precisely, IR takes no less time to rakishly haul the component of relations to the level of the states through the establishment of embassies, placement of envoys, and practices of diplomacy. Perceiving the admission of relations into the bilateral and multilateral fronts, one may enquire about two things:  whose international? And whose relations? Whose international? As a prefix, inter either means between or among. National is etymologically concerned with a nation or country or people of a nation. The discipline of international relations schools the concept of international to its pupils by coaching them untiringly that international is about what happens between or among countries and their people. But, which countries and which people? Is the definition of international the same for all countries and their people? Does the understanding of the powerful countries about international vary from the responses of the less powerful countries toward the domain of international? To the former, the international may be the site of influence and authority. To the latter, it’s possibly the realm of both, opportunities and threats. While the state’s approach to international affairs is principally determined by power, the general public’s interactions with international affairs are frequently influenced by class, access, literacy, language, roles, and status. For instance, there may be more differences than similarities in the perceptions of international people by the Nepali migrant workers toiling in a GCC country and the official Nepali diplomats assigned to the same country. To the labor migrants, international may mean a site of livelihood strategies, while to the diplomats, it is more about boosting one’s career, contacts, and exposure. Conditioned by one’s access and ability, the realm of internationalism is not only relative but also hierarchical. Before the establishment of the League of Nations, internationalism was narrowly European. With the launch of the United Nations, international was levied on developing and third-world countries in the name of global peace and security.  After the end of bipolarity in 1990, however, the developing world was unprecedentedly enticed by wide-ranging changes taking place on economic, political, and technological fronts. Nepal’s earliest fascination with the international community was driven by its rulers’ interest in getting access to European commodities and adopting the lifestyle of the British colonizers and residents. Following the political change of 1950, however, Nepali leaders and rulers cherry-picked west-educated Nepali men, who were fluent in speaking and writing English to interact with the international community. After 1990, international entered Nepali households through the policies of liberalization and privatization. Whose relations? The domain of international thrives on interest-based relations, not necessarily on the interests of the States but also of the non-state or transnational actors. They may be international organizations or non-governmental organizations. They may be individuals, lobbyists, interest groups, or pressure groups. While all kinds of relations, from social to political, are historically shaped and defined by the power elites, their interests are palpably manifested in Nepal’s foreign relations, particularly through the bureaucratization of national interests. As such, a country’s national interest is monolithically reduced to the interests of the elite groups. For instance, we often hear in TV talks and election campaigns about the need to increase the export of Nepali goods to foreign countries so that Nepal’s trade deficit could be reduced. But, while endorsing that narrative, we pay no heed to the financial profits reaped by the business communities through exports of goods and services. Do the interests of the merchants and traders epitomize the interest of the entire Nepali people? We have been socialized to endorse such interests in the name of scanty employment opportunities offered by those business communities or pretentiously in the name of economic interdependence and reciprocity. Such narratives should be understood in the historical continuity of the rulers-traders nexus. Politicians seek financial favor from the business communities in the form of Chanda or donations. In turn, the former is obliged to ease the Dhanda or economic activities of the latter.  Recently, the Maoist-led government negated the proposal dispatched by the Ministry of Agriculture demanding to test Indian vegetables for pesticides arguing that such a test could jeopardize Nepal’s ties with India. Thus, it was clear whose interest the government was promoting to maintain what relations. Historically, Nepal’s foreign relations is branded for divulging the disputes between the interests of the Nepali ruling class, be they the Shahs, Ranas, or the parties.  Of late, Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s decision to halt the then former foreign minister Bimala Rai Paudyal’s scheduled visit to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva revealed a discrepancy in the commitment of Nepali political actors toward human rights issues and transitional justice. Triggered by her personal wrath, Poudyal portrayed her posture publicly as the representation of wider social relations, while Dahal has constantly feared being persecuted for his felonies during the decade-long Maoist insurgency. In that sense, the international community is dreadful for him. After all, today’s international is not only about the English language. It’s also about the regime established by human rights and international law, which lay down certain obligations and duties that states are bound to respect.

Not just a buzzword. The ceaseless penchant for geopolitics in the world of foreign policy analysis appears mediocre. An addiction, precisely, when it comes to probing Nepal-India ties. And, when such probes become so instant and swift, one’s hasty haven in the geopolitical scrutiny doesn’t appear thick, convincing, and credible. After all, geopolitics is never the foundation of any bilateral ties. It’s only an interpretation having a long militarist and colonial tradition. When a state’s physical proximity is intertwined with the larger political chronicles, a fashioned narrative is sketchily developed, dismissing the larger component of cultural homogeneity and civilizational affinities, in the pursuit of the interest of lobbyists, interest groups, and power elites. In reality, people and their mobility in the porous and interdependent borderlands are the foundation of the Nepal-India ties. But, understanding and appreciating their everyday experiences aptly seeks anthropological and sociological approaches. It means an armed-chaired geopolitician needs to get rid of xeroxing media narratives and his own temperament and instead get into the field, which demands more time and energy. At times, money too. Because without field visits and observations, one’s understanding of Nepal-India relations may remain away from reality. Or else, it would be a pool of overstretched secondary details sans any novel perspective. It’s not only because of the resurrection of geopolitical accounts, globally, in the wake of the Russian-Ukraine crisis that geopolitics has been the dominant discourse in analyzing Nepal-India ties. Instead, it has become a ritual in the context of Nepal-India relations. Not surprisingly, the early geopolitical chronicles encompassing the post-1950 Nepal-India relations were weightily swayed by the spread of American strategic thoughts during the Cold War period. After the Cold War geopolitics was popularized in South Asia by American political scientists including Leo E Rose, the concept of “balancing” lured the Nepali foreign policymakers, and the west-educated Indian leaders were also not upset by the idea of Indian “influence” in the region. As such, the geopolitical narratives evolved in the bilateral ties that have always cherished their civilizational linkages. Despite the longevity of the civilizational ties and durability of connected histories, the sense of beguilement among the foreign policy practitioners/analysts/experts for the geopolitical elucidation has done more damage than benefits to the bilateral ties. Actually, it's where the ordeals commence. Why geopolitically burdened?   Both our foreign policy imaginations and the foreign policy rhetoric are cripplingly laden with geopolitical thoughts. One of the popular geopolitical narratives on Nepal-India relations is the critique of the continuity of the colonial hangover in India’s policy toward Nepal. Such narratives are framed by treading on discourses of the imperialist geopolitics propounded by Ratzel, Mahan, and Mackinder. Nehru’s Himalayan Frontier Policy is sloppily cited—without understanding the actual context—in disparaging India’s foreign policy behavior. While imperialist geopolitics was triggered by the project of state expansionism, Nehru’s frontier policy was influenced by the Cold War geopolitics globally popularized by George Kennan, Kissinger, and other American and Soviet military leaders. The China factor has further wrought our geopolitical elucidations. Nepal’s diplomatic relations with China and the opening of the Kodari Highway—the first land route connecting Nepal with China—are unequivocally understood from the cold war geopolitics. But, with China’s increasing presence in South Asia through BRI projects, the lens of a new old order geopolitics is being embraced, which is once again an American discourse, primarily publicized by Fukuyama, Gorbachev, Huntington, Bush, and now Biden. Nepal’s collective imagination vis-à-vis its geographical location between India and China has fueled geopolitical chronicles. King Prithvi Narayan Shah popularized it in the 18th century with the “yam” metaphor, in the tradition of imperialist geopolitics, and the subsequent generations glossed the same militaristic approach to Nepal’s geography. Relentless geopolitical interpretations of the events and episodes that have taken place between Nepal and India divulge the same. Episodic geopolitical interpretations After identifying the reasons why geopolitics stands at the top, it's germane to survey the evolution of the geopolitical analysis of Nepal-India ties, and to do that let's examine a few episodes starting from the 1950 AD. The geopolitical reading of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Nepal and India in 1950 signals the militaristic discourse of national security, which keeps on informing Kathmandu that the provisions of the treaty are restrictive. Although an epistemic community named the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) was constituted in 2016, comprising members from Nepal and India, to analyze the relevance of the treaty in the present context and float recommendations accordingly, the EPG’s report is yet to be made public. With the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1951, buffer became a catchword in the geopolitical chronicles. While the 1962 Sino-Indian War heightened the importance of balancing strategies for Nepal, the series of Indo-Pak conflicts further deepened the principle of the sphere of influence and the search for comfortable alliances in the region and beyond. The emergence of Bangladesh and the annexation of Sikkim in the 70s reinvented the narratives of threat and reproduced the discourses of state sovereignty and survival. The Zone of Peace proposal introduced by King Birendra was itself a coping strategy in the context of the fall of Sikkim. The 1989 crisis over the renegotiation of trade and transit between Nepal and India was the upshot of the conflict between Nepal’s hedging strategy and India’s sphere of influence policy. India’s twin-pillar approach in the 1990s accommodated King and the political parties in Nepal. While the global war on terror shaped Nepal-India ties through the array of new geopolitics with transnational problems, India’s interest in Nepal’s water was also not free from geopolitical problems. While the increasing role of China in Nepal and South Asia is often narrated through the lens of power and discourse, the political change that Nepal underwent in 2006 is often scrutinized by foregrounding India’s policy of the promotion of democracy in the neighborhood. The Indo-Nepal crisis of 2015 over the promulgation of the Constitution in Nepal was the outcome of the “geopolitics from above,” but ended with the “geopolitics from below”. Geopolitics from above refers to the tension between the power elites in Nepal and India over the issue of the promulgation of the constitution in Nepal, whereas geopolitics from below referred to the role of the people, civil societies, and public intellectuals in ending that conflict. While Chinese President Xi strategized Nepal’s geography during his 2019 visit by pledging to make Nepal a land-linked state, the 2020 map fiascos between Nepal and India triggered claims and counterclaims in the narratives set by military-bureaucratic intellectuals and the dissemination of their thoughts in the social, political and foreign policy spheres of both the countries. New Delhi’s geopolitical reading of China in Nepal offers a way of relating local and regional dynamics to the global system as a whole. Chinese engagement in Nepal is enframed through a variety of dramas, and conflicts, and within a grand strategic perspective of containing the rise of China. But the geopolitical interpretation of the US in Nepal offers the account of strategic convergence between India and the US regarding China. But, until the interests of New Delhi and Washington hadn’t converged over containing the rise of China, India earlier perceived the US’ offer of arms assistance to Nepal in combating terrorism as a threat to India’s security concerns. Militaristic tradition The prevalence and primacy of unceasing geopolitical interpretations in the aforementioned situations make us wonder about the likely alternative narratives. There are accounts of mobility, migration, and matrimonial relations. But they are also hauled into the geopolitical perspective and placed in the popular template of the militarist tradition of state formation and state-making. The representation of Nepal as a “yam” between two “boulders” is in itself a misrepresentation made from the prism of militaristic tradition that disavows the connected histories with both the boulders. In principle, the military’s discourse of “national security” and the “social security” discourses braced by critical thinkers don’t converge.  But, in the Nepali context, endorsing the militaristic tradition of geopolitics has become a daily routine in the realms of statecraft, diplomacy, and foreign policy. When diplomatic briefings are done and foreign policy analyses are manufactured by upholding geopolitical reckonings, a stark divergence in a country’s foreign policy priorities, agendas, approaches, and behavior is inescapable. Thus, in that sense, mere geopolitical interpretation of events, episodes, and instances has done more damage to Nepal-India ties and more benefits to the military-bureaucratic intellectuals in both countries.  After all, geopolitical knowledge is constructed from positions and locations of political, economic, and cultural power and privilege. It focuses more on the action of the power elites and the discourses articulated by them to fulfill their interests. Spawning a suspicious worldview, the (re)generation of doubts is at its heart, and above all, the interests of the political elites supersede the interests of the people. In the name of geopolitical inquiry, the ‘China scare’ has further inflated the discipline of security studies and the codes of containment. After all, the geopolitical readings of the experts and think tanks only endorse a regime’s interest. No surprise that the practice of statecraft has long enjoyed producing its own intellectuals in fulfilling its interests and ambitions. When unbending conservatives and chauvinists are endured in the process of foreign policy making, the geopolitical analysis of any episodes is reduced to the militaristic approach.  Wrapping up The multidimensionality of Nepal-India ties cannot be fully grasped by recurrently espousing the geopolitical lens, which is not an objective and scientific form of knowledge. After all, it is about the knotty operation of discourse and power. While the dearth of alternative narratives in foreign policy interpretation and analysis is perceptible in the existing public discourses, media narratives, and deliberations in the parliaments of both countries, the diffusion of geopolitical readings into the social realms has generated a sense of doubt and suspicions toward each other. Before our worldview turns entirely suspicious and hostile, an anti-geopolitical reading of Nepal-India ties could be initiated, which not only questions the material (ie, economic and military) power of states and resists the narratives of (mis)representation imposed by the political elites, but may also contribute in keeping the multidimensionality intact by dwelling largely on the work and livelihood strategies of Nepalis in India and Indians in Nepal, pilgrimages made in both the countries, the aesthetic of the matrimonial relations, people crossing borders for health, education, and post-death rituals. Bhattarai is the author of the book, “Nepal between China and India: Difficulty of being Neutral” published by Palgrave Macmillan

Indian authors have written diversely on Nepali history, culture, politics, society, and geography. Still, their works stand small compared to Western scholars writing about Nepal, its people, and politics. Despite the geographical proximity and cultural homogeneity, very few Indian scholars have worked on the multidimensionality of Nepal-India relations, and the trend is acutely decreasing if heed is paid to the duplication of the perspectives and contents. In the past, Nepal study centers in a handful of Indian universities used to discuss, research, and publish about Nepal. Although they were required to offer an alternative narrative, at least not conforming to the position of the Indian state, they failed to meet their objectives.  At present, along with the newly established think tanks, scholars and researchers take no less time to endorse the interest of the Indian state, instead of weaving the alternative narratives—which may place people, culture, and civilization at the center, not solely on power and state politics. Upon the same realization, this article intends to shed light on how the priorities of the Indian foreign policy intellectuals are shaped by the interests of the Indian state. As such, India’s Nepal experts perceive Nepal, in the same manner as the Indian state does. Endless reiteration of the same perception has led to flimsy duplication. Nepal experts in India Universities, academicians, diplomats, retired military officials, think tanks, and journalists deliberate and write about Nepal, in India. Despite having an interest and objective to understand and analyze different facets of Nepali politics and foreign policy, they are entrapped in Westphalian narratives, consistently missing the prospect to offer a counter-narrative on India’s rise, and its responsibilities toward the neighborhood. Only on rare occasions do we see Indian foreign policy analysts divided over Nepal. Usually, they converge on the interest of the Indian state. In 2015, when India imposed a blockade on Nepal, resulting in an artificial shortage of goods in the landlocked country, few Indian foreign policy experts dared critique India’s neighborhood policy towards Nepal. But, at usual times, there is no divergence in approaching Nepal and gauging Nepali politics. A survey of the evolution of India’s Nepal experts after the establishment of an independent India reveals the same. Nepal studies in independent India began with the establishment of the School of International Studies (SIS) in Delhi in 1955. The school, set up to offer a “second opinion” on India’s foreign policy, started Nepal studies in 1960. SIS merged with Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1970. Besides SIS, the South Asian Studies Center under the University of Rajasthan in Jaipur, and the Centre for the Study of Nepal in Banaras Hindu University (BHU) also contributed to Nepal studies.  The products of the South Asian Studies Center in Jaipur include the likes of Ramakant, S.D. Muni, MD Dharamdasani, R.S.Chauhan and B.C. Upreti. They all have contributed books on Nepal and written for the center’s journal South Asian Studies.  Although the Center for the Study of Nepal in BHU also started the Indian Journal of Nepalese Studies in 1987, it couldn’t continue for long.  While the center in Jaipur studied Nepal’s diplomatic history, foreign policy, Panchayat, political parties, and regionalism, its BHU counterpart focused on Nepal-India trade, Nepal’s democracy, elections, and constitutional practices.  Although the objectives of the two centers and the SIS were to offer an alternative narrative, independent of what has been propounded by power elites in New Delhi, the state as their unit of analysis constrained the critical approach and thwarted the self-reflective appraisal. Idolizing the Indian state as the harbinger of sovereign power, they missed inculcating creative and experimental approaches to international relations through studies on connected histories, borders, culture, mobility, and lived experiences.  The possibility of offering greater breadth and depth in perspectives endowed by historical sociology and political anthropology is neglected in their writings. The same tradition continued, whilst the new generation of Indian experts, as their works depict, remain less aware of the social science writings in Nepal. As a result, their understanding of Nepali society, culture, history, and geography is reduced to the monolithic narrative of bilateral relations. China scare  The perennial problem of India’s Nepal experts, whether they be academicians or diplomats, or retired military officers, is their failure in examining Nepal’s foreign policy empirically without hauling China. The rise of China and Sino-Indian contestation has predetermined the understanding of India’s Nepal experts.  In academics, whatever Ramakant and Muni produced, the generation after them has been replicating the same geo-political tune, without any innovative approach to studying Nepal through methodological pluralism. Diplomats’ world is also not free from the plight of duplication. The portrayal of Nepal is nearly the same in the writings of MK Rasgotra, Deb Mukherjee, K V Rajan, Shyam Sharan, Rakesh Sood, Manjeev Singh Puri, and Ranjit Rae, all of them who had served as the Indian ambassador to Nepal in different periods of time. Disseminating their understanding of Nepal to the outside world usually implicates China’s increasing role in India’s periphery, influencing the methodical approaches of research centers and think tanks accordingly.  Although the South Asian Studies Center and Center for Study of Nepal are not very effective today, think tanks like Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses (IDSA) are obliged to endorse the view of the Indian state as circumscribed by their mandate. Indian media, too, is not an exception.  For instance, in 2020, when Kathmandu protested India’s Mansarovar route and unveiled its new map, the then chief of the Indian Army General Manoj Mukund Naravane stated in a conference organized by Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA) that Nepal was acting at the “behest of else”, which was an indirect reference to China. Following Naravane’s remarks, India’s foreign policy experts, security analysts, and media were spotted endorsing the remarks of the Indian army. Thus, the representation of Nepal-China relations by India’s Nepal experts today is by no means different from that of the Modi administration. Their proximity to the attitude of the Indian state is also understandable from the way Indian experts are heard justifying the relevance of the 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Nepal and India, and the significance of the Himalayan frontier theory in the context of the rise of China. Since the days of Nehru, the Indian state has always perceived the Himalayas as its natural defense frontier (not as Nehru’s original contribution to strategy but as a colonial legacy), because of which Indian experts take no less time to justify India’s military occupation in Kalapani-Lipulekh region. India’s Nepal experts appeared helpless when the Modi administration expressed its reluctance in receiving the report prepared by the Eminent Persons’ Group (EPG), which was constituted of experts from both countries in 2016 to evaluate the Nepal-India relations and offer key recommendations on the 1950 treaty and open borders.  The study on people-to-people relations existing between the two countries is limited to the political rhetoric of Roti-Beti (Bred-Bride) ties. It divulges the dearth of Indian scholarship on Nepal. In 2017, when the Modi administration was exerting pressure on the Deuba government to amend Nepal’s new constitution, and accommodate the interest of the Madhesi community inhabiting the Nepal-India borderlands, India’s experts’ understanding of Madhes was instantly reduced to the interest of the Indian state. They remained ignorant of the reality that people-to-people relations between Nepal and India are not driven only by the interest of the two states as in the case of Nepal-China relations. Instead, people-to-people relations influence and shape the interests of the two states. Conclusion The world reads and trusts what Indian authors write about Nepal, and vice versa. As such, proficient Nepali language and access to fresh information and data (not only based on secondary sources but enriched by field visits and ethnographical details) could have been convenient to India’s Nepal experts. Scholars from Darjeeling and Sikkim have this benefit, which is also visible in their works on cross-border work and migration between Nepal and India.  Also, the lack of required funds and deficiency of a long-term plan to conduct social science research dishearten one’s commitment to knowledge-based foreign policy. As a result, India’s Nepal expert finds an easy refuge in endorsing the interest of the Indian state. The author has written the book, Nepal between China and India: Difficulty of Being Neutral, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2022

Writing about the issues and affairs deeply associated with International Relations (IR) of Nepal is not a very fresh enterprise. Still, writings on IR issues in Nepal are not free from slips and skids. Despite having an oldest foreign policy institution in South Asia, known as Jaisikotha, which was established by King Prithivi Narayan Shah to deal with Tibetan affairs in the 18th Century, Nepal’s writings in IR remained confined to diplomatic notes, treaties and agreements, at least until the visit of Nepal’s first Rana Prime Minister Jung Bahadur to Britain that has been variously documented and interpreted in history by both Nepali and non-Nepali scholars. Exchanges of letters remained at the heart of Nepal’s diplomatic history until the political change of 1950. Not only because of the diversification of Nepal’s foreign policy under King Mahendra Shah, but more because of the country's increasing literacy rate, Kathmandu started to produce different kinds of writings on Nepali IR, including books, commentaries, articles, reviews and interviews. Despite the new changes in the nature and scope of international relations, writings on Nepali IR have not developed much, as most of the writing that this article aims to highlight is swayed by repetition and hyperboles. Who writes IR in Nepal? Not only the president, ministers, political leaders write IR. As the issues of IR lure columnists, journalists, reviewers, authors, think tanks, and bloggers, they have been writing IR in their own ways. While the former group writes IR in statements, press releases, agreements, treaties and MoUs, the latter analyzes the activities of the former group. In the Nepali context, such analyses are heavily stamped by the paraphernalia of repetition and hyperboles. While journalists report daily occurrences in Nepali IR, columnists weigh the nature and impacts of such episodes; book writers, however, struggle to offer fresh perspectives by compiling such events as supporting details. Think tanks are busy amassing data and publishing reports to espouse the beliefs they prescribe. Whilst different actors and agencies have been reporting, evaluating and analyzing Nepali IR, they end up in duplication. Geopolitics is the key source of duplication in writing Nepali IR, whose perennial use has made Nepal’s worldview appear more suspicious and superfluous. Squeezed between two big civilizations, powerful economies, divergent political institutions and a colossal population, Kathmandu’s worldview has become apprehensive. Persistent emphasis on the same has made Kathmandu’s view of the world and its view for the world superfluous. Throughout the cold war, primacy over geopolitics was understandable. At present, the constitutional objectives of Nepali IR—panchasheel, UN Charter, world peace, non-alignment—which need more study and scrutiny, rarely appeal Nepali authors and commentators. Fascination of retired military generals towards geopolitics has only encouraged replications. American Political Scientist Leo E. Rose’s book “Nepal, Strategy for Survival,” has been a bible for them. They may try to justify their acts of replications citing the challenges triggered by the rise of China. Even the young aspiring Nepali authors perceive China only as a balancer to Indian influence in Nepal, which, however is not a new claim than the cold war narratives offered by Rose back in 1971. While news reports and articles are fundamentally responsible in informing and updating the public, their endorsement of cold war world views and state-centric narratives have provided further impetus to the geopolitical lens and suspicious world view. In the name of being academic, writing IR in the university is triflingly constrained to ease one’s promotion by getting published in the ranked journals. Precisely, when they come to realize that writings on China sell instantly in Western world during the time of Sino-US contestation, strands of geopolitics attract them more than any efforts directed to fulfill policy and knowledge gaps. Alternative narratives Unusual refuge that Nepal has taken in the realm of geopolitics since the days of P.N.Shah has plausibly thwarted Nepal from considering assorted factors while writing Nepali IR. As such, no attempts have been made in understanding what is international for Nepal. To an aging grandmother visiting her daughter in the United States, internationally may be something that she struggles linguistically and culturally throughout her journey and stay. To the Nepali labor migrants toiling in the parching heat of GCC countries, international may signify something different from the Nepali students pursuing their studies in the American and Australian universities.  To those crossing Nepal’s open borders with India, the idea of international may vary. Therefore, without paying heed to the multiple idea of international, the overemphasis on geopolitics has made the writings on Nepali IR superfluous and redundant. Representation of Nepal’s open border with India is an apt example. The corpus of research that is currently available on the Nepal-India border centers around border security, encroachment, and the removal of border pillars.  While debates on closed borders and controlled borders are underway in Nepal, writings that divulge the narratives of the working-class people on borderlands are largely missing. While the open border between Nepal and India is the appropriate site to generate discourse on people’s centric IR, the existing writings on Nepali IR have largely failed to counter the political culture of exploiting territorial borders as an electoral rhetoric to fulfill Machiavellian ambitions. The perennial problem of Nepali IR is its ceaseless stress on the neighborhood. Various metaphors suggesting Nepal’s geographical location, be it “entrepôt,” “yam,” “buffer,” or “bridge” have methodically shaped Nepali authors’ worldviews. In the pre-unification era, Kathmandu remained an entrepôt between Tibet and Indian princely states. P.N. Shah, however, identified Nepal as a yam between the Chinese Empire and British India. To the colonizers in India, Nepal remained as a buffer. But, with the economic rise of India and China, decision makers in Kathmandu emphasized on revitalizing the entrepôt status of Kathmandu through bridge metaphor by encouraging multidimensional connectivity with both neighbors in Nepal’s developmental and infrastructural policies. While numerous writings on China’s Belt and Road Initiatives (BRI) and proposed Nepal-China trans-Himalayan railways are concentrated on the same, there is a dearth of literature willing to identify the reason behind India’s reluctance to the proposal of China-Nepal- India trilateral partnership. Being limited to discourse, the focus on neighborhood is pretentious and pompous. Ideologically, a neighborhood is characterized by the presence of trust, harmony and confidence building measure. Gauging writings on Nepal’s neighborhood, Sino-Indian interactions are either presented as a threat or an opportunity. Besides the politics of high optimism and deep depression emanating from its gigantic neighborhood, there is a noticeable absence of the other kinds of narratives, particularly people-centric. Also, Nepal lacks its own perspective on the rise of China. Either it is shaped by the West like the issue of “debt trap” or by China itself through aid and assistance to Nepal. Despite putting so much emphasis on neighborhood, studies on the neighborhood are limited to analyzing high-level visits and identification of strategic and economic interests of the neighboring countries. Trivial Chinese speaking population of its own, and not having even one India Study Center in Nepal indicates the level and extent of Nepal’s neighborhood studies. Conclusion As the uncertainties and complexities prompted by the changing world order confront Nepal's foreign policy objectives, turning to epistemic communities that investigate, study and above all, write on the different facades of Nepali IR, may help the decision makers in steering the foreign policy agendas accordingly. But, in the Nepali context, recurring geopolitical chronicles and sheer ignorance of people in Nepali IR has confined writing IR to the shackles of state-centric accounts overlooking the alternative narratives. Asst. Prof. Bhattarai is author of the book, “Nepal between China and India” published by Palgrave Macmillan