Two events this past week could have lasting impact on Nepal’s foreign relations, the first more so than the second. First, the two sets of Eminent Persons Groups (EPGs) formed to suggest changes to old Indo-Nepal treaties and to review bilateral ties, are reportedly close to a final deal. If India does indeed agree to amend the 1950 treaty, long decried as ‘unequal’ in Nepal, it will be a watershed in Indo-Nepal ties.
Second, the Communist Party of China (CCP) is amending the national constitution to abolish the two-term limit for China’s President and to incorporate the ‘Xi Jinping Thought’ in the charter. With this Xi Jinping, the CCP chief and the reigning President, would arguably have more power than any of the previous leaders of modern China, including Mao.
The ‘Thought’ envisages, among other things, ‘common destiny’ of China and other countries in a ‘peaceful international environment’, particularly its immediate neighborhood.
Based on Indian media reports and my recent (and extensive) conversations with two representatives of the four-man Nepali EPG team, the Indian change of heart is undoubtedly a result of ‘growing Chinese activism’ in Nepal. Its blockade-time Nepal policy, New Delhi has come to realize, was misguided, and India needs an urgent ‘course-correction’ if Nepal is not to be forever lost to China.
Ready for love
India is now open to ‘regulating’ the Indo-Nepal border, such that people can cross over only thorough select points and only after registration. The Nepali side has also proposed that Nepal be allowed to import arms from a third country after ‘informing’ India. Nepal has, moreover, clarified that considering the vast differences in the two countries’ area and population, a reciprocal treatment for Indian nationals in Nepal is impractical. That their Indian interlocutors are even ready to discuss these issues, which had until recently been no-go areas, is a big surprise to the Nepali EPG quad.
If Modi worries about Chinese penetration into Nepal, he is right to do so. The Chinese influence in Nepal—be it in terms of the number of Chinese tourists, investments or political clout—is at an all-time high post-blockade. Xi’s consolidation of power at home will only make him more ambitious abroad.
Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli knows he cannot afford to antagonize India if he hopes to stick around. However great the Chinese influence in Nepal, he is also aware, China cannot match the extensive people-to-people contacts and the geographical proximity between Nepal and India. Yet Oli is not in a position to make a clean break with the Chinese, as the Indians perhaps expect of him.
It will be hard for Oli to abandon the popular agenda of closer ties with China, having endlessly championed it on the campaign trail—and with such success. Near the end of his political career (and perhaps, the 66-year-old sickly prime minister reckons, even his life) Oli also seems keen to leave behind a strong legacy: he wants to be remembered as the first Nepali leader who dared to openly question—and do something about—India’s stranglehold over Nepal.
Gujral Doctrine 2.0
Separately, Chinese President Xi has made no secret of his ambition to restore China’s past glory. To achieve this, the Chinese probably feel they have to limit the role of the US, the world’s sole military superpower, in the Asia-Pacific.
As the strategic links between India and the US multiply—the Cold War-era suspicions subdued—China is starting to eye Indian activism in the subcontinent suspiciously. China under Xi will try doubly hard to sell to immediate neighbors China’s alluring agenda of mutual prosperity in a ‘peaceful international environment’. Otherwise, the Chinese fear, these countries risk fall under the sway of the Americans, who are increasingly happy to use India as their smokescreen in South Asia.
In its dealings in the subcontinent, China, it can be said, has rather paradoxically come to champion the ‘Gujral doctrine’: the former Indian prime minister’s mantra of helping India’s smaller neighbors without expecting much in return. Reality however is seldom this ideal; there really is no free lunch in interstate relations. China nonetheless has been able to convince South Asian strongmen and democrats alike of the foolishness of not trying to benefit from China’s stellar rise.
The inconvenient truth for India is that its cumbersome bureaucracy-driven decision-making is no match for the zippy trickle down authoritarian model China has perfected. As Robert Kaplan would perhaps put it: Geography is destiny, until a strongman like Xi with international imagination digs a tunnel under it.
