Besides the senseless “tra­dition” of our prime minis­ters making India their first foreign port of call following the 1990 political change, there is another irritating ritual that is not much discussed. Nepal needs to assure, promise and pledge that it will not allow its land to be used against India at the end of every bilateral talk between the leaders of the two countries. While our leaders may feel it’s just a simple ritualistic statement to make their hosts or guests happy, it nonetheless implies that we either were or are insensitive to India’s security concerns. Now, if one looks at history, it’s always India that is insensitive to our security interests and allows its territory to be used against the government of the day. As the late social scientist Saubhagya Shah once wrote, no “revolution” in Nepal has succeeded without India’s active support, a state­ment which was later corroborat­ed by the writers close to Indian establishment in their books on the Maoist insurgency and polit­ical transition in Nepal. Likewise the Nepali Congress used Indian territory against the Nepali state throughout the 1960s and the most of the 1970s. But we are yet to be assured by the Indian side; nor do we seek assurances that it will not allow its territory to be used against us.

 

Plane hijacking an excuse

 

The “ritual” has been repeated so often that almost every Nepali “scholar” writing on Nepal-In­dia relations has to suggest that our government appears sensitive to India’s security concerns. We cannot even buy modern weapons for our forc­es because it is interpreted as being insensitive to Indian securi­ty interests. Forget weapons, we can’t even implement our nation­al security policy lest we offend Indian sensitivities.

 

True, a plane belonging to an Indian airliner was hijacked from the Kathmandu airport in 1999 and the Indian government had to release some notorious ter­rorists in exchange for the hos­tages. And there’s been reports of anti-India criminal and terror­ist outfits operating from Nepal. But terrorists have hijacked planes from secure airports around the world, including in India, and there’s been similar release of terrorists in exchange for hostages. And no country can claim that it’s free of terrorist net­works. Using the hijacking as an excuse, India installed its own security check before boarding Indian aircraft from Kathmandu, to prove that Nepal’s commit­ment to India’s security cannot be trusted. Sadly, while the hijacking is remembered, Nepal’s help in suppressing the 1948 Hyderabad revolt is forgotten.

 

Nepal is doing all it can to address India’s concerns with whatever limited capacity it has. It is no secret that Nepal Police, either working on tip-offs from Indian police/intelligence or acting on its own, routinely arrests and hands over wanted criminals and terrorists to India, and the Indian police does the same with Nepali criminals hiding in India.

 

What India wants

 

Then what is it that the Indian government really wants? In the short run, it wants us to limit our engagement with China and who­ever it deems a threat. It wants us to follow its lead on foreign policy. And we are already witnessing it. It has succeeded in making the most of the world view Nepal through the Indian lens. Rarely do heads of state/government from other countries visit us, nor are our heads of state/government invited to other countries, except India and China, for official or state visits.

 

In the long run, just like any aspiring regional power, India wants to bring us under its security umbrella by making us and others believe that we have the capacity neither to address India’s security concerns nor to handle our defense by our­selves. All aspiring powers need to exercise power in their neighbor­hood to prove they are not to be taken lightly.

 

PM Oli, how about putting it this way when you need to follow the ritual next? So far we have done everything in our capacity to address India’s security concerns and we will continue to do so, and we expect our good neighbor India to reciprocate.