Why India Should Not Get Involved In Nepal's Internal Politics

If India cares for Nepal, it should simply allow things to take shape.

In the late 1980s, the time when I was enjoying the brilliant colours of the dasain festival, India had blocked all supplies to Nepal, as a result of, what some say, was a personality clash between the King of Nepal and the then Prime Minister of India (Shukla, India-Nepal Relations : Problems and Prospects, 2006).

This was not the first time India had openly intervened in Nepal to express its displeasure at internal political developments or to guide Nepal’s politics towards an outcome desired by Indian policy makers. No country in the world intervenes as frequently, fervently and blatantly in other countries’ affairs as India does in Nepal. The argument is always the same – we have an open border, close cultural ties, security concerns and, of course, whisper of just how much India has to fear from China’s growing influence in Nepal.

As we speak, Nepal bears the brunt of India’s displeasure for the fifth time in its history and is blockaded. (Depending on whom you believe, India doesn’t say it has blockaded Nepal). The headline grabbing blockade by India is, to me, just culmination of the acute suffering that the people of Nepal have stoically suffered over the past two decades, as politics, violence and a confusing array of ideas under the banner of progressivism have left us with a bewilderingly complex crisis.

Broadly, the people of the plains (called Madhesi) do not accept select provisions of the new constitutions and accuse the Nepali “ruling class” of instituting discrimination. In a nutshell, they want a greater role for the Madhesi people under the new constitution and higher number of representatives in the parliament.

The fact that Madhesis are the only ones who have a separate state specifically for their ethnicity is lost in a barrage of opinion prints. If the Nepali government agrees to one more state and to the blackmailing by the Madhesi groups and India, why wouldn’t the Newar, Kirati, Tamu, Magar and a host of other ethnicities with their unique language and identity not ask for separate states. A look at Nepal’s ethnic map should help illustrate the complexity of ethnic/race-based federalism to you. Don’t even worry about deciphering the colour coding, it will take too much time. I can predict that regardless of what settlement is reached, you are likely to read about ethnic conflict in Nepal for many years to come.

Of course, there was discrimination against Madhesis, but there is also discrimination against a wide range of people depending on where they are in the country and what the power equation of a particular relationship is.

As I speak against India here, I do not want to be misunderstood. The new constitution of Nepal is born out of the maiming of Nepal done by the Maoists and other Nepali politicians. An illegitimate document produced by a constitutional assembly whose term ended a year before it delivered the constitution. Not only that, the document itself is an example of hasty political compromise by politicians to suit their agenda.

For example, the constitution’s definition of secularism is a solid punchline to a very bad joke. The constitution and its much-touted “progressivism”, welcome as it is, is evidence that it was written keeping the donor and aid giving community in mind, with a sprinkling of provisions to address the most emotive of local issues – protection of Sanatana Dharma (despite secularism) and laws against cow slaughter.

So, I am not even defending the new constitution. I am suggesting that India should stay away from interfering in Nepal, because all its previous interventions have had disastrous side effects on Nepal’s society and politics. The unequal 1950 treaty (which underpins the open border etc.), the transfer of land after the 1990 People’s Movement, and the normalisation of anocracy* (not democracy) after the 2005 intervention are all examples of often terrible unintended consequences. As politicians and op-ed columnist devote their substantial intellect and resources to devise crafty solutions to this problem, almost everybody appears to have forgotten what created the current crisis, and just how dangerous the idea of federalism is to the future of Nepal.

I do not have any special insight, nor information, on the tools of coercive foreign policy that ought to be utilised as the good Prashant Jha suggests in his Hindustan Times article:

…India has a range of tools, both overt and covert, which it has chosen not to use in Kathmandu at the moment. Delhi must be careful none of this hurts the Nepali people, for it is a select political elite which is driving the process.

However, I do know that this is not the first time this suggestion has been made. In February 2005, by SD Muni, India’s foremost expert on Nepal wrote in the Economic & Political Weekly –

It is both necessary and desirable that India reviews its approach to the Nepal Maoists and tries to “soft-land” their move into Nepal’s democratic mainstream.

This article was written soon after the King of Nepal dismissed the Sher Bahadur Deuba government and took control with the promise to hold elections and “restore democracy”. In November of the same year, seven political parties and the Maoists signed a 12 point agreement in New Delhi, paving the way for constituent assembly elections and the ouster of the monarchy. Later in 2012, Muni outlined just how exactly India used its considerable clout to help its political friends in Nepal (Muni, 2012) – to ignore an election and helped them unleash complete chaos in Nepal. The current political quagmire in Nepal stems from this 12 point agreement.

I believe it would help to briefly narrate the background of this 12 point agreement and the disaster it has been for Nepal.

On 13 February, 1996, just five years after India’s intervention led to the formation of a New Nepal, with multi-party democracy and a constitutional monarchy, a new war started. Under the leadership of Pushpa Kamal Dahal and his love-hate sidekick, Babu Ram Bhattarai, the Maoists declared a people’s war. Over the next decade, 16000 people were dead – vastly underestimated numbers in my humble view, thousands of families were displaced, properties lost and children traumatised for life. The Maoists were not only merciless to people, they destroyed infrastructure worth millions in a poor country. One of their biggest crimes was the decimation of the Village Development Committee (VDC). This was the most successful economic institution in Nepal. Elinor Ostrom, who won the 2009 Nobel Prize in economic sciences, brought the work and effectiveness of this institution to the notice of the world.

The reason why I mention this is to point out the utterly hollow claim made by the good professor and Nepal expert. Nepali democrats are no democrats. The November 2005 agreement was signed in the wake of an announcement by the then royal government that local elections will be held to break the political logjam. Instead of participating in elections, Nepali politicians chose to sign the 12 point agreement under India’s supervision to “restore democracy”. The April 2006 Janandolan wa successful, the monarchy was quickly sidelined, and what ensued was utter mayhem. Agreements upon agreements to manage short term agitations, billions spent on managing the Maoist combatants in camps, murders, strikes, chaos in the streets, beating up people, murdering those who disagreed was the democracy Nepal got. It will be 10 years in April of that moment of terrible usurpation, and yet there have been no local elections.

All that India’s intervention did was ended whatever hope Nepal had. Nepal’s political groups are arrayed so that there will never be any settlement. One fire doused, another will be lit by some politician to gain prominence. It will be an endless story.

Now again I have a sense of Déjà vu. The madness that engulfed Nepal in 2006/07 is back. India is deeply involved in a fight that is not its own. It has again taken sides that will result in artificial peace. As new agreements will be signed, new promises made, and victory of “democracy” proclaimed, Nepal’s anocrats would have won again. If India cares for Nepal, it would simply allow things to take shape.

*Anocracy– a regime type that is characterized by inherent qualities of political instability and ineffectiveness, as well as anincoherent mix of democratic and autocratic traits and practices.