Revisiting India’s Handling of the Nepal Crisis
Nepal needs India for its economic and political stability.
Indo-Nepalese relations are experiencing their greatest crisis in a generation. Underlying the current difficulty is a long history encompassing cooperation, dependence, and resentment. But while the crisis may represent a temporary setback in relations between the two countries, India is unlikely to lose its privileged position in Nepal, no matter how it handles the current situation.
As the dominant power in South Asia, India has always had complex relationships with its smaller neighbors. While countries like Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka have deep cultural and economic ties with India, they also fear its overbearing embrace and what that means for their sovereignty and freedom of action.
In no country is this dichotomy felt as strongly as it is in Nepal, a small landlocked Hindu-majority country almost entirely dependent on India for access to the outside world and international trade. Nepalis, especially the elites – mostly upper caste Hindus – share deep cultural links with India that will likely never be meaningfully replaced with ties to neighboring China. This “special relationship” has long been formalized through both implicit understandings and explicit agreements, most notably the 1950 Indo-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which established an open border and opened the way for Indian influence in Nepal’s economy and foreign policy. Due to geographic and strategic concerns, as well as emotional ties based on a shared Hindu heritage, India has long seen Nepal as a northern buffer against China. It would be unacceptable to any Indian government for a Nepalese regime to emerge that is overly pro-China at the expense of relations with India.
Yet, Nepalis also deeply cherish their independence, and resent what they perceive as the influence of their “big brother” in the country. This feeling in Nepal has reemerged several times, such as during an Indian blockade of Nepal in 1989 due to a trade and treaties dispute, and during the 2001 massacre of the Nepalese royal family by their own crown prince, which precipitated a political crisis. Many Nepalis, in particular the ruling hill elites, fear that their country may eventually go the way of Sikkim, a neighboring Himalayan state that India annexed in 1975 after an internal Sikkimese political crisis. As a result, Nepalese politicians of all stripes have made gestures toward China as a way of offsetting Indian influence.
The past two decades have witnessed several ups and downs in the Indo-Nepalese relationship. Indo-Nepalese ties were lackluster during the premiership of Manmohan Singh (2004-2014). Singh’s Congress Party had close ties with the Nepali Congress Party, traditionally Nepal’s largest political party. However, in 2005, the then-King Gyanendra suspended the Nepalese constitution and isolated himself from mainstream Nepalese parties, ostensibly to fight Nepal’s Maoists. The restoration of democracy, after protests in 2006, was seen in India as ultimately most favorable to Maoists, who were more pro-China.
After the abolition of the monarchy in 2008, Nepal’s Maoist prime minister, Pushpa Kamal Dahal “Prachanda” visited China before visiting India, a move that raised many eyebrows in Indian circles. Since then, Nepal has lurched from crisis to crisis, and from government to government, as its myriad mix of ideological, ethnic, and regional parties failed to agree on a new constitution until just this September. Many Nepalis saw this persistent instability as proof of Indian intrigue designed to keep their country weak; never mind continuous Indian exhortations that Nepal write a constitution. India certainly has interests in influencing Nepal, but having a failed state for a neighbor is far from advantageous.
Legitimate Concerns
Ultimately, India did have legitimate concerns about the shape of a new Nepalese constitution. For eight years, Nepal’s own ethnic and ideological cleavages were largely to blame for the inability of Nepal’s political parties to agree to a constitution. One of the biggest questions in the drafting of Nepal’s permanent constitution was the question of whether or not Nepal would be a federal republic with ethnic regions or a unitary state. The Madheshis, native to Nepal’s southern plains, the Terai strip, are ethnically close to Indians over the border in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and form almost half the Nepalese population. They were especially adamant about obtaining a federal region of their own and equality with the Pahadis, or the Nepalese of the hills, the country’s dominant group.
September’s constitution, which was rammed through Nepal’s parliament despite protests from ethnic minorities and India, was the direct trigger of the present crisis. While the new constitution conceded a sort of federalism, it divided Nepal into several regions that cut across ethnic lines, presumably to dilute ethnic nationalism. It also made it more difficult for people of the Terai strip to get citizenship for their relatives across the border in India, as many families there straddle the two borders. This move was met with protests by the Indian government as well as by the Madheshis. Ironically, both the Indian government and the Nepalese elites want Nepal’s government structure to provide stability and strength to the country, though their views on ethnicity and how to achieve stability are different. Nepal’s elites see more ethnic autonomy as a centrifugal force that could tear apart their country, while India’s government sees genuine regional and ethnic autonomy as the only way to prevent constant tension and violence between Nepal’s myriad groups.
Additionally, Nepal and India have different reasons for seeking stability in Nepal. Nepal’s new constitution reflects the Nepalese hill elite’s desire to establish a stronger, more centralized state that can achieve more foreign policy autonomy and end its dependence on India. For its part, India would prefer a more fragmented Nepal, with groups and regions aligned with India, as a way to continue influencing the country’s politics and prevent it from becoming too friendly with China. This is not too dissimilar from the Russian desire to use its influence in eastern Ukraine to establish political structures that would prevent the country as a whole from drifting away from its orbit toward Europe. As a result of these different Indian and Nepalese objectives, it is hard for the two sides to square their positions with each other and make significant compromises.
The current crisis is especially painful for Nepal because of the protests in the Madhesh region, on its border with India, leading to a shortage of goods and fuel throughout Nepal. Most of the protests are being staged by ethnic Madheshis in border towns and near border crossings with India. The Indian government and its Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) have clarified several times that the Indian government has nothing to do with the shortages, which have been characterized by several Nepalese parties, including the ruling Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) as a “blockade.”
India’s government handled the crisis well, despite some nasty rhetoric and a Nepalese attempt to get the United Nations to intervene – an initiative which India nipped in the bud. Prior to the current crisis, India’s ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and its Prime Minister Narendra Modi did much to achieve closer ties with Nepal. Since becoming prime minister in 2014, Modi became the first Indian leader to visit Nepal – not once, but twice – in 17 years. His government is probably being honest when it says that it has nothing do with the protests. But while doing nothing to fan the flames, the Indian government is certainly not using its influence to stop the protests without meeting at least some of its objectives. There is very little Nepal can do but offer some concessions, especially as the fuel crisis becomes even more acute as winter approaches. The recent acquisition of some fuel from China is not nearly enough to solve Nepal’s crisis or resolve the underlying ethnic problems in the Terai strip.
India merely needs to hold onto its consistent position in regard to Nepal’s crisis. This was expressed by Modi to Nepal’s deputy prime minister in a meeting on October 19: As long as Nepal settled its disputes with the people of the Terai, everything could return to normal and supplies could enter Nepal again. India has no need to deviate from this position, while the onus is on Nepal’s new prime minister, K.P. Oli to reach a settlement with the Madheshis. Nepal must realize that it is not geostrategically large or important enough to truly achieve the type of freedom of action that it wants and that it needs to gauge India’s strategic interests smartly. But all is not lost: India has no interest in turning Nepal into a puppet state.
And while India’s actions toward Nepal have been decried by many analysts as heavy-handed and counterproductive, this view does not hold water for two reasons. First, even if India were to be heavy-handed in its response to the current crisis (which it is not), Nepalese issues with India will blow over and be forgotten soon enough. Nepal continues to need India for investment, trade, and the political legitimacy Indian support bestows on its government – its leaders will remember this eventually. Despite some heated anti-Indian rhetoric from Nepal’s elite, they are just too connected with India, both culturally and economically, to ever disassociate with that country to the advantage of China.
Second, the role of China in resolving the crisis has often been overstated. China has neither the geopolitical interest nor the physical ability via transportation links (yet) to massively increase its influence in Nepal. China knows that India sees Nepal as vital to its security, while China has much more important concerns in the South China Sea and elsewhere. It is not to China’s advantage to needlessly antagonize India, especially when no major Chinese interests are at stake, unlike in Pakistan, where China has major investments and geopolitical objectives. Additionally, Modi has made it a point to improve relations with China, India’s largest trade partner. The Indo-Chinese rivalry will continue, but Nepal will not have a large part in it.
Although many in Nepal will continue to see India as a bully, in the end the country needs India for the sake of its own economy and stability, and it is likely that some sort of agreement will be reached the vindicates India’s position and the rights of the people of the Terai strip. Despite not signaling its policy well to the Indian and international media, the Indian government pursued the correct strategy of not abandoning the Madheshis (both for humanitarian and political reasons). Therefore, it will be possible for India to argue in the future that it held the high moral ground while also achieving its goals and, ultimately, stability in Nepal.