Nepal jittery over king's India
visit By Dhruba Adhikary
KATHMANDU - King Gyanendra is to visit
India this week, but Nepalese citizens are not
particularly pleased over the idea. Their main
apprehension is that the beleaguered king might find it
expedient to quietly sign a security pact with New Delhi,
taking no notice of the reality that such a deal could
severely dilute the country's sovereign status. Nepal
could become another Bhutan (which had been forced -
through a friendship treaty of 1949 - to survive as
India's protectorate).
"The king needs to
talk to the Nepali people about a solution, not to
the Indians," said the Nepali Times in an editorial
last week, alluding to a nine-year insurgency that
has already claimed more than 11,000 lives. "This is a home-grown
revolution, it needs a home-grown solution," the
editorial said.
But King Gyanendra's palace
has done little to allay public fears about potential
pacts with India. On the contrary, on December 10, the
king's press secretariat issued an announcement, which
remained silent about the purpose of the "official visit to
the Republic of India" from Thursday to January 2. It
merely said the king and queen would be in India at the
invitation of President A P J Abdul Kalam. Officials in
Nepal's Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not have much to
say about the visit, which, they conceded, was being
planned and supervised by a select group of high-placed
palace functionaries. The majority of those selected for
the entourage are said to be the king's relatives,
courtiers and persons with military backgrounds.
Surprisingly, India's Ministry of External
Affairs (MEA) was a bit more transparent about King
Gyanendra's third trip to India since he ascended the
throne in the aftermath of a mysterious palace massacre
of June 1, 2001, which claimed the lives of King
Birendra, Crown Prince Dipendra, and eight other members
of the royal family.
"The visit ... would
provide an opportunity to discuss all issues of mutual
interest," the MEA press release of December 10 said.
Diplomatic analysts relate this broad agenda to the
context provided by Shyam Saran, India's foreign
secretary, at the end of Nepalese Prime Minister Sher
Bahadur Deuba's visit to New Delhi in September. While
briefing the media during that visit, Saran referred to
the ongoing Maoist insurgency as a "common threat to the
security" of both India and Nepal. In other words, the
insurgency has ceased to be Nepal's internal problem.
This, then, logically means the rebellion has to be
addressed through a joint approach - a joint operation.
For that Nepal should agree to enter
into a security pact, something India has been insisting
on for years. To bring Nepal under its security umbrella
and to secure access to Nepal's snow-fed rivers
have always been India's twin objectives in
determining relations with its landlocked neighbor. And, from
India's point of view, this is the right moment to strike a
deal with King Gyanendra, who, though unpopular at
the grassroots level, is both de facto and de jure ruler of
Nepal - ever since he dismissed an elected government
on October 4, 2002. Parliament had been dissolved
five months earlier. New elections have not been
scheduled, mainly because of the ongoing insurgency.
The junior
foreign minister of the royal government, Prakash Sharan
Mahat, appealed to media on Sunday to avoid referring to
the royal visit as "mysterious". His statement,
however, failed to offer any credible assurances to the
skeptics in the audience. Kathmandu's intelligentsia is
unwilling to believe in Mahat, because he is not the minister
who enjoys the palace's confidence. The main person
the palace has chosen to be with the king is Purna
Bahadur Khadka, minister in-charge of home affairs
(interior). Khadka's selection as the minister-in-waiting
has enhanced speculation about imminent agreement
or agreements on security issues. New Delhi's
recent interests include signing an updated extradition
treaty, superseding that of 1953, to bring third-country
nationals (mainly aimed at Pakistanis) under an expanded
legal ambit. Similarly, Indian authorities want to
conclude an agreement on mutual legal assistance, in
order to allow Indian police into Nepali territory to
identify and detain those they consider "enemies".
In 1990, when King Birendra was facing a
pro-democracy movement, India's then foreign secretary S
K Singh flew into Kathmandu with a draft of a friendship
treaty, which was even worse than the unequal and
anachronistic treaty initialed on July 31, 1950. (This
controversial draft Singh brought to Kathmandu can be
found in the reference book edited by Indian scholar
Avtar Singh Bhasin, Nepal's Relations with India and
China (1947-92).) However, the king declined to
accept that draft; he chose, instead, to respond to the
popular demand for multiparty democracy. But the present
king, some analysts predict, might be tempted to take a
different line - presumably for a quid pro quo in the
form of New Delhi's support to run Nepal through an
active monarchy.
New Delhi's traditional view is
that the monarchy provides stability to Nepal, and it is
through this institution alone that India can get its
security concerns addressed. Whether this is a correct
perception in changing times is a matter of conjecture,
because India's relations with both China and Pakistan
have markedly improved in recent years and months.
Besides, India is already a nuclear power. Why
is it so jittery over trivial matters?
"I
will speak my mind when in India and get to know
India's perspectives on insurgency in Nepal," King Gyanendra
was quoted as saying by an Indian newspaper on December
16. This shows, said one analyst, that the king is
not bothered about what the people of Nepal, his
own country, think about insurgency as well as
the democratic process that began in 1990. Despite
his repeated pledge to democracy, King Gyanendra
still considers Nepalis as no more than his "subjects", as
was alluded to in the newspaper interview. Kathmandu
has been abuzz that once back from New Delhi, the king
would formalize "the constitutional coup" he staged in
October 2002. Nepal could then in effect be placed under
Pakistan-style rule - dominated by the royal army that
has traditionally been under the king's supreme command.
But is India, the world's largest democracy,
likely to aid an absolute monarchy on its northern
border, a frontier that it also shares with communist
China? Would the US, the other democratic country
currently helping Nepal's army in its "war on terror",
be keen to continue its support to the king, ignoring
its own commitments to democracy and human rights? Quite
unlikely, in the opinion of another set of analysts.
"Undoubtedly, the institution of monarchy is one
of the symbols of this country," said Hari Sharma, a
political analyst. "But since it is not a representative
institution, New Delhi may think twice before making
King Gyanendra its counterpart to sign treaties having
far-reaching implications for Nepal." Sharma's
assessment is shared by several others who tend to think
India is unlikely to tilt its existing policy toward
"constitutional monarchy" at the cost of "multiparty
democracy". The Indian leadership, in the meantime, can
ill-afford to overlook the concerns of the international
community, including those of the United Nations, the
United Kingdom and the European Union.
Geography requires Nepal to have friendly
relations with both India and China, particularly with India,
with which it shares a 1,800-plus-kilometer porous border.
China and Nepal's friends in the West too recognize
this reality, palace officials argue in
private conversations. This is precisely the reason,
they contend, that the king has decided to spend a good part
of his tour visiting the capitals of four Indian states
bordering Nepal: Uttaranchal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and
West Bengal. They have not given reasons why the king's
itinerary does not include Sikkim, but the obvious
explanation is Nepal's silent protest over the way India
annexed that tiny Himalayan kingdom in 1974. With this
exception, Nepal's aim to forge close contacts with
India's frontier states is considered beneficial to both
sides. Such contacts would promptly help sort out local
level irritants, such as cases concerning criminals who
frequently abuse the free movement facility across the
porous international border.
"We all know that
when Nepal will be able to generate surplus electricity
from its rivers, the potential buyers are the bordering
states of India," one palace official said, justifying
the king's plan to visit Dehradun, Lucknow, Patna and
Calcutta.
While leaders of the political parties
continue to criticize King Gyanendra for promoting an
authoritarian regime, supporters of the monarchy are
raising their voices against the anarchy and corruption
unleashed by the elected leaders who ruled Nepal since
the restoration of democracy in 1990. Their contention
is that since the country is in crisis and passing
through an extraordinary phase, also because of Maoist
insurgency, it is essential to take extraordinary
measures to end the current state of chaos and disorder.
In their view, this can be done only when the king is
made powerful. Or else the country would soon slide into
the world's "failed state" club.
In
its December 18 edition, The Economist (of
London) editorially described Nepal as "a failing state",
where Indian intervention remains a possibility. "That
would cause intense disquiet in China, Nepal's other
big neighbor," said the article. In fact, this is the reason
even the most hawkish of India's think-tanks hesitate to
suggest that their government use the option of military
intervention similar to New Delhi's intervention in the
Sri Lankan civil war more than 15 years ago. Besides,
there is a lurking threat of mutiny by the 50,000
Gurkhas in the Indian army. They are recruited in Nepal
for the Indian army under a tripartite agreement Nepal,
Britain and India signed after the British left in 1947.
So can
King Gyanendra convince his hosts in the Indian capital about
his ability to handle the awesome challenge at hand,
and thereby reassure the Indian leadership that the
Royal Nepal Army, which is being heavily aided by
both India and the United States, would effectively
prevent the Maoist insurgency from spreading to
the neighboring Indian states? It is a question that continues
to exercise the minds of several Nepali intellectuals.
Had his hosts been the leaders of the pro-Hindutva
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as on the past
two occasions, the visiting Nepali king would not have
found his mission difficult. The scenario is different
now, with a Congress-led coalition in the central
government . And the left-leaning component of the
coalition can be an additional disadvantage to Gyanendra,
whom they see as the head of a feudal institution
in the back yard of progressive and
democratic India.
What then could be the
sustainable alternative? To the king, it would be to
seek an undertaking from New Delhi to stop interfering
in Nepal's domestic politics. To the Indian leadership,
to encourage the royal visitor to play sincerely the
role of a promoter of democracy. Actually, India stands
to make long-term gains by dealing only with a
modernized monarchy - be that in Nepal or in Bhutan.
Dhruba Adhikary is vice president of
the Nepal Press Institute. He has been a Dag
Hammarskjold Fellow at the United Nations.
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