POLITICS-SOUTH ASIA: Wary India Watches Nepal Drama in Silence

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Jun 6 2001 (IPS) - By right, the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in India should have hit it off with the world’s only Hindu kingdom, Nepal, which is now struggling to recover from the massacre of its royal family.

But although their religious-cultural links are bolstered by an open border and free access to labour, relations between the two countries have been steadily deteriorating in recent years.

Anti-Indian sentiment reached a new low in December when Kathmandu was rocked by rioting after rumours spread that Indian matinee idol Hrithik Roshan had made disparaging remarks about Nepal.

In such a tinderbox situation, India’s foreign ministry has judciously refrained from commenting on the Friday night massacre of King Birendra, his queen, his children and his siblings.

India has so far also not commented on the hasty enthronement of Gyanendra, the sole survivor of the ancient Shah dynasty, as the new king. His coronation on Monday sparked off rioting in Kathmandu by youths unsatisfied with Gyanendra’s lame statement on Sunday that the killings resulted from the accidental explosion of an automatic weapon.

Gyanendra had opposed the ushering in of democracy into Nepal by his slain brother in 1990 and the media has charged him with harbouring an anti-India attitude — so much so that Nepal’s high commissioner in New Delhi, Bhekh Bahadur Thapa, was compelled to clarify that no changes in bilateral ties would be caused by Gyanendra’s succession to the monarchy.

“My advice to the people of India, especially the media, is not to indulge in speculation based on rumour or preconceived notions,” Thapa said, adding that the ties between the two countries “predates written history and will continue in perpetuity”.

Thapa’s confidence stemmed from the fact that Nepal’s royal family has close blood ties with several of India’s erstwhile royal families spread from western Rajasthan through central Madhya Pradesh and to eastern Orissa states.

But with memories of December’s anti-India riots in Kathmandu still fresh, Indian officials are wary and careful not to speak out of turn.

“We are seriously studying the developments in Nepal” was the sole comment Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has ventured to offer the media on the tragedy that befell the Shah dynasty, whose restoration to power New Delhi helped in 1951.

That restoration cost Gyanendra the throne on which he was placed briefly as a puppet, child ruler by the tryrannical Rana aristocracy, while his father, King Tribhuvan, and his elder brother, the slain King Birendra, fled to exile in India.

Records of the time say King Tribhuvan offered to merge his kingdom with India, following a plan under which the sub-continent’s princely states acceded either to India or Pakistan on gaining independence from Britain in 1947. But that is a chapter that many in Nepal would rather forget .

In December, even as the row over remarks that actor Roshan never made subsided, BJP leader and ideologue K.R. Malkani stirred up another hornet’s nest by stating publicly that India had made a grave blunder by not accepting King Tribhuvan’s offer.

According to the outspoken Malkani, the real issue between the two countries was an all too cosy relationship developing between Nepal and Pakistan, India’s arch rival in South Asia.

“Probably Nepal thinks that it will be in a better position to deal with India if it had Pakistan’s support. Nepal should be careful as its pro-Pakistan tilt is very short-sighted,” Malkani then said.

India officially disassociated itself from Malkani’s contentions but the Indian government adopted a punitive approach to the December 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines airliner from Kathmandu to Afghanistan by suspected agents of Pakistan’s dreaded Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).

The punitive approach, made in the name of security, included restrictions on air travel to Nepal, which deterred the tens of thousands of Indians who holiday there annually.

Tourism is Nepal’s single biggest industry, bringing in 15 percent of its foreign exchange earnings.

Many of those restrictions have since been eased and last month Nepal launched a special campaign to attract Indian visitors, giving them concessional tariffs in hotels and for trekking and travel services.

Anger at Indian “hegemony” in Nepalese journals is often mixed with jingoistic pronouncements.

The Kathmandu-based weekly ‘People’s Review’ advocates re- uniting all Nepalese-speaking communities, including those in territories lost to India under the 1816 Sugauli Treaty at the close of the Anglo-Nepal wars.

“The glorious past of the Nepalese should always serve as a decisive inspiration for bringing the entire Nepalese-speaking community under one parliament,” urged the ‘Review’.

Substantial Nepalese-speaking communities exist in India’s northern Uttaranchal state, the eastern autonomous hill district of Darjeeling in the state of West Bengal and in Sikkim state.

Civil society movements in Nepal such as the Campaign for Solidarity and Friendship, promoted by the South Asia Forum for Human Rights (SAFHR), have pointed out that nationalism in the decade-old multi-party democracy under constitutional monarchy has needlessly become synonymous with anti- Indian feeling.

The movement recognises that much of Nepal’s political instability stems from the fledgling democracy’s inability to handle and accommodate its multi-ethnic polity and there was a tendency for the frustration to be transferred to external scapegoats.

While India has been careful with its official statements and even advised media to “respect the institutions of Nepal and the sentiments of the Nepali people in this hour of loss,” Hindu fundamentalist leaders have been harping on religious connections.

For example, Ashok Singhal, chief of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Forum), which is closely associated with the Vajpayee’s BJP, declared Tuesday that the massacre of Nepal’s royal famiily was a blow to the one billion Hindus who live in India and elsewhere.

A well-known economist and former finance minister in West Bengal state, Ashok Mitra, holds Hindu fundamenatlism directly responsible for deteriorating Indo-Nepal relations.

“Nepal will continue to be the only Hindu kingdom in the world, her people will continue to be devoutly Hindu and yet will turn into inveterate enemies of the ‘Hindutva mongers’ (religious fanatics)”, he predicted.