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BOOK REVIEW:
Anatomy Of An Injustice
How the world’s largest democracy exercises freedom to undermine
a smaller neighbour
Reviewed by D.N. Pandey
Nepal’s transformation from centuries of monarchical rule to republicanism
is a seminal development in South Asia’s thorny political evolution.
Clearly, King Gyanendra brought down Nepal’s oldest institution
by his arrogance and ineptitude. The challenge ahead for Nepal may be
inherently uncertain, but at least it would not be encumbered as much
by the past.
This, however, is a superficial view of events. The daily headlines
and sound-bites do not tell the full story. The Nepalese monarchy’s
greatest crime was to have consistently stood on a platform of nationalism
atop South Asia’s oldest nation-state. And that ground was predicated
in large measure on the reality of India’s total control of almost
every aspect of Nepali life. By asserting its religious, cultural and
social links with Nepal as well as incessantly raising its geographical
vulnerabilities, successive rulers in New Delhi have sought to keep
its small northern neighbour tightly within its sphere of influence.
Successive Nepali monarchs, on the other hand, have struggled to move
in the other direction by, among other things, raising the landlocked
nation’s international profile.
A new book titled “The Raj Lives: India in Nepal” is a saga
of Nepal’s subjugation, beginning with the British, who never brought
the Himalayan nation under their direct rule. Paying lip service to
Nepal’s independence, Delhi has imposed unequal and iniquitous
treaty obligations on Nepalis. They have exploited the weaknesses of
the Nepali regime to create pliant leaders in each political party.
Once their interests have been served, these leaders have been discarded
to the wayside, the most prominent of them being B.P.
Koirala, Nepal’s first democratically elected prime minister.
India has used the palace, institutionally sceptical of the political
parties, to do its bidding, thereby creating greater instability. In
the end, Nepali media and academia have been manipulated by Delhi to
heap the entire blame on the monarchy’s autocratic tendencies.
In Upadhya’s conclusion, independent India virtually adopted the
British colonialists’ policies vis-à-vis Nepal.
“The Raj Lives” explains how consistently India has been
pitting political power centers against one another over the decades.
Jawaharlal Nehru virtually imposed a Treaty of Peace and Friendship
in 1950 on a tottering regime of Rana oligarchs by using the monarchy
and the nascent Nepali Congress. Enticed by promises of continued political
support, the Ranas, staunch British allies worried by the colonialists’
departure, signed the document. The inequity of the treaty is apparent
in the fact that the incumbent Rana Prime Minister signed on behalf
of Nepal while India’s signature was appended by its ambassador
in Kathmandu.
Yet months later, Nehru engineered the collapse of Rana rule by restoring
to King Tribhuvan as the head of state and promising the Nepali Congress
and other parties a share of political power based on their electoral
strength. But India went on to empower the monarchy at the cost of the
political parties. After much wrangling, Nepal held elections in 1959
in which Koirala’s Nepali Congress triumphed with a landslide.
Prime Minister Koirala, cognizant of India’s real motives, sought
to project Nepal’s international involvement far and wide. He built
closer ties with China, opened relations with Israel and became more
vocal in his assertion of Nepal’s sovereign rights and responsibilities.
A clearly infuriated Nehru responded by making public secret letters
exchanged with the 1950 Treaty, which, in India’s interpretation,
placed Nepal within the Indian security perimeter. Undaunted, Koirala
continued to march ahead, which strained his ties with Nehru. Delhi
then turned its sights on Tribhuvan’s son and successor, Mahendra,
who was politically shrewder and more ambitious than his father. Through
a variety of intermediaries, Upadhya suggests, India encouraged the
palace to dismiss the elected government. When the monarch did so in
late 1960, Delhi criticized him and began arming Nepali Congress exiles
against the palace. This was merely one of the manifestations of the
divide-and-rule policies the British had used in India.
For almost two years, Nehru pitted Mahendra and the Nepali Congress
against each other to gain maximum advantage in a future setup. But
China’s humbling of India in the 1962 war worked to Mahendra’s
advantage.
Nehru and his successors continued supporting and chastising both sides
of the Nepali political divide.
King Birendra, Mahendra’s son and successor, saw India’s
annexation of the independent kingdom of Sikkim in 1975 as a clear threat
to Nepal’s independence. He announced a proposal to have Nepal
declared a zone of peace, a move that would go on to win massive international
support. India considered the proposal aimed against its interpretation
of the 1950 Treaty and continued to oppose it bitterly.
When Birendra bought arms from China in 1989, India imposed a crippling
blockade of Nepal. Here, too, Delhi cited a secret agreement which it
said required Kathmandu to meet its defence requirements through India.
Nepal continued to insist that China had offered the arms at bargain
prices, but to no avail.
The shortage of food, fuel and other essential supplies soured Nepali
public opinion. Mindful of a nationalist backlash, Delhi then backed
a democracy movement against the palace, all the while pressuring Birendra
to sign a comprehensive treaty aimed at bringing Nepal under tighter
Indian control.
Birendra, Upadhya emphasizes, compromised with the Nepali parties and
“democracy” was thus ushered in the world’s only Hindu
kingdom. Yet weeks later Delhi presented the same draft treaty to the
new Nepali premier Krishna Prasad Bhattarai. When political parties
failed to serve its interests, Delhi gave support and succour to Nepali
Maoist rebels. Political instability deepened and the insurgency raged
on almost in a vicious circle.
King Gyanendra, who succeeded Birendra, slain in a mysterious palace
massacre along with his entire family, sought Chinese and American support
to quell the insurgency and prevent Nepal from becoming a failed state.
There was little India could do differently, considering the vast and
open border as well as the international concern the rising insurgency
had raised. Yet Delhi sought to use the relative unpopularity of Gyanendra
to pressure the palace into concessions. Gyanendra’s family, after
all, had escaped unhurt from the palace massacre. His son, Paras, had
been involved in a number of hit-and-run accidents, killing at least
one victim.
As Nepali political parties descended into deeper infighting, Washington,
Beijing and – grudgingly Delhi – concluded that the palace
needed to take greater control to quell the insurgency. King Gyanendra
held extensive discussions with foreign envoys, including two senior
Indian representatives, and dismissed an elected government in October
2002. Delhi seemed to go along but was seething at the ground Washington
and Beijing gained in Nepal. A succession of palace-appointed premiers
proved unable to quell the insurgency, whose leadership was safe and
sound on Indian soil.
When King Gyanendra, wary of India’s double-dealing, was contemplating
a political settlement directly with the Maoists, India preempted that
move by urging him to take direct control of government and crush the
insurgency militarily. When Gyanendra seized power on February 1, 2005,
appointing himself head of government as well, India became all the
more vitriolic. The duplicity forced Gyanendra to move closer to China
and the United States. By portraying Gyanendra’s government as
an autocratic regime on the way to becoming a Chinese satellite, India
was able to drive a wedge between the palace and Washington.
At the Dhaka summit of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation
in late 2005, Gyanendra led an effort to bring China as an observer
in the organization. The monarch, like the leaders of Pakistan, Bangladesh
and Sri Lanka, believed greater Chinese institutional engagement in
South Asia would help the region achieve strategic stability and spur
the economy. Delhi was infuriated by what it considered Gyanendra’s
brazen flaunting of the “China card”. Days later, it brought
the mainstream Nepali opposition parties and the Maoist rebels in an
anti-palace alliance. India’s sponsorship of both became all the
more apparent.
Months later, the royal regime was brought down amid massive popular
protests. Recognizing that an abrupt removal of the monarchy would produce
a level of instability it could not handle, India began neutering the
palace through a series of steps. After the elections were held this
year, according to some reports from Kathmandu, India was continuing
to negotiate with the palace a quid pro quo for the retention of the
monarchy. Apparently, the king
refused.
Upadhya’s 350-page volume could have been dismissed as an alternative
history penned by a diehard royalist, an identity Upadhya has not bothered
to conceal. But he cites sources, most of them in the public record,
that provide a perfect timeline to back his narrative.
As Nepalis celebrate their triumph against the monarchy, India has widened
its options with regard to its security considerations, Nepal’s
vast water resources and the nation’s status as a vast Indian market.
Some Nepalis continue to raise their voice against India’s true
motives, but they are few and far between.
For a wider South Asian audience, “The Raj Lives”
comes with a palpable ring of familiarity. Precise modes and methods
may vary, but the smaller nations of South Asia are long-standing victims
of Indian highhandedness stemming from the same megalomania. For others
beyond South Asia who are interested in the region, Upadhya provides
a lucid portrayal of how the world’s largest democracy uses a free
press, civil society and other tenets of openness to undermine its neighbors.
The Raj Lives: India In Nepal
By Sanjay Upadhya
Vitasta Publishing Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi
350 Pages; Hardbound Edition: 2008
ISBN: 81-89766-73-2
Price: Indian Rs. 645
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