The Raj Lives: India In Nepal

Umesh Verma
May 6, 2008
Book Review: Paradox of Proximity

The Raj Lives: India In Nepal

Sanjay Upadhya
New Delhi: Vitasta, 2008
Pages: 350; Hardbound Edition
ISBN: 8189766732
Price: $34.95

A case for prudence on Indo-Nepal relations

Six decades after the British withdrew from the subcontinent, it takes considerable audacity to
produce a book titled “The Raj Lives”. It takes much more when the country supposedly on the
receiving end is one that actually never came under British colonialism.

Mercifully, there is much more than hyperbole in Sanjay Upadhya’s narrative of the political
history of India’s troubled relationship with its northern Himalayan neighbor. The author, a
leading Nepali journalist, offers a gripping chronicle of a nation’s experience intertwined with
that of British as well as independent India. To rebuff the book as another anti-Indian rant Nepali
academia churns out with some regularity is to lose sight of the pieces that, when put together,
etch a tapestry of entrenched skepticism.

Innumerable organizations, officials and individuals on both sides of the border have expended
much time, money and energy into examining why India-Nepal relations remain so touchy.
Many “new beginnings” have been hailed over the years. Exhilaration has barely lasted long
enough to engender meaningful action. The slightest affirmation of “special” relations on India’s
part instantly sparks cries of hegemonism in Nepal.

It was fashionable for Indian analysts and commentators to blame Nepal’s lack of democracy for
the virulent strain of anti-Indianism running rampant in the kingdom. But the restoration of
multiparty democracy in 1990 did little to end Nepali suspicions. In some ways, political
openness exacerbated mistrusts.
History, geography, religion and culture have bound India closer to Nepal than to any of its
neighbors. Pakistan and Bangladesh may have emerged from the same womb, but they
acclimatized themselves to the turbulent world as independent nations. In landlocked Nepal,
which borders India on three sides, relations became ever more controversial. Nowhere are they
more so than in the political domain. Indeed, it would be fair to say that everything in the
relationship is political.

Ordinarily, British India’s alleged transgressions against Nepal should not have mattered much
to Indians; they were direct victims of the worst of the Raj. But in Nepal, perceptions are what
ultimately matter – a point Upadhya emphasizes throughout. It is the inseparableness of the two
Indias in the Nepali consciousness that gives the book its title as well as relevance.

India has been central to three democratic changes in Nepal since the 1950s. The Delhi
compromise Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru mediated in 1951 among King Tribhuvan, the
hereditary Rana premiership and the Nepali Congress was instantly denounced by Nepali
communists as a “sellout”. India’s sympathy and support aided the collapse of the three-decade
Panchayat Raj in 1990. Yet India’s actions were seen more as a machination to limit Nepal’s
sovereignty. New Delhi’s initiative in 2006 to partner the mainstream parties and the Maoist
rebels against King Gyanendra’s autocratic rule, too, was interpreted as part of an elaborate plot
to perpetuate instability.

Upadhya asserts that Lainchaur Darbar – which refers to the neighborhood the Indian Embassy is
located in the heart of Kathmandu – has become an important player in the domestic politics of
Nepal. Each Indian ambassador has been accorded in the Nepali media a status akin to that of a
viceroy’s. The Indian Embassy, at least in the Nepali mind, has the power to make and break
governments. And perhaps not without reason.

It is a matter of public record that the adviser to King Tribhuvan used to attend cabinet meetings.
Whether he really directed the government or drafted policy in any way is immaterial. The
perception was enough to fortify the “nationalist” flank King Mahendra – Tribhuvan’s wily and
ambitious son and successor – used to neutralize India-friendly organizations like the Nepali
Congress.

During this time, Nepal seemed to defy conventional wisdom. While the world was anxiously
pondering whether Nepal could be the next domino to fall to international communism, King
Mahendra was cultivating Mao Zedong. His success owed much to ordinary Nepalis’ perception
of India as the greater evil.

Upadhya offers interesting nuggets that could help put things in perspective for the average
Indian reader. In the early 1950s, as Nepali politics entered troubled waters, politicians often
took their quarrels to New Delhi and sought Nehru’s intervention. Back home, some of these
same leaders would vie with one another to denounce Indian motives.

Nepali Congress leader B.P. Koirala had once lobbied against Nepal’s membership of the United
Nations, ostensibly claiming that it was a dependency of India. When Koirala’s Nepali Congress
won the first multiparty elections in 1959, Mahendra seemed reluctant to invite him to form the
new government. Koirala sought Nehru’s intervention and became premier. Once in power,
Koirala used the “nationalism” flank vis-à-vis Kathmandu’s relations with China.

Indian words and actions, to be sure, helped deepen Nepali suspicions. Nehru, during his first
visit to Kathmandu, tried to dispel the image that India was dictating to Nepalis how they should
conduct himself. Yet in a major public speech, he seemed to do precisely that. During three
decades of palace rule, Nepali Congress operated from exile in India. New Delhi’s eagerness to
use the exiles as a bargaining chip against the palace seemed to alienate sections within the
Nepali Congress.

An Indian TV channel’s erroneous report accusing a Nepali passenger of being behind hijacking
of an Indian Airlines aircraft to Afghanistan in late 1999 left many Nepalis scratching their heads
in amazement. An official visit by the Indian Air Force chief in late 2000 to a country that did
not possess an air force served to raise deeper questions across the Nepali political spectrum.

Although Upadhya covers only the first year after the collapse of King Gyanendra’s regime, he
has delineated how India may have lost some ground in Nepal and could lose more. China has
stepped up its role in the country in an unprecedented manner. The recent electoral victory of the
former Maoist rebels – who still espouse an avowed anti-Indian agenda – has presented a new set
of challenges. Upadhya sees the Bharatiya Janata Party and Hindutva brigade as a major
contender to restore Nepal’s status as a Hindu state, which it lost with the collapse of the royal
regime.

Nepal has moved far ahead in the international arena since the 1950s. It hosts the secretariat of
the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation and has served two stints as a non-
permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, among other things. If Nepalis seek
some overt Indian acknowledgment of this sea change, then they hardly can be faulted.

For India, crafting a credible and effective policy on Nepal requires greater prudence. Consider
this supreme irony. During the decade-long Maoist insurgency, India was criticized by Nepalis
and others for sheltering Nepali rebel leaders. China, on the other hand, was backing the
monarchy politically, and then militarily as well, to crush the rebellion. Today, Beijing has
increased its influence in the country on the back of the Maoists as well as the monarchists.

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