Political circles in Nepal are keenly watching how much Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba will score gains in his first bilateral visit scheduled from April 1-3, 2022 after taking over as the PM in July last year. Moreover, the visit takes place during the year of the election to the National Assembly of Nepal. It is not that it is his first visit to India as the PM. In 1996, Deuba visited India which was fully committed to secularism while Royal Nepal was a Hindu state. Now it has changed upside down. Nepal ceased to be a Hindu state in 2015, while India under the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-dictated National Democratic Alliance government in India, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party gravitates toward a ‘Hindu Rashtra’. Deuba’s party, Nepali Congress, is broadly secular. For the PM of Nepal, the diplomatic stance has to be cautious as it’s going to be a tightrope walk for him.
However, Deuba is not new to India, but his camaraderie was with leaders of the Indian National Congress. Towards his counterpart and the latter’s party BJP, his steps will be more diplomatic than cordial. The erstwhile PM Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli has been pronouncedly anti-Indian, quite unlike Deuba. Nepali intelligentsia has become more critical of India during the last two decades. The reason was the Modi government’s more-than-implicit encouragement to the Madhesi parties that have been at loggerheads with the then Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). Dr Nishchal N Pandey, director of Kathmandu-based think-tank Center for South Asian Studies and formerly executive director, Institute of Foreign Affairs under Nepal’s ministry of Foreign Affair states realistically in an interview to Kathmandu’s English daily ‘My Republica’, “We also generally raise the people’s expectations before the visit. When the visit falls short, there is no dearth of those that criticise and state that the visit was not a success. Besides, this is an election year here in Nepal. Local polls are due in a month. Nepal needs to stress the expeditious implementation of bilateral projects and reinvigorate the already existing bilateral mechanisms across diverse spheres rather than forming new committees and groups.”
The region under controversy and in question between the two nations is situated between Limpiyadhura-Lipulekh, and the Kalapani trijunction between Nepal-India and China (Tibet), located at an altitude of 3600m on the banks of the river Kali. Even the incorrigible optimists do not expect an amicable settlement of the issue during the ensuing visit of Nepal’s PM. Kathmandu refers to the Treaty of Sugauli of 1816 where the then British colonial rulers recognized the right of Nepal to the region that fell to the east of the Kali river. Nonetheless, Deuba and top bureaucrats in Kathmandu are thankful to India for helping the land-locked neighbour with vaccines and the repatriation of stranded Nepalis. Nepal is looking up to the Indian government to further help the Nepali tourism industry get beefed up by augmenting air connectivity to Varanasi and south India. Veteran Nepali diplomats think the visit is an opportunity for Modi to mend the fences. China cashes in on a growing anti-India mentality. But many look at China suspiciously for its propensity to dominate economically.
