Somber questions in the shadows

Nepali Netbook

Somber questions in the shadows

By Maila Baje

The deferral of the parliamentary vote to amend the Constitution to reflect our new map has stiffened the shadows. Not that Nepalis haven’t been left to take their most consequential decisions in the dark.

The purported arrival of Indian troubleshooter Shyam Saran, hectic bargaining within the Madhes-centric parties and the Nepali Congress (think Millennium Challenge Corporation compact) and the prevalence of palpably cooler thoughts have injected anticipation and apprehension.

The injurious insults the Indian still complain about, their candor in conveying their broader magnanimity to Nepal, and their public brazenness in postulating ways of possible retaliation have plunged bilateral relations to new lows.

The debate on Kalapani, Lipulekh and the wider swath of territory up to Limpiyadhura has certainly enlightened Nepalis on multiple disciplines. What was simplified as King Mahendra exchange of barren and treacherous terrain for two trunks of gold (or was it support for the partyless Panchayat system?) has now unfolded itself into an intricate lesson in history, geography, hydraulics, international law and diplomacy.

If an all-powerful monarch, whose mere word constituted law, gave away those vast tracts of land to India, why are we even questioning why, much less expecting to get it back? Are we also going to nationalize the ‘birtas’ and land ‘bakas’ the monarch had handed to his favourites?

Our post-1990 leadership was not stupid to rake up the issue and then let it die. The British East India Company through the Sugauli Treaty in 1816 may have accepted our sovereign territorial rights east of the Kali River. But it turns out that they began the cartographic aggression long before Indian independence.

After Warren Hastings, the first governor-general, departed Calcutta in 1785, Britain had no further relations with Tibet for nearly a century. In 1884 the Indian government prepared to send a diplomatic mission to Lhasa to define the spheres of influence of the Tibetan and Indian governments. Colman Macaulay, a secretary in the government of Bengal, was responsible for the negotiations. While Macaulay obtained Chinese assent to conduct a mission to Lhasa, he had not gained the Tibetan government’s approval. Instead, the Tibetans dispatched troops almost 21 km into Sikkim. The British decided to suspend the Macaulay mission since its presence was the Tibetans’ argument for their occupation. Tibet’s refusal to retreat precipitates new fighting. Eventually the Anglo-Chinese Convention of Calcutta was signed on 17 March 1890, under which Tibet renounced suzerainty over Sikkim and delimited their border.

Despite Tibet’s inward turn, Britain persisted in its plans for Central Asia, cultivating so-called ‘pundits’ who traveled in disguise into Tibet also along the western routes. With their compasses and 100-bead rosaries, they secretly counted their steps to map the terrain later. British Indian maps began encroaching eastward into Nepal, as Calcutta and London sought new routes to Tibet. The imperative became more urgent amid British suspicions that Russia sought to boost its influence in Tibet, possibly with the connivance of China, widely deemed a serious menace to India.

At the turn of the century, Governor-General George Curzon, who had long obsessed over Russia’s advance into Central Asia, now feared a Russian invasion of British India. In 1903, he dispatched the Younghusband military mission to Tibet, eventually imposing the Treaty of Lhasa the following year.

The Tibetans naturally loathed the treaty, while the British realized they seemed to have misread the military and diplomatic situation. The Russians did not have the designs on India and would go on to suffer defeat at the hands of the Japanese, which further shifted the balance of power.

The Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 produced a semblance of stability following the ‘Great Game’, while the Qing dynasty headed toward collapse. Five years later, the Republic of China proclaimed Tibet a part of China but did not try to reoccupy it. In 1914 a treaty was negotiated in India by representatives of China, Tibet and Britain. Again, Chinese suzerainty over Tibet was recognized and a boundary negotiated between British India and Tibet. As the Chinese never signed the treaty, it never came into force.

As the Chinese persisted with their objections, especially their refusal to recognize any treaty between Tibet and Britain, other players became interested in the region. A German expedition arrived in Tibet in 1939, led by Ernst Schäfer, a protégé of the future Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler.

At about the same time, a Japanese mission arrived in Tibet for ‘research purposes’. Three years later, the United States government sent Captain Ilya Tolstoy, a grandson of the Russian novelist, “…to move across Tibet and make its way to Chungking, China, observing attitudes of the people of Tibet; to seek allies and discover enemies; locate strategic targets and survey the territory as a possible field for future activity.”

As the British departed the subcontinent in 1947, the Chinese communists were closing in on a full takeover of the mainland and formal annexation of Tibet. Independent India’s views on the territory currently in dispute were colored by the imperatives of cooperation and later conflict with the Chinese.

After the 1962 Sino-Indian border war, Nepal began consolidating its partyless Panchayat system and went on to forge a road link with Tibet in 1968. A confident and assertive Nepal forced the Indians to vacate their military check-posts in the Nepali Himalayas in 1969, but New Delhi went on to fortify its military position in Kalapani.

So, was the trade-off (temporary or final) related to the Cold War-driven regional rivalry that already claimed our democracy and was creeping upon our country? Maybe Kalapani was why the Kodari Highway didn’t evoke any of the much-feared punitive measures from India, which rarely went beyond verbal outbursts. If communism couldn’t come to Nepal in a taxicab, maybe it was because our extreme western flank was too fortified.

If so, was that the kind of persuasion the Indians engaged in with our multiparty and republican leaders? After having made much noise initially, did they acquiesce in India’s stand through the ratification of the Mahakali Treaty and, subsequently, on the sidelines of the 12-Point Agreement?

Furthermore, is New Delhi’s surprising hard line on an issue it has hitherto regarded as bilateral dispute stem from its displeasure at this ‘reneging’ on the part of the broad-based Nepali leadership? All good questions. But a better one is whether Nepalis will ever get answers.