At the end of 2015, soon after Nepal promulgated a new constitution, the Madhesis of the country\u2019s southern plains intensified a movement seeking revisions in the structure of political representation and federalism. The constitution, they believed, would create a deeply inequitable polity. An Indian diplomat then told a Madhesi interlocutor, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you promulgate your own constitution? That is the only way Kathmandu will learn a lesson. We are with you.\u201d<\/p>\n
A year-and-a-half later, in the middle of 2017, Nepal was all set to hold its local elections. Madhesi parties, still waiting for an amendment, did not wish to participate in the polls since that would have meant endorsing the constitution. A key Indian diplomat then told the same Madhesi interlocutor, \u201cMadhes is a liability for us… you should surrender to the Kathmandu mainstream, even if it means being \u2018second class citizens\u2019…India\u2019s only interest is in keeping Kathmandu happy so that it doesn\u2019t move to China.\u201d<\/p>\n
In those contrasting messages lies the tale of India\u2019s Nepal diplomacy. It also explains Nepal\u2019s recent electoral result \u2013 where a \u2018communist alliance\u2019 on an explicitly anti-India plank has won \u2013 and how Indian inconsistency, ad-hoc policy making, multiplicity of power centres, conflicting messages, and absence of will has contributed to it.<\/p>\n
The first was defining its core concern in Nepal\u2019s constitutional project. When Nepal\u2019s hill elite came close to drafting its constitution in August-September 2015, and the Tarai began burning, Delhi slowly sent signals to Kathmandu that an inclusive constitution that took into account Madhesi concerns was advisable. This was good advice \u2014 an inclusive Nepal is good for both Nepal since it would cater to aspirations for all citizens and for India since it would create balances in a polity known for anti Indian nationalism. But the advice came too late. India had neither used its leverage with Nepali parties nor prepared Indian political opinion well enough to emphasise why an inclusive constitution was essential. Nepal\u2019s hill elite went ahead with their statute. India lost the moment.<\/p>\n
It was because they left intervention too late that India and its Madhesi allies ended up using their most potent weapon \u2013 blocking supplies at the border to put pressure on Kathmandu \u2013 to revise the constitutional compact. This generated a backlash in the hills, gave the then PM K P Oli ammunition to stoke ultra nationalism, and reach out to a willing China. It also began drawing criticism within India as the Congress saw it as a tool to hit out with at the Modi government.<\/p>\n
Rattled by the criticism, without achieving its desired objective fully, India prodded the Madhesis to withdraw the blockade. This led to triumphalism in Kathmandu\u2019s conservative polity \u2014 they had defeated India\u2019s \u2018Brahmastra\u2019. The lesson drawn was simple if you screech against India, if you play the China card, Delhi will get scared and back off.<\/p>\n
This is when India decided that its priority was no longer an inclusive constitution as much as it was removing Oli from office; or \u2018teaching him a lesson\u2019. It managed to persuade Prachanda to withdraw from the alliance, stitch a coalition with the Nepali Congress, and Delhi could thus tell its own domestic audience all was fine back in Nepal.<\/p>\n
The final act was when India pushed the Madhesi parties to participate in elections \u2013 even though they were deeply uncomfortable with the constitution, almost making a two year policy exercise futile.<\/p>\n
Through this process, there was a powerful constituency within India\u2019s political establishment which was sending an entirely different message to Nepal \u2014 our interest is really in a Hindu rashtra, not inclusion. Kathmandu\u2019s hill leaders made most of the divide within India\u2019s ruling establishment.<\/p>\n
And so Delhi lost the Nepali elite: it threw away powerful leverage by forcing Madhesis to accept a system where they can never swing the balance; and it opened doors for the Chinese. This election has marked Nepal\u2019s shift from being a partly sovereign country where India had a role in domestic political management \u2013 to an almost fully sovereign country \u2013 where Indian leverage in Nepal\u2019s internal politics has shrunk to its most negligible.<\/p>\n
The loss of political control is accompanied by \u2013 or is perhaps because of \u2013 India\u2019s shrinking leverage with a new generation of Nepali politicians, civil society and opinion makers who are either exposed to the western world or are rooted in the Nepali speaking world and have little emotional investment in the bonds with India.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the end of 2015, soon after Nepal promulgated a new constitution, the Madhesis of the country\u2019s southern plains intensified a movement seeking revisions in the structure of political representation and federalism. The constitution, they believed, would create a deeply inequitable polity. An Indian diplomat then told a Madhesi interlocutor, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you promulgate your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15382,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15381"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15383,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15381\/revisions\/15383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}