Who would have thought that Nepal, a country with which India has open borders, would become such a foreign policy headache? While the anti-India rumblings from Kathmandu have quietened in recent months, they are always there just below the surface, threatening to cause upheavals like some Himalayan temblor.
Understanding the mind of the Nepalese, therefore, is important for India. And who better to explain this than Ranjit Rae, India’s envoy to Nepal during the time when bilateral relations hit an all-time high and then, slipped into one of the worst lows.
Rae’s book covers mostly his ambassadorial tenure, though it often reaches into the past. He writes about the high of PM Modi’s first visit to Kathmandu in 2014, when he wooed polity and public alike and when “every sentence of Modi’s speech was greeted by loud and prolonged thumping of the desks by the Assembly members”. India-Nepal relations were at an all-time high, he writes. He then goes into the details of the fiasco over Nepal’s constitution, and the subsequent “blockade” of supplies from India. He also writes of the developments after his term, especially the 2020 border dispute.
The book reads well. Rae gives an insider’s view of the developments, and how some misunderstandings blew up beyond proportion. It is a very detailed account of the past seven years. Rae’s writing style is easy and his anecdotes are revealing. He describes his visit to the PMO before Modi’s first visit, and how he gave a lowdown on his assessment of the bilateral, which the PM listened to quietly. Had he done his homework well? Obviously not. The only question the PM asked him left him stumped. How many shakti-peeths are there in Nepal, Modi asked, and Rae had to admit that he did not know.
The author gives a good analysis of the dramatis personae. His descriptions of K.P. Sharma Oli are insightful and interesting. He calls Oli possibly the shrewdest politician in Nepal. He writes that at one time, in the 1990s, Oli was India’s greatest friend. Obviously, his anti-India stance now is to pander to his own nationalistic image. Rae notes that after Oli developed this image, he never visited India for treatment, instead going to Singapore and Bangkok. And when he chose to have his second kidney transplant in Nepal itself, he won accolades from the public.
There is an interesting anecdote in the book about how Oli once fumed over President Bidya Devi Bhandari’s tardiness for a dinner engagement, but when she did turn up, “he was full of charm... not a word of censure escaped his lips”.
The best chapter in the book is the one explaining why the Nepalese love to hate Indians. Among the various reasons is a strong national pride and fear of being subsumed into the great Indian stream. He gives the example of the extremely uncomfortable and seemingly illogical practice of a second security check at the Kathmandu airport for those returning to India via an Indian carrier.
The check is conducted just before the passengers board the plane, a few rungs above the aircraft’s step ladder. It was introduced after the hijack of IC 814 in 1999, when India wanted to strengthen security at the airport. Rae writes, “The Nepalese were outraged. How could they permit Indian security personnel on sovereign Nepalese territory? It is then that a compromise was worked out. Indian security personnel would not stand on sacred Nepalese soil, but a foot above it and do their job!”
Kathmandu Dilemma: Resetting India-Nepal Ties
By Ranjit Rae
Published by Penguin Random House India
Price Rs499; pages 237