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Why Nepal loves to hate India

For someone who has spent a lifetime with the Gurkhas of the Indian Army and walked 30,000 kms through the length and breadth of Nepal, I should understand the reasons for the periodic groundswell of anti-India feelings there despite most Nepalese regarding India-Nepal relations as one between dajubhai (brothers).

King Prithvinarayan Shah, who unified Nepal in 1746, warned his people to tread carefully between its two giant neighbours, China and India. Being Himalaya-locked, the Nepalese have gravitated only south for succour and salt. They have become conditioned to blaming India for their ills, frequently motivated by the ruling establishments and its adversaries and more lately, by external forces.

So when there is a drought, floods, cholera, or a price rise, Nepalese usually hold India responsible. Proximity not just familiarity, breeds contempt though it is generally ignorance.

Take Madhuri Dixit when she said she did not realise that beautiful Nepal was a part of India. She was only rubbing salt in the wounds as Nepal is fiercely proud of the fact that it was never colonised and that once the might of the Himalayan kingdom had spread from the rivers Sutlej to Teesta. Only unequal treaties imposed by the British, later India, have undermined the glory of Nepal and its identity.

Being anti-India is therefore seen as being nationalistic among intellectuals and the establishment and sometimes also fashionable. India provides the necessary political space for them to get it off their chest.

Previously Nepal used the China card against India. Now after the restoration of democracy and freedom of expression, the anti-India lobby is more vocal. This is however, less noticeable in the countryside. India on the other hand, is seen acting as the proverbial Big Brother which has failed to contain the fallout of dissidence and anger.

Anger comes from frustration and unhappiness over the ups and mainly downs in India-Nepal relations, starting more recently with the Indian economic blockade of 1988 -- one of the reasons that triggered the movement for the restoration of democracy.

This was followed by a series of events seen in Nepal as violating Nepalese sovereignty -- the 1998 Delhi police raid in Kathmandu, similar police incursions in Nepalgunj and Jhapa subsequently, the 1995 'invasion' of Nepalese skies by IAF helicopters (these were requested from India to help locate victims of an air crash) and so on.

With the advent of democracy, anti-India protests can be orchestrated easily. But this means there is a basic grievance.

It is mainly the Left or extreme Left wing Communist parties who are in the forefront of the anti-India campaign. The periodic row over the 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship, Mahakali Treaty, Kalapani, and Trade and Transit is their handiwork, both while they were in and out of office.

The ruling Nepali Congress is perceived to be pro-India. The delay in resumption of Indian Airlines flights to Nepal after the hijack of IC 814 was seen by many as another economic blockade to punish Nepal. This hurt the people of Nepal and not so much the government of the day.

So with the Nepali Congress now in power, what has sparked off the Hrithik Roshan riots? Take your pick from among these -- the ISI, Maoists, other Left parties, the palace, a carry-over of the Bombay underworld, infighting in the Nepali Congress and the party's crucial Pokhara convention next week, even China and spontaneity.

The purpose of the riots was no doubt, to further sour Indo-Nepal relations and the media played no mean role in this. It is also no coincidence that 57 out of 113 Nepali Congress members of parliament chose to fish in troubled waters by challenging the leadership of the third-time Prime Minister G P Koirala. In the blame-game, the Nepalese media has been singled out for fanning the riots.

Nepal's rumour mill and bush telegraphy are the best anywhere in the world. Students are a potent power centre though the Nepalese media is a late starter in this game.

In 1979, soon after Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was hanged in Pakistan, massive student riots broke out in Kathmandu and rest the of the kingdom forcing King Birendra to hold a referendum: a partyless panchayat system versus multiparty system.

The king won by a whisker. But no one has ever explained how Bhutto's execution triggered off the student riots which nearly brought down the monarchical partyless panchayat system. It is obvious that the students need to let their steam off.

The media on both sides has not been helpful in narrowing differences and correcting perceptions. Not long ago, an Indian magazine had implicated the queen of Nepal through a general in the palace in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination. The said general had died four years earlier. The same magazine recently leaked an Indian home ministry report on ISI-related activities in which former and present ministers including a prime minister of Nepal are named.

Right or wrong, the Nepalese can't help feeling not only India's overbearing influence on everyday life but also its interference in its internal affairs. As for blaming India, the habit has got ingrained in the Nepalese psyche.

During a trek in 1959 in the far west of Nepal, an elderly gurung told me that India had been very unfair: it had commandeered the rich and fertile plains for itself and left Nepal all the arid mountains. His son is from my Gurkha battalion. And it is these very Gurkhas who have fought for India's independence and territorial integrity. So how can they be anti-India and at the same time, lay down their lives on Tiger Hill?

It is due to Nepal's complex internal dynamics that India has been unable to balance its security concerns and national interests to Nepal's sensitivity to independence, identity and well being. As for Nepal, it wants to eat the cake and have it too.

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