Legally, treaty-wise, and under international law, the entire Limpiyadhura basin at the source of the Mahakali River is Nepali territory.
But, as we are all painfully aware, international law does not apply in geopolitics. If it did, colonialism would be a crime against humanity. The firebombing of Dresden, and the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have also been declared war crimes. China would have to give up its claim over the Spratly Atolls. Instead, it is Slobodan Milosevic’s or Bosco Ntaganda’s of the world who get hauled over the coals at The Hague.
Might is right. Laws are laid down by the victors.
So, it does not seem to matter that more than 200 years ago, the Sugauli Treaty of 1816 between the East India Company and the defeated Gorkhalis agreed to the main channel of the Mahakali River as Nepal’s western border.
After the Mutiny of 1857, the Survey of India maps cunningly moved the border to Lipu Khola, a tributary of the Mahakali that flows down from Lipu Lekh pass. That was the original sin.
After 1816, the Shah dynasty was in decline, palace intrigue led to the downfall of Bhimsen Thapa and later to the rise of the Ranas in 1847. The distracted rulers in Kathmandu, then as now, had no idea what was going on in that far-flung edge of Nepal.
After independence, India inherited the British survey. So, when the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi says, like it did this week, that the new road to the Chinese border ‘lies completely within the territory of India’ it is an understanding based on those maps.
In the 1950s, Nepal had allowed Indian security forces to set up 17 checkpoints along the border with China, and one of these was on the strategic Lipu Lekh Valley. Following the Sino-Indian war Nepal told India to remove its personnel in 1969 – but the one in Kalapani was allowed to stay. And they have been there ever since.
Nepal’s own official maps show Lipu Khola as the boundary between Nepal and India, and not the Mahakali River. Ultra-nationalists cry themselves hoarse about ‘big bully’ India, but why would a neighbour respect your boundary if you yourself never cared where it is?
Kalapani is on the traditional route for the Mansarovar-Kailash Hindu pilgrimage in Tibet. It was common knowledge in Kathmandu that the Indian military had a base there. Elected rulers in Nepal after 1990s used this to stoke anti-Indian nationalism for political benefit, but did nothing about it.
Then on 2 November last year, an official Indian map showed not just the original 336sq km of Limpiyadhura within India’s external boundary, but for the first time also depicted a whole 66sq km swath of the east bank of Lipu Khola also as Indian territory. That is when the manure really hit the fan.
Last week, Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, in the presence of top Indian Army generals, inaugurated by video conference a 70km stretch of road to the pass. A photo-op while both countries were in lockdown was intriguing in itself, but the timing could not have been better for Nepal’s embattled Prime Minister K P Oli.
There is nothing like an external threat to unite Nepal’s snarling political factions, and sure enough Oli’s detractors in the NCP suddenly went quiet this week on strident demands for his resignation.
Nepal’s Armed Police Force has started patrol at the bank of the Mahakali River in Byas village near the Nepali territory that India has claimed and built a road through to the Chinese border. Photos: RSS
India has never historically been bothered about winning the hearts and minds of Nepalis. It believes in carrying the big stick, and Kalapani has opened up bad memories in Nepal’s cybersphere of the 2015 Blockade. This put pressure on the Nepal government to ‘do something’, so it fired off a note verbale or two, and flew up an APF unit to set up an outpost 12km from India’s new road.
Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali on Monday handed Indian Ambassador Vinay Mohan Kwatra a note protesting India’s ‘unilateral action’ in building a road in Nepali territory. But India’s position is bilateral — Beijing is on the same page as New Delhi on the dispute.
Lipu Lekh has come up at various times in India-China meetings: during Indian External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh’s visit to Beijing in 1999, by Chinese Premier Wen Jiaobao to Delhi in 2005, and by President Xi Jinping in India in 2014. A joint communiqué between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi in 2015 in Beijing listed Lipu Lekh as one of the Himalayan passes through which the two countries agreed to conduct trade.
For the first time, protests in Kathmandu were directed not just at India, but also China. Yet, Nepal’s leaders did not broach the subject during President Xi’s state visit to Kathmandu last October.
There is not much tiny Nepal can do when its two gigantic neighbours decide to snub it. But Nepal could revise its own official map, and take up the matter with both Chinese and Indian leaders. For neighbours to take us seriously, we must have leadership with self-respect and the vision to act in the long-term national interest.
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